05-24-2019

A necessary debate on the statement of the IWL-FI/NPA before the elections to the European parliament:

The position of revolutionary Marxism on the imperialist Maastricht

On May 10, a statement signed by groups of the IWL-FI in Europe and sectors of the NPA was released before the upcoming elections to the European parliament to be held on May 26. In turn, the IWL-FI group in the Spanish State, Corriente Roja, has made its candidacy to the European Parliament public.
From Democracia Obrera of the Spanish State, we believe that the European Parliament and Maastricht are a cave of bandits where social-imperialist parties (social democrats and Stalinists turned into bourgeois) align in decorative positions - in an institution very similar to the UN, or the former Society of the Nations - to guarantee they keep on eating from the crumbs - as the labor aristocracy does - of the super-exploitation and blood of the semi-colonial world and of the working class of those states in which capitalism was restored.
The fiercest attacks against the European working class are centralized from the governments of the European imperialist powers such as in Germany, England, France, Italy or the Spanish State. These attacks are decisively directed and centralized by the wars of prey and massacres in the colonial and semicolonial world, for example, the Fifth French Republic in the Middle East sends its troops to Syria or massacring in Mali, or the Spanish monarchy sells weapons to Saudi Arabia, etc.
Maastricht is a parliament where the delegates of the different imperialist powers discuss how the business of the looting of the oppressing peoples is distributed, which means that the European parliament is a meeting of the delegates of the transnationals who sit down to discuss how they divide up the spoils among themselves and dispute the zones of influence to the other imperialist gangs. The European parliament is nothing more than a board of European imperialist gangs.
It is one of the many institutions that dominate politics and the world economy that imperialism builds. At the end of World War II, which is one of the institutions of dominance par excellence, imperialism set up the UN on the one hand and on the other signed a Pact of peaceful coexistence with Stalin so that the revolution did not explode throughout Europe. Maastricht is nothing more than that, one of the many institutions of dominance that imperialism builds to control the world, as UNASUR, MERCOSUR, the FTA treaty, etc in Latin America.
In our opinion, the revolutionaries must not run in the elections to MPs of the imperialist Maastricht, that fictitious organization that seeks to make a trade agreement between the different imperialisms to compete with the US while they plunder the wealth and overexploit the workers of the colonies and semicolonies and of their own countries. They are elections for a puppet parliament of a true new "League of Nations" of the European imperialist powers.
But we are going to leave this matter aside for a moment, although for us it is crucial, and we will go through their analysis of the situation in Europe and the program that they raise to face this situation.
“Breaking with the European Union” or revolution of the workers’ councils to crush the imperialist states of Maastricht
For the socialist united states of Europe!
In the statement of the IWL-FI/NPA they raise the first point: "We must break with the EU and the euro to achieve social change and raise a workers' Europe!".
What would it be like for them to break up with a supra-state institution? Because, as we have said before, Maastricht is just a meeting of delegates from the different European transnationals to share the spoils. So you can't say "I'm going to break up with the European parliament", it's not about making a "workers’ Brexit". Because it is about destroying the imperialist Maastricht and setting up the workers and soldiers councils to crush the imperialist states that are now in that cave of bandits that is the European Parliament. It is about the working class taking power in Germany and advancing to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The Trotskyist's program is that of the international socialist revolution, that of the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the workers' councils to resume the tradition of the workers' councils of the German revolution, of the Portuguese revolution, of the Spanish civil war. Let the dictatorship of the proletariat return in the USSR in revolutionary ways! Let the red armies return! Let revolutionary Greece get back on its feet with its general strikes to crush the Troika!
Maastricht is nothing more than an illicit association where the imperialist states defend the businesses of their transnational financial capital in the different areas of influence and branches of production that these imperialist states control. In general, to state, as Corriente Roja does, that "we must break with the EU", without stating that for that we must unite the working class to bring down the Bourbon Monarchy and its servant government in the Spanish State, that the Fifth Republic of France must be defeated to its foundations, the looter and murderer of the oppressed peoples, etc., that is to say to the working class that there is a peaceful way to destroy the European Union and to set up the Socialist United States of Europe.
We must speak clearly to the European working class and say that the only way to march to the Socialist United States of Europe is to retake that historical tradition and set up the workers' councils, the soldier committees, defeating the social-imperialist parties that were betrayed, strangled and repressed as in the East.
This cannot even be thought without stating that the only way to achieve it is the armament of the proletariat, the destruction of NATO bases, the disarmament of the bourgeoisie, and the military defeat of its invading troops throughout the world.
In its statement, the IWL-FI states “…Workers' Governments that have emerged from new institutions, supported by a network of assemblies and popular committees built up in the workplaces and neighborhoods of the people, based on revocable delegates at all times” can be led peacefully. In other words, the government of France that massacres in Mali, that bombs in Syria, that self-attacked Charlie Hebdo, etc would allow the workers to take power without repression and without shooting a single shot. But let's go back to reality, to which the yellow vests live that for months every time they go out to fight; they are repressed, imprisoned, they lose eyes by the tear gas, etc.
It seems that those in the NPA who sign that statement do not live in France.
Let's continue to see what they say, for example, about Greece: “The savage action of the EU in Greece shows us that the revolutionary rupture of a country with the EU will face the most brutal sabotage from the beginning. Therefore, it will be necessary to adopt basic self-defense basic measures, such as the closure of financial markets, the conversion of financial assets and liabilities into a new non-convertible currency or the state monopoly of foreign trade.”
First, we do not see that Greece has broken in a revolutionary way with the EU, we believe that at this point there has surely been a problem of translation or grammar, because Greece and its Tsipras government are still part of the cave of bandits, although minor, of the EU, as we show below.
But what seems also serious to us is that the “basic measures of self-defense” for the IWL mean economic measures! As if to fight against the different European imperialisms that have NATO military bases throughout Europe, imperialist armies and security forces could be done with "the closure of financial markets."
These people talk about an ideal Europe that does not exist, at least not in this world. Let's see another example. In the Spanish State, the struggle of the workers and the Catalan people who voted for independence on October the 1st, 2017 received the fiercest repression of the forces of the Monarchy and their governments. More than 15,000 police and civil guards were sent to Catalonia to curb the decision that the Catalan people had already taken to become independent from the Spanish State.
This fight put the Bourbon crown in check, that’s why they received the unity of all the employers' parties to apply Article 155 of the Constitution, which was a coup d'etat against Catalonia and its right to independence, which meant even imprisonment and the exile of a sector of the Catalan bourgeoisie.
Let us think about what would happen if, as the IWL-FI says, workers' governments that break with the EU are imposed, one cannot even think because it is impossible for the imperialist bourgeoisie to surrender peacefully.
The statement of the IWL-FI/NPA/Corriente Roja is a true pacifist position that liquidates all the revolutionary content of the slogan of "United States Socialists of Europe", because for them Maastricht can be destroyed without setting up the revolution of the workers and soldiers councils to defeat the imperialist states.
We are facing a statement that does not tell the working class of the European imperialist powers that the only way to end the colonial wars is the disarmament of their own bourgeoisie and the armament of the proletariat, the only way to advance to the Socialist United States of Europe. The enemy is at home!
This fight begins today by calling to set up, in each fight, factory committees, strike pickets, embryos of workers’ councils and workers' militias. We must oppose a congress of workers' organizations to organize a European general strike against the attack on the conquests of workers and labor flexibility, to defeat the offensive by the governments of Maastricht and its states.
A Congress to defeat the Stalinist bureaucracy on which unions are held in the service of power and who have betrayed one by one the struggles of the European working class. Those same Stalinists who defend the massacres of the Syrian people, the genocidal Bashar al-Assad and Putin, who they even make pass as "progressive" and "anti-imperialist". Putin himself, who along with the Yankees and the German government of Merkel organized the Minsk pact with which they broke Ukraine.
The struggle for the Socialist United States of Europe is the only solution to the capitalist catastrophe. For this, the working class must get rid of the social-imperialist scourge and the business administrators of the slave bosses.
Down with the utopian and reactionary "European unity" of the Maastricht treaties! Down with all the free trade agreements of the European imperialist powers with which they dispute with Yankee and Japanese imperialism, the sweat and blood of millions of colonial slaves!
For the triumph of the socialist revolution that establishes the dictatorship of the proletariat in France, Germany, England, Italy and other imperialist powers, and that restores it under revolutionary forms in the former working-class states of the East, the former USSR and in Russia, to conquer the SOCIALIST UNITED STATES OF EUROPE from the British Isles to Eastern Siberia, the only way to end exploitation, wars, massacres, genocides and national oppression in the old continent!

A statement on “Europe” that does not fight for the demands of the most exploited sector of the European working class: migrants and refugees and the workers of the Eastern maquilas
Despite correctly denouncing xenophobia, Islamophobia and racism against immigration and stating that we must end up with it and ensure freedom of movement and settling down for migrant workers, it does not raise a single demand for it, other than putting an end to the Spanish State Immigration Law. But here we want to emphasize that they are part of the International Trade Union Network of Solidarity and Struggle which brings together more than 70 unions worldwide and a large part in Europe. They do not even raise the struggle for equal work, equal working and salary conditions for the entire working class: migrants, refugees, Eastern European workers, etc. This struggle is inseparable from the struggle of the working class of colonial and semicolonial countries.
Migrants are part of the European working class, they are the labor force expelled from production by the imperialist bankruptcy and its counterrevolutionary wars. Today in the world more than 250 million migrant workers are looking for a place on the planet to eat and work, but they can't find it.
In Europe we see how hundreds of thousands of migrants struggle to enter across the Mediterranean Sea or trying to jump the fences of Ceuta and Melilla or to break through the borders in Macedonia, etc. They flee the wars and looting that the imperialist countries of Maastricht carry on throughout Africa, the Maghreb and the Middle East. These migrants who knock on the doors of Europe are the true owners of the wealth stolen and plundered by the imperialist transnationals. Turned into the new slaves of the 21st century, the imperialist gangs use their labor force to perform the worst jobs and for that, they let them enter or not in Europe depending on what their imperialist companies need for production or also to sink the value of the workforce of the European working class.
Let us also hope that the IWL-FI/Corriente Roja lead the fight in the International Trade Union Network of Solidarity and Struggle to conquer “equal work, equal pay” for all workers, with reduced working hours and a living wage for all workers, whether migrants, refugees or over-exploited in the Eastern European maquilas and by a pan-European Congress to face the flexibility and attack on our conquests that are being launched by the various imperialist governments of Europe.

Unifying the struggle of the workers of the imperialist countries with those of the working class of the colonies or semi-colonies pillaged by European imperialism
The Corriente Roja Movement, which is part of the CoBas union, presents its candidacy and its program without saying a single word of the workers who are over-exploited in Bangladesh by the imperialist companies like Zara or Primarck, nor even mention the workers who in Latin America see that their wealth is looted by Repsol or with the debts to which banks such as BBVA or Santander are subject to those countries.
But if we see the statement of the IWL-FI / NPA groups, we will not see a single word of denunciation of German imperialism that plunges Russian oil and super-exploits the workers of the East in real maquilas, or in the United Kingdom than with the Anglo American together with the African governments they plunder the wealth of those countries and assassinate the workers who dare to get up to ask for better working conditions as they did in Marikana.
The European working class, the product of the betrayal of its union leaderships and the reformist parties, has not been able to unite its struggle with the working class of the colonies and semi-colonies, and this has resulted in the European workers movement getting worse and worse, as we have seen in France with the Khomri Law, in Italy with the suppression of conquests etc. The working class of the European powers will fare worse and worse if their own imperialist bourgeoisies impose their plans of colony, looting and plunder in colonial and semicolonial countries and in the former workers' states handed over to capitalist restoration.
This is how the III International raised the question at its II Congress:
“2. The colonies constitute one of the main sources of the forces of European capitalism. Without the possession of large markets and large territories of exploitation in the colonies, the capitalist powers of Europe could not be maintained for a long time. England, a fortress of imperialism, has been overproduced for more than a century. England has managed to maintain, despite its charges, its capitalist regime only conquering colonial territories, supplementary markets for the sale of blockbuster products and sources of raw materials for its growing industry. Through the slavery of hundreds of millions of inhabitants of Asia and Africa, it is how English imperialism has so far managed to keep the British proletariat under bourgeois domination.
3. The surplus value obtained by the exploitation of the colonies is one of the supports of modern capitalism. As long as this source of benefits is not suppressed, it will be difficult for the working class to defeat capitalism. Thanks to the possibility of intensively exploiting the workforce and natural sources of raw materials from the colonies, the capitalist nations of Europe have tried, not without success, to avoid by all means, their imminent bankruptcy.” (our bold)
The statement that does not tell the German, French, English, Italian worker and other imperialist countries in Europe that their future lies in the rights and interests of the vast majority of the European working class and its most exploited sectors, it adapts scandalously to the labor aristocracy.
Only this anti-imperialist and revolutionary policy of the proletariat of the imperialist countries towards their class siblings from the colonies, the semi-colonies and the states where capitalism has been restored, is what can guarantee that they are not subordinated to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist leaderships that they take their revolutionary struggle to alleys with no exits and defeats. The struggle for class independence of the workers of the colonies and semi-colonies is thus in the hands of the revolutionary and anti-imperialist action of the proletariat of the imperialist countries.
As we see, the statement of the IWL-FI/NPA/Corriente Roja says nothing about how European imperialism survives with the super-profits it obtains from the looting of the wealth of the colonial and semicolonial world and with the over-exploitation of the slave labor force of those countries, therefore, does not propose a program for this, which cannot be other than that of destroying the European Union and its governments.

Once again, the European New Left, together with the renegades of Trotskyism try to subordinate the working class to their own imperialist bourgeoisies...
Social-chauvinism is nothing more than tying the fate of the working class of the imperialist powers to their counter-revolutionary adventures on the planet, while in the semi-colonial world they submit the proletariat to the native bourgeoisies who always end up agreeing with imperialism against the masses.
This social-chauvinism is developed by both the socialist-imperialist currents "of the left", as well as the labor aristocracy with its "right-wing" and "reactionary" positions and the renegades of Trotskyism that do not call the working class to destroy are also folded the European Union and its imperialist pirate governments.
The “New Left” that defends the different imperialist gangs has seen it play its full role in the Spanish State with Podemos and Pablo Iglesias as minister without portfolio of the PSOE government and the monarchy.
We also see it in Greece with the Syriza government managing the Troika's businesses.
On the other hand, the anti-capitalists of the NPA in France recreate a front with former Stalinist Melenchón before the possibility of a crisis in the government of Macron, at a time when the Socialist Party is going through a serious crisis. They are looking to set up a new Podemos there, thus supporting the regime of the Fifth Republic. And in case of missing an example, we see that in the face of the crisis in England with the “Brexit”, the Labor Party offers itself with Corbyn and the “anti-capitalists” of the SWP to achieve a tide of support for the crown business in the world.
"Right" or "left" Social-chauvinism is nothing more than a defense policy of the interests of the imperialist gangs supported by the bureaucracies and labor aristocracies of the central countries.

Democracia Obrera - Spanish State

Greece: Imperialist or semi-colonial country?
Both in the general statement of the IWL-FI/NPA and the Corriente Roja statement, they state that Greece “has become a semi-colonial country”, according to its Spanish State militants, it is directly a German semi-colony.
For years now, left-wing currents have wanted to make Greece pass as a colony or semi-colony, which would put their bourgeoisie as "national" oppressed mainly by French and German imperialisms. This has been used by the most reformists and social democrats to support Syriza "against imperialism" of the Troika. This was a scam before and much more it is now!
Greece is not a colony or a semi-colony. Their imperialist gangs are minor members of the imperialist domain of the world. Greece is one of the weakest and bankrupt links in the imperialist domain of Europe. But that is not why the Greek bourgeoisie is no longer part of the imperialist gangs, which, although small and smaller, share the world market and its large or very small areas of influence, where they are associated with each other.
We talk about Syriza and the Greek imperialist bourgeoisie that is one of the most important shareholders of the HSBC, of ​​which they had their assets as partners of the Morgan Bank and the Goldman Sachs on Wall Street. Greece is an imperialist bankrupt nation, but it has the second military budget in Europe, even larger than in Germany, since it is disputed with Turkey in the southern Mediterranean, the Black Sea routes and the Balkans. We talk about the transnationals of the largest shipowners in the world.
What we have seen with Greece is the normal functioning of imperialism: a major and a lesser imperialist power, while they agree that the economic crisis is paid by the masses and not they, discuss what part of the portion each one takes, the greatest step at least, beats it, imposes his conditions and keeps most of the profits. This is how capitalism works in its imperialist phase.
That is why, in the Parliament of the Greek bankers and the imperialist gangs of Maastricht, the massive confiscation of the conquests and the assets of the workers and the people has been voted year after year. It is more than proven that the Greek bankers and their imperialist transnationals are minor partners of Germany, the European Bank and the IMF, and enemies of the workers.
One of the greatest dangers of this position that says that Greece is semi-colonial is that the Greek working class does not see that it has to fight against its own imperialist bourgeoisie but only against the Troika, which would be exploiting Greece. Because what these currents refuse to raise in Greece is one of the fundamental struggles of the working class of the imperialist countries: The enemy is at home! As it is also for the German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, etc. working class. This is the only possibility to conquer the unity of the European working class to face Maastricht.
That is what the nationalism of the imperialist powers is about: breaking the unity of the working class and developing the worst of chauvinisms in its labor movement.
We will see throughout both articles of the IWL-FI that what lies behind every single letter is a deafening social-chauvinism that attempts to silence the cries of the millions of refugees who live in true concentration camps in the Syriza Greece, of those who they perform the worst jobs and worst payments, that is, those who make up the majority and the most exploited sector of the European working class.