International Correspondence

November 22nd, 2019

Appeal by the Collective for the Re-Foundation of the 4th International/FLTI:

For an internationalist block of the revolutionary forces of the world working class! 

"Huge revolutionary forces nest in the vanguard of the world working class. The Middle East is on fire once again. They are fighting in Hong Kong and Catalonia. The US working class have not surrendered. It is time to stop fighting alone and group internationalists’ forces. The fate of the working class is at stake”

 

Comrades of the JRCL-RMF of Japan,

As we send this letter there are both an ongoing coup and a mass uprising in Bolivia, which threatens with placing the exploited in a position of offensive against the coup and fascist putsch. Morales has escaped and left the masses resisting. The bourgeoisie focused their forces in Senkata, with the Añez administration and the Banzerista Armed Forces perpetrating a true massacre. The viciousness of the government, the regime, the military and OAS against the exploited was even unleashed in the ferocious repression against the demonstration in La Paz, when the masses were carrying the coffins of those murdered in Senkata last Tuesday.

From the “International Network for the Freedom of Political Prisoners”, the FLTI is propelling an action to break the isolation of hundreds of relatives of those murdered, wounded and disappeared in Senkata. Different organizations of the working class, Human Rights and socialist currents are propelling an international campaign to support the workers who were brutally repressed in El Alto. We are sure that you will propel boldly this struggle of class solidarity in the Pacific.

Imperialism, as they did in Syria, has focused their forces in Bolivia to inflict a defeat on the masses and chasten the revolutionary fighting wave that is running through Latin America.

The offensive of Latin American masses answering imperialist aggression in the sub-continent does not stop. Yesterday there was a general revolutionary strike in Colombia, which threatens to follow the path taken by the exploited in Ecuador or still today in Chile, with the masses overtaking Stalinist leaderships.
Imperialism focused their counterrevolutionary offensive where the “Boliviarian” bourgeoisie and Stalinism had surrendered the revolutionary processes and anti-imperialist struggle of the masses years ago. They hit in Brazil and Lula surrendered; they hit in Venezuela and Maduro is the best in applying US plans.

A dead silence by Castroism, which is hidden by reformism, is running through Latin America during this mass offensive. For the first time since ‘60s, nobody is talking about Cuba or the Castro brothers. Before, every time there was a mass uprising, Castroism strangled and betrayed the revolutions, like in Chile in the 1970s by proposing a “peaceful way to socialism”, which ended up in a bloodshed; or like in the first decade of the 21st Century by supporting pseudo-nationalist bourgeois governments, called “Bolivarians”, which expropriated the anti-imperialist struggle pf the masses This time, there can only be heard an utter silence. Castroism has become a direct agent of imperialism, namely, a new bourgeoisie in Havana which surrendered Cuba to capitalist restoration in an open way.

What is clear –and Stalinism wants to hide- is that the current uprising of the Colombian masses hits Cuban Stalinism directly. After becoming a new bourgeoisie, not only did they surrender Cuba but also the Colombian resistance, which they disarmed and submitted, with a “peace agreement”, to Uribe-Santos’ government, guarded by the 9 US bases in that country.
Cuban Castroism signed the “peace agreement”…. They surrendered Cuba to imperialism and the response was war and an imperialist offensive against the masses. Now a fierce response by the working class and the peasants is taking place. There are enormous clashes of a class war in the entire continent. Castroism is on the opposite trench, thoroughly quiet, so that imperialism –while stamping on its “backyard”, Latin America- shares with them some new business.

As you can see, we have made an appeal to conquer a revolutionary Latin American continental general strike to unify and coordinate a mass action against US imperialism and to stop the massacre in Bolivia. If the coup is imposed there, the bourgeoisie and imperialism will launch a fierce offensive against the ongoing revolutionary processes.

 

Ecuadorian revolution: the most advanced revolutionary process in Latin America

A few weeks ago, the Ecuadorian masses held a revolutionary uprising that paralyzed the state, damaged the government of Lenin Moreno that had to go and hide in a military base and the army could not repress and smash the exploited openly, due to the rebellion of the rank and file soldiers.
Immediately, imperialists drew conclusions from such political defeat of their government and the standstill of the Ecuadorian repressive state, namely the gang of armed men. Moreover, the masses had taken 200 army officers and members of the police as hostages. The generals of West Point and US SOUTHCOM met with the commanders of 11 Latin American armies and discussed their incapacity to smash the mass uprising in Ecuador, which defeated Moreno's pro-IMF attack. This proved that the slightest demand –like stopping fuel hike- can only be conquered through big revolutionary actions.
A crucial lesson was drawn in that meeting commanded by US SHOUTHCOM: their policy of choice before the revolutionary processes has to be, strengthening the “peaceful” leaderships of the uprisings while crushing those who they call “the hooded”, the ones who fight in the barricades… The “violent ones”. This means that based on reformist leaderships, imperialism seeks to guarantee that they control the mobilizations once again while the repressive forces concentrate in smashing the left wing.
Ultimately, this was the plan applied in Bolivia, with the agreement between “the peaceful” ones (like the COB, peasant federations and MAS) and the Añez government so the latter had a free rein for massacring the revolutionary vanguard of El Alto, left isolated by reformism and Morales’ coward bourgeoisie.
This sinister plan, supervised by US SOUTHCOM, is being prepared for Chile and Colombia. In that meeting they resolved concentrating forces in Bolivia to chasten the Latin American masses from there. Under US imperialist pirates' command, they disciplined the states of Latin America to contain the mass revolutionary response to the imperialist offensive.

Ecuador has been so far the vanguard in this process where the masses paralyzed the armed gang of the bourgeois State.
As we have said, Lenin Moreno’s government hid in a military base in Guayaquil. The leadership of peasant CONAIE (Confederation and Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) and FUT (United Workers’ Front) were surpassed by the mass independent action, which was an answer to the fuel hike. Before the masses continue arming themselves, those leaderships went for Moreno and brought him back to Quito, the capital, to legitimize him. Moreno had to cancel for now the fuel hike and labour flexibilization. The result is a weakened government supported by union bureaucracies and petit-bourgeois leaderships. This shows how deep this revolutionary onslaught of the Latin American masses has gone, which has not yet ended.
It is clear that the masses gave FUT and CONAIE a true dual power character, which the reformist leadership prevents from being armed through soldiers' committees to move towards a victorious insurrection. A collaborationist leadership of the dual power organisms, alongside with their silence and the fact that the revolutionary lessons are hidden have become the true support of the damaged regime of IMF and the USA in Ecuador.
As you can see, we are witnessing crucial struggles not only of revolution but also of counterrevolution. As in any revolutionary situation, mass independent actions are at hand, as well as the perfidious policy of class collaboration, where reformist leaderships use “siren songs” to tie the masses to the bourgeoisie that they call “progressive” and to señal agreements with the enemy, which disarm and disorganize the exploited so that fascism and armies can impose new counterrevolutionary blows.

 

The international revolutionary movement must close ranks and regroup their forces to disperse the forces of reformism, which disorganize the struggle for socialist revolution all over the world

The dispersion of the revolutionary groups all over the world must end once and for all.
As we can see in China, there are left wings of the rebel youth splitting from the counterrevolutionary party of the “red businessmen” of the Chinese CP that are going to the working class to help develop their struggle for independent unions.
The Middle East is on fire once again. In the combats of Idlib a left wing of workers and militia members are emerging that is resisting the selling out of the Sunnite bourgeoisie in the freed areas, as well as the latter's starving plans and wages, which are the same ones imposed by al-Assad in the areas he has recovered. In Iraq the masses are seeking to take heaven by force. In Algeria the combat of the working class and the exploited continues and in Iran the masses keep resisting.
As you can see, in the Middle East and Latin America there are what we call “twin revolutions.” But also in Europe, USA and Eurasia there are struggles and resistance to the imperialist offensive. The objective conditions are rotting. The bankruptcy of capitalism is leading human civilization towards barbarism and new wars.

In these events, we revolutionary are confronting powerful treacherous leaderships. On the one hand, we confront Stalinists who are being booed and expelled from some demonstrations in Chile and Colombia. We are facing treacherous national union bureaucracies, like COB (Bolivian Trade Union) in Bolivia and CGT (Labour General Confederation) in Argentina.
On the other hand we are also confronting the renegades of Trotskyism, who with their parliamentary cretinism go in an opposite direction to the events. They say that fascist coups and military clashes with counterrevolution can be solved with “Constituent Assemblies” and “more democracy”. They are the continuity of bankrupt Stalinism.
It is clear that successful socialist revolutions and worker-peasant governments are the only way to break with imperialism and conquer the land for the poor peasants.

Clearly, the struggles of the oppressed peoples will not have an effective way out unless they merge and coordinate with the offensive of the workers in the imperialist countries. The role of reformism is about preventing this process. They bring back the policy of “stage revolution” of Stalinism. In Europe, with their program of “real democracy all along the line" the treacherous left repeats the program of the so-called “anti-capitalists” who are with Syriza (Greece), Podemos (Spanish State), Melenchon (France), or Corbyn and his followers of the British SWP. They have deceived the masses saying that imperialist Maastricht, namely NATO, the bastards of UN and imperialist powers, can be "democratized". Thus they submit the left wing of the working class to the “left wing” of the imperialist bourgeois parties, like Corbyin (UK) or Sanders (USA). They, together with collaborationist union bureaucracies, have become an obstacle to any attempt of taking the economic struggle to an open political struggle, for example overthrowing Macron in France, so that the masses not only defeat the attack on pensions, but can also recover all the working class gains that have been stolen.

We know revolutionary forces nest in the vanguard of the world working class. The Middle East is on fire once again. There are struggles in Hong Kong and Catalonia. The US working class have not surrendered. It is time to stop fighting alone and re-grouping the internationalist forces. The fate of the working class is at stake.

From the FLTI we fight under the banners of the 4th International, which we are fighting to recover from the hands of those who have surrendered our international party to Stalinism and reformism. We have insisted, but we will do it again and will keep doing so: we call currents of the world who claim themselves revolutionary Marxists to intervene together in the ongoing revolutionary processes, based on clear revolutionary programmatic points to be a milestone in the mass struggle to conquer a victorious socialist revolution.
The struggle for setting up an internationalist block of revolutionary forces worldwide is an urgent matter.
We need your experience, your knowledge in the field of the world class struggle and of  political and theoretical struggles in defence of Marxism because we are sure we will learn from them.

The time has come for a new revolutionary regrouping, as the Marxists achieved in Kienthal and Zimmwerwald in 1915-1916. Without such regrouping it will be impossible to set up true revolutionary vanguard parties that, by solving the crisis of leadership of the proletariat, orientate the masses and their struggle organizations towards seizing power.

Bankrupt world imperialist capitalist system has deepened global trade war and is heading towards new military conflagrations, while it attacks the world working class. The battlefield is full of rubble, which now includes the debris of the bankruptcy caused to the 4th International by the renegades of Trotskyism, which have moved completely to the side of Stalinism.

 

We are looking forward to see you soon.

A warm hug to you, to the leadership of JRCL-RMF and to all your brave members.

Felipe Cruces, Eliza Funes, Hugo Parreira  and Carlos Munzer