Trotskyism

There is a simple way to prevent conflict: Get rid of the sanctions!

Instead, Biden and company have greeted the legitimate Iranian resistance by escalating the war danger. Sending sailors and Marines to this hot region puts these troops in danger, risking their lives to create a pretext for an attack on Iran — invented by the Pentagon propaganda machine, if necessary (remember the Gulf of Tonkin, August 1964).

For anti-imperialists, for those of us in the movement who have absorbed the lessons first taught by the Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin during World War I, there is no need to wait for a whistleblower like the late Daniel Ellsberg to know the class truth of these latest U.S. war moves against Iran.

Pull the sailors and Marines out of the seas near Iran. End the economic sanctions against Iran. Stop the [neo]imperialist war before it starts!

Those opposing an emphasis on public housing and strict controls on the housing market argue that such an agenda does not work in practice. They say it is outdated and goes against the world trend of privatisation, “user-pays” and neo-liberal deregulation.

There is a huge problem with that argument, however. In Australia’s largest trading partner, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the direction over the last decade and a half has been explicitly towards public housing and strict regulation of the housing sector.

In the decade from 2008, the PRC provided 70 million additional public housing dwellings for her low and lower-middle income people. Proportionate to population size, China delivered in ten years, one and a half times the amount of public housing as what the Greens promise to provide in low-cost accommodation over twenty years.

As a result, today, the percentage of China’s urban population in public housing is nearly ten times higher than Australia’s. Moreover, the PRC’s public housing drive continues. Last year, the PRC provided an additional two and a half million public rental dwellings for her people. In percentage terms, this is equivalent to 45,000 dwellings here.

That means proportionate to population size, Red China in just one year provided one and a half times as much public housing as what the Albanese government promises to deliver in privately-owned “social and affordable” housing over five years.

And unlike here, China does not have a homelessness crisis. Despite China (which is still trying to pull herself up from her impoverished pre-1949, capitalist days) having a per capita income some three to five times lower than Australia’s, Chinese international students entering Australia, the U.S. and Western Europe are shocked at the level of homelessness in these richer countries compared with their socialistic homeland.

The PRC’s public housing drive is part of Beijing’s official housing policy that is aptly titled; “Houses are for living, not for speculation.” The PRC takes the opposite stance towards housing speculation compared to successive Australian governments. For example, most Chinese cities ban households from buying more than two homes.

Needless to say, Australia’s big end of town hate the PRC’s policies. That is why their media seek to denigrate it at every possible instance. Last year, they seized on the troubles of a Chinese capitalist developer hit by the anti-speculation campaign to claim that the PRC’s “Houses are for living, not for speculation”-policy was soon going to cause the Chinese economy to collapse. Needless to say, that never happened!

Today, while the capitalist Australian, American, British and German economies are either in recession or on the verge of one, the PRC’s economy surged by 4.5% last quarter. More importantly, socialistic China’s workers continue to enjoy, by far, the world’s fastest growth rate in real wages.

All this is why the Western capitalist powers see China as an “existential threat.” They fear that the successes of China’[s] socialist alternative will encourage their own masses to also demand a system that puts the masses’ needs above big end of town profits. Frankly, that is the kind of “threat” that working class people in the capitalist West need!

Let’s help “infect” Australia’s working class population with sympathy for Red China’s “Houses are for living, not for speculation” policy and her system that underpins it.

The fact that China’s transition to socialism is incomplete, bureaucratically distorted and endangered by hostile elements — including by the capitalist powers internationally and by its own capitalists who long to have the right to “freely” exploit as in “normal” (that is capitalist) countries and who have a layer of academics, lawyers, journalists and politicians in the right wing of the ruling Communist Party of China doing their bidding — actually makes socialistic rule in China more in need of defence, not less.

Let’s oppose the U.S. and Australian régime’s military build up against the PRC! Let’s refute their lying propaganda attacks against China! And let’s oppose the anticommunist groups within China that they support in their quest to destroy socialistic rule there!

(Emphasis original.)

With China’s socialistic state-owned enterprises offering developing countries access to infrastructure development, capital and technology without ripping them off, these countries are giving some projects to China that they would previously have had to give to Australia’s plundering corporate bigwigs. Moreover, with China’s public sector firms offering such good deals, South Pacific and southeast Asian countries are using the “threat” of turning to China to claw better terms from Australian companies that continue to be granted projects. Either way, without actually meaning to do so, the PRC’s socialistic enterprises’ mutually beneficial cooperation with countries in this region is causing Australia’s capitalists to lose money – lose big money! And we know how greedy capitalists behave when their profits are threatened!

(Emphasis original.)

The methadone-clinic system should be abolished completely. Patients should be able to get their treatment from their primary care physicians, rather than vaguely named “addiction specialists.” But until this happens, how can the prescription of methadone be liberalized for patients who need it?

Whenever workers demand improvements in their wages, the capitalists scream that this will cause job losses. But such job cuts will only occur if we let these exploiters carry out retrenchments and if we let them retain as few workers as is necessary to maximise their profits. Instead of doing that, we must force the capitalist bosses to hire more workers than they want to at the expense of their profits. We must demand a ban on job cuts by all profitable firms and must demand that all companies making a profit be required to increase their number of full-time, permanent employees by at least twenty-five workers for every one million dollars of quarterly profit.

(Emphasis original.)

The capitalist class’s current “solution” to the very inflation and staffing crisis their profit-driven system created is to raise interest rates. In mid-June the Federal Open Market Committee raised its key interest rate by 75 basis points, which is its largest rate increase since November 1994. (Forbes Advisor, June 15) The “logic” behind boosting interest rates is based on a deceptive prediction that people will spend less, and that should somehow reduce inflation.

Working and oppressed people, particularly the youth, are the ones expected to suffer most because of higher interest rates, which will impact mortgages and student loans. According to freelance writer and business analyst Mary Hall, “. . . as interest rates rise, many investors believe growth stocks [will] come to appear less favorable, because their long-term discounted cash flow is reduced and their ability to [secure] low-cost debt financing is more difficult.” (Investopedia June 22)

The fluctuation of interest rates by the Fed is a game that has historically been played by the billionaire class at the expense of the working class and nationally oppressed people.

A big calculation is which countries will be forced to accept the onerous economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the U.S. Countries representing a majority of the world’s population are not willing to tie their sovereignty to total Wall Street control. To the shock of U.S. war strategists, almost all of Latin America, the Caribbean, many countries in Africa, and most of Asia have rejected the sanctions on Russia.

The open defiance by so many countries and major trading blocs is a stunning confirmation of the weakening hold of U.S. economic power.

Regardless of how the conflict initially began, the war from the point of view of the Western [neo]imperialists would become one aimed at expanding the power and reach of NATO, deepening the economic subordination of Russia and sending a message to the world that anyone who dares defy Western imperialism will be mercilessly smashed. In that case, socialists must stand for the defence of Russia. However, the current conflict is not one of Western imperialism versus Russia. It is a war between Ukraine backed by the Western powers and Russia.

(Emphasis original.)

The level of worker activism has not yet reached the level of an irreversible, massive worker uprising. Still many, including this writer, see analogies between today and the beginning of the workers’ upsurge that brought tens of millions of industrial workers into the class struggle and into labor unions in the 1930s.

Why the analogy? Something is happening, something that’s been long awaited and something that holds the potential of awakening the sleeping giant that is the U.S. working class — but also transforming its organizational and political character.

I’m a victim of guard brutality. I was physically assaulted while at Frackville, by two guards while handcuffed. I’m still spitting up blood. I’ve lost over 30 pounds. Guards stole $285 of my commissary, my wedding band, and my legal work.

To see in the Ukrainian conflict a struggle between two world views, between autocracy and democracy, between tyranny and freedom, is a mystification. What is being disputed is the space that the loss of hegemony by the imperialist West leaves to the new powers that yesterday were in the shadows and were therefore sidelined and that are now asserting themselves with the capacity to compete on the world stage.

It is unclear what form the new order heralded by the conflict will take. But it is certain that it will reflect the irremediable change in the world balance of power. Those forces that align with the U.S. and EU camps — on the pretext that they represent “Democracy” and “Freedom” — are in fact once again capitulating to imperialism — and this time their surrender is no longer to a rising force, but to an old world that is sinking.

For those who claim President [Vladimir] Putin is a megalomaniac sociopath, intent on drawing Europe and the U.S. into some kind of Machiavellian war in order to massage his overinflated ego, let’s look at the facts, shall we.

Over the past eight years, Putin has avoided a conflict with Ukraine, and by extension the EU, United States and NATO, through his refusal to annex the Lugansk and Donetsk Republics or indeed to formally acknowledge them as independent states.

He allowed the Minsk Agreements 1 and 2, from 2014 and 2015, to form the basis of negotiations between the Lugansk People’s Republic, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the regime in Ukraine; [and] for over seven years the regime in Ukraine, to include the infamous [neo]fascist, pro-neo-Nazi nationalist, Ukrainian armed forces Azov Battalion, to continually violate the Minsk Agreements by shelling the independent republics with prohibited military munitions, causing death and destruction.

Zelensky being courted by the West took things further, when he escalated tensions and violence on the line of contact and prepared, in February, 120,000 Ukrainian soldiers to invade and reoccupy the Donbass region.

He stated publicly he wanted Ukraine to become a nuclear power.

What is motivating many Starbucks workers to unionize is a fundamental belief that they should have a say in their workplace and the idea that a company doesn’t have to be as bad as Amazon or Walmart for the workers to deserve a union. Many stores that have filed for union representation have explicitly stated this in their letters to Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson — that the decision to unionize is based on principle and not a specific list of hardships and grievances.

To condemn some (the U.S.) for pursuing [neo]imperialist plans and being hypocrites and, at the same time, condemn others (Russia and China) for being dictators and violators of human rights is a Solomonic attitude that does not address the problem that the world faces today and, in the face of which, the revolutionary left must take sides.

The U.S. and its allies are (always) on the offensive to constrain, undermine and, if possible, break up (politically and territorially) Russia and China. And the latter respond as they can to defend themselves from this siege. The former attack; the latter defend themselves from aggression.

Without making this distinction, nothing becomes clear; and the revolutionary left is unable to play a role in events, bypassing reality.

Russia is a target of U.S. [neo]imperialism because of its vast resources. Eighty percent of Russian exports abroad are now in raw materials, primarily gas and oil. The petroleum industry in Russia is one of the largest in the world. It is the largest exporter of natural gas. Coal, iron, aluminum, precious metals, lumber and cereals are other major exports.

This makes Russia’s economy especially vulnerable to global commodity swings and drastic downturns.

There is an insatiable drive to control Russia’s great wealth by the largest banks and corporations. All currents of the U.S. and Western [neo]imperialist ruling class are desperate to have unlimited access to this great stream of profits, which they had finally laid their hands on just a few years ago. Remember: Imperialism’s very survival depends on expansion and profit.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights just released its latest report, “The Civil Rights Implications of Cash Bail,” revealing the true nature of the incarceration system in this country. Between the years 1970 and 2015, there was a 433% increase in the number of people who were incarcerated pretrial. The number of people languishing in prisons and jails who haven’t even been convicted of any crime is growing exponentially. (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Jan. 20)

In fact, pretrial detention is a guaranteed racist institution with Black and Latinx detainees receiving more severe conditions of release. And according to this report, more than 60% of the pretrial incarcerated population (in court they are called “defendants”) are there in places like Rikers Island or Santa Rita Jail because they can’t afford bail! In many states, these pretrial defendants are placed in state prisons while awaiting trial. In fact, more than 5 million people are sitting in jail or prison awaiting trial.

And what about our incarcerated siblings who have already been sentenced? In a racist, sexist, transphobic legal system, how can most of the incarcerated population ever get a fair trial? Organizations like RAPP, Release Aging People in Prison, have been working tirelessly to get elderly and immunocompromised prisoners released in New York State and around the country. “If the risk is low, let them go!” is their motto. And for most people inside, the risk is more than low — after decades inside it is time to release them all!

“Billionaires have had a terrific pandemic,” stated Oxfam International’s executive director Gabriela Bucher. “Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, yet much of that has ended up lining the pockets of billionaires riding a stock market boom.”

Workers World demands U.S. hands off Ukraine, withdraw U.S. troops and weapons from Europe and put an end to the NATO alliance.

From their Facebook page:

The history of the last 100 years – that is since the 1921 Soviet victory in the Russian Civil War that consolidated the October 1917 Socialist Revolution – is a history of blown opportunities for workers revolution. Sure, some very important victories were achieved in this period in the so-called “Third World” – that is the anti-capitalist revolutions in North Korea, China, Cuba, Vietnam and Laos. However, at the same time, the world’s first workers state (the Soviet Union) was destroyed in capitalist counterrevolution in 1991-92 and so were the East European ones created in the wake of the Soviet Red Army’s heroic triumph in World War II. Moreover, countless opportunities for revolution were not taken or betrayed over these last 100 years – mainly as a result of the re-badged Menshevik strategy of the “Popular Front”. It is as if there has been a soccer match between two sides where one side – the working class – has all the opportunities to score and the other side – the capitalist exploiters – has very few … but the score still ends up being a draw! We therefore insist on Trotskyism as the perspective needed to ensure that the working class seizes all the goal scoring opportunities that history inevitably creates for it.

Trotskyism is merely the program of authentic Leninism - that is genuine Bolshevism. It is only necessary to speak of Trotskyism because the program of Leninism was perverted by the rightward moving post-1924 Soviet leadership.

The following article deals with what authentic Trotskyism advocates. This is crucial because especially since it is now 98 years since the split between the Trotskyist Left Opposition and the post-Lenin leadership of the Soviet Union, the reasons for this split are often obscured in myths, conspiracy theories and disputes about who said and did what back then. The real political issues and disputes are often muddied.

This article also deals with the important question of why and how the Trotskyist Fourth International degenerated, just like the Communist International (Comintern) a few decades earlier. It makes the point that in the end, all Marxist groups are subjected to the same pressures regardless of the particular political tradition that they claim to stand on. Moreover, ever since most of the nominal “Trotskyists” despicably took the side of imperialism in the 1980s Cold War II, it is no longer true that people that call themselves “Trotskyists” are necessarily closer to authentic Bolshevism and thus authentic “Trotskyism” than those that consider themselves anti-Trotskyist, “Marxist-Leninists”. Therefore, any socialist workers group must be judged mainly by their actual actions and political positions and not mainly by the particular “ism” (whether that be Trotskyism or Stalinism or Maoism or anarchism or some other “ism”) that they claim to stand by. Or in other words, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and not in the recipe. However, while the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the recipe is still important. It is true that just like how a cook who can bake a good pudding with a bad recipe has great cooking instincts, a socialist who can arrive at the correct positions despite a flawed political theory has good revolutionary class instincts. But sooner or later, the cook with the bad recipe, perhaps when tired, will get the pudding wrong. Similarly, flawed political principles based on a flawed political tradition will eventually lead to flawed political positions. Meanwhile, just like how having the recipe right allows the cook to teach others to cook well, a correct political theory allows a Marxist to train others in revolutionary politics. That is after all the most crucial task of communist activists – to spread communist consciousness. That is why the principles of authentic Trotskyism need to be explained and propagated. This article, which we have put a huge amount of effort into, attempts to do this. Please have a read.