Echoes of May 1st, 2023

in France, Iraq, Iran...
The workers are confronting the capitalist governments and regimes

In Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, South Africa, the Spanish State...
Despite enormous struggles of the masses,
the reformist leaderships have managed to temporarily contain the revolutionary struggles of the exploited

This May 1st, in the midst of the brutal economic crisis and the bankruptcy of the capitalist system that imperialism Is throwing on the backs of the exploited, huge sectors of the world working class deployed all their fighting energies and demonstrated the way forward to defeat the attack of the bourgeois governments and regimes.

The union bureaucracies, the social-imperialist parties and Stalinism, which have been playing their full role to divert and betray each mass revolutionary struggle, could not prevent the enormous combats that the working class waged in France,  Iran and Iraq on this "International Workers’ Day”.

In France, it was a true May 1st in flames, with massive demonstrations and clashes with the police throughout the country to bring down the Macron government and the regime of the imperialist Fifth Republic that are trying to steal pensions and allá conquests from the heroic French proletariat.
In the city of Lyon, workers and rebellious youth attacked symbols of power, looting real estate, insurance and banking agencies and setting cars on fire. There were also demonstrations in Saint Lazare, Brest, Perpignan, Toulouse and Montpellier.
Meanwhile, in Paris, the CGT bureaucracy and the entire Intersyndicale tried to impose a “peaceful march”; but the working-class base and the combative youth imposed their own qstamp, facing the brutal police repression with barricades and Molotov cocktails. Long live the struggle of the French working class and youth!

In the Middle East, one of the central battalions of the world proletariat entered the fight: the oil workers of Iraq and Iran, where 80% of the energy that makes the planet work comes from.
For a week now, a heroic strike has been taking place in 110 Iranian oil, petrochemical and gas companies, with workers confronting the regime of the bloodthirsty Iranian theocracy, which is supported by the Communist Party and huge sectors of the global reformist left.
In Iraq, this May 1st, the oil workers went on strike and together with hundreds of thousands of workers took to the streets, with the same cry as their class brothers in Iran, for work and decent wages, and against the imperialist oil companies that plunder the "black gold" of the entire region.
Long live the working-class and internationalist action of the workers of Iran and Iraq!

At 180° from the mass combats, this May 1st the union bureaucracies and Stalinism carried out marches and acts at the feet of the bourgeois governments and regimes

As demonstrated by the revolutionary struggles taking place in France, Iran, etc., today, the world working class has been waging hard battles against the offensive of imperialism and its lackey governments, as we recently saw in South Africa with days of industrial action and a general strike, fighting against the blackouts and for the fall of the Ramaphosa government, the African National Congress (ANC) and the Communist Party.
Previously we had also seen the youth and the workers in the combats in Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia in Latin America and within the US against the Trump government and the Wall Street parasites, in the upsurge of the exploited in the Middle East and in former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan and Belarus.

The great obstacle, the limit these enormous mass combats had and still have to succeed, has been the worker aristocracies and bureaucracies, the Communist Parties and the entire reformist left that every day surrender the workers' struggles and are a true dead burden that the workers and exploited have on their shoulders and blocks the way to victory.

Proof of this is that wherever  these leaderships were surpassed, great days of combat took place in the streets this May 1st, as we have already seen, in France, Iran, etc.
In the rest of the world, what prevailed  was the role of Stalinism that was in charge of carrying out actions this May 1st at the service of keeping the world proletarian forces divided, and continue submitting them country by country to their executioners.

As for the former workers' states that stalinism handed over to imperialism in '89 imposing the capitalist restoration, they did not even carry out symbolic acts. In those countries where the old Communist Parties have been recycled into a new bourgeoisie, inflicting a huge defeat on the working class, and they are which lead semi-fascist counterrevolutionary governments, the acts for May 1st no longer exist, as it happens in China, or Vietnam.
No doubt the symbol this year was what happened in Cuba, where with the excuse of "lack of fuel", the "new rich" of the Cuban CP canceled the central parade that had historically been held in Havana for decades and decades. This is how they tried to prevent an outburst from winning the streets again by the hungry workers who rebelled on July 11, 2021 and were brutally repressed by the government of Díaz Canel and the new Castroite bourgeoisie, which today keeps dozens of them in prison.

Meanwhile, in the West the Stalinists demonstrated how imperialism preserved them after '89 so that they control the trade union centrals, the trade unions and mass organizations to close the road to the revolution.
For example, in Italy, far from the barricades of Paris, the confederal unions, close to the Democratic Party (born in 2007 from the merger of the heirs of the former Communist Party and the former Christian Democrats), held a music festival in Rome like they have been doing since 1990.

Today, to continue playing this role, Stalinism has the unconditional support of former Trotskyist currents and sectors of anarchism that cover its left flank to keep the working class at bay and discipline it.
This was clearly demonstrated in the rallies that took place in the Spanish State for this May 1st.

While the bureaucracy of the CCOO and UGT made a mobilization and an official act of the Spanish imperialist government of the PSOE-Communist Party-Podemos, in Madrid the "Bloque Combativo y de Clase (Combative and Working-class Block)" marched on, where all the Anarchists and Stalinists trade union centrals imposeddpf their stamp on top.

Alongside them the Communist Party of the Peoples and currents of the former Trotskyists were also marchimg.

The organizers of that march were enemies of raising as their first task the fight for "Down with the monarchy"!, for the right to self-determination of the Catalan and Basque people and all the oppressed nations and the demand for immediate freedom for all political prisoners, without which is impossible to unite the workers of the entire Iberian Peninsula.

Consistent with this, the motto of all of them was to formally call to "fight like in France", instead of calling on the working class of the entire Spanish State to break out with the government and the regime of the Bourbon monarchy and fight together with the French workers, in a common fight to defeat Maastricht and the NATO governments in the imperialist Europe. In other words, it was a march at the service of isolating the European working class country by country.

Not to mention that these social-imperialist currents, servants of Maastricht, kept a shameful silence about the situation of migrant workers and the looting carried out by their own imperialist bourgeoisies throughout the semi-colonial world.  These leaderships dare to proclaim that there can be a "dignified life for the working class" within the framework of this bankrupt capitalist system that only imposes hunger, unemployment, misery and the worst sufferings on the workers and exploited.

In this way, in the streets of the Spanish State, the strategic alliance sealed for a while now was evident between Stalinism with its new partners, the renegades of Trotskyism.
All of them have covered up the genocide by al-Assad and Putin that crushed the Syrian revolution by doing the “dirty work” for all the imperialist powers.

All these currents go on supporting the jackal Putin who has currently invaded Ukraine to claim, with its partition, to continue being the guardian of the imperialist business in all the former Soviet republics and in Russia itself, while he appropriates part of the Ukrainian territory. They hide that those who die in the war in Ukraine are the Ukrainian workers, and are fully against supporting the young people who rise up in Russia so as not to be forced to join the army and go kill their brothers in Ukraine.

We also saw this in Latin America, where after the union bureaucracies and Stalinism played their full role to get the masses out of revolutionary combat, this May 1st activities were carried out led by those who gave in the struggles of the exploited, such as the bureaucracy of the CGTP in Peru, supporter of the government of Boluarte and the fujimorist regime, or in Colombia are at the feet of the bourgeois government of Petro, servant of imperialism. Likewise in Bolivia, where the COB bureaucracy led a class collaboration mobilization with the Arce government and the MAS, at a time when the latter are throwing the full weight of the crisis on the working class and guaranteeing the repayment of the fraudulent foreign debt to the IMF.

In Chile, the Communist Party, which is part of Boric 's anti-worker government administering the Pinochetista regime, organized the official CUT rally, which was attended by Trotskyist renegades of MIT / LIT-CI, giving support to that government of class collaboration, agent of the Gringos.

In Argentina, the currents of the FIT-U carried out a rally that received the support of the "Comunistas" group of Cuba, led by members of the Communist Party of Havana, while from the box, leaders such as those of the PTS affirmed that the fight for Socialism “stays in the future”... In other words, the old Stalinist policy of “revolution in stages”, telling the working class that they have a whole stage of struggle ahead for “more democracy” and the, who knows when, they will be able to fight for the socialist revolution, in an open break with the program of Trotskyism.

In Brazil, the former Trotskyists of the PSTU marched with the Stalinists of the PCB and Popular Unity together with the LIS, while the majority bureaucracy of trade union centrals such as the CUT and CTB, were with the Lula government together with the PSOL and its "Intersindical".

At the opposite barricade to Stalinism and reformism, we internationalist Trotskyists fight for a May 1st for the socialist revolution at the service of the combats of the world working class

We, the Trotskyists of the Collective for the Refoundation of the IV International were not part of any of the actions led by stalinism and its flanks of the renegades of Trotskyism and sectors of anarchism.

We fight for an Internationalist May 1st, of working-class struggle and for the socialist revolution, under the banners of the Fourth International.
That is why we were not in the "combative" march of the Spanish State, a place for those who support al-Assad and Putin, those who support the imperialist Maastricht refusing to unify the struggle throughout Europe with the French working class, those who do not defend the Basque and Catalan prisoners or the nations oppressed and plundered by the Bourbon monarchy.
We fight to overthrow the regime of the Spanish monarchy, sustained in the Moncloa Deals, oppressor of the Catalan and Basque peoples, etc. Open the road to the Republic of the Outraged! For a Federation of Socialist Republics of the Iberian Peninsula!

We fight for the unity of the European working class from Portugal to the Russian steppes, for the military defeat of Putin's counterrevolutionary troops in Ukraine, for a Soviet, working-class and independent Ukraine and for the return of the revolutionary USSR without its betrayers, the Stalinist scourge.

We call on the European proletariat to fight NATO of the US and the Maastricht's Europe of of the Franco-German axis. We are for the victory of France on fire so that the Paris Commune returns and for imposing the United Socialist States of Europe.

We are standing up fighting against all these Stalinist and Trotskyist-renegade currents that are dedicated to submitting the working class to the bourgeois governments considered as "progresseve" by them,  as they do in Latin America. We fight to break the subjugation of the Latin American proletariat to those bourgeois governments and regimes, un order to conquer the unity of the workers and poor peasants and forge a common fight against imperialism, together with our best allies, the US American working class.

This May 1st and every day we fight together with the Chicago Martyrs of the 21st century: the martyred masses of Syria, Yemen and Palestine occupied by Zionism.
We raise high the need to recover proletarian internationalism so that the working class can coordinate its struggles at the international level, against these treacherous leaderships that divide their combats every day of the year, submit them to the bourgeoisie and inflict the masses the worst  backstabbing so they don't succeed.

On this "International Workers' Day" we, the Trotskyists who fight under the banners of the Fourth International of 1938, tell the masses the truth: bankrupt capitalism only prepares new catastrophes, wars and fascism against the exploited. Against the rallies and mobilizations of reformism that hide this under lock and key and are enemies of the struggle for the socialist revolution, to save rotten imperialist capitalism, we call on the working class and the exploited masses to try again, to resume the path of the socialist revolution to send to the dustbin of history this capitalist system that can no longer even feed its slaves.

For the working class to live, imperialism must die!

Stalinists, anarcho-syndicalists and former Trotskyists... May 1st in Spain: a march that does not confront the counterrevolutionary monarchy of the Bourbons

A new blow from the global economic crisis

Chile

Colombia

France on fire

Oil strike in Iran