Colombia - May 12th, 2021

The limits of the trade unionist left in the Colombian labor vanguard

At the key and crucial moment of the indefinite strike, the group Democracia Directa, a current coming from the LIT-CI and Morenoism, is proposing to strengthen the scabs of the “Strike Committee” and leading the unarmed masses to a negotiation with Duque and the bourgeoisie, which are armed to the teeth

The CUT and the three trade unions have already separated the workers' movement from the masses. The working class is still intervening in the struggle in the streets but has lost centrality in the combat. The discredited trade unions weaken the weight of the proletariat in the popular assemblies, which keep the struggle going and are the embryos of dual power.

The task of all reformists is to put pressure on the union bureaucracy from the left to “negotiate well”, as Colectivos Unidos of the ITU-CI does. Others proclaim that the Strike Committee has to "incorporate the peasants" and even call for "the negotiation to be public" and "decided in assembly", as is the case of the Democracia Directa group. This policy is totally wrong and marks a 180° angle with the aspirations of the revolutionary masses in struggle.
This is an old reformist recipe: with their policy they intend to leave Duque government and the regime of the "reconciliation pact" under the US leadership intact, and want to combine this with "a lot of pressure" to negotiate in the "best conditions" with the popular assemblies, that is, with dual power.
This shameful policy belongs to a group of powerless trade unionists who, being frightened, have long ago refused to organize a revolutionary struggle against Duque.

Duque “negotiates” by launching the fascist gangs and ESMAD, killing fighters… And Democracia Directa calls for unarmed grassroots assemblies to approve or not the negotiation, that is, to decide while the bourgeois State points a gun to their heads.
This is already none other than scandalous pacifism. How can a negotiation be carried out with the government that is armed to the teeth? This means surrendering workers' demands before sitting down to negotiate.

The "public negotiation" proclaimed by Democracia Directa is what the CONAIE leadership did in Ecuador in 2019. At that time, CONAIE brought Moreno, who no longer had any kind of power due to the mass revolutionary insurrection, and put him in front of the television cameras to discuss the withdrawal of the "gasolinazo" (fuel price hike). Thus, the traitors of Stalinism placed again a government that had fallen in power.

The Democracia Directa group is dressing a negotiation in "red", which ultimately only pursues keeping Duque in power. In this issue, it is not different from all the bureaucracies of the trade unions.

Their friends from the LIT-CI, the PTS, etc. in Chile have adopted the same policy. They acted as the caboose of Stalinism and the former Concertación to divert the revolutionary struggle towards a rigged "Constituent Assembly", under the tutelage of Piñera and the civic-military regime. In Colombia they want to do so with the people "publicly deliberating" with the murderer Duque.
Meanwhile, more than 980 fighters are rotting in prisons and over 50 dead clamor for justice against the murderers and executioners of the people. They want the masses to negotiate with a gun to their head.

Democracia Directa states that “by pressuring the government, it will be possible to bend its intransigence, contain repression, demilitarize the cities and demand the punishment of those guilty of the more than 40 murders, more than a thousand wounded, and get all the disappeared victims to appear alive.” If Democracia Directa affirms that the government can be bent, that is, it is possible to bring it to its knees and break the backbone of its repressive forces, why don't they call to overthrow it out? Ultimately, Democracia Directa is the last device Duque has to keep him from falling. Shame on them.

The Democracia Directa program goes as far as "bending" the government... For Democracia Directa, as for Stalinism and the union bureaucracy, overthrowing the government is forbidden. But there is nothing that the masses long for any more than to see Duque's head rolling down in Cali, Bogotá, Medellín, Pereira and other rebellious cities.

They are enemies of setting up the dual power so that the revolutionary process that began sweeps away the entire infamous regime and its murderous government. They end up being the “left wing” of the CUT and with their policies they are the ones that subjected the National Union, Social and Popular Coordinator to an impotent union policy and pressure on the bourgeois regime and the union bureaucracy.

Democracia Directa’s policy of "expanding the Strike Committee" is real gibberish. It is totally opposed to a program for workers' democracy. It is not about "expanding the Strike Committee", but about defeating the traitors who have already surrendered the strike.
Where were these people on April 30 when the CUT union bureaucracies called to end the strike and held a virtual meeting by Zoom on May Day?

Is it the necessary task to "Expand the Strike Committee" of those who already betrayed the strike and of those who have been conspiring with Duque against the strike; or is it instead, to fight and set up independent organizations of the masses that have risen up, breaking with the control of the bourgeoisie and all the treacherous leaderships?
Democracia Directa goes back on their steps. They aborted the independent path of the workers' vanguard that left the CUT bureaucracy dislocated in 2019, being its advisers from the left, from the outside.
Now they are trying to put the masses back under the leadership that lost control of them.

We insist; day by day, the labor movement loses its centrality in the popular assemblies and in the fighting in the streets because the bureaucracies of the unions and the Strike Committee have left the strike and are betraying it.
There is no time to lose. The task of the moment is to set up the factory committees, expel the scabs of the union bureaucracy, and convene a Congress of popular assemblies, independent unions, workplace councils, supply committees, students' and all the revolted poor workers' and peasants' committees.

Democracia Directa does not break the limits authorized by the bourgeois regime and government in Colombia. The masses have long ago broken them.

The revolutionary process that every day has been climbing steps since April 28, is today beginning to descend. The scabs of the strike, the trade unions and the Strike Committee are responsible. They are the ones who agreed with Petro to withdraw the minga (native Colombians’ protest) and the peasants marches. They are the ones who together with the CUT sent all the workers to work and only hold protests with no more than 100 bureaucrats with banners, to show that they are there. And they do it in Bogotá, very far from the barricades and trenches of struggle of the masses.

Democracia Directa has returned to the CUT led by Stalinism and the MOIR. It has become their spokesmen.

One last clarification: calling for the strengthening of today's Strike Committee, without calling to do so with committees of armed workers and peasants organized in self-defense committees and workers' militia, is not just a trait of a vulgar pacifism. It is not just trying to submit the dual power bodies to the bourgeoisie that is armed to the teeth. It amounts to strengthening a committee of strikebreakers and on top of that, sending the unarmed masses for  Duque to shoot them dead.

Moreover, the only slogans raised by Democracia Directa are about fighting against the bills and decrees of Duque’s government, without proposing any program that attacks the property and businesses of the capitalists and imperialism.
Duque launched the "tax reform" and the health reform because Colombia is a US colony, completely indebted with the IMF and looted by transnational corporations.

The government has already withdrawn the "tax reform" and is about to withdraw the "health reform." It pretends to give something up while giving nothing and only to buy time and get the masses off the streets. To achieve this task, it counts with the bureaucracy of the trade unions and also with Democracia Directa that ends with its program and demands when they should be a starting point to conquer the most heartfelt demands of the exploited by attacking the interests of the capitalists and the imperialist plunder of the nation.

There is a agonizing crisis of capitalism in Colombia, in Latin America and the world. There is a worldwide crash. The capitalist system is bankrupt. It's them or us. If there is something that Colombia demonstrates, it is that social peace between the classes is over, that the margins of concessions have ended and the time in which the reformists can pass scraps as "reforms" is over.
The masses cannot even dream of improving their current life standard in the midst of capitalist bankruptcy. Workers and the exploited are much more cunning and further to the left than Democracia Directa. They have waged a political fight against the government and their conscience is clearly pointed: Unless Duque is defeated, nothing will be achieved. That is understood by the millions who are on the streets. Democracia Directa is a thousand kilometers behind.
For the Trotskyists, the bankrupt capitalists only give something when they see that they can lose everything. Only in this way and fighting for everything can certain demand be achieved, which will be lost if we do not seize power.

The masses in Colombia have waged a revolutionary struggle. We revolutionaries fight for this combat to lead to an insurrection and an open revolution that overthrows the capitalist system. This is the only way to conquer bread, land, national independence, health and education for all. Everything else is a smokescreen to support the bourgeois regime.

The policy of "sovereign assemblies with direct grassroots democracy", without self-defense committees and without weapons, is a real slap in the face to the workers' democracy of the struggling masses.

Democracia Directa silences that the masses are not only facing Duque government, but also the infamous regime of the "reconciliation pact" of the US military bases with Cuban Stalinism, which handed over the peasant resistance unarmed and Cuba to imperialism.
Is it because of its adherence to Castroism, which has proclaimed that “socialism does not work anymore, not even in Cuba”, that Democracia Directa silences the immediate tasks of expropriating the capitalists, breaking with imperialism and imposing a tax counter-reform for the crisis to be repaid by bankers and transnationals?

One could think that Democracia Directa is a group living in Switzerland. But even there it would not be possible to carry out their policy.

The reactionary utopia of this policy is the attempt to building organizations of direct democracy (soviets) under an increasingly dictatorial and fascist regime, without arming the masses to prepare them for the fierce civil war that the bourgeoisie and its state have already started.

We are facing a trade unionist current that has long since broken all ties with the Marxist program of the socialist revolution.
Many of its honest members and courageous vanguard workers have another alternative path for their struggle: raising the program of socialist revolution in Colombia and internationally. The time has come to walk through it again. We must fight under the banners of the Fourth International.