July 27th, 2020 Letter from the Collective for the Refoundation of the Fourth International / FLTI to the 58th International Antiwar Assembly The US working class is the iron fist of the workers of the world that hits the imperialist parasites Our socialist and revolutionary greetings to The 58th International Anti-War Assembly in Japan The Zengakuren [Japanese Federation of Self-Organized Student Associations] The Anti-War Youth Committee The Revolutionary Communist League of Japan - Marxist Revolutionary Fraction (JRCL-RMF)   Comrades, Months ago, towards the end of 2019, a new crash and breakdown of the rotting world capitalist system began. The same thing had happened in 2008. The financial oligarchy and the big capitalists seize parasitically on benefits that human labor has not yet produced. Capital goes out of production and goes to speculation and the withdrawal of fictitious profits without backing in goods. Thus they had fled the bursting of the housing bubbles of 2008 and the widespread bankruptcy of the banks. They threw, as they are trying to do now, their entire crisis at the oppressed peoples and workers of the world. The bourgeoisie came out of the crash of 2008 making new bubbles such as “zero rate” loans, with which profits and super-profits were distributed and fictitiously raised the values ​​of the shares. Meanwhile, they deepened the massive indebtedness of companies and states. In this new round of the crash, the debts of states and companies already amount to 230% of world GDP. The US, the epicenter of the crash, has been throwing its entire crisis on the world. Its deficit is already $ 18 trillion. US imperialism captures the reserves of most of the countries that go to buy its bonds, while with the monetary emission of the Federal Reserve of already several trillion dollars it saves its financial oligarchy that is permanently on the brink of precipice and finances its military machine on the planet. It is clear that if capitalism survives in such a marasmus and world crisis, it is because of the treacherous leaderships, the union bureaucracies, the Stalinists and the renegades of Marxism, who support it. There has been no country or continent in which the working class did not present a battle in recent years in the face of the attack and the crisis that this putrefying system threw at them. It was these leaderships that played their full role in betraying the mass uprisings, while with counter-revolutionary pacts the revolutionary processes of Syria and Ukraine were closed in and crushed and Cuba was handed over to imperialism. Thus, the capitalist system was able to crawl out of the 2008 crisis, to find its way back to this new blow of the crash, but not before that 1% of imperialist parasites monopolized 50% of the planet's wealth. The global division of labor has been broken. The world market is only shrinking. The United States, with Trump in its lead, in a fierce competition with imperialist Europe, had come out to defend its control of the world market with a tough trade war. With an aggressive policy, it advanced on China and the European Union itself, at the same time disciplining the Moscow oligarchy, seizing all its assets and accounts abroad. This shows that no dominant imperialism withdraws nor will it withdraw peacefully from the control of the world economy. And this is the case of the United States, as if it does not want to begin an open process of decline, it must advance its strategy of colonizing or semi-colonizing China and Russia to keep their very profitable markets. This has to be done against the stiff competition already imposed by the Franco-German axis, which, at the head of Maastricht, is advancing steadfastly, contesting the various high-tech industries in the world economy. Despite this, production in Europe and in Germany in particular, fell by 6.8%, while China remained stagnant with a growth rate of 2%. This has opened a phase of depression of the world capitalist economy, capital devaluation and a huge crisis of overproduction. The collapse at USD 20 of the price of a barrel of oil was only the thermometer of this new capitalist catastrophe... Millions of workers lost their jobs. The most valuable commodity, the labor force, was wasted by millions in the world economy. Proof of this is that 200 million inhabitants of the planet were already migrating in the 5 continents looking for a place to live and eat. Today we see how 55 million jobs have been lost in the United States alone, exacerbated by the crisis of the Coronavirus pandemic. Comrades: Covid-19 and the spread of the pandemic acted on an already sick and bankrupt capitalist system. This caused the suffering of the masses to worsen to extreme degrees. Coronavirus came to deepen this crisis and this breakdown of the world economy. It sharpened the effects of the trade war between the imperialist powers to extreme degrees, as it imposed even more restrictions on world trade and produced a new leap in the closing of customs barriers. World-economy is semi-paralyzed. Companies' inventories are saturated. The paradox of this bankrupt system is summarized in that in this crisis there are plenty of minerals, oil, food, factories, etc., while millions and millions of hungry and unemployed people do not find a place to live in this dirty prison in which this perfidious way of production has transformed the planet. As you correctly put in your appeal, "the world economy has instantly frozen over." We have entered a phase of depression and general impoverishment. Again the catastrophe is already here. Comrades: The year 2019 ended and as more and more the capitalist economy collapsed, new detachments of the world working class entered the battle in Hong Kong, Chile, Ecuador, or in Bolivia, where they faced a bloody military coup. Indomitable French working class endlessly resisted the onslaught of the capitalists, and the masses of the Middle East returned to the fight, as huge revolutionary processes began again, such as in Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan and Algeria. The start of the Coronavirus pandemic undoubtedly served the bourgeoisie to stop the masses' offensive, to throw their crisis at them and to throw the worst of the hardships on their shoulders. Millions of workers were sent into the production process for the capitalists to keep their profits, bringing hundreds of thousands to die. In New York, thousands of black and Latino workers were buried in mass graves. In Italy and in the Spanish State, workers went on strike, as in automobile and steel mills, to prevent death caused by the pandemic. In China, the lives of thousands and thousands of workers were lost, which has been hidden by the sinister and semi-fascist government of the Communist Party. In Latin America, where the pandemic is hitting hard today, the exploited masses are left with the alternative of dying when producing in the factories or starving to death at home, and they again begin to take to the streets. Imperialism announces that a post-pandemic "new normal" is coming. But the recipe they are preparing is not a new one. Absolutely not! Ahead is simply the worst attack on the exploited, the looting of oppressed peoples and the fierce scramble for markets in the world economy to a greater degree than that we have seen so far. The Franco-German axis has decided to maintain its living space in Europe by giving "aid" and loans to the states that will seek to pay them back with their workers' blood, sweat and tears, as happened yesterday in Greece, Portugal, Spain, etc., and also in France and Germany itself. In the United States, the Trump government orders workers to produce in factories under deadly conditions, while threatening the world with its gunboats if other imperialist powers or strong national bourgeoisies threaten its markets. The embargo on Iran and the dispatch of its fleet to the China Sea are an example of the latter. For its part, China once again offers its internal market to transnational corporations, eager for business, in order to try to revive their economy. Meanwhile, entire regions of the planet are sinking into a well that appears to be bottomless. Oil-producing countries are bankrupt, including Russia, which has already seen its gas and oil exports drop by 50%. This has further accelerated the armoring of the fully Bonapartist regime in Putin's Russia. Then, the "new normal" will be marked by the gross agonizing crisis of the world capitalist system and the deepening of the character of this time of crisis, wars and revolutions. With hindsight from today's crisis, it is clear that in 1989 it were the traitors of the Stalinist bureaucracy who, handing over the conquests of former workers' states such as the USSR, China, etc. to the capitalist system, they gave it an abject survival in the last decades. The fresh blood injected into the sclerotic veins of capitalism is no longer enough for the body to live. Now they are going all the way. "Greater China" and "Greater Russia" no longer have a place in the world market as they are today. The city of London, Frankfurt and Wall Street are fighting each other for taking them and they will be disputed nails and teeth. Moreover, the USA would not be able to continue maintaining its hegemony in the world market  and risks entering into an open decline, unless it does conquer China and Russia, breaks them economically and financially or puts them under its military boot. This is the "new normal" that the imperialist pirates are preparing to be able to emerge from the catastrophe and crash. Here and there governments and regimes are armoring and Bonapartizing themselves. But in order for imperialism to advance to new superior offensives, it must defeat its own working class, something it is far from having achieved.   And the working class wages battle Comrades, In this dark world, as you say, imperialism does not have an open road for its counterrevolutionary deeds and offensives. The workers and exploited still keep their huge energies, despite cruel and heavy defeats as in Syria, Ukraine, the final sell-out of Cuba to the US by Castroism or in Bolivia, where a semi-fascist coup d’état was imposed with iron and blood, which massacred the exploited in Senkata. The world working class is far from giving up. As the 8 minutes 46 seconds that took the executioner’s knee to choke George Floyd passed, the black people, the workers, millions of unemployed and rebel youth in the US broke out in huge struggles and independent mass political actions. These actions were a left blow on the infamous regime and the trap it had set on the exploited with Sanders, backed by the entire American left, who returned to the Democratic Party to support Biden. This happened just in moments when the masses were turning left and, pushed by huge sufferings, they rose against the US regime, Trump’s government and his repressive forces. The old and weakened AFL-CIO bureaucracy couldn’t do anything to prevent a volcano eruption of the anger of millions of exploited. In more than 50 cities, centuries of hatred for the slavery of the black people burst out. Also, for the desperate situation, without a way out, of the more than 55 million unemployed, of the homeless and for the miserable wages that doesn’t even reach 6 dollars an hour of millions of exploited treated in America as the US bourgeoisie treats the workers and subjugated people of the colonies and semi-colonies that plunders. “Dissolve the police!” is the cry and the struggle of the masses. This is a direct clash to the heart of the bourgeois state, with its armed men gang. Police stations were raided. Some of them were burnt. A huge mass independent action has struck the ruling imperialist power inside of it. In their struggle against Trump’s government and the police, the exploited concentrate all their demands. The masses are convinced that they have to deal a heavy blow and defeat the government on the streets to advance in recovering their gains and put an end to their unbearable living standards. The oppressed don’t enter the revolutionary processes with a book under their arms. The unprecedented sufferings push them to the revolutionary struggle. In the spontaneous mass actions there’s the embryo of consciousness, as Lenin said. The exploited distinguish their enemy. It’s been more than 60 days of struggle and the reformist left cannot subject the working class to the Democratic Party again, the same party that has attacked all the workers’ gains with 24 governors today as yesterday with Obama. The masses don’t let the reformist left subject the working class to the Democrats. “Dissolve the police!” They insist. Besides the uprisings in the cities, the 29 ports in the US west coast were paralyzed. As black lives matter and the lives of the entire working class deserve to be lived, the exploited took over the central police station in Seattle. In Detroit, tens of thousands of workers refuse to enter to produce in the factories as they don’t want to die of Coronavirus. More than 50 cities in USA are today revolted. With the cry “our streets”, they kicked out the white supremacists and defend the streets from the repressive forces with barricade fighting. A gathering of old union leaders and Stalinism tried to place itself once again in this mass uprising to control it again. This is what the symbolic July 20th day of action they called was about. The union bureaucracies weakened their own call as they reduced those actions to symbolic demonstrations and tried to add bourgeois, representatives and senators of the Democratic Party to convince the workers movement that their way out was to trust again in the Parliament and in the imperialist democracy of Wall Street pirates. The response of the revolted masses did not take long. In Portland, where Trump sent the Federal Forces, the clashes have not stopped. The wall of mothers, then wall of fathers and now wall of war veterans are clashing every day with Trump’s forces. As we are writing this message to your Assembly, in 45 cities there were actions taking place at the war cry “We are all Portland!” “Out with Trump!” “Feds Out!” and “Dissolve the police!” Comrades From the Collective for the Re-foundation of the Fourth International / FLTI, we take as our own what your appeal says: It is time for a mass counter-attack. Indeed, it is time to prepare a strategic offensive for the fight of the international proletariat. But for this to happen, it is not enough with the spontaneity and heroism of the exploited. This is an indispensable condition for victory. But without a revolutionary leadership, these attempts will be sought to be taken to new traps, diversions and class collaboration policies, promoted by all kinds of trade union bureaucrats and by Stalinism that put down the mass struggle and prepare hard blows of fascism. There is no time to waste. In Middle East, France, USA, the South Cone of Latin America, the world working class stands strong. There are conditions to prepare a strategic offensive. The US working class is the iron fist of the workers of the world. In its offensive, it is in condition of stopping the imperialist war machine, as yesterday in Vietnam and later Iraq. The black workers of Africa are taken as slaves to the imperialist Europe with shackles (as they were taken to the plantations of the white in southern USA centuries ago), see that this struggle of the black people inside the imperialist beast is their own struggle. The immigrant and undocumented workers, the Black Vests of Paris, rose to the cry “Fear has changed sides!” The bourgeoisie sent its agents to the workers movement in USA, as we saw on July 20 and in every decisive struggle of the working class. They go to prevent the masses from setting up self-determination direct democracy armed organizations in their struggle, that is to say, their own power. Against them, the revolutionaries must fight in the heart of the masses to set up a supporting point for them to break and overcome the leaderships that at each step seek to disorganize their struggles and revolutionary assaults, dissolve their dual power organs and prevent the exploited from arming themselves. It is indispensable to provide the working class and the rising oppressed the leadership they deserve to win. So in USA the main task is no other than fighting to coordinate, expand, generalize, arm and centralize at national level all the self-determination organs that the exploited set up in their struggle in each city and state. The disarming of the police puts the mass arming at the order of the day. The ones on the top don’t represent us. The fighting in the streets is not to be delegated. Trump out! Out with the bourgeoisie and its parties from the workers organizations! The decisive strength of the American workers will come from their support to the struggle of the workers and subjugated people of the world. To stop the offensive of the capitalists, to recover the houses, to get bread, free health and education, work and a decent life, the socialist revolution must win in USA. Fighting for the Socialist United States of North, Central and South America is a task of the entire world working class.   The working class must “go back to normal”, recovering militant internationalism Comrades The Black Vests in France claimed “Fear has changed sides!” in moments when the workers in England knocked down the statues of the enslavers in Bristol. The world working class is already fighting with their class brothers and sisters in the streets of New York, Detroit, Portland and Washington, where the shameless Trump had to hide in a bunker under the White House facing the rising of the black people and the workers. Meanwhile the masses wage huge revolutionary processes in Iraq, Lebanon and tough struggles against the Iranian theocracy, while the heroic resistance in Syria and Palestine is alive. In Chile, the exploited seek to enter once again to the first line of the fight of the workers of the world. It is time to coordinate the struggles of the international working class to strike as a single fist to the imperialist parasites. Our fight for the re-foundation of the Fourth International is inseparable of our fight to rebuild the militant internationalism in the world workers movement, fighting to defeat the treacherous leaderships, agents of capital. The workers must return to their “historic normal”, re-taking the militant internationalism that the traitors of Stalinism, Social-democracy and the renegades of Trotskyism destroyed, subordinating the working class to its executioners. The “new normal” should be the masses re-taking the path to the international socialist revolution. This is what preparing a strategic offensive of the working class is about. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution are not only “ripe”, but started to rot at extreme degree. There is no time to waste. It is needed to coordinate the struggles against dismissals and labour flexibility of the workers of Detroit with the workers of the Mexican maquilas. We have to unite the workers of Renault in Brazil with their siblings the dismissed workers in Nissan, Barcelona and Renault in France into a single fight against the transnational companies. Also, the unified struggle to get free health, defend the pensions and get decent work for all is a struggle of life or death for the world working class. A new internationalist regrouping of the revolutionary Marxism is an imperious need to help the masses overcome the limits imposed by the treacherous leaderships to conquer the road to victory. This is the immediate task and the obligation of all the currents that claim to be of revolutionary Marxism. Comrades The best fighters of the working class are in the jails of the exploitation regimes. In Greece, the rebel youth has been in jail for many years. The prisons of Zionism and those of the fascist Al Assad are full with heroic revolutionaries. Thousands of them were brutally murdered. The Iranian clerics attacked the fighters of the working class, youth and working women, putting thousands of them in jail. The Chilean masses seek to release the best fighters of their first line from jail. In Bolivia, the relatives of the exploited massacred in Senkata demand justice and the release of the political prisoners. In Argentina, the former leader of GM workers, Sebastian Romero, is in prison, while the “Damocles Sword” still hangs over the workers of Las Heras and thousands of imprisoned. In Colombia or in the tormented China, thousands of workers and youth get kidnapped. The fight for the freedom of all the political prisoners of the world is a task and obligation that we raise together in a single cry against the exploiters and the repressors around the world. This “dark century” of the rotten capitalist system must end! Imperialism must die! Let’s not allow that the historical alternative be war and barbarism but the victory of the international socialist revolution! We salute your 58th Antiwar Assembly. Paula Medrano, Carlos Munzer, Villacorta, Jussa K., James S. and Lourdes Fernández For the International Coordination Secretariat of the Collective for the Refoundation of the Fourth International / International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (FLTI) Integrated by: Internationalist Workers Party – Fourth International (POI-CI), Chile / Workers International League (WIL), Zimbabwe / Paper “The Truth of the Oppressed”, voice of the socialists of Syria and Middle East / Workers Democracy, Spanish State / Socialist League of the Internationalist Workers (LSTI), Bolivia / Internationalist Workers Nucleus (NOI), Colombia / Communards Group, Colombia / Internationalist Workers League – Fourth International (LOI-CI) - Workers Democracy, Argentina / Workers’ Advance “Black List” of Rio Santiago Shipyard, Argentina / Workers And Youth Revolutionary Committee for Self-Organization (CROJA), Brazil / Socialist League of the Internationalist Workers (LSTI), Peru

California, USA   Dockworkers of the Eastern Coast - USA   Wall of mothers in Portland, USA   Wall of mothers in Portland, USA   War veterans supporting the struggle in Portland, USA         Mineapolis, USA   Boston, USA   March 2020 – strike in Italy to prevent dying from coronavirus   Syria   Federal forces in Portland, EEUU   Lebanon   Iran   Iraq   Chile   Ecuador, November 2019   Massacre of Senkata, Bolivia   Immigrants from Central America going to USA   African immigrants in the Mediterranean   Mexican immigrants   52nd Anti-War Assembly   55th Anti-War Assembly   12/08/19: Annual political meeting of the JCRL-RMF   2017: Japan, Osaka, rally against Trump’s tour