Class Struggle # 30 November 1999/January 2000

Communist Workers Group of New Zealand. Section of Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International. PO Box 6595 Auckland. NZ email: cwgnz@pl.net.

For the Withdrawal of Russia from Chechnya. Draft of POR (Argentina) statement

The great rightward moving circus of the November 27 election adds to the general cynicism in the air that nothing is going to get better – probably worse. Cynical workers’ instincts are correct. They see all parties dealing with superficialities – Jenny kissing Clinton, Helen playing to the polls, Winston and Prebble playing the law and order and race card to appeal to voters’ prejudices. We appear to be in the grip of a global economy that denies many of us jobs and social security. No amount of hype about national identity or hopes for the future pinned on APEC, the All Blacks or the Americas Cup can substitute for this lack in peoples’ lives. But it is not dysfunctional families, bad All Black coaches or diesel in the decaf that is the problem –it is a dysfunctional society. Capitalism is a society that cannot meet the basic economic or emotional needs of the people and no parliamentary charades or feel good bright future spin doctoring can disguise this reality.

Labour and the Alliance with the smell of office in their nostrils are retreating from all but the most pathetically tame challenges to the neo-liberals. Labour long ago gave up any pretence to even a pale pink socialism. And now it wants to follow Tony Blair down the Third Way (3W) where the name socialism is banned and the working class is the name of a pop band. It raises the question again of how far right Labour has to go before it ceases to have any contact with the working class. We may be at the point of no return. And what of the Alliance? Originally a break from Labour to the left, the NLP followed Mat Rata out of Labour as it started openly attacking workers. Now the Alliance postures as a left ‘heart’ of Labour, but it is to the right of Labour when it took office under Lange in 1984 and yonks to the right of Big Norm Kirk in 1972. It won’t re-nationalise any of the state sector that in 1984 Labour took for granted before Douglas and his acolytes began selling off state assets. Today a Labour/Alliance 3W government would do little to slow down or reverse the policies of the last 15 years. A centre-left government, if not at the mercy of a centre dominated by maverick Maori or by Winston Peters, would be dragged further to the right by the weight of multinational capitalists in the NZ economy.

Those on the reformist left who claim that the economic ‘horror’ of globalisation can be tamed by international alliances of groups of states or NGO’s mobilising protests against the US and its IMF/WB/WTO etc, don’t understand what their up against. They imagine that the great rightward show is the result of a monopoly of power and wealth concentrated in the hands of the MNC’s and that this can be redistributed by reforms at national and international level. Even such a consistent critic of US world domination, Noam Chomsky, can offer no hope but the naïve belief that US citizens can rally around their democratic institutions and reclaim them in the common interest. This position is that of good vs bad capitalists. In NZ, Bruce Jesson’s last book Only their Purpose is Mad takes this line. Good capitalists are productive of goods. Bad capitalists are parasitical on the producers. Finance capital has taken over the economy and now rules the world. He argues that all we have to do is get rid of the finance capitalists, and capitalism can be made to run for the benefit of all. Jane Kelsey in her latest book Reclaiming the Future makes a similar case for mobilising against the power and wealth of international capital by NZ reclaiming its sovereignty over the national economy.

This productive capital = good and money capital = bad view is a variant of the classic neo-Ricardian economics that Marx rejected. It saw production as natural under capitalism because it was no different to pre-capitalist production. By itself natural production would mean that all producers get the full value of their product. However, under capitalism, the capitalists were parasites because they took part of that natural value as their profits. Mr Money Bags is the personification of money capital ripping off the producers. What the reformist left can’t understand is that finance capital is a necessary part of capitalism. Its "power" is a symptom of productive capital in crisis that is both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ together. Its good part is that it develops nature to produce more with less labour time.

The measure of historical progress is therefore, economising on labour time (which is the expenditure of labour power and who will object to having to spend less time working?). Its bad side is that this progress in production means not that wealth is shared equally but is accumulated as the private property of the capitalist class that owns the means of production. Capitalism becomes more destructive as it ‘overproduces’ goods but at the same time destroys the environment and starves increasing numbers. Therefore the good and bad cannot be separated in capitalism and the whole system has to go.

A real left position must start from the need to revolutionise capitalism from the bottom up. We have to reject both the neo-liberal and reformist arguments as harmful to workers. Both must lead to workers being further exploited and impoverished, defeated and demoralised. That’s why we say that the only solution is revolution, and we have to start preparing for revolution now. Join us in building an internationalist communist movement!

On the 12 October 1999 students at the University of Auckland stormed the Old Arts building, and occupied part of that building for a number of hours, before being sold out by the dishonest manoeuvre of certain misleaders of the union. It became painfully obvious that the long-standing need for a left pole of student activists had reached a high point. The whole episode served to bring about the formation of that genuine leadership as Fightback! an organisation of student activists committed to fighting for students' rights. Part of one of the first communiques in Fightback! reads:

Student protest in Auckland wasn’t what it used to be. Years of New Right rule seemed to have worn down the resistance of students. Numbers at demonstrations seemed to be on a permanent decline. Gone were the days of 10,000 Auckland uni students marching through Queen Street. The Union had just voted to become voluntary: a great defeat for students.The student mis-leaders shook their learned heads in despair. Right wing members of the 2000 elect executive proclaimed that student protest was dead, that students didn’t want to demonstrate and that they didn’t want a free education. In the Education Action Group (EAG) advocates of militant mass action were ridiculed and sidelined. We were told that the focus had to be on "silent protest" and "achievable demands".The way the EAG was organised meant that the bureaucratic misleaders had virtual control over it, and it became apparent to militant members that if there was to be progress those bureaucrats were going to have to be left behind. The bureaucrats were trying to hold back the students, instead of leading them. A small group of proven activists decided that there was going to be an occupation. At this point, the biggest hurdle had been successfully crossed. Once it was decided that there was going to be an occupation, the rest was easy.

A demonstration was planned for Tuesday, the 12^th. A wall had been built by the EAG to symbolise the student debt, standing at over three billion dollars. A hammer was procured and the debt wall was smashed by student activists, to an audience of TV cameras, students, and Helen Clark, the leader of the Labour Party. The quad was full of students hyped and ready for action. The march they had been promised started, and headed more or less directly toward the agreed target, the Old Arts building. Once within striking distance, the leading marchers made a run for the building, and they were followed by a mass of students into the old building and into the pages of history. By 1:30 pm students were occupying the Information Centre of the Old Arts Building. Throughout the day students streamed through the occupied information centre, offering their support. It is difficult to say exactly how many people participated in the occupation, as many came and went a number of times. What became clear was that there were more than enough people who believed in the occupation for it to work. This was to be confirmed over the next days and weeks.

By late evening word began to filter through of a sell-out. A press release was rumoured to have been released by some bureaucrats condemning the occupation. After a number of attempts the press release was located and a copy brought to the occupation. The press release did not state in whose name it had been put out, but the contact details of Kane Stanford and Sherid Thackwray were given. The release was made to look like some sort of official AUSA statement. Certainly the university Vice Chancellor John Hood took it as a green light to call in the cops. In a letter put out by the university it clearly states that Hood felt he could call in the cops due to three factors: the disruption caused by the occupation, the nature of the occupiers’ demands, and the "..position of AUSA on the matter." Clearly, the people who signed the deceitful press release had sold the occupation out. At an emergency meeting of AUSA executive the next day made it clear that the sell-out press release was not the position of AUSA.

Here it is worth noting that one of the signatories of the press release condemning the occupation, Sherid Thackwray, whose job it is to organise and lead student protest, was literally jumping up and down saying over and over that "we need to occupy, occupy,occupy!" just two short days before the occupation, two days before she betrayed the students she was supposed to represent. She is the Roger Douglas of AUSA and should be treated accordingly.

The reason these bureaucrats came up with for their behaviour was that the occupation was endangering the service agreement they were about to sign with the university. This is totally untrue. The university has made it clear that the service agreement was never in any danger. Even if it were, the approach of these so called leaders to beg like dogs at the tables of the university council instead of fighting with the students demanding our rights is a downright embarrassment. The union is not about selling sausages and coke, but about representation. The reason the union was in the position of having to beg the university was the fact that it had just gone voluntary. This was a great defeat for students at the university and the situation highlights the need for the union to win back compulsory membership.

A communique written in the occupation reads: "...This occupation states that it will not be held back by the opinions of "members" Thackwray and Stanford......Yesterday these same ladies and gentlemen scrambled over each other calling for an occupation, for occupying the Vice Chancellor’s office etc....today they bark like rabid dogs, indignant that this occupation as taken place despite their best attempts..." This communique was not issued because the police evicted the students before the chance to issue it arose.

By the evening the occupiers received word through the university security guards that the university was not going to attempt an eviction during the night. This of course was untrue. The occupation made a grave error in talking to and trusting those security guards. In fact, the students made the horrendous mistake of lending those security guards a television set, in the naive supposition that if the security guards were treated well, they would reciprocate. It was a mistake made due to inexperience, and no doubt will not be repeated. Security guards are nothing but private police, and they are the enemies of students and of working people in general.

As a result of this the barricades on the doors were left down at night, and the police simply walked in a 5 am pre-dawn raid. The students did not have time to think or organise, and as a result four people were arrested. Had the barricades been up, the students would have had enough time to organise themselves at least to avoid the arrests.

Fightback was formed as a direct consequence of the obvious inability of student leaders to lead the struggle for a decent education system. It is an organisation that is committed to fighting for a free education, for universal allowances, for access and for quality. Fightback! contains the majority of good elements from the EAG plus a whole lot of others who have come out of the woodwork to play an active role in this organisation. Fightback now needs to continue the good work by building and preparing for a number of things, like winning back universal compulsory membership in the union. Fightback is raising money to help pay the legal costs of the four brothers and sisters who were arrested at the occupation. 2000 promises to be an exciting year for Auckland uni, and Fightback! promises to be an integral part of that. The occupation lasted a few short hours. But in those short hours the students of the University learnt a number of valuable lessons. Foremost among those lessons was that the students of this institution had the power to perform miracles, if only they could have the strength to believe in themselves, in collective action, and the right to a free education.

• Build Fightback! as the voice of student protest!
• Sack the sellouts! Rebuild the Union!
• Fightback! demand a free education and a living allowance!

Among a world wide chorus on the left, the South African Communist Party echoed the call from Gusmao and the CNRT (National Council of Timorese Resistance) for the imperialists to interevene in East Timor. "The SACP calls upon the United Nations to immediately dispatch an international peacekeeping force to halt the escalating social and human disaster and to force the Indonesian regime to respect the democratic will of the people of East Timor. We also call upon all progressive forces in South Africa and across the world to do all in their capacities to pressurise the United Nations and their respective governments to act now and lend all available support to save the people of East Timor." Blade Nzimande SACP General Secretary SACP Head Office 6th September 1999

The Australian Green Left (paper of the Democratic Socialist Party) even misquotes Lenin to justify calling on its semi (read 'Jackal') imperialist government to send in the troops. Green Left says that Lenin supported the right of Belgium to be liberated from the occupying German army in WW 1. Yes, but he did not mean that he would then support the Allies because their defeat of Germany would liberate Belgium!

Lenin's position was that there were oppressor nations and oppressed nations. No oppressor nation, in that case Britain and France, could free Belgium, an oppressed nation, from another oppressor nation, Germany. To say this is to create false hopes in the working class for whichever imperialist ruling class can claim to be defending an oppressed country, when by its very nature any and each imperialism must oppress nations. Lenin's actual policy was for workers to fight their class enemy and not other nations. Belgian workers could tactically bloc with their army to fight to get rid of Germany, but only for the purpose of making it easier to get rid of their own ruling class. They would not under any circumstances form a military bloc with Britain or France because that would be to swap the one imperialist master for another.

The situation is even clearer in East Timor. There is no war between imperialist powers over East Timor. Despite many claims that Indonesia is imperialist or fascist, it is a semi-colony of the US. Its rule over East Timor was part of its role as a US client state ruling over the region in the interests of the US. The US helped put Suharto in power in 1965. He then murdered 1,000,000 communists and between 1975-77 killed over 200,000 East Timorese to prevent it from becoming a 'Cuba of the East' to please the US. The US not only encouraged the invasion of East Timor but armed, trained and funded the Indonesian occupation. The role of Australia was from the start to act as the US sheriff's deputy. Australia played the most openly oppressive role in East Timor as the nearest imperialist state with a direct economic stake in oil in the Timor Gap. So far from the liberation of Belgium justifying a call on British or French troops, in the case of East Timor the Green Left's demand that Australian troops be used to free East Timor was like calling on the Germans to invade Belgium –again!

Well Gusmao, the Green Left and the SACP got their wish. A UN mandated peacekeeping force, Interfet, went into East Timor, 20 days after the Referendum result proved what everybody already knew, that the unarmed UN was incapable of dealing with the pro-Jakarta thugs backed by the military. To imagine that this new force will protect the people of East Timor from further attacks is to be deluded. The same powers that backed Indonesia, now claim the role of peacekeepers. But they are merely ensuring that the Freedom Fighters are not able to prevent East Timor from becoming a newly established semi-colony of Australia and the US. This is because the UN is no more than a stooge for the US where it can be used as a front for its interests. Where the UN is blocked by Russia or China the US sidesteps the UN as in NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. Living Marxism (better known in other contexts as Leaving Marxism) put it very well. The UN is now a front for the US empire. "The sun never sets on the UN's empire" that now stretches from East Timor to Haiti.

So why is it NOT possible to give even critical support to UN military intervention in the hope that under some conditions imperialism will do the right thing? Because even when imperialism is hiding behind the UN, in the pretence that it is defending the rights of small countries, this is only to make sure that the workers and poor peasants are disarmed and prevented from turning their war of national liberation into a socialist revolution.

The UN will implant a new comprador ruling class under its tutelage so as to ensure that imperialist rule is kept in place and the super-exploitation of East Timor's resources can continue. The UN is just a front for imperialism. Its official policy is to prevent the outbreak of war, or to contain wars, when that suits imperialism and Russia and China (neither of which is imperialist –despite some claims). But its unofficial policy is to prevent and contain class war wherever it breaks out. To suggest that the UN is a force for democracy and peace is therefore a delusion that plays into the hands of the bosses everytime.

This delusion in the UN as "anti-imperialist" is being fed weekly by a fawning, sensationalising media which reports how "our boys and girls" in Interfet are facing up to the risks of an armed intervention. The UN forces are painted up as the only alternative to further widespread death and suffering of the East Timorese. But is this true? As we have seen in Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq etc. they may contain the militias and create "safe havens", but at the expense of disarming or subordinating the Falintil. At the time of the referendum, the CNRT and the UN agreed to keep the Falintil in their cantonments. Had the West put one 100^th of its funding into the Falintil that it put into the Indonesian army in the last 25 years, Fretilin would have secured its independence long ago. So it is necessary to draw the conclusion that the war was created deliberately in East Timor and that a peacekeeping operation is a continuation of imperialist war by other means. Far from peace, the UN presence and Interim Government that will be formed by the UN, have much wider and sinister implications for the popular struggle in East Timor and the whole of Indonesia.

First, the Interfet troops are required by the UN mandate to disarm the East Timor resistance, the Falintil, the only popular force capable of defending the people and resisting imperialist super-exploitation. They will use the same arguments that Gusmao used to silence the armed youth before and after the referendum. They will say that armed resistance will provoke an Indonesian clampdown! We are talking about 3000 troops who have survived nearly 25 years of Indonesian military repression! But whatever their excuses, the real reason will be to prevent the independence movement from becoming a revolutionary movement which links up with the wider Indonesian revolution.

Second, the occupying force can be used to justify a further imperialist invasion against any workers and peasants revolution in the whole of Indonesia! The struggle for democratic rights came to a head in East Timor only as the result of the pressure from the struggle of the Indonesian masses for democracy. This includes the national struggles of the Aceh and the West Papuans. The US and the rest of the imperialist powers hope that they can oversee a shift from a militarised regime to a western style democracy that will contain any attempts be workers and peasants to go beyond a unified Indonesian bourgeois state to a workers' state. The pressure to get Habibie to agree to a vote on autonomy was part of this thrust. Now that Habibie is history and the Wahid/Megawati leadership is in place, the US led ‘democratisation’ process can continue. But will it contain the mass pressure from below?

It took Clinton's threats of an economic and military blockade of Indonesia to put some restraints on the military. And this is because the IMF has been holding back on a payment of the billions that Indonesia needs to keep its economy afloat. We have to be totally cynical as to the US reasons for using this blackmail. 25 years ago, President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger directly conspired in the Indonesian invasion in 1975 to prevent the "Red" Fretilin from spreading communism and creating a Cuba in Asia! Now that the US has won the cold war, and defeated the evil "communism" it has unrivalled world dominance and can promote human rights and pose as champion of democracy. But can it deliver democracy? No!

The US is looking beyond Wahid to Megawati Sukarnoputri as the new democratic leader in Indonesia.

Her father, President Sukarno was the first leader of Indonesia from Independence in 1945 until he was replaced by Suharto's coup in 1965. The US sees Megawati as a viable leader to 'democratise' Indonesia and provide the 'human face' that Clinton speaks about. But democracy is not compatible with Indonesia's role as a US semi-colony. It is heavily indebted to the Western banks and the IMF/WB. To pay back this debt it has to sell its resources and labour cheaply, forcing down living standards. Such deteriorating conditions will generate mass resistance making it impossible to rule by means of the 'human face'. Megawati will capitulate to the military leaving the two forces, the military and the workers and poor peasants confronting each other without benefit of democratic institutions.

The students and workers who have been increasingly active over the last two years are the basis of such a movement. While their immediate protests are for democracy, they need to put up a programme for permanent revolution that recognises that democratic rights cannot be won while Indonesia remains a capitalist semi-colony. They must organise independently of the Indonesian bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. Failure to do this means that workers will remain trapped in a popular front strategy led by the national bourgeoisie, who's class interests always lie more with the imperialist powers than with the popular masses. In order to protect their class interests they must sooner or later turn on the workers and peasants and attempt to smash them with the same tragic consequences as we have just seen in East Timor. (see Class Struggle # 22 June/July 1998 "Indonesia and Permanent Revolution.")

The East Timor struggle is an object lesson. When Fretilin was isolated and militarily defeated, this opened the way for the petty bourgeois nationalist leadership of Gusmao and Horta to call on the 'international community' for 'peace and democracy'. After the recent vote, the CNRT issued several statements calling on immediate Western intervention. Horta called for a tourist "boycott of Bali". More significantly Gusmao refused to allow the Falintil to deploy their armed units, before, during or after the referendum, to defend the population for fear that this would spark a civil war. So behind the pretext of avoiding a 'civil war' we witnessed the criminal betrayal of that national revolution by its petty bourgeois leadership and its Western 'pink-green left' accomplices.

Gusmao and Horta have long made their class position clear. They put more trust in the imperialists than in their own troops who were ordered to stay in their camps. In echoing this call, their pink-green left supporters turned their back on the reality that it is imperialism that has created this war in the first place, and will only commit itself to 'peacemaking' if it can guarantee its super-profits in East Timor without having to go to war. Gusmao has already made his deal. He will be part of a new bourgeoisie in the newly independent client state of imperialism. He will not be personally exploited by imperialism. Rather imperialism will use him to act as their agent in exploiting East Timor. His tears for the dead sacrificed in the struggle are crocodile tears because the crying will not stop with the winning of independence. Even if the UN makes a showcase of East Timor and rebuilds its infrastructure before handing over control, this will be a diversion from the mounting conflicts arising all over the world as imperialism intensifies its wars and conquests. The pink-green left quotes Marx and Lenin to serve as a ‘left cover’ for this rapacity. It calls on its own imperialist military to act as peacekeepers and disarms the workers and peasants militias. And it has the audacity to call itself Marxist!

The answer to East Timor's struggle has always been; (1) To unite the armed struggle in East Timor with the workers and poor peasants struggle in Java and elsewhere in Indonesia; (2) To build international support for material aid to the Freedom Fighters; (3) To fight the imperialist arming of the Indonesian army which has acted as a tool of imperialism in Indonesia. How realistic is this strategy? The Western pacifist left says it is unrealistic if not impossible. Why?

The 'pink-green' left always expresses its patronising belief in the 'backwardness' of the working class, and especially the poor peasants, of the 'third world'. They do not believe workers and peasants in the ‘third world’ can free themselves –this freedom must be delivered by the West to its former colonial subjects. What the Western left does not see is that this attitude is itself an expression of the ideological backwardness of "social imperialism". That is, the dependence of the Western middle class and labour aristocracy upon the privileged living standards made possible by the super-exploitation of the 'third world'. In other words, the bosses buy their loyalty to the Western ruling class’ position of imperialism, but with a "social" ie. democratic cover.

Social imperialism is a middle class guilt-ridden expression of the same old Eurocentric imperialist 'civilising mission' that has shaped Western attitudes towards the 'colonial and post-colonial world' from the 19^th century onwards. The Western left echoes its ruling class position that bourgeois democracy is a necessary step that third world countries must take under the tutelage of the democratic institutions of the West. Today this guilt becomes evident in the sponsoring of particular struggles by Western middle class intellectuals. All over the world there are little "free East Timor" groups which see themselves as "servants" of Horta or Gusmao, when in fact they are the "sponsors" of these petty bourgeois leaders. What's even more evident is, that increasingly these latter-day missionaries become 'soldiers for Christ' and 'give their lives' to work for the many charities that pass as aid organisations. The Western media, looking for human interest stories, seizes upon human rights "disasters" as if they were a natural consequence of barbarism, and interviews aid workers as authorities on 'human rights'.

It is not surprising then that the social imperialist left has no hope of popular armed uprisings leading to victorious revolutions in the colonial and post-colonial world. They see it as their mission to help the backward colonial and post-colonial masses towards the 'promised land' ie. western democracy and human rights. They reject the armed struggle and offer Christian charity. However, when their hypocritical strategy leads to 'human rights disasters' like East Timor, they then call on the West to intervene as armed peacemakers. But as we have seen, this is to call on the Tiger to mind the calf.

This stagist evolutionary theory limits their immediate perspective in their own countries to the fight for democracy by the method of a cross-class, popular front. They project this strategy onto the international arena where the UN becomes the force for "international democracy" against reaction. So in East Timor they cannot draw the correct conclusion that the UN has been exposed as a pathetic pawn of US policy, and that no imperialist intervention is the answer to East Timor's plight. Instead the Western left is tailing the social imperialists who believe Clinton when he says that there is a " human face" to the "global community". They are now crowing about the power of 'international opinion' in bringing the renegade Indonesian army to heel and a peaceful transition to East Timor.

Proletarian internationalism means joining up the struggles against national oppression by taking on the source of that oppression at every level. Fretilin was doomed to isolation and defeat by a Western left that tailed its bourgeoisie. It will remain isolated and defeated unless its struggle for liberation is joined by militant anti-imperialist workers capable of taking on the main enemy at home. This duty falls mainly to the workers in the imperialist states or their client states actively occupying East Timor. The US is the main enemy of East Timor, followed by Australia which is a lackey imperialist state feeding off the scraps left by the US and Japan (these scraps are quite large concessions to oil in the Timor Sea).

NZ as a semi-colony of the US acts as the US deputy’s, deputy (i.e.Australia’s deputy) in East Timor. In NZ a united front called 'Material Aid for the Freedom Fighters of East Timor" (or MAFFET) has been formed to oppose NZ's military role as in recolonising East Timor, in particular the disarming of the Falintil, and to mobilise working class material aid for Falintil. The Communist Workers' Group participates in that united front. MAFFET's job is to take this message into the labour movement and build support for the Freedom Fighters against imperialism. It also means getting the UN out of East Timor.

To organise workers and poor peasants to this level will require the building of a revolutionary communist international which can struggle to win workers and peasants away from the reformist misleaders of Megawati's party, against the stagist programme of the Peoples Democratic Party in Indonesia, the bourgeois leadership of the CRNT in East Timor, and the reformist and centrist left in the 'Western' countries. We have to unite internationally to fight for democratic rights against imperialist and local reactionaries, and to prove in practice that immediate and democratic demands can only be won by "going all the way" to socialist revolution.

A group of 140 workers on the North Shore are up against the bosses’ ideal form of "negotiation" under the Employment Contracts Act. Their boss is trying to get them to sell their overtime rates…

Their boss (North Shore Maintenance) wants to scrap penalty rates for anti-social hours of work. The boss is using the same tactic as used on the Babbcock dockyard workers, that is a contract offer which includes a bribe of $400 cash as a "once-and-for-all" buy out of penalty rates of pay.

North Shore Maintenance has been taken out of the political control of the North Shore Council (and North Shore residents) by being restructured as a "Local Authority Trading Enterprise". The day to day management has little fear of being held accountable through the council, and little fear of losing their jobs. They have brought in the same hatchet man that Babbcock used to take on the dockyard workers.

The workers are organised with the Engineers Union, and the Amalgamated Workers Union. Others remain unorganised. The leadership of both of these unions would be familiar with these tactics, since they both were involved in the Babbcock dispute. The tactic at Babbcock, as will be used again, was to let the contract expire, and to play up the fears of workers in order to undermine solidarity. Eventually the bosses were able to bribe and scare enough workers into voting for signing the new collective. At Babbcock, the workers involved were split between 3 unions (PSA, EU and AWU). The boss was able to play the workers off against each other. How? It appears that the Engineers Union was able to sway the settlement (and to consolidate their jobs as negotiators) by selling out the conditions of other workers. The AWU covered most of the workers who worked in the worst conditions and gained most from the penalty rates. However the EU workforce were convinced to take the bribe on their own, and held the majority when it came to vote. The AWU members were out voted.

Within the ECA, bosses have armed themselves with a range of weapons to use against unions. The bosses can often use the courts against union leaders to land them with heavy fines. The provision is there to legalise the theft of paid union officials homes or "assets", to pay for the bosses imposed fines. The bosses if they wish can simply try to bankrupt a union with legal fees by persisting in legal actions against unions. Stagecoach has shown other bosses how signing enough workers onto individual contracts with rotten conditions, brings down everyones conditions. This also scares the union bureaucrats who worry that they may lose their jobs as the workers representatives, if the union becomes more and more ‘dismembered’ by the bosses.

The author, Tom Bramble is a member of the Brisbane `Defend our Unions Committee' and a supporter of Socialist Alternative (a breakaway from the International Socialists).

The `Defend our Unions Committee’, was involved in the mass action which rose in defence of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) after Patrick's locked out its waterfront workforce in April 1998. This booklet should be recommended reading for all union activists. Bramble is able to expose the rotten role played by the MUA leadership. In Brisbane he showed that union leaders backed away and demobilised the working class from shutting down Patrick's operations. He covers the union history behind this betrayal and the links of the MUA with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the Australian Labor Party (ALP). However, Bramble seems to read the end result of the lockout with an overall favourable light for the organised / unionised working class of Australia.

The most promising aspect of the whole dispute was the huge turn out of workers in support of MUA pickets. Where pickets were threatened by police or Patrick's' security, the mass movement of working people to reinforce the pickets would have given the ruling class enough to worry about. Before Patrick's made its move to lockout the MUA labour solidarity was shown. In Melbourne, 12 thousand construction workers had a one-day

strike (March 20th) to show their solidarity for MUA members. The Melbourne Australian Workers Union, oil industry workers had (2nd April) promised to strike if Patrick's workers were sacked.

When the sackings took place (8th April) working people mobilised mass pickets. The booklet is rich with examples, the "clearest on the night of Friday 17 April when literally thousands of workers turned up at East Swanson dock in Melbourne on a tip-off that 1000 police would be descending to break up the picket. " (p15). "By 3 am, 4000 picketers had turned up" (p16). The proof that working people can build huge pickets, quickly and effectively against an attack from the ruling class, would have had that ruling class worried.

Union misleadership

The MUA leadership limited the struggle to the capitalists’ rule-book. John Coombs and most other officials of the MUA were fully into the legal path. They had centralised the power and left the union membership and lower union officials in the dark about their strategy. In Queensland, "time and again the local MUA leadership and the ACTU leadership pulled the plug on any significant direct action" (p22). They refused to accept a call for state-wide strike and repeatedly asked union members to "trust the leaders". Bill Kelty of the ACTU in 1997 promised the union movement's backing and support to defend the MUA. Of the ACTU's promises, Bramble says: "what they had in mind was only a limited campaign: defending MUA coverage, but not jobs and conditions" (p 13-14).

The members did not know what the MUA officials were negotiating, and the ACTU officials were also in on the negotiations, while members heard the news faster from the radio. The officials tactic was that of "strategic unionism", which in NZ is called "partnership" (by the Public Service Assn) or "strategic partnership" (by the Engineers Union). This is a rotten partnership that means the union officials end up taking the same role as the bosses managers. Bramble describes the role of union officials: "The officials' acquiescence to pro-business agendas is underpinned by their social position within the labour movement. The primary role of full-time trade union leaders has always been to negotiate with employers over the terms of workers' exploitation rather than to oppose capitalist labour relations. " (p39) "…union leaders themselves suffer no hardship from the deals that they do: it is not their jobs which are lost, it is not they who have to suffer speed-ups" or "…the stand-over tactics of bullying supervisors or security guards, and it is not they who have to stand by the phone as casuals waiting for the call for work" (p40). Unlike workers, the top officials are doing all right out of capitalism and their interest is not to challenge it. In times of open class struggle, it becomes clear that it is in the interests of workers to oppose capitalism the basis of exploitation. The role of union officials is to negotiate, to disarm the working class, and to limit the class struggle, in order to negotiate.

Bramble shows how historically the MUA became a more centralised organisation with less shop-floor debate. The elections of officials went from 1 to 2 to 4-yearly. He discusses the wider political context in which the militant culture of the waterfront union was undermined. The years of the ACTU "Accord" with the Australian Labour Party were years where union militancy was frowned upon by the official –the labour lieutenants for capital. Union officials had ridiculed any opposition to the Accord, based on falling economic position of workers. They had halted calls for strike action. During the lockout the union officials keep a lid on the interests of working people, they lead away from direct action. Examples of this were clear in Brisbane, where on a number of occasions MUA members and supporters were ready to establish an effective picket, which blocked all transport of Patrick's facility. Bramble laments the lack of an another leadership, capable of "winning the argument.. ..on the picket lines" (p35). He gives a brief criticism of the existing left currents within the MUA: "these have been little other than factional platforms for elements of the MUA leadership", and "have done little or nothing to distinguish themselves from...the federal leadership of Tas Bull and John Coombs". An example of this rottenness: a leading Communist Party of Australia figure was a member of the 1988-90 waterfront reform team.

While Bramble says there was a lack of socialist influence within the MUA, he focuses mostly on building a rank and file. What was shown was a committed militant rank and file that organised a strong strike effort. What was lacking was a communist party capable of offering a leadership, a fighting alternative to the sell-out. The question is posed: which political organisation in Australia could have offered that communist leadership? Socialist Alternative? A comrade from Australia says: " Even though Bramble is good on the logistics of understanding how the Accord demobilised workers, Socialist Alternative does not have a Marxist analysis. They do not understand the colonial nature of the Australian economy, the fact that it is resource based, or the weakness of Australian manufacturing which only developed during the post war boom under the umbrella of protection. They do not understand the collapse of manufacturing and the bankruptcy of the bureaucrats who had no political answers. The Accord was a consequence of this. When the crisis struck initially the working class was militant and so was the Aaronsite CPA (as opposed to the current organisation which was pro-Moscow). When it was clear that there was a wholesale collapse (in 1976 when shipbuilding totally collapsed, the once militant Aaronsite bureaucrats had no alternative but crawl to the government (more protection). To do this they had to sell out class struggle (embodied in the Accord)."

The ACTU and MUA negotiators took a deal back to the MUA in September 1998. The deal was a loss for unionised workers. 736 permanent jobs were cut, leaving the "core workforce" at less than 700, and the core workforce was guaranteed only 2 days work per week. 66% of MUA members would be casual workers. Jobs in the maintenance, cleaning and security areas were to be contracted out, with likely loss of wages, conditions, and union coverage. There was more casualising of conditions: on call 24hrs a day all year, a minimum shift of 2hrs, 12hr shifts without penalty rates, compulsory weekend work, up to 15 midnight shifts in a row, and drivers may have to drive for their full shift (up to 12hrs). Management has taken control of the allocation of workers, which allows them to victimise union militants. And P&O, the other big player in the Australian waterfront industry, which was open throughout the lockout, will expect similar concessions.

Weighing up an overall balance sheet on the struggle Bramble gives some points to the MUA. He says that in the wider political context, the government of Howard and Reith "failed": (1) to bust the MUA; (2) to introduce scab labour onto the waterfront: (3) to intimidate other unions; (4) to give itself an electoral boost on the agenda of union busting.

However, while the MUA won some points, we have to give the bosses an overall victory on points.

1.The MUA has on the ground, lost coverage of sections of the waterfront workforce, in such key areas as maintenance and security. The MUA leadership was keen to prove itself as willing to give concessions and play a role `managing' MUA members demands. It has proved to the capitalist class that its role is to serve as capitalism’s lieutenant within the workforce. Capital has no need to smash the leadership of the MUA, and it did not. It was able to hurt the militant rank & file, and can continue to police the rank & file through oppressive

supervisors and security.

2. While the scab company failed, and the scab stevedore labour was dumped, the contracting out of some work and some loss of coverage has weakened the power of organised waterfront labour. The MUA has been badly undermined. The remaining workers, who have faced demoralising redundancies and are now largely a casualised reserve army of labour. The antidote to this must start with a thorough debate on the left and within the trade unions. The debate that began on the picket lines needs to be ongoing.

3. With the above losses the threat of similar losses must threaten other unions. The weakness of the left parties (method and programme) and splintered organisations, would not be overcome by mass rallies alone.

4. Howard's coalition government continues to set the political agenda for Australian capitalism. After the deal, the reality now kicks in for the remaining workers. Deaths and injuries have occurred on the waterfront since the settlement. The MUA has failed to protect the life and conditions of working members.

The "war" was a defensive struggle for working people, against the capitalist offensive. Through the union bureaucracies betrayals one "battle" has been lost. But the "war" on the waterfront is not over, with the MUA leadership drawing up a temporary truce agreement.

The "war" is not confined to the waterfront. The Howard government is anti-worker, an outright bourgeois government. The ruling class still faces the reality of falling profits on an international scale, and this is turned into pressure on the working class, whether we are organised or not. Union members need to use the power they have to challenge the union officials. Members should be able to recall (sack) officials who are not performing according to the will of the members. The union leaders should not be paid any more than the rank and file membership. Their wages and conditions need to be pegged to those of the workers that they represent. Even if only one side is fighting, class war is ongoing. When as working people we organise and show unity, we find our strength. When we take control of the "means of production" (in this case pickets blocking access to the port facilities) then we are using our power. Industrial action that challenges the bosses over the "control" of the means of production is a direct challenge to the ruling class’s ability to rule. It is our most effective weapon. It is a challenge to the social leadership, a challenge to the social relations of production, a challenge to the capitalist state.

War on the Waterfront is important because it highlights the urgent need for a party with a communist analysis to draw out the political lessons and campaign for fighting democratic unions.

This article is a reply to Jack Conrad (Communist Part of Great Britain), who wrote his "Theses on Ireland" in a recent issue of the Weekly Worker. Conrad argued that the Loyalists in the North have national rights. John Stone of the LCMRCI/CEMICOR illustrates what is wrong with Conrad's Theses using with a number of examples of national struggles. He concludes that Conrad's position on Ireland is to advance the democratic rights of a oppressive minority (the loyalists) at the expense of the rights of an oppressed majority (the nationalists).

Jack Conrad's theses on Ireland have two significant innovations. First, they advocate the right of self-determination, including the right to create their own state, for a group of people who the author recognises don't constitute a nation. Second, it proposes to give that right to the British-Irish. I would argue that for Marxist self-determination is only applicable to nations and it is not a universal principle. To accept that any "ethnic community" could have that right would mean a significant alteration in a Marxist principle, even more when this is a privileged community whose benefits have been achieved by backing an imperial power at the expense of the rest of the same nation.

In order to clarify the differences I would like to start by saying where I agree with Jack. First, the British-Irish are not a nation - they were and are a privileged segment of the Irish nation that oppressed the Catholics, nationalists and republicans and served Britain against the Irish national right of self-determination. Second, the six-counties of Ulster comprise a reactionary, segregationist and oppressive statelet created by British imperialism against the will of the overwhelmingly majority of the Irish nation. Third, the struggle of Irish republicans, despite their democratic and national bourgeois limits and wrong methods, was and is a legitimate anti-imperialist cause. Fourth, we agree that Britain has to immediately withdraw from every part of Ireland allowing this nation to re-unite.

It is important to clarify some concepts. Jack is demanding to extend the right of self-determination to ethnic communities. There is a big difference between nations and ethnic groups. Nations are constituted by a series of peoples divided by antagonistic classes who share the same territory, a common history and many cultural, linguistic (one or more languages) and economic links. Communities are groups of persons who share SOME of these characteristics. They could be based around a common faith, kinship, race, roots in another country, languages, or cultural manifestations. In many societies some social classes, occupations or stratum overlapped with what are today considered ethnic groups.

Every nation has many ethnic groups or communities. Britain has hundreds of them. Some British communities (like the Afro-Caribbean or Muslim) are larger than the British-Irish. Marxists should demand the right for every community to cultivate its own languages and dialects, to have its own schools and associations, to freely worship their cults, to oppose their segregation on racial, linguistic or religious grounds, and other democratic rights. However, we are not in favour of giving them the right to create their own state. There are TENS OF THOUSANDS of ethnic groups all over the planet and it is simply impossible to advocate their right to create sectarian ethnically-based states because they would create problems for the rights of others. When the rights of some of these communities are at the expense of the rights of other communities we are not going to back them. For instance, we don't defend the right of the White British to put quotas on coloured people or immigrants. Imperialism also created many communities as tools for imposing its dominance over native populations. These communities were created as privileged stratum based in native or imported migrant inhabitants. There were one million French descendants in Algeria. Most of them come from poor backgrounds. However, the Algerian anti-imperialists correctly opposed giving them the right of self-determination.

Today Britain has other enclaves in lands that it took from other countries. In Gibraltar, the Malvinas and in the Caribbean or Oceanic Islands, a significant proportion or even most of the population would not like to separate with what was the largest overseas empire. The USA has many political-military bases all over the planet. For example, in Guantanamo and the Panama channel it has its own enclaves. Perhaps a significant proportion (or even a majority) of the local population would like to retain the occupation of the world's mightiest power instead of returning to their former backward semi-colonial countries. However, communists should support the right of Cuba or Panama to expel the Yankees and to re-take their own territories. But if tomorrow Puerto Rico votes for independence we are not going to recognise the right of a part of that island that wants to become part of the USA.

Perhaps Jack Conrad would object that these pro-imperialist communities do not compare with the British-Irish who have a three-century historical tradition. But this is not a valid objection. Lets look at the case of the Boers and the White Anglo-South Africans. The White settlers arrived from Europe in South Africa at more or less at the same as the British settlers crossed the Irish Sea. While the different Irish communities are part of the same nation, speak the same language and share many racial and cultural features, the Afrikaners and White Anglo-South Africans spoke a different language and had strong racial, cultural and even national differences in relation to the rest of the population.

The Whites represent a similar percentage of the South African population as the British-Irish in relation to the whole Ireland. They also dominate entire regions. Many racial segregationists insisted on allowing the Boers to achieve their national self-determination and to have their own state. In fact they, unlike the British-Irish, have real national differences with the rest of the population. In South Africa there are at least twelve linguistic-national groups and the Afrikaners have their own fully developed language, culture, race, territory and history.

In South Africa the anti-imperialists were against giving the Whites any right to self-determination and were also against the Bantustans. We were against the White capitalist segregationist project of dividing the South African peoples into racial or nation-linguistic groups. Marxists wanted to win many workers from the White population (at least five times larger than the British-Irish) but they never advocated the demand of self-determination for the Boers or Anglo-South Africans. They knew that the White proletariat was privileged with better wages than their Black brothers and sisters and that the best way to win them was in the fight for better social and economic conditions, to end the segregationist authoritarian state, and to build an equal and multi-ethnic society. Many leaders of the ANC, CP and other left organisations were whites. The progressive whites did not fight for a separate state in which the European descendants could cultivate their own culture because it would mean a state based in the most reactionary layers and against the rest of the population.

The right of self-determination is not a universal principle even for every nation. When the right of a nation to build its own state can only be realised by oppressing another nation should we support that right? An Afrikaner or white Anglo-South African state could only be achieved by walking on the national rights of the Southern African peoples. That is why we demanded that the Euro-Africans from Zimbabwe, South Africa and other Black countries should accept majority rule. We don't support the right of the Sikhs to create their own Khalistan at the expense of many Punjabi Indians.

In Palestine we don't support the right of the Israeli Hebrews to establish their own separate state. Their nation was built up by expelling most of the native population. Four million Jews came from all over the world and, despite their huge linguistic, ethnic, cultural and historical differences, tried to unite in one single nation against the Arabs. If we were to recognise the Israeli State we would have to recognise its rights over Palestinian lands and over the expulsion and segregation of four million Arabs, and we would be supportingt the right of a religious community to create a country based on the First Testament. In Palestine we are for a multi-ethnic workers' state in which the toilers of all the communities (Christian and Muslim Arabs, Oriental, Arab, Western, Russian and Black Jews, Druses, Beduines, etc.) will be equal.

Jack Conrad believes that the best way to win support amongst an oppressor community is to advocate its democratic right to secede and create its own state if that is the majority will. The problem with that idea is that it subordinates another democratic principle: the right of the historic majority of the same nation! In the struggle between an oppressed and an oppressor community we can't put their rights on the same level. Even more, their own rights can be in contradiction with each other. For example, the capitalist 'democratic' right to hire and fire workers or to acquire property and capital is in mortal antagonism with the workers' democratic rights for job security, better living conditions and control of the means of production. In the case of South Africa, Palestine or Ireland the right of self-determination of the oppressor people would affect the right of self-determination of the oppressed people.

Jack Conrad says that they are one million British-Irish and that they should not have to identify with loyalty to the Queen or with Protestantism. Albeit both aspects are dominant trends inside that community, what distinguishes these people from the rest of the Irish is that they are descendants of former British settlers and have historic cultural allegiances with Britain. Conrad argues that if we became the champions of the democratic rights of that privileged community we might be able to split it, and that the cornerstone of such rights is to accept their possible wishes to make a new partition of Ireland. Tom Delargy pointed out that Jack's theses have two contradictory points. It is not feasible to reconcile the right of self-determination of the Irish nation as a whole with the right of its pro-British layers to veto it and to re-divide the nation and the country.

During decades and even centuries, the Irish people overwhelmingly, continuously and repeatedly expressed their democratic desire for a united republic. It is not possible to transform that reality into the opposite, converting the minority's pro-imperialist veto into a democratic decision imposed against the majority of the Irish population. For eight centuries Britain ruled Ireland. Its domination was so ruthless that several rebellions were crushed in blood. Britain caused the death of more than one million during the potato famine and today more than 80% of the Irish descendants live abroad. In 1921 the Orange statelet was created as a reactionary colonial outpost against the will of the great majority of the Irish nation. Ulster was created in the six counties to turn the tiny minority of pro-British in the whole of Ireland, into the majority in Ulster. Catholics, nationalists and republicans remained as second class citizens, and suffered discrimination in jobs, housing and police and state posts, and terror and abuse from the British army, the RUC and the paramilitaries.

If Irish national consciousness was defined in the struggle against British imperialist domination, British-Irish consciousness is defined in the struggle to defend what was the largest overseas empire against its first and last colony (Ireland). The British-Irish want to be more British than the British. Like many other peoples which benefited from imperialism against the native population this strengthens the allegiance with the imperialist motherland. The political representatives of this community are united in their desire to keep their privileges, to smash the IRA (the main armed force that prevented its total dominance), and to veto the national reunification.

In order to win some sympathy amongst the British-Irish Jack Conrad proposes that revolutionaries should accept a new re-partition of Ireland for those Loyalists who do not want to be part of a united Ireland. He even suggests a formula in which the Northern six counties would be divided roughly in half: one county and four half-counties for each community. This alternative would not satisfy anybody and would not solve any problem. The Orange State would be reduced by approximately a half but with a more concentrated British loyalist majority. The loyalists would resent the Irish Catholics because they captured some of their post-1921 territory and that would increase their desires to be part of the UK. The Irish nationalists would still be unhappy because the island would still be divided and many Catholics would remain in ghettos inside the British-Irish State. Sectarianism and communalism would persist.

Jack Conrad constantly uses the example of the Russian Cossacks in support of his position. They were the Tsar's most reactionary tools used against the workers and the oppressed nations. Conrad asks, why if the Bolsheviks granted a soviet republic to them should we not allow the same right to the British-Irish? Conrad confuses many things. First, the Bolsheviks were against giving any single national or democratic right to the Cossacks. Even more, at the beginning of the civil war they said that all the Cossacks were a reactionary stratum that needed to be smashed. In the course of the war Lenin realised that it was possible to split this mass around social and class questions. Later on, WHEN THE REDS DEFEATED THEM, Lenin imposed the victor’s conditions. The Cossack elite was expropriated and a non-sovereign council SOVIETIC republic based in the oppressed Cossack labourers was established in the middle of Russia as part of the Soviet Federation. The Bolsheviks would never have accepted the right of a reactionary and segregationist Cossack state to secede.

Today Jack Conrad is advocating a principle that the Bolsheviks never fought for: the right of an ethnic group to secede, and even worse, the right of an oppressive community to create its own state against the wishes of the majority of their oppressed nation. A British-Irish state created in this capitalist system and without a revolution would be a continuation of the same Orange segregationist and ultra-reactionary statelet.

A big problem that the CPGB has is the way in which it deals with the question of bourgeois democracy. It raises it as a universal principle. Jack Conrad is in favour of federal bourgeois republics in Britain and in Ireland allowing the Unionists to secede. Advocating democratic rights for an oppressor community means to deny democratic rights to the oppressed whole-nation. The struggle for a pure bourgeois democracy led to the immolation of the democratic rights of the majority of the Irish nation. It also creates a barrier between democratic and socialist demands. The only way to achieve full democracy and national rights inside capitalism is to expropriate the ruling class and to socialise the means of production. The only real solution to the constitutional, national and social issues in the British-Irish islands is the expropriation of the capitalist class by a socialist revolution and the formation of a federation of workers republics.

However the CPGB's programme stands for a bourgeois democratic stage. Its central goal is to sort out the monarchy's crisis by advocating a pure bourgeois solution: a federal republic. Marxists should not propose replacing the UK for another kind of capitalist federal state a la Germany, USA or France. Unfortunately, anti-capitalist revolution, socialism and the federation of workers republics are absent from the CPGB immediate programme. Adapting to bourgeois democratic principles mean to sacrifice the struggle for democratic rights for the oppressed majority and for a socialist alternative.

The IWC presents its analysis of the rise and fall of the Fourth International in the following way:

"In response to the Comintern's counterrevolutionary international policy, the Bolshevik-Leninist movement began the process of building a new, Marxist International. The founding of the Fourth International (World Party of Socialist Revolution) in 1938 was the culmination of the 15-year struggle to reclaim Marxism in the wake of Stalinism. As the founding document of the Fourth International, "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International" (the "Transitional Program"), proclaimed: "The Third International has taken the road of reformism at a time when the crisis of capitalism definitely placed the proletarian revolution on the order of the day. The Comintern's policy in Spain and China today -- the policy of cringing before the 'democratic' and 'national' bourgeoisie – demonstrates that the Comintern is likewise incapable of learning anything further or of changing. The bureaucracy which became a reactionary force in the USSR cannot play a revolutionary role on the world arena."

"As the Second World War approached, the ranks of the young Fourth International fought hard to remain at the forefront of the struggle for socialism. The Bolshevik-Leninists correctly raised the slogan of unconditional defense of the USSR in the face of imperialist attack. They said that the only genuine way to defend the gains of the October Revolution was to fight for proletarian political revolution to oust the bureaucracy and return control to the workers' councils (soviets). During this time, a struggle broke out between the proletarian and petty bourgeois elements in the International. The petty bourgeois current, exemplified by Max Shachtman and James Burnham in the U.S. Socialist Workers Party, was ready to abandon defense of the USSR due to the aggravating contradictions of Stalinism. Their rejection of defense of the Soviet Union was accompanied by a rejection of the Marxist method - materialist dialectics. The International Workers' Committee stands alongside Trotsky -- and, to the extent they agreed, James P. Cannon, the founder of the Bolshevik-Leninists in the U.S. -- in his struggle in defense of Marxism."

"The onset of WWII took a heavy toll on the ranks and leadership of the Fourth International. The pressure from imperialism, Social Democracy and Stalinism weighed heavily on the Marxist method of the young International. That, in combination with a loss of proletarian cadre, led the sections and affiliates of the Fourth International into the centrist swamp. The tendency toward "national Bolshevism" by the Fourth International led to disastrous consequences by the end of the War. By 1945, the Fourth International had backslid into centrism. The sections of the International, gripped by a sterile and catastrophist method of "war/revolution," were disoriented in the face of the growth of the "official Communist" parties, and the development of the deformed workers' states in Eastern Europe and China."

"The fight against revisionism, centrism and bourgeois ideology in the ranks of the Marxist movement is a constant struggle as the pressures of bourgeois society weigh down upon it. Disconnected from the working class and impatient at the prospects of the revolutionary development of the proletariat, the post-WWII Fourth International began to openly court non-proletarian "vanguards." The Marxist method that was forged through the struggle against Stalinism -- Bolshevik-Leninism -- was subordinated to the "Trotskyism" of the post-War FI. Beginning with Titoism in 1948, the post-War International engaged in an ever-rightward moving tailism. This tailism was begun under the leadership of Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel, and is known by the term "Pabloism." However, at the time when Pabloism took leadership of the Fourth International, all currents in the FI supported this trend. It was only later that the so-called "anti-Pabloites" began to wage a partial struggle against the open revisionism of Pabloism"

"The political collapse of the Fourth international began as the Second world War entered its decisive stages. The 1953 organisational collapse of the International was only the culmination of the previous 13 years of centrist degeneration. The political end of the Fourth international marked the decisive break in Marxist continuity. The international Marxist party of the working class must rehabilitate and reclaim Bolshevism-Leninism – "the only possible form of Marxism for this epoch" –and be built in its best traditions."

We have quoted the IWC position on the Fourth International (FI) at length because we see it as displaying the same failure as post-war Trotskyism to come to terms with the underlying causes of its collapse. The IWC takes the view that the FI collapsed because of its isolation from the proletariat. While we agree that a proletarian orientation is essential, we think it is mechanical to draw a straight line from party organisation to class composition.

More important for us in explaining the collapse of the FI was the fact that its leading section the SWP (US) was based upon a relatively backward working class specifically the US labor aristocracy which shared some of the super profits of US imperialism. If the IWC blames only a petty-bourgeois orientation that would make them blind to the backwardness that not only infected the petty bourgeois faction, but also Cannon's leadership itself. Instead of romanticising Cannon's "proletarian" line, we invite the MWG to re-read and reply to the article "James P Cannonism", by Owen Gager. Here they will find expressed very clearly, an analysis of the collapse of the leading section of the FI that results from the relative privilege of the US working class, rather than an isolation from the working class.

Having concluded that the collapse of the FI resulted from its isolation from the working class, the IWC makes much of its "proletarian" orientation to avoid a repetition of the same fate. But as we argue this is to miss the point and to set itself up for the same fall. It was not Cannon's adherence to the proletariat that ensured that the Fourth International could go into the war in a healthy state. Already the seeds of destruction had been sown. His failure to stand up against the US chauvinism of the labour aristocracy led him to capitulate on the imperialist war. It was this same devotion to US workers' ideological backwardness that led to the refusal of the SWP to recognise the war had ended in 1946; to promote the "American Theses" which attributed to the US working class the most "advanced" ideological standpoint; to oppose Pablo's threat to the US party and then to unite with Pablo in 1959 after a petty bourgeois revolution became Stalinised in Cuba to create a "healthy" workers' state in the US own backyard. Thus, none of these clear breaks and zig zags of the SWP (US) from Trotsky's method and programme can be explained without first rejecting the mechanical proletarian line of argument for a dialectical explanation rooted in the nature of US imperialism.

Or course a communist leadership must recruit workers to the party in order to be fully practically involved in the struggles of working people. It must ensure that its non-proletarian recruits are proletarianised. But more than anything, party cadres have to be immersed fully in the class struggle. We suspect the knee jerk mechanical "proletarian" line of the IWC is overcompensating for its experience of petty-bourgeois sellouts. But it does not follow from this that workers defined as ‘those who must sell their toils/labours in order to survive’ (or do not have their own means of production) are not infected with non-class, backward, chauvinist, racist and sexist ideas. Whether they recognise it or not, self-employed workers, even scab workers are parts of the working class -not that we should defend scab actions. Our aim is to raise the political consciousness of workers so they become class conscious and fight for the proletariat. To do this we need to recognise that some layers of the working class are more advanced, and some are more backward. Lenin in "What is to be Done" explained the spontaneous limits of working class consciousness to bourgeois ‘trade union’ consciousness. To raise political consciousness is primary role of Marxist "leadership".

We conclude by drawing attention once again to the importance of Marx's method. Materialist dialectics is the method that allows the democratic centralist proletarian party to develop a programme through the testing of theory in practice. But it requires at its core, cadres who express the interests of the proletariat and not the petty bourgeoisie or bourgeoisie. The problem with the IWC concept of "proletarian orientation" is that it reads off from the occupation of wage-labourer an essentialist proletarian class consciousness that does not exist, but has to be created by the intervention of the party. In this way, the IWC is in danger of repeating the same mistakes of the FI and falling into the trap of an objectivist/subjectivist split in its method. That is, there is a danger that it will liquidate the party before the idealist proletarian vanguard in just the same way as post-war Trotskyism generically liquidated itself before various objective revolutionary processes and 'vanguards'. This is no way to 'reclaim Marxism' and build a new Revolutionary International!