Videos of  Socialist Alliance delegate *Federico Fuentes'* address to
the International Encounter of Left Parties held in Caracas, November
19-21, 2009.

Watch at http://links.org.au/node/1401

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You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism

This week at Marxist Update

http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/

　

Jared Diamond: booster of Wal-Mart

First anniversary of occupation of Republic Window...

Duh Bye

A morbid system

Immigrant struggles in France

Huis Clos

Kim Moody on labor & the crisis

John Riddell on Latin American Marxism

U.S. rulers know Cuba's example still a threat

Real estate price deflation

Bourgeios analysis of high tech prospects for 2010...

Only in America

The crisis & the prospects for resistance

HOW NOT TO COUNT THE POOR

Christian Rakovsky video tribute

Morbid Symptoms: Current Healthcare Struggles

Satire from Товарищ Х


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What's new at Links: Copenhagen climate talks, support for 5th
International, Arabic, left unity, Afghanistan & Pakistan, Honduras

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Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

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Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed
(http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to
consider an article, please send it to links@...

*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links.

* * *


     John Bellamy Foster: `We can't shop our way out of the ecological
     crisis' <http://links.org.au/node/1390>

John Bellamy Foster Interviewed by Max van Lingen
Max van Lingen: Consciousness about climate change has increased
enormously; however, it also seems as if there is a lack of criticism of
business and government actions. Instead it appears as if people are
thinking: it doesn't really matter why people act, as long as they act.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1390>


     A lesson from Seattle for Copenhagen: Vigorous activism can defeat
     the denialists <http://links.org.au/node/1381>

By Patrick Bond
December 1, 2009 -- Preparations for the December 7-18 Copenhagen
climate summit are going as expected, including a rare sighting of the
African elites' stiffened spines. That's a great development (maybe
decisive), more about that below. While activists help raise the
temperature on the streets outside the Bella Centre on December 12, 13
and 16, inside we will see global North elites defensively armed with
pathetic non-binding carbon emissions cuts (US President Barack Obama's
promise is a mere 4% below 1990 levels) and carbon trading, but without
offering the money to repay the North's ecological debt to the global South.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1381>


     Video: `The Story of Cap and Trade' (aka carbon trading), from the
     makers of `The Story of Stuff' <http://links.org.au/node/1380>

December 1, 2009 -- The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced,
fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at the
climate talks in Copenhagen. Cap and trade is also variously described
as ``carbon trading'' and ``emissions trading''. In Australia, the
federal Labor government is trying to push a variation of this through
the Senate called the ``Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme''.

     * Watch and read more <http://links.org.au/node/1380>


     The Flame, November-December 2009 -- Green Left Weekly's
     Arabic-language supplement <http://links.org.au/node/1389>

With the help of Socialist Alliance members in the growing Sudanese
community in Australia, Green Left Weekly -- Australia's leading
socialist newspaper -- is publishing a regular Arabic language supplement.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1389>


     Recent experiences in left regroupment and reconstruction
     <http://links.org.au/node/1388>

By Jim McIlroy
November 23, 2009 -- How do you build socialism in the First World
countries right now? Of course, we are part of a world movement for
socialism, including the Third World. We can learn a lot from recent and
current experiences in left regroupment and party building that are
happening around the world at present -- with all proportions guarded,
and realising that there is no direct transposition of one historical,
national experience onto another.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1388>


     Australian and New Zealand socialists support Chavez's call for a
     new international organisation of the left
     <http://links.org.au/node/1387>

December 3, 2009 -- On behalf of the Socialist Alliance of Australia, we
would like to send warm, socialist greetings to the United Socialist
Party of Venezuela (PSUV), thanking you once again for the invitation to
participate in the International Meeting of Left Parties held in
Caracas, November 19-21, 2009. The outcomes of this event are already
having an important impact on the world, particularly among left and
progressive forces, and we are grateful that we could be part of it and
contribute to its success in our own modest way.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1387>


     Obama delivers -- when it comes to war <http://links.org.au/node/1386>

By Billy Wharton
December 4, 2009 -- When US President Barack Obama announced his plan to
escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending 30,000 more troops to the
war-torn country, he delivered on two campaign promises. The first was a
campaign trail pledge to re-focus US military power on the border region
of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This was mostly ignored by enthralled
voters. The second was made more quietly to his many campaign donors in
the defence industry.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1386>


     Labour Party Pakistan condemns Obama's Afghanistan policy
     <http://links.org.au/node/1385>

By Farooq Tariq
December 4, 2009 -- The Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) condemns US
President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy and demands that all NATO
forces immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and stop drone attacks on
Pakistan. The Labour Party Pakistan has decided to protest against this
new escalation of the war effort in the region. The first protest took
place on December 4 in front of US consulate in Lahore. There will be
more demonstrations in different parts of Pakistan.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1385>


     L'appel historique de Chavez pour une 5eme Internationale
     <http://links.org.au/node/1384>

par Federico Fuentes

2 d�cembre 2009 --  S'adressant aux d�l�gu�s de la Rencontre
Internationale des Partis de Gauche qui s'est tenue � Caracas du 19 au
21 novembre (2009), le pr�sident v�n�zu�lien Hugo Chavez a d�clar� :
� il est temps de constituer la 5�me Internationale. � Face � la crise
capitaliste et la menace d'une guerre qui repr�sente un danger pour
l'avenir de l'humanit�, � les peuples r�clament � une unit� plus forte
des partis de gauche et r�volutionnaires qui sont pr�ts � lutter pour le
socialisme, a-t-il dit.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1384>


     El llamado hist�rico de Hugo Ch�vez para conformar una V
     Internacional Socialista <http://links.org.au/node/1383>

por Federico Fuentes
2 de diciembre de 2009 -- Hablando a los delegados del Encuentro
International de Partidos de Izquierda realizado en Caracas, el
presidente venezolano, Hugo Ch�vez se�alo "que lleg� la hora de que
convoquemos a la Quinta Internacional. Frente la crisis capitalista y la
amenaza de guerra que poner en peligro el futuro de la humanidad, la
unidad de partidos de izquierda y revolucionario dispuesto a luchar para
el socialismo "es un clamor del pueblo," dijo Ch�vez.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1383>


     Honduras: `The election was a farce, new regime will not be
     recognised' -- National Resistance Fron <http://links.org.au/node/1382>

By the National Resistance Front against the Coup d'etat

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1382>

* * *
Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing
socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

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* Drafts & Translations *
http://gci-icg.org/english/greece.htm

Greece, December 2008:

The proletariat showed to the world proletariat the essential way to follow1

“The condition of a victorious insurrection is that it spreads...”2As we
have asserted in the first part of this article, the international proletarian
revolt against worldwide capitalism has continued to unfold over the last few
months, as the bourgeois society continues to inflict its catastrophic situation
the pauperised population of the planet. In Greece, its expressions were
struggles of the imprisoned, of the undocumented immigrants, of the students, of
the marginalized. These lasted many months, until the generalisation of the
struggle in December 2008. In doing so, it anticipated what may and will happen
in other countries, while giving indications on the path to follow. In other
words, this international and internationalist protest against capitalism had
been gaining momentum in Greece, until the sweeping upheaval of December,
triggered by the murder of the young Alexis Grigoropoulos by the henchmen of
this vile social system.
The cells, the compartments, the segmentations that capitalism had erected
everywhere, through all sorts of gibberish aiming at negating the proletarian
struggle, were shattered by the very proletarian movement, although only in this
country and in culminating moments of the struggle. This happened because
proletarians took to the streets not only as such: i.e. workers or unemployed,
natives or foreigners, students or shanty-town dwellers, young (even kids!) or
elderly people, men or women, documented or undocumented, hooded or openly,
pupils or teachers, “peasants” or city-dwellers, but precisely because the
movement, resorting to all available means (flyers, Internet, pamphlets,
newspapers, and so on) explicitly denounced all these categorizations with which
the historic enemy insulted and sought to dismember and liquidate this
extraordinary and generous social movement.
The first expressions of this movement to spread throughout the world proclaim:
“Who are behind the revolt? Whose actions, deeds and movements keep and grow
its flame? The anarchists? The students? The immigrants? The unemployed and the
humiliated? The youths from the rich Northern and Southern suburbs? The gypsies?
The hooligans? The workers? To all of them and many more belong the actions that
shape the unstoppable lava that was awaken when the unthinkable murder of Alexis
that shook all of Greece took place on Saturday night.”3 Beyond the
limitations contained in these first written manifestations, they go up against
all that the media are trying to convey, because they claim this revolt belongs
to all.
During the course of the French suburbs riots disparagement and affronts were
given a free rein, even to the point of insulting, in the name of the
proletariat, the very proletarians that had risen up. In Greece the bourgeoisie
resorted to all available means to discredit the riots or reduce them to a
question of particular social categories. However, the movement succeeded in
ridiculing these efforts, and even exposed the lackeys of the State for what
they were. The media, voice of our enemies, proclaimed, as always, that we were
“only” dealing with a bunch of anarchists, hooligans, young people, whose
sole purpose was indiscriminate violence, but the generalisation of the riots,
and the proclamations that asserted its proletarian and revolutionary nature,
left no room for doubt among the proletarians not only in Greece, but in other
countries too. The proclamations made it clear that it was not a matter of
replacing a rightist government with a
  leftist one, of discarding one government programme to implement another, or to
change the government so that the situation is back to normal. Quite the
opposite, this very normality, this very daily routine, was denounced by the
proletarian riot for what it was: salaried slavery and permanent blackmail. The
movement yells its truth in the face of the counterrevolutionary falsifications.
It had been a long time since the proletariat in the heat of the battle had
professed so unambiguously its revolutionary goals. A pamphlet from our comrades
stated: “We are part of the revolt of life against the daily death the
existing social relations impose on us.”4 It went on saying that: “We erect
a steadfast barricade against the loathsome normality of the cycle of production
and distribution. In the current conjunction, nothing is more important than
consolidating this barricade against the class enemy. Even if we retreat under
the pressure of the (para-) state scum and the insufficiency of the barricade,
we all know that nothing will ever be the same in our lives.”
What a wonderful affirmation of the proletariat as a class! What a terrorising
(for the bourgeoisie) reassertion of the proletarian struggle to abolish the
social system, and the dominant class! “We also position ourselves in the
historical conjunction of the recomposition of a new class subject, that carries
from long ago the promise of assuming the role of the gravedigger of the
capitalist system. We believe that the proletariat was never a class because of
its position; on the contrary, it constitutes itself as a class for itself on
the ground of the clash with the bosses, first acting and only later gaining
consciousness of its actions.”5
The proletariat is reborn when it takes to the streets. The proletariat defines
and moulds itself as a confrontation to capital, the very revolutionary theory
is reasserted by vanguards’ expressions. The very concept of proletariat, ever
falsified, sociologified, often reduced to the sole industrial workers and
systematically emptied of its social counterpoint dynamics by the
counterrevolution, is reclaimed by our comrades: the proletariat constitutes
itself in the confrontation with capital! The proletariat stands as a force
against “wage work (that) has always been a blackmail.”6
When it was no longer possible to conceal the generalisation of the riots,
neither on the national nor on the international level, our old enemy went on to
explain, through all the media available, that the “rightist government had
made mistakes” and that “it should step down”. But uncountable
communiqués and proclamations were issued to denounce that vile lie.
“Politicians and journalists bragg around, trying to impose on our movement
their own failing rationality. We would revolt because our government is
corrupted or because we’d like more of their money, more of their jobs.
If we break the banks it’s because we recognize money as one of the central
cause of our sadness, if we break down shop windows it’s not because life is
expensive but because commodity prevent us from living, at all cost. If we
attack the police scum, it’s not only to avenge our dead comrades but because
between this world and the one we desire, they will always be an obstacle.”7
How critical it is for the ongoing struggle that the proletariat does not
mistake its enemy for such or such government, or party. Its enemy is not even
all governments and parties as a whole, but money, capital, the social relations
of production! In spite of all anti-terrorist campaigns set up by all the states
in the world in order to consolidate their own monopoly of terror, the
proletarians in Greece who took to the streets yelled in the heat of the battle:
“Wage labour is the real terrorism! No peace for the bosses!”
The uprising of the proletariat in Greece has lit up the whole world; not its
positive proposals, but its radical critique of today’s society without
requesting anything from the power in place, which obviously is what most
terrified the bourgeois worldwide power at the international level. We quote the
revolutionary expressions of the struggling proletarians: “The insurrection of
December didn't put out any concrete demands, exactly because the participating
subjects daily experience, and therefore know the denial of the ruling class to
meet any such demand. The whisperings of the left that initially demanded the
removal of the government were replaced by a mute terror and a desperate attempt
to relieve the uncontrollable insurrectionary wave. The absence of any reformist
demand whatsoever reflects an underground (but still unconscious) disposition
toward a radical subversion and surpassing of the existing commodity relations
and the creation of
  qualitatively now ones.”8
Contrarily to other countries (where the proletariat does not take to the
streets when it should, when undocumented immigrants and prisoners are being
repressed, when overtly racist acts are committed) the strength of the movement
in Greece is based on the fact that the bourgeoisie and its various apparatuses
has not succeeded in isolating the sectors of the proletariat that, well before
December, had initiated exemplary struggles that resonated in the whole country,
and abroad. We are referring to the sectors that are most repressed on a daily
basis –the prisoners, the undocumented immigrants, the immigrants, the youth,
and “nonconformists”- but more globally, to all proletarians in irregular
and precarious situations, poorly paid, who undoubtedly sparked off the
movement.
The proletariat in Greece has proven its vigour by not shying away from
expressing solidarity with those sectors that were radically confronted to
capitalism and the State. Indeed, it was the struggle of the prisoners, the
undocumented immigrants, and the marginalized that resonated through the whole
proletariat as its very own, and originated the movement. Already in November
2008, the struggle in the prisons spread out, with more than 7,000 of the 12,000
prisoners taking part in a series of organised protests (among which the hunger
strike that started on the 3rd of that month).9 The bourgeoisie proved unable to
keep the struggle in check, and the protest spilled through the streets, as
evidenced by the radicalisation of the demonstration of November 17th.10 Small
groups carried out direct action throughout the month of November. Actions were
undertaken against repressors and also against all forms of citizen
surveillance, such as destroying
  surveillance cameras in many strategic places. At that time, the struggle
reached out for abroad and constituted a first call to international solidarity.
Within the scope of this same movement came the struggle of various groups of
immigrants and undocumented immigrants who also started a hunger strike, along
with other demonstrations and actions (such as the occupation of the city hall
of Chania). This gave a new impulse to the proletarian movement that was
demonstrating violently in various cities, and particularly in Athens, on
December 5th. Soon not a day would pass without struggles, and everyday the
Athenian democracy responded repressively, leading to the murder of Alexis,
which was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
From that moment on, nothing would be the same. We cannot produce a detailed
chronicle of the movement, but we can highlight some of its synthetic elements:
“From the first moment after the murder of Alexandros, spontaneous
demonstrations and riots appear in the centre of Athens, the Polytechnic, the
Economic and the Law Schools are being occupied and attacks against state and
capitalist targets take place in many different neighbourhoods and in the city
centre. Demonstrations, attacks and clashes erupt in Thessaloniki, Patras,
Volos, Chania and Heraklion in Crete, in Giannena, Komotini, Xanthi, Serres,
Sparti, Alexandroupoli, Mytilini. In Athens, in Patission Street – outside the
Polytechnic and the Economic School - clashes last all night. Outside the
Polytechnic the riot police make use of plastic bullets. On Sunday the 7th
December, thousands of people demonstrate towards the police headquarters in
Athens, attacking the riot police. Clashes of unprecedented tension spread in
the streets of the city centre, lasting until late at night. Many demonstrators
are injured and a number of them are arrested.
  From Monday morning until today the revolt spreads and becomes generalized. The
last days are full of uncountable social events: militant high school
students’ demonstrations ending up -in many cases- in attacks against police
stations and clashes with the cops in the neighbourhoods of Athens and in the
rest of the country, massive demonstrations and conflicts between protestors and
the police in the centre of Athens, during which there are assaults in banks,
big department stores and ministries, siege of the Parliament in Syntagma
square, occupations of public buildings, demonstrations ending in riots and
attacks against state and capitalist targets in many different cities.”11
Other accounts of the movement, which were circulating on the Internet, describe
how unstoppable was the splendid proletarian fury, how relevant was the choice
of its targets:
“All of us together with our differences we write history and we shake the
whole planet. This revolt not only will not stop but is intended to spread
across Europe and the whole world. In this framework, we can comprehend the
panic of the State. But nothing can forgive or justify or make bearable the
incredible, unmatched orgy of violence that it continuously sets off. How much
rather when this violence is not recorded or when it is unbearably distorted
from the media. Our comrades have suffered unjustified beatings, pupils are
beaten mercilessly, fascists make use of their weapons, secret cops act out of
control, immigrants have their lives threatened but for the media there is only
burned shops and “criminal” looting. Unlucky for them what is left is old
aged housewives and the rest of little scared men like the finished fascist
followers. Our rage for all them has no limit and from now on they should be
careful. The rebellion turns the
  impossible to possible. It is the dream that wakes up when the never-ending
nightmare before ends. Because comrades, what we lived in the Western suburbs,
Athens, the whole world, was a nightmare. In an ugly city to spit every day on
our misery, to kill our imagination, to be scared of our neighbour, to remain
helpless in our incapability being bombarded by made up advertisements that make
us believe that we are worth for what we have and not who we are.
Alexis, we are ashamed of you because it took your blood us to wake us up from
the nightmare and live the dream of life. But if we are ashamed of you, the
others should be fearing you with a fear that paralyses their guts. First of all
the cops that dress up like revolting people to abduct pupils and take them to
the dungeons of central offices. NO MERCY FOR THEM. THEY CAN’T HIDE FROM US.
Their punishment is coming and no State can save them. You are the ones that
spread the worst catastrophism, the vile defeatism, the insane fear and all that
just to save your skin. You will not save it. But it is not only you that do all
the above. ALL the parliamentary parties live in distress and are dying to
diffuse the revolt. The lower middle class people that cannot think of their
life without their little shop. Dehydrated existences that only live for their
money income; they also have their fears of existence. They don't have to fear
us that much. Apart from
  those who actively and openly help the murdering State, the rest will be left
to their unbearable misery. And well done to those of them that went further
than them selves and took part in the events on the right side. As much as it is
suppressed, they are not few. But we wrote enough for the lower-middle class.
History is written now from other powers and those powers will strengthen their
presence overwhelmingly in the next days. After six days of colossal battles,
fatally TODAY is the start of the second round with new heights and landmarks to
reach. (…) The pupils that have suffered the worst kind of police brutality
will be there, the students of the 2006-7 revolts will be there, the unemployed
that fight against depression and humiliation will be there, the workers who
lately look at their boss with a different eye will be there, the immigrants who
for years know what dictatorship means will be there, we, from the Western
suburbs who for years are torn by the most ridiculous regionalisms, will be
there. WE WILL ALL BE THERE.”12
It is true that besides this rejection, this negation of the world, besides the
movement’s stunning comprehension of the necessity for a social revolution,
that is the necessity to destroy totally the capitalist system, this manifesto
also developed further much vaguer and weaker expressions.
“We are accused that our rebellion is inarticulate, blind, reactive. That we
don’t know what want and what we don’t want, yet. That we are thieves and
destroyers. Well then, we know what we want and we don’t want. We don’t want
cops paid to terrorize teenagers. We don’t want chemical war that blocks our
lungs and blinds our eyes. We don’t want riot police, bodyguards, pimps,
parasites, bouncers, professions of violence and force. We don’t want polluted
air, and burned forests, concrete that kills the earth. We don’t want prisons
that annihilate the individual, absurd laws about cannabis, cameras that
supervise life in order to protect inanimate property. In this draft of
manifesto for life after the revolt we ask and shall impose.
1) Liberation of the wider centre of Athens from cars. City for pedestrians,
bikes and children.
2) Transformation of the destroyed banks to asylums for the poor, libraries and
free internet points as well as coffee shops as in Amsterdam.
3) Transformation of police departments into kitchens that would offer natural
food, free of charge to whoever asks and is in need of.
4) Copyleft all intellectual, informative material as well as free 1gbps
internet with modern optic fibres.
5) Stop the use of oil and natural gas and replace them with high tech solar
energy beehives and other completely recyclable energy sources.
6) Assaults to all the covered from the police whore houses and release of the
forced prostitutes. Positive recognition of the feminine sexuality as a right
that will be practiced by choice. No mercy to rapists and paedophiles. No
humiliation to those who enjoy their sexuality in different way provided that
they do not do it by using force.
7) Assaults in prisons and release of everyone unless they have been proven to
be related with crimes of pederasty, rape, racism and white slavery.
8) Priority to children and their needs for play, love, tenderness and joy.
9) Free infrastructure; educational and medicinal with simultaneous restriction
of arbitrariness and power of those working there. Responsible, open, friendly
relationships between doctor-patient and pupil-teacher.
10) Free transportation and encouragement of the use of bikes in the city, while
expanding trains across the country.
These are roughly what we want and will achieve. Maybe some others equally
essential are absent but those mentioned are not a few nor negligible. We know
that our movement not only has acquired world interest but it has taken to
inspire a global revolt. As we drew upon the 10 rough points of “what we
want” it was under serious consideration.”
It would be a lot easier to discard such propositions or to ridicule the narrow
scope of such claims. However, in this listing of issues that emerged from
discussions and assemblies, we highlight, before anything else, the total
rejection of the present world, through the enumeration of what “we do not
want”. The rejection, the negation, constitutes the starting point of every
revolutionary movement. We reaffirm that this negation does not beg for anything
to anyone, not even to the State. It aims at enforcing itself. These expressions
have the huge merit of starting from the essential understanding that in order
for things to change it will be necessary to resort to violence in order to
bring down the authority of the state and replace it with something else. The
movement’s desire to turn the speculation and repression centres (banks,
police stations…) into something useful to mankind is something positive,
although it is hard to fathom how such
  thing could ever be achieved. Finally, it is worth noting that the protagonists
see these claims (which, in reality, amount to not much) solely as immediate
measures, that they are not negotiable and that further and more critical issues
will have to be dealt with later.
Yes, it is true that this manifesto contains a variety of illusions proper to
any burgeoning and heterogeneous movement, encouraged by circumstances and
ideological pressure to express hastily some positive solutions without yet
asserting enough its strength of negation of the all existing society. This is
why some solutions appear, which are somewhat illusory on the means considered
to change what most affects them in their immediate lives, without uprooting the
whole system of exploitation. It is also true, that in these expressions can be
felt the harmful influence of ideologies such as are fashionable among leftists
and environmentalists, whose reformist obedience inevitably reduces the scope of
the movement. These have been and will be limitations that the next proletarian
movement will be confronted with, but the most important is not the content of
these timid immediate, and very often reformist (although some may sound quite
appealing) immediate
  measures, but the inherent negation of all that currently exists, the violent
confrontation against the whole capitalist world defended by leftists, centrists
or rightists.
Finally, it is worth noting that point 7, to storm the prisons and release all
the detainees (beyond some limits in the formulation), does not match the
others, since it is not something that should be aimed at, but rather it is a
crucial expression of the movement, although at this stage it does have the
strength to shoulder it. It is an important objective, but for the time being
out of reach. Unlike all others it stands overtly against the democratic and
legal structure of private property and bourgeois domination and insofar it
points out a clearer rupture with reformism.
In this historical epoch of so much division within the proletarian movement,
the most significant feature of the struggles in Greece is, as we have mentioned
before, the strength that the movement displayed in prevailing over the
fragmentations and compartmentalization so crucial to the bourgeois domination.
Against official contempt, against the racism inherent to capitalism, against
the good citizens, the proletariat shouldered the defence of its interests,
rallying under its banner the prisoners, the immigrants, the youth and all other
sectors that are usually kept isolated. If they often had to face, alone, the
coalition of all bourgeois forces, in December their joining together and taking
to the streets kindled a beacon-fire in Greece, whose powerful flame could be
admired by the proletarians throughout the world.
Far from ignoring the problem of racism and other segmentations permanently used
to maintain the capitalist domination and oppression,13 the movement faced them
for what they are, and many discussions and communiqués dealt with the matter
of the immigrants and foreigners. Class conscience asserted itself among other
things against the ever-present divisions, and the protagonists made it clear
that they fought side by side with the local proletarians as well as with the
immigrants and refugees.
“In the framework of this wider mobilisation, with the student demonstrations
being its steam-engine, there is a mass participation of the second generation
of migrants and many refugees also. The refugees come to the streets in small
numbers, with limited organisation, with the spontaneity and impetus describing
their mobilisation. Right now, they are the most militant part of the foreigners
living in Greece. (…) The children of migrants mobilise en mass and
dynamically, (…) this is a second French November of 2005. (…) These days
are ours, too. These days are for the hundreds of migrants and refugees who were
murdered at the borders, in police stations, workplaces. (…) They are for
Gramos Palusi, Luan Bertelina, Edison Yahai, Tony Onuoha, Abdurahim Edriz,
Modaser Mohamed Ashtraf and so many others that we haven’t forgotten. These
days are for the everyday police violence that remains unpunished and
unanswered. They are for the humiliations
  at the border and at the migrant detention centres, which continue to date.
(…) These days are for the price we have to pay simply in order to exist, to
breathe. They are for all those times when we crunched our teeth, for the
insults we took, the defeats we were charged with. They are for all the times
when we didn’t react even when having all the reasons in the world to do so.
They are for all the times when we did react and we were alone because our
deaths and our rage did not fit pre-existing shapes, didn’t bring votes in,
and didn’t sell in the prime-time news. These days belong to all the
marginalized, the excluded, the people with the difficult names and the unknown
stories. They belong to all those who die every day in the Aegean sea and Evros
river, to all those murdered at the border or at a central Athens street; they
belong to the Roma in Zefyri, to the drug addicts in Eksarhia. These days belong
to the kids of Mesollogiou street, to
  the unintegrated, the uncontrollable students. Thanks to Alexis, these days
belong to us all.”14
With these words, issued in Europe, historical centre of colonialism and racism,
the struggle of the proletariat in Greece proclaims the internationalism of the
proletariat as a class. The opposition between the present and future world
could not be clearer, between the world of capital with its racism, its wars,
its slavery and massacres and a society rid of inhumanity, brought forth by the
proletariat and its revolutionary struggle.
It is true that, as often before, the movement stemmed from specific sectors of
the proletariat. As witnessed by the protesters, when it embarked on a radical
course after the murder of a youngster, the streets were filled mostly with
youngsters, nearly kids (this had also happened in France, in the suburbs’
riot and during the anti-CPE struggle). Of course, as always, the protagonists
initially viewed this as a problem, but continuity and generalisation (including
geographically) of the struggle eventually transcended it. Such reassertion of
the proletariat as a class generated an interesting intergenerational exchange
of communiqués. We emphasize some noteworthy elements, in which some “kids”
produce a sound and constructive critique of the conformism of the adults,
basically, their own parents. Here's in the box the letter distributed at
Alexi’s funeral, written by his classmates (the words in capital letters were
like that in the original
  letter).



“WE WANT A BETTER WORLD!
HELP US.
We are not terrorists, wearing a hood, vandals.
WE ARE YOUR CHILDREN.
Your children, the known-unknown ones.
We dream, don’t kill our dreams.
We have force, don’t stop our force.
REMEMBER!
You were once young too.
Now you only chase money, you grew fat, bald and you only care about image,
YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN!
We expected to have your support
We expected your interest; we expected to see you make us proud for once.
IN VAIN!
You live false lives, you have put your heads down, your pants down and you are
waiting to die.
You don’t imagine, you don’t fall in love, you do not create!You just buy
and sell.
MATERIALISM EVERYWHERE - LOVE, NOWHERE - TRUTH, NOWHERE.
Where are the parents?
Where are the artists?
Why don’t they step outside to protect us?
WE ARE GETTING KILLED!
HELP YOUR CHILDREN
P.S. We do not need tear gas, WE already cry on our own.”
This communiqué circulated a lot, in Greece as abroad, and obviously many could
not but denigrate its authors, but there were also a number of replies who
wholeheartedly agreed with it, calling for all proletarians to join the fight,
and this is what we want to emphasize.15
Of course, as in other occasions, some sectors of the proletariat failed to act,
stuck in front of their televisions and digesting, unmoved, the ideological
venom that produces good citizen. There will always be proletarians who will
betray their class and act as silent accomplices of their own repression, as
pointed out by the pamphlet of the “kids”. It was not the bourgeois who went
to repress and kill the struggling proletarians. The bourgeois were hiding in
fear. Class domination is based on the ability of the ruling class to enlist
part of the proletarians in order to repress the other part.
In Greece, as we have seen, the protagonists not only globally denounced the
cringing citizen, but also whoever balks at taking sides, or fails to break away
from the citizen demonstrations organised by the leftists and the trade-unions.
“The owners of the commodity labor-power who had it invested in the stock
exchange of social security and in the hope of seeing their offspring exiting
this condition through social ascension, continue to observe the insurrectionary
party without taking part, but also without calling the police to dissolve it.
Along with the substitution of social security with police security and the
collapse of the stock market of class movability, many workers, under the burden
of the collapsing universe of petit-bourgeois ideology and the state hybris, are
moving toward a (socially important) moral justification of the youth outbreak,
but without yet joining the attack against this murderous world.
They kept on dragging their corpse on three-month litanies of the professional
unionists and on defending a sad sectional defeatism against the raging class
aggressiveness that is rapidly coming to the fore. These two worlds met up on
Monday, 8/12, on the streets, and the entire country caught on fire. The world
of the sectional defeatism took the streets to defend the democratic right of
the separated roles of the citizen, the worker, the consumer, to participate in
demonstrations without getting shot at. Nearby, not that far away, the world of
class aggressiveness took the streets in the form of small organized "gangs"
that break, burn, loot, smash the pavements to throw stones onto the murderers.
The first world (at least as expressed in the politics of the professional
unionists) was so scared by the presence of the second, that on Wednesday,
10/12, attempted to demonstrate without the annoying presence of the
"riff-raff". The dilemma regarding how
  to be on the streets was already layed in: Either with the democratic safety of
the citizen, or with the clash solidarity of the group, the aggressive block,
the march that defends everyone's existence with sharp attacks and
barricades.”16
Many of the movement’s expressions denounce, rightfully and violently, all
those who, although shocked with Alexis’s death and peacefully demonstrating
in protest, yet submit totally to the dominant ideology and collaborate with the
ruling class on an everyday basis.
The sectors of the proletariat whose job is less threatened, and which, very
often, enjoy the highest trade-union protection, are always the most
conservative. For the most part, they are, with their ideas and illusions, an
obstacle to proletarian solidarity and combativeness. Beyond those who actually
enjoy a “privileged” position within the production apparatus, the average
good citizen is a key asset of the counterrevolution. The left-wing bourgeois
parties are crucial to the construction of that ideology. In Greece as in other
countries, these parties are strongly rooted in the above-mentioned sectors and
always take stand against the communist struggle. The occupation of the
headquarters of the General Confederation of Workers in Greece by the Assembly
of Insurgent Workers of Athens constituted a stunning act of defiance against
the tutelage of these leftist counterrevolutionary forces and dismissed many
media lies. This edifice, permanent
  bastion of the bourgeois order, paid by the proletarians, briefly reverted to
the latter’s control, and through this allowed our class to confront the
counterrevolutionary containment of the trade-unions. Beyond the mere taking
over of the building, it was highly symbolic of the struggle against the
trade-unionist apparatus and bureaucracy, as emphasized in the present
communiqué:
“To flay and uncover the role of the trade union bureaucracy in the
undermining of the insurrection -and not only there. GSEE and the entire trade
union mechanism that supports it for decades and decades, undermine the
struggles, bargain our labour power for crumbling, perpetuate the system of
exploitation and wage slavery. The stance of GSEE last Wednesday is quite
telling: GSEE cancelled the programmed strikers' demonstration, stopping short
at the organization of a brief gathering in Syntagma Sq., making simultaneously
sure that the people will be dispersed in a hurry from the Square, fearing that
they might get infected by the virus of insurrection.”17
However, during this bold direct action, two classical tendencies confronted
each other, as everywhere and anytime: on one hand the left-wing of social
democracy only criticizing the union bureaucracy, and on the other hand those
who are getting to the root of the problem while criticizing the very basics of
the union as an apparatus of capitalist oppression:
“From the beginning it was obvious that there were two tendencies inside the
occupation –no matter how clearly articulated: a workerist one, that wanted to
use the occupation symbolically in order to criticize the trade unionist
bureaucracy and promote the idea of an independent of political influences base
unionism; and a proletarian one, that wanted to attack one more institution of
capitalist society, criticize syndicalism and use the place for the construction
of one more community of struggle in the context of the general unrest.”18
Obviously unionists and their shock troops couldn’t allow such an affront
hurled by the revolutionary proletariat. That day, they tried to recover the
premises by force. For doing this, they appealed to more than 50 henchmen who
tried to throw out the occupants, but the latter resisted and thanks to the
occupants of ASOEE (university of economy of Athens), they succeeded to postpone
the eviction till around 3 p.m. To reaffirm the occupation, calls to gather were
issued, which materialized some hours later and where around 800 people took
part.
In spite of all these efforts we must admit that our enemies’ endeavour bore
fruit, and that from the vast numbers of proletarians in the streets in those
days of fighting, few were those who had clearly broken away from the
trade-unionist bourgeois tutelage. Many workers of the heavy industry were
spectators rather than protagonists, meaning that they failed to take on the
struggle that their comrades from the vanguard were urging them to join. This
proved a significant limitation to the scope of the revolt. However, when the
crisis deepens, even job security, that is so central to securing conformism,
starts to totter. Then, the proletarians of the large companies end up breaking
free from the trade-unionist tutelage (and social democratic ones generally
speaking) and may play a major role in the struggle. By the way, we deem it
relevant to make a comparison with the proletarian revolt in Argentina in
2001/2002, when the crisis had reached such
  proportions that even those sectors took to the streets, which was generally
not the case in Greece. As a matter of fact capitalism has yet to launch in
Europe a head-on strike on all these sectors, which for the time being makes it
possible for all the State apparatuses (and in particular the trade-unions) to
continue keeping the proletariat divided. In spite of what is known today as
“the crisis”, the capitalist catastrophe in Europe has primarily hit the
weakest strata of the proletariat (young people, immigrants, undocumented
immigrants, and marginalized people in precarious situations). Consequently,
they have spearheaded all the main struggles on this continent. This may be a
reason for the difference with the characteristics of the struggle in Argentina.
In Greece, judging from the outburst and the insurrectional pattern, the
movement seemed set on laying it all on the line. In Argentina the movement
lasted much longer, but much greater was
  the infestation by political illusions (Constituent Assembly, classical
reformism, Argentinean flags, and so on) and above all by managemental trends
(self-management, productive cooperatives set up by the jobless, and so on).
These plagues were the main internal factor of the liquidation of the movement.
In Greece the ideology conveyed by Negri (or Holloway) or the fashionable
Comandante Marcos, who want to change the world without settling the power
issue, hardly impacted the movement. It issued an outright challenge to the
ruling class ( in the Argentinean-style “Que se vayan todos!” – Out with
them all!). It affirmed explicitly its insurrectionalist objectives and was only
and ultimately held in check by its isolation, in other words, by the fact that
without the proletariat from other countries joining the struggle (at least the
other European countries, as stated in the pamphlets) it was not possible to go
any further.
Here too the vanguard sectors showed great lucidity: “We know that the time
has come for us to think strategically. In this Imperial time we know that the
condition of a victorious insurrection is that it spreads, at least, on a
European level. Those last years we’ve seen and we’ve learnt: The
counter-summits worldwide, students and suburban riots in France, the No-Tav
movement in Italy, the Oaxaca commune, Montreal’s riots, the offensive defence
of the Ungdomshuset squat in Copenhagen, riots against the Republican National
Convention in the USA, the list goes on.
Born in the catastrophe, we’re the children of all crisis: political, social,
economical, ecological. We know this world is a dead-end. You have to be crazy
to cling on its ruins. You have to be wise to self-organize.”19
The appeals from Greece proliferated arouse solidarity with the proletarian
revolt in Greece throughout the world:
“The explosive events right after the murder caused a wave of international
mobilization in memory of Alexandros and in solidarity with the revolted who are
fighting in the streets, inspiring a counter-attack to the totalitarianism of
democracy. Concentrations, demonstrations, symbolic attacks in Greek embassies
and consulates and other solidarity actions have taken place in cities of
Cyprus, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Holland, G. Britain, France, Italy, Poland,
Turkey, USA, in Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, Slovakia, Croatia,
Russia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Belgium, N. Zealand, Argentina, Mexico, Chile and
elsewhere.”20
There were significantly more repercussions and displays of solidarity than for
other instances of revolt these last few years. We hope that this is a sign that
however dormant the proletariat was, the catastrophic current situation of the
bourgeois society and the riposte of the proletarians in Greece have been a
vital shake-up that is starting to awake it (to the great apprehension of the
bourgeoisie). Have we reached a turning point towards the end of class
unawareness, a point where no one will ever feel indifferent to the ever more
daily catastrophe and this valorous struggle against the system?
Of course, these international direct actions must be taken as models and
opposed to bourgeois leftist alternatives of ever, that merely caricature
solidarity (actually, that try to deflect, or prevent it), encouraging peaceful
demonstrations, petitions, harmless carnivals, or humanitarian/charity
campaigns.
Is it necessary to remind that real, strong, and organized class solidarity
still doesn’t exist, that what do, we proletarians from everywhere else in the
world, to support an extraordinary movement such as this, is totally
insufficient.




One of the biggest difficulties for the proletariat everywhere in the world is
the “what’s to be done?” to snatch our fellow prisoners from the clutches
of the repression after each little conflict or big battle. In the present
international balance of forces, it’s obvious that the proletariat is really
incapable to assume this necessity on a class ground. The impossibility to
impose the release of comrades in jails through direct action and full force is
an element of permanent blackmail, which democracy and its agents always play
with in order to bring us on their ground, the one of the isolated individual
facing the state, the citizen alone facing the legal apparatus, in which there
is no other “defence” but the individual defence on the ground of law and
“solidarity” based on the sending of material aid to endure the jail, face
the trial and pay the lawyer… The tricky discussion on how to face each
concrete situation mustn’t make
  us lose sight of the fact that the bourgeoisie exercises the dictatorship not
only when it imprisons comrades but also when it imposes by strength the law and
forces us to this individual defence as a citizen. The citizen’s rights, so
much advocated by our enemies, always contain this component of state terror
that is used to oppose the organization of the proletariat in force.
But, as we already developed, as important and courageous can be the direct
action of the international proletariat in solidarity with the struggle of the
proletariat in a region, the genuine solidarity is the intensification of the
struggle against the bourgeoisie wherever it is. The ultimate expression of
solidarity will be when, from all parts of the world, the proletariat will
simultaneously take to the streets, and confront one and the same enemy. Only
then will social revolution be possible, as expressed by many internationalist
groups.
“Comrades, let’s follow the example of our brothers in Greece that outflanks
any democratic integration attempt. Let’s not believe in the artifices, which
they want to fool us with. All the politicians in the government or in the
opposition, left- or right-wingers as well, the repressive forces, journalists
and others who speak out on behalf of capital… all of them are expressions of
the capitalist beast: i.e. spare parts, alternatives, false oppositions and
tools to crush us. It’s the whole world we want to change from its
foundations. And for this, we rely only on ourselves, while getting organized
outside and against all the apparatuses of the state (parties, unions, NGO’s,
etc.), breaking the divisions they want to impose on us (youngsters vs.
oldsters, workers vs. students or unemployed, immigrants vs. natives,
etc.).”21
From Rosario in Argentina this position is also asserted, which consists in
putting forward that the real solidarity means to struggle everywhere against
capitalism, to confront “his own bourgeoisie”:
“Why to react faced with these events, which take place so many kilometres
from where we try to live in? Because, exploited and oppressed, we don’t have
no homeland: patriotism serves the ruling class to hide the social antagonism,
which we are living in, it’s the alibi to separate the dominated, so that we
don’t have any class identity. Because we were, we are and we will be those
who strike a blow at this shape of non-viable life, we support the people who
push forward the revolts in Greece while affirming life, destroying what
destroys them (and what destroys us), recovering the food produced by our
brothers, occupying universities to get together, confronting the police,
reclaiming the streets, acting outside and against parties and unions, showing
us that the real organization is the one from below. “Workers, unemployed,
students, hooded” are categories used by the bourgeois medias to isolate and
divide. We say: “All proletarians!
  Consequently, let’s struggle and get organized against “our” own
bourgeoisie in “our” own region…”22
And even from the Czech Republic (“the little putrefied pond of social
peace” as some comrades describe “their” own country), calls for
solidarity and proletarian action were issued:
“Is economy in crisis? Let’s finish it off! Down with social peace! One
Greece is not enough!
Sooner or later, capital will leave us with no reserves. We will suffer and
maybe we will die, if we will continue to slavishly accept wage labour and money
as a necessary means to satisfy our needs. But surely there will be
proletarians, who will refuse the logic of exchange value and surge into
supermarkets and take without paying, what they will need. The class movement in
Greece will explode anew with even greater subversive power and this time it
will not be alone. And it will not be only proletarians in China, Bangladesh,
Egypt or Bolivia, who will rise up. Even over here, shop windows will be
trashed. We will loot shops and luxurious bourgeois haciendas. Mass strikes
without and against trade unions will subvert all the capitalist economy. The
state with its police and army will, as always, defend bourgeois order and
properties and make terror against the proletariat, who will never solve
anything, unless it makes its own revolution. In the
  meantime, all our support, sympathies, thoughts belong to proletarians in
Greece, who struggle or are imprisoned. We long for helping them through
spreading the struggle in the Czech Republic and the whole world. We want to
share and develop their experience with them, in order to put a global
revolutionary insurrection back on the order of history…”23
Proletarian class unawareness in Europe and worldwide keeps pushing down with
all it’s weight, preventing this simultaneous outburst of proletarian violence
that is so critical to make a riot turn into an international social revolution.
Obviously, without this generalization, as our comrades from the ASOEE said (see
their communiqué), there is a point when, due to the correlation of forces,
momentum will be lost. It is a saddening thought, and nonetheless realistic,
that sooner or later and despite our efforts to maintain and expand the
movement, things will revert to normality. It is an important fact, because one
of the factors that hobbles the movement is the idea, widespread but chaotic,
according to which “the insurrection should be sustained for as long as
possible”. As a matter of fact, we have read communiqués on the Internet that
advocated this. This is a completely absurd version of insurrectionalism; an
ideology according to which
  everything is insurrection and such insurrection could be sustained
indefinitely. Far from being radical, this ideology, pretty fashionable among
certain anarchist circles, undermines the essence of insurrection. By
identifying it with any form of direct action, not only collective, but even
individual; it states that this put into practice on a permanent basis, as if it
were some sort of radical lifestyle. To advocate insurrectionalism without the
critical qualitative leap that destroys the power of the dominant class amounts
to negating the necessity of a proletarian revolution and always turns out to be
a waste of energy. Insurrectionalism concretely stands in the way of the social
revolution, which requires the liquidation of capitalist power and the
enforcement, by means of revolutionary violence, of a different social
organization. More precisely, the proletarian insurrection is the necessary
qualitative leap in terms of concentration,
  organization and application of force against the bourgeois power that will
turn the generalized proletarian revolt into a social revolution. If revolt aims
at striking at and disrupting the bourgeois society, the proletarian
insurrection will destroy the organized power of the dominant class, and grind
to the dust the whole bourgeois society. Therefore, The many self-proclaimed
“insurrectionalists” who make an indiscriminate use of the word
“insurrection” are definitely not helping the real insurrection.24
The internationalism of the proletariat is still limited to these few actions,
vital and exemplary, such as carried out by a small minority of groups that in
various countries took to the streets to lend support to the revolt in Greece,
attacking symbolic targets, representations of State, handing out pamphlets,
proclamations and appeals to join the fight to the dormant proletariat that in
other countries “watch” what (our enemies claim) “is going on in Greece”
through the caricaturing and castrating images on TV. Tragically, sedatives and
other ideological drugs are still effective and prevent the spreading of the
fire. Indeed, this time, a lot more happened than during other proletarian
revolts such as the ones that occurred in Iraq, Algeria, and Argentina. There
was also a feeling of recognition at the international level that created an
atmosphere contrasting with the one of a world class that seems very often
buried. In the militant
  discussions, in assemblies, in publications, in bars, on Internet… we can see
that a large number of proletarians, who a few time ago were yet stunned with
idiotic things, ideologies and pacifism, identified somehow with this great
violent expression of our class. Even though one could feel an embryonic
re-emergence of this feeling to belong to the same class opposed to the world of
capital, we cannot say that there was an international extension of the
proletarian revolt.
This extension is not prevented by a lack of internationalism among the
proletariat in Greece. On the contrary, it is the unawareness of
internationalism from the proletariat in other countries that sets the objective
limits of the Greek revolt. In Greece the proletariat did all it could to break
its isolation, and its actions were internationalist in essence. They brought
light to all our proletarian brothers that in those actions could see their
potentiality, the grandeur of the revolution they announced. Furthermore, not
only did the proletariat in Greece, in its actions and proclamations, call its
brothers to join the fight, but in the midst of the struggle it clearly
expressed, through concrete acts, its internationalist solidarity – with the
proletariat in other countries, not only with foreign proletarians fighting in
Greece. As a matter of fact, there were pamphlets and actions in Greece directed
against the terrorist repression, conducted in
  those very days by the State of Israel (and the USA), of the proletariat in the
Gaza strip. This shows that against the terrorism of the international State
there is no solidarity but through the use of force and direct action.
Concerning this, we would like to emphasize something critically important.
During the revolt in Greece, proletarians realized that the USA were supplying
the criminals of the Jewish State with military equipment that transited through
the port of Astakos, and fought to interrupt the traffic. This is the report of
“Voices of Resistance from an occupied London”:
“Mainstream media reports have revealed that the U.S. Navy is attempting to
ship 325 20-foot containers of ammunition (over 3000 tons) from the private
Greek port of Astakos to Israel, in an emergency shipment of arms to aid the
occupation in its ongoing war crimes against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Information as for when this shipment will be attempted is conflicting; possible
dates are the 15th, 25th and 31st of January. (…) groups and individuals (…)
are organising for a national mobilisation/blockade of the port of Astakos: the
anti-authoritarian movement, the anti-war internationalist movement and
Astakos’ local assembly of groups and individuals have already issued
statements calling for a gathering at the port of Astakos on Thursday,
15.1.”25
Some days later, the state of the United States informed its Israeli counterpart
that the shipment had been cancelled under an unknown pretext. But with
struggling proletarians in Greece, in Palestine and in the world, we knew that
our enemies preferred to stop the shipment (and maybe to organize it in another
way) rather than to maintain it while confronting the international proletarian
solidarity because it would have prompted a very clear class against class
violence at the general level, which would have been in return an objective
element encouraging to raise the consciousness of the proletariat at an
international level. It’s what they are the most scared about: the fact to
emphasize that the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat is the only one
capable to stop wars, repressions and massacres of the state, holding up to
ridicule all the pacifist speeches and demonstrations.
There’s one last question: what is left of the revolt in Greece? Let’s
mention once again the clearness of protagonists of our class:
“Everything begins and matures in violence – but nothing stops there. The
destructive violence that unleashed in the events of December caused the
blocking of the capitalist normality in the center of the metropolis, a
necessary yet insufficient condition for the transforming of the insurrection
into an attempt for social liberation. The destabilation of capitalist society
is impossible without paralysing the economy – that is, without disrupting the
function of the centres of production and distribution, through sabotage,
occupations, strikes. The absence of a positive, creative proposal for a
different form of organizing the social relations was –up until now- more than
self-evident. Nevertheless, the insurrection of December must be understood
within the historical context of an enlivement process of class struggle that
takes place on the international level.”26
At the time of ending the present text (February 2009), the struggle of the
proletariat in Greece was going on, although in a more limited way. After a wave
of roads and highways blockades mainly led by the agricultural proletariat, a
series of occupations and especially assemblies are going on, structures and
groups are taking stock of what happened and are drawing lessons and giving
instructions for the next explosion, which is as certain as the unavoidable
catastrophe of capital.
Nothing will be the same anymore, neither in Greece nor elsewhere. The comrades
who were in the street in Greece have a lot of lessons to draw and to pass on
for the fights that are on the way in the whole Europe and all over the world.
May our present contribution go in this direction!

The proletariat in Greece showed to the world proletariat the essential way to
follow
Notes1. This text has been originally written in Spanish in February 2009 and
published in our review “Comunismo” N°59 (May 2009) as well as in French in
“Communisme” N°61 (June 2009) under the title: “It’s going on:
Greece”.
2. From the text “Greece: Call for a New International” distributed in
Greece during the movement of December.
3. Extract from the leaflet “Nothing is Over – We are only the beginning –
Statement” issued by assemblies (found on UK Indymedia) and showing a high
level of spontaneity and innocence as for the goals of the movement that we
comment on further.
4. “We destroy the present because we come from the future. Communiqué from
proletarians of the occupied ASOEE,” already published in our previous review
in English “Communism” No.14 (January 2009).
5. Idem.
6. Idem.
7. Extract from “Greece: Call for a New International,” already quoted.
8. From “We destroy the present because we come from the future,” already
quoted.
9. “We, prisoners in extermination centres of the Greek state, who got tired
of the false promises of all the ministers of justice of these last ten years
about the penitentiary condition improvement, we decide to mobilize and to
insists on our just demands,” a communiqué declared (ICG’s translation from
Spanish).
10. At each birthday of the “fall of the dictatorship,” demonstrations are
organized, but this year, thanks to the prisoners’ struggle, they intensified
and solidarity with these rebels was proclaimed, which was its climax.
11. From the leaflet “Their Democracy Murders…” - The Occupation of the
Polytechnic University in Athens, Friday, December 12th, 2008.
12. From the leaflet “Nothing is Over – We are only the beginning –
Statement,” already quoted.
13. The worst aspect of racism is the one that exists in the very essence of the
capitalist social relations, which makes that the labour force of a national and
white worker is worth much more than the one of a black and/or a foreigner, and
it’s all the more pernicious when some considers that it doesn’t exist and
that this affirmation is accompanied with an “antiracist” ideological
speech.
14. This communiqué has been handed out on December 15th, 2008 and started with
the following header: “The following text was distributed at the student
picket outside the police headquarters today by people from Athens’ Haunt of
Albanian Migrants.”
15. See “An Open Letter to Students by Workers in Athens” signed
Proletarians we already published in our previous review in English
“Communism” No.14 (January 2009).
16. From “We destroy the present because we come from the future,” already
quoted.
17. From the “Declaration of the General Assembly of Insurgent Workers in
Athens.”
18. From “A detailed updated summary of the recent events in Athens, from the
perspective of some proletarian participants,” found among others on
libcom.org web site.
19. From “Greece: Call for a New International,” already quoted.
20. From the already quoted leaflet “Their Democracy Murders...”
21. Excerpt translated from the call issued (ICG’s translation from Spanish)
by the Committee of the Asturias in solidarity with the struggles in Greece
(solidariosg@...).
22. The call here reproduced and translated is entitled: “We are going to
light up the obscurity!” (ICG’s translation from Spanish) and signed
Anarquistas de Rosario, Argentina (www.anarquistasrosario.cjb.net –
anarquistasrosario@...).
23. From the leaflet of Class War Group (“Trídní válka” in Czech):
“Declaration of Solidarity with Struggling and Prosecuted Proletarians in
Greece” (www.tridnivalka.tk – tridnivalka@...).
24.
25. On this topic, see the complete article in English on:
http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/.
26. From “We destroy the present because we come from the future,” already
quoted.

Read

COMMUNISM

Dictatorship of the Proletariat for the Abolition of Wage Labour

Central review in English of the Internationalist Communist Group (ICG)


geovisit();





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http://www.revcom.us/a/185/obama_speech-en.html

Obama's War Speech: The Questions It Raises… And The Answer That Must Be Given

By Larry Everest


On Tuesday, December 1, at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, President
Barack Obama announced that he would send 30,000 additional troops to
Afghanistan. He also called for 10,000 more NATO troops, which pushes the total
U.S.-led forces to nearly 150,000, and he announced plans to step up the war on
a number of fronts including (without being specific) in Pakistan. Obama has now
tripled the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan since he took office.


These military forces will not be going to Afghanistan to set up vaccination
programs or conduct literacy classes for Afghan girls. They are going there as
part of the most destructive military machine on the planet, to wreak violence.
The military machine that has bombed wedding parties, that has held thousands of
young Afghan men in Bagram prison without charges, that kicks down doors in the
middle of the night—this machine is being strengthened and further unleashed.


The West Point speech is being called the "defining moment" of Obama's
presidency. Thus far into his term, at least, that is true. So it is important
to look deeply at the questions Obama posed and the answers he gave—and in
doing so to get into the real underlying causes of the military escalation now
being put into effect.

Continue reading: http://www.revcom.us/a/185/obama_speech-en.html




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

By *Jim McIlroy*

November 23, 2009 -- How do you build socialism in the First World
countries right now? Of course, we are part of a world movement for
socialism, including the Third World. We can learn a lot from recent and
current experiences in left regroupment and party building that are
happening around the world at present -- with all proportions guarded,
and realising that there is no direct transposition of one historical,
national experience onto another. When we talk about left regroupment
and reconstruction, unlike some of the other overseas examples that I
will refer to, Socialist Alliance in Australia is not at this stage a
broad left party or a regroupment organisation in quite the same way as
some of the other international experiences. But it is a vehicle for
constructing one and it is a nucleus for building a broad-based
socialist party in the future.
Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1388

Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism

December 3, 2009 -- On behalf of the Socialist Alliance of Australia, we
would like to send warm, socialist greetings to the United Socialist
Party of Venezuela (PSUV), thanking you once again for the invitation to
participate in the International Meeting of Left Parties held in
Caracas, November 19-21, 2009. The outcomes of this event are already
having an important impact on the world, particularly among left and
progressive forces, and we are grateful that we could be part of it and
contribute to its success in our own modest way...

We also understand that the left today is confronted with the greatest
crisis that capitalism has ever seen; a crisis which goes far beyond a
simple financial crisis. The economic crisis, the environmental crisis,
the food crisis, the energy and natural resources crisis represent in
their totality a structural crisis of the capitalist system itself.

More than ever, the response of the left must be global and must be for
the replacement of this system, which threatens to plunge the world into
barbarism. The only other alternative today is socialism, which must be
built internationally.

For this reason, we greatly welcome the outcomes of the International
Meeting of Left Parties, which your party convened, and reaffirm our
support for the final declaration.

***

On November 29, 2009 the central committee of Socialist Worker-New
Zealand unanimously decided:

● The Caracas decision to move towards forming a Fifth International is
of "world historic importance". Such a Fifth International will "boost
the legitimacy and organisation of socialism around the world" at a time
when global capitalism in terminal decay threatens the existence of
humanity through climate change, mass poverty and imperial conflicts.

● Consequently, Socialist Worker-New Zealand will do all we can to
support the April 2010 global left meeting to form a Fifth International.

● Socialist Worker-New Zealand is looking to send two delegates to the
April conference. We are launching an appeal to raise funds for their
return air fares to Caracas.

● Socialist Worker-New Zealand will be talking with other socialists in
New Zealand about the April 2010 global left conference. Our aim is to
cooperate with all those who, like us, support the formation of a Fifth
International.

● Socialist Worker-New Zealand will be urging socialists in other lands,
including the International Socialist Tendency to which we are
affiliated, to likewise back the formation of a Fifth International.

Full statements at http://links.org.au/node/1387

Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism

By *Farooq Tariq*

December 4, 2009 -- The Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) condemns US
President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy and demands that all NATO
forces immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and stop drone attacks on
Pakistan. The Labour Party Pakistan has decided to protest against this
new escalation of the war effort in the region. The first protest took
place on December 4 in front of US consulate in Lahore. There will be
more demonstrations in different parts of Pakistan.

Full statement at http://links.org.au/node/1385

Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism

Weekly Worker 796 - Thursday December 3 2009

The latest edition of the Weekly Worker is now available on the CPGB
website at www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/796

In this week's issue:

TO SAVE THE PLANET FIGHT FOR A RED WORLD
Capitalism is showing itself to be totally incapable of cutting back
on carbon emissions, writes Eddie Ford

LETTERS
Kautskyan; Surprise vote; Soviet power; True vote; Simple; Military
tips; Rambo; Border line; Abused child; Trotskyist mote; Correction

CHILD ABUSE, THE CHURCH, AND THE IRISH STATE
Anne Mc Shane reports on the child abuse scandal engulfing the
Catholic church in Ireland. The case for a secular republic and
confiscating the church�s property could not be stronger

SOLIDARITY WITH WORKERS KEY PRIORITY AFTER JUNE ELECTION
Chris Strafford reports on the annual general meeting of Hands Off the
People of Iran

NO WAY BACK FOR WARMONGERS
Mike Macnair addressed the Hopi AGM on the continued threat of war. US
imperialism has a new face, but when it comes to foreign policy it is
business as usual

AHMADINEJAD�S POSSIBLE ROLE IN SAVAGE BEATINGS
The Mail on Sunday (November 29) published a photograph purportedly
showing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the regime�s London
consulate in April 1984. Comrades from the Fedayeen (Minority), who
had forced their way into the building, were imprisoned and severely
beaten by Iranian staff. Yassamine Mather was a member of the Fedayeen
(Minority) at the time and spoke to the Weekly Worker about the
incident

THE POLEMICAL ALTERNATIVE
Peter Manson reports on the latest debates of CPGB members and supporters

MULTICULTURAL BURROWING STRATEGY
Mike Belbin reviews Kwami Kwei-Armah�s Seize the day Tricycle Theatre
(ends December 19)

SPLENDID TALKING SHOP
James Turley reports on the Historical Materialism conference

A NORTHERN GIANT
David Douglass reviews Keith Armstrong�s Common words and the
wandering star University of Sunderland Press. pp296, �7.95

METAPHOR FOR NEOLIBERALISM
Dubai collapse points to continuing crisis, writes James Turley

THURSDAY DONORS
Robbie Rix discovers an area where there is room for improvement

A PDF version of the paper can be downloaded at
www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/796/796web.pdf

What's new at Links: Fifth International?; Venezuela, Philippines, Marta
Harnecker, climate jobs, Foro Social Latinamericano, ecosocialism

* * *
Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism

Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed
(http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to
consider an article, please send it to links@...

*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links.

* * *


     Venezuela: Hugo Chavez calls for international socialist unity
     <http://links.org.au/node/1378>

By Federico Fuentes, Caracas
November 27, 2009 -- Addressing delegates at the International Encounter
of Left Parties held in Caracas, November 19-21, Venezuela's President
Hugo Chavez said that with the capitalist crisis and threat of war
risking the future of humanity, "the people are clamoring" for greater
unity of those willing to fight for socialism. Chavez used his November
20 speech to the conference, which involved delegates from 55 left
groups from 31 countries, to call for a new international socialist
organisation to unite left groups and social movements: "The time has
come for us to organise the Fifth International."

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1378>


     500,000th visitor to Links International Journal of Socialist
     Renewal <http://links.org.au/node/1376>

At around 8pm on November 25, 2009, Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewal received its 500,000th visit since records began being
kept on April 4, 2008. Almost 676,000 articles were read by those
visitors in that period.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1376>


     `The Caracas Commitment' -- Declaration from World Meeting of Left
     Parties, November 19-21, Caracas, Venezuela
     <http://links.org.au/node/1375>

Declaration from World Meeting of Left Parties, November 19-21, Caracas,
Venezuela
November 21, 2009 -- Political parties and organizations from Latin
America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania commemorate
and celebrate the unity and solidarity that brought us together in
Caracas, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and from this libertarian
city we would like to express our revolutionary rebelliousness. We are
glad of and committed to the proud presence of the forces of change in a
special moment of history. Likewise, we are proud to reaffirm our
conviction to definitively sow, grow and win Socialism of the 21st century.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1375>


     Philippines: Justice for murdered journalists and human rights
     heroes! End trapo politics now! <http://links.org.au/node/1379>

By Sonny Melencio, Partido Lakas ng Masa
November 25, 2009 -- The Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM) condemns in the
strongest possible terms the massacre in Maguindanao. We assert that
this is not only a problem confined to Mindanao, but that it's a symptom
of a festering and rotten political system. We predict that this
violence will be the feature of the coming elections, as the political
elite struggle with increasing desperation and ferocity for a share of
the ever-dwindling national wealth and power. [On November 23, 57 people
were massacred by the ruling Ampatuan clan that governs the province --
see news report below.]

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1379>


     Fourth International leader on Chavez's call for a new international
     <http://links.org.au/node/1377>

By Fran�ois Sabado
November 26, 2009 -- During an international meeting of left parties
held in Caracas from 19-21 November, 2009, Venezuela's President Hugo
Chavez launched a call for a Fifth Socialist International, which,
according to him, should bring together left parties and social
movements. According to Chavez, who is also president of the United
Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the Fifth International must be "an
instrument for the unification and the articulation of the struggle of
the peoples to save this planet". In a world political situation marked
by a total crisis of the capitalist system, this is a fact important
enough to be underlined.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1377>


     Pamphlet to download: Marta Harnecker's `Ideas for the Struggle'
     <http://links.org.au/node/1374>

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1374>


     Venezuela: Chavez urges PSUV to debate how to win socialism by 2019
     <http://links.org.au/node/1373>

By Kiraz Janicke, Caracas
November 23, 2009 - Venezuelanalysis.com - During an inaugural speech to
the 772 delegates at the First Extraordinary Congress of the United
Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) on November 21, Venezuela's
President Hugo Chavez raised a series of proposals to open the debate
and discussion over consolidating the struggle for socialism both
internationally and in Venezuela.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1373>


     Venezuela: Chavez calls for new international organisation of left
     parties <http://links.org.au/node/1372>

By Kiraz Janicke, Caracas
November 23, 2009 - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez called for the
formation of a "Fifth International" of left parties and social
movements to confront the challenge posed by the global crisis of
capitalism. The president made the announcement during an international
conference of more than 50 left organisations from 31 countries held in
Caracas over November 19-21.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1372>


     Britain: One million climate jobs now! <http://links.org.au/node/1371>

By the Public and Commercial Services Union (Britain)
November 15, 2009 -- Earlier this year, Britain's Campaign against
Climate Change (CaCC) trade union group set up a commission to produce a
detailed plan for a million ``climate'' jobs.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1371>


     `Foro Social Latinamericano', Green Left Weekly's Spanish-language
     supplement launched <http://links.org.au/node/1370>

Australia's leading socialist newspaper Green Left Weekly is strongly
committed to supporting the growing "people's power" movement in Latin
America. We are proud of the fact that GLW is the only Australian
newspaper to have a permanent bureau in Latin America, based in Caracas,
Venezuela. Through our weekly articles on developments in the region,
GLW strives to counter the corporate media's many lies about Latin
America's revolutions, and to give a voice in English to the people's
movements for change.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1370>


     Socialists, the environment and ecosocialism: a view from South
     Africa <http://links.org.au/node/1369>

By Trevor Ngwane
November 19, 2009 -- There is an ecological crisis in the world and this
crisis can be traced to capitalism. There is deforestation due to the
trade in timber. There is climate change due to unsafe production
methods. The working class is the class that suffers the most from the
ecological crisis. Working-class people are in the majority and their
life conditions make them more vulnerable. Workers live in flimsy houses
and shacks that are easily washed or swept away by strong rains and
winds. When workers are sick or injured there is always not enough
medical help for them. Over the years not enough attention has been paid
to this problem by socialists.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1369>

* * *
Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing
socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

Follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism


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Weekly Worker 795 - Thursday November 26 2009

The latest edition of the Weekly Worker is now available on the CPGB
website at www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/795

In this week's issue:

DEFEND REES-GERMAN LEFT PLATFORM AGAINST CALLINICOS-SMITH CC
Peter Manson looks at the organisational moves to pre-empt a full
debate, the factional war in the latest Pre-conference Bulletin and
the ending of the silence over Jane Loftus

LETTERS
Dead-end; Liability; Pissy fit; Folly; Crusty borders; Red mist; Not
victimless; Gratification; Vulgarisation; Alternative?; Arson attack

TIP OF AN ICEBERG
We must support the rebellions of brave individuals in the military,
writes Jim Moody. But collective organisation is the key

USE IT HOW YOU WANT
Is it a petition or a draft manifesto? Nick Rogers attended the
grandiosely titled �convention� to discuss the vagaries of the
People�s Charter

REHABILITATION, NOT PUNISHMENT
Prison does not work, writes Eddie Ford

CRITICAL SUPPORT FOR POA STRIKES
Are prison officers �workers in uniform� or just agents of state
oppression? Paul Greenaway argues for a nuanced approach and a
strategy for splitting the state machine

MASSES FORCE LEADERS TO ACT
The difficulties faced by the Irish working class cannot be
understated, writes Anne Mc Shane

UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS VICTIMISED BY UNITE
In September 2009 the union Unite ordered the Latin American Workers
Association to vacate without notice the office it had provided within
its southeast region HQ. Its comrades explain the background

HOPI: FIGHT ON TWO FRONTS
Ben Lewis makes a call to truly champion the cause of the Iranian masses

POLITICAL RESPONSE NEEDED
James Turley expects a sudden rise in the pitch of industrial struggle
after the general election

BEST READ
Robbie Rix praises partisan readers

A PDF version of the paper can be downloaded at
www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/795/795web.pdf

http://www.revcom.us/a/184/AWTWNS-A_Roy-en.html
 
From A World to Win News Service
"Sri Lanka solution" threatened for Maoist-led uprising in India—Excerpts from
Arundhati Roy
November 16, 2009. A World to Win News Service. The Indian government is
preparing "Operation Green Hunt," a counter-insurgency operation on an
unprecedented scale. As many as a hundred thousand soldiers and other security
forces are to be sent into the forested hills of eastern and central India to
crush the rebellion of adivasi (tribal peoples) led by the Communist Party of
India (Maoist). This is no short-term incursion: the authorities have announced
that they plan to station massive numbers of troops in the tribal areas for
years to come.
 
Several commentators have warned of the danger that the Indian government plans
to seek a "Sri Lanka solution," modeled on the recent protracted government
offensive there. Massive ground forces and air assaults were used to defeat the
Tamil Tigers, and then hundreds of thousands of the region's civilian population
were imprisoned in detention camps, where most still languish. Now what may be
permanent military bases are being built in the Tamil heartland. The Indian
government no doubt noted the implicit U.S. approval for that operation. At the
U.S.'s behest, the International Monetary Fund [IMF] granted the Sri Lankan
government a huge financial package almost immediately after the massacre.
 
Following are excerpts from an article by Indian writer and activist Arundhati
Roy that appeared in the October 31 issue of the Sri Lanka Guardian
(srilankaguardian.org). The full article online gives much more detail for her
arguments and a more all-around representation of her views. The November 2009
issue of People's March (peoplesmarch.googlepages.com or bannedthought.net) has
two recent statements by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and other
material on this offensive. A statement by the Revolutionary Democratic Front is
also included in the AWTWNS packet dated November 16, 2009.
 
The low, flat-topped hills of south Orissa have been home to the Dongria Kondh
[one of several tribal peoples in the region] long before there was a country
called India or a state called Orissa. The hills watched over the Kondh. The
Kondh watched over the hills and worshipped them as living deities. Now these
hills have been sold for the bauxite they contain...
 
Perhaps the Kondh are supposed to be grateful that their Niyamgiri hill, home to
their Niyam Raja, God of Universal Law, has been sold to a company with a name
like Vedanta (the branch of Hindu philosophy that teaches the Ultimate Nature of
Knowledge). It's one of the biggest mining corporations in the world and is
owned by Anil Aggarwal, the Indian billionaire who lives in London in a mansion
that once belonged to the Shah of Iran. Vedanta is only one of the many
multinational corporations closing in on Orissa.
If the flat-topped hills are destroyed, the forests that clothe them will be
destroyed too. So will the rivers and streams that flow out of them and irrigate
the plains below. So will the Dongria Kondh. So will the hundreds of thousands
of tribal people who live in the forested heart of India, and whose homeland is
similarly under attack...
 
The government has announced Operation Green Hunt, a war purportedly against the
"Maoist" rebels headquartered in the jungles of central India. Of course, the
Maoists are by no means the only ones rebelling. There is a whole spectrum of
struggles all over the country where people are engaged in rebellion—the
landless, the Dalits [so-called "untouchables"], the homeless, workers,
peasants, weavers. They're pitted against a juggernaut of injustices, including
policies that allow a wholesale corporate takeover of people's land and
resources. However, it is the Maoists who the government has singled out as
being the biggest threat.
 
Two years ago, when things were nowhere near as bad as they are now, the prime
minister described the Maoists as the "single-largest internal security threat"
to the country. He revealed his government's real concern on 18 June 2009, when
he told Parliament: "If left-wing extremism continues to flourish in parts which
have natural resources of minerals, the climate for investment would certainly
be affected."...
Right now in central India, the Maoists' guerrilla army is made up almost
entirely of desperately poor tribal people living in conditions of such chronic
hunger that it verges on famine of the kind we only associate with sub-Saharan
Africa. They are people who, even after 60 years of India's so-called
Independence, have not had access to education, healthcare or legal redress.
They are people who have been mercilessly exploited for decades, consistently
cheated by small businessmen and moneylenders, the women raped as a matter of
right by police and forest department personnel. Their journey back to a
semblance of dignity is due in large part to the Maoist cadre who have lived and
worked and fought by their side for decades.
 
It's not enough that the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Border
Security Force (BSF) and the notorious Naga Battalion have already wreaked havoc
and committed unconscionable atrocities in remote forest villages. It's not
enough that the government supports and arms the Salwa Judum, the "people's
militia" that has killed and raped and burned its way through the forests of
Dantewada leaving three hundred thousand people homeless, or on the run. Now the
government is going to deploy the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and tens of
thousands of paramilitary troops. It plans to set up a brigade headquarters in
Bilaspur (which will displace nine villages) and an air base in Rajnandgaon
(which will displace seven). Obviously, these decisions were taken a while ago.
War has been in the offing for a while. And now the helicopters of the Indian
air force have been given the right to fire in "self-defence", the very right
that the government denies its poorest
  citizens...
 
What kind of war is Operation Green Hunt going to be? Not much news comes out of
the forests. Lalgarh in West Bengal has been cordoned off. Those who try to go
in are being beaten and arrested. And called Maoists of course. In Dantewada,
the Vanvasi Chetana Ashram, a Gandhian ashram run by Himanshu Kumar, was
bulldozed in a few hours. It was the last neutral outpost before the war zone
begins, a place where journalists, activists, researchers and fact-finding teams
could stay while they worked in the area...
 
The "Sri Lanka Solution" could very well be on the cards. It's not for nothing
that the Indian government blocked a European move in the UN asking for an
international probe into war crimes committed by the government of Sri Lanka in
its recent offensive against the Tamil Tigers...
 
Last week, civil liberties groups from all over the country organised a series
of meetings in Delhi to discuss what could be done to turn the tide and stop the
war.
 
These are the people who the Union [All-India] home minister recently accused of
creating an "intellectual climate" that was conducive to "terrorism". If that
charge was meant to frighten people, to cow them down, it had the opposite
effect. The speakers represented a range of opinion from the liberal to the
radical Left. Though none of those who spoke would describe themselves as
Maoist, few were opposed in principle to the idea that people have a right to
defend themselves against State violence. Many were uncomfortable about Maoist
violence, about the "people's courts" that delivered summary justice, about the
authoritarianism that was bound to permeate an armed struggle and marginalise
those who did not have arms. But even as they expressed their discomfort, they
knew that people's courts only existed because India's courts are out of the
reach of ordinary people and that the armed struggle that has broken out in the
heartland is not the first, but
  the very last option of a desperate people pushed to the very brink of
existence. The speakers were aware of the dangers of trying to extract a simple
morality out of individual incidents of heinous violence, in a situation that
had already begun to look very much like war.
 
People who had come from the war zones, from Lalgarh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh
and Orissa, described the police repression, the arrests, the torture, the
killing, the corruption, and the fact that in places like Orissa, they seemed to
take orders directly from the officials who worked for the mining companies.
People described the dubious, malign role being played by certain NGOs funded by
aid agencies wholly devoted to furthering corporate prospects. Again and again
they spoke of how in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh activists as well as ordinary
people—anyone who was seen to be a dissenter—were being branded Maoists and
imprisoned. They said that this, more than anything else, was pushing people to
take up arms and join the Maoists. They asked how a government that professed
its inability to resettle even a fraction of the fifty million people who had
been displaced by "development" projects was suddenly able to identify 140,000
hectares of prime land
  to give to industrialists for more than 300 Special Economic Zones, India's
onshore tax havens for the rich. They asked what brand of justice the Supreme
Court was practising when it refused to review the meaning of "public purpose"
in the Land Acquisition Act even when it knew that the government was forcibly
acquiring land in the name of "public purpose" to give to private corporations.
They asked why when the government says that "the Writ of the State must run",
it seems to only mean that police stations must be put in place. Not schools or
clinics or housing, or clean water, or a fair price for forest produce, or even
being left alone and free from the fear of the police—anything that would make
people's lives a little easier. They asked why the "Writ of the State" could
never be taken to mean justice…
 
The forest once known as the Dandakaranya, which stretches from West Bengal
through Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, parts of Andhra Pradesh and
Maharashtra, is home to millions of India's tribal people. The media has taken
to calling it the Red corridor or the Maoist corridor. It could just as
accurately be called the MoUist corridor. Scores of corporations, from
relatively unknown ones to the biggest mining companies and steel manufacturers
in the world, are in the fray to appropriate adivasi homelands—the Mittals,
Jindals, Tata, Essar, Posco, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and, of course, Vedanta.
 
There's an MoU [Memorandum of Understanding—an agreement between government
and corporate investors] on every mountain, river and forest glade: social and
environmental engineering on an unimaginable scale. And most of this is secret.
Somehow I don't think that the plans that are afoot to destroy one of the
world's most pristine forests and ecosystems, as well as the people who live in
it, will be discussed at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen...
 
A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine
(aworldtowin.org), a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation
of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the
world’s Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.
 




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

This 12-part series of articles by *Marta Harnecker* (translated by
*Federico Fuentes*) on ideas for how to organise for socialism in the
21st century first appeared in /Links International Journal of Socialist
Renewal/. It is now available download free as a pamphlet in PDF format.

Marta Harnecker is originally from Chile where she participated in the
revolutionary process of 1970-1973. She has written extensively on the
Cuba Revolution, and on the nature of socialist democracy. She now lives
in Caracas and is a participant in the Venezuelan revolution.

Download it at http://links.org.au/node/1374

Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at
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http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/2009/11/curb-your-enthusiasm-permanent-carniva\
l.html


Tuesday, November 24, 2009
"Curb Your Enthusiasm" a permanent carnival of fetishized inwardness


I don't watch much series TV, but I make an exception for Larry David's "Curb
Your Enthusiasm" on HBO. It finished its most recent season Sunday night,
satirizing the profit-driven big business entertainment mania for remakes and
reunions of old TV warhorses. Of course David is the epitome of the "Hollywood
left", which he also satirizes in his show. The environmentalist preening of
David and his cohort about their Prius cars, their green toilet paper, and their
contributions to NRDC are little more than what Georg Lukacs called "a permanent
carnival of fetishized inwardness."

The current season's Episode 66 has the rightwing culture heroes up in arms. A
blogger who styles himself the "Left Coast Rebel" had this to say:

Comedian Larry David is under attack from critics who say he pushed the mocking
of religion and Christian belief in miracles over the edge in the latest episode
of his HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm," which the cable network defended as
"playful."

On the show's most recent installment, which aired Sunday, David urinates on a
painting of Jesus Christ, causing a woman to believe the painting depicts Jesus
crying.

I am nearly speechless. Nearly because I know full-well that David, HBO,
Hollywood et al. come from the anything goes school of thought when it comes to
conservatives/christians. Any and every proclivity of disdain and excess aimed
at the Christian ethic is fodder for even the most vile of attack.

Liberalism 101:
To desecrate a picture of Jesus - Now that is funny!
To desecrate Muhammad, the Koran - Racist! Bigot! Boycott!

The Left Coast Rebel and the Fox News story he quotes to froth his
self-righteousness are incorrect. In the offending scene, Larry David does not
"urinate on a painting of Jesus Christ." While visiting the home of his
assistant, he visits their bathroom. A very kitschy Jesus print is on the wall
above the toilet. David relieves himself, his "stream" inordinately powerful
because of some medicine he is taking. A particle of liquid ends up on the good
lord's face. The homeowners take it to be a sign from God and drop to their
knees before committing themselves to a cross-country RV trip to exhibit the
weeping Christ.

All this reminds me of an older artistic work the right wing used in their
fundraising, the "Piss Christ". The fact that Larry David is so outspokenly
liberal and revels in the personal and social complexities of being Jewish just
adds to the enjoyment for those of us tired of a lifetime of holier-than-thou
special-pleading by reactionaries who present Christianity as a persecuted
minority religion beset by unbelievers and Christ killers on all sides.

A few years ago Marxist Louis Proyect wrote these perceptive lines about "Curb
Your Enthusiasm":

When Seinfeld's Executive Producer Larry David launched a new TV show on HBO
playing himself, it might have been anticipated that "Curb Your Enthusiasm"
would retain some of the characteristics of the Seinfeld show. This it does. Not
only is the character Larry David just as self-centered and obnoxious as the
Seinfeld regulars, he has the same whining Queens inflection as Jerry Seinfeld
himself.

Unlike most Americans, I could not stand the Seinfeld show. I thought the show
relied too heavily on shtick, a Yiddish word meaning gimmick--especially in the
comic sense. For example, Jack Benny's cheapness was shtick, as was Chevy
Chase's pratfalls on SNL. It also had the mandatory laugh-track, which has the
same effect on me as the sound of a garden rake being scraped across a
blackboard.

"Curb Your Enthusiasm" does incorporate the same kinds of convoluted plots as
Seinfeld, usually putting one of the main characters into an excruciatingly
embarrassing situation. Since they are not constrained by network requirements
to keep bible belt figures like Donald Wildmon happy, these plots tend to be a
lot rawer and a lot funnier. For example, in one show, Larry David performs oral
sex on his wife only to get a pubic hair stuck in his throat. For most of the
episode, he is seen gagging and choking in polite company trying to dislodge the
troublesome hair.

But "Curb Your Enthusiasm" has many other features that were not seen on
Seinfeld or any other television show on or off cable. For one thing, much of
the dialogue is improvised on the spot. Larry David himself got started as an
improvisational stand-up comedian in NYC. This means that the performances have
few of the kind of histrionics associated with situation comedies. For example,
on all network comedies the actors are always speaking in a completely unnatural
manner leading up to some gag that is punctuated by a raucous laugh-track
explosion. On "Curb Your Enthusiasm", you will more likely find the characters
sounding like real people chatting over an awkward situation that does not lead
up to a conventional punch-line.

For example, in last night's episode Larry David is in an examination room
waiting for the doctor to look at a head wound (Mel Brooks has accidentally
smacked him on the forehead when opening up the bathroom door in his office.)
Growing bored, he picks up the doctor's phone and starts chatting with his
business partner who is in the waiting room. When the doctor comes in, he tells
him that patients are not allowed to use the phone. This leads to a five minute
argument between David and the doctor over this practice, with David demanding
to know the reason for this rule and the doctor telling him that he does not
need to know. They end up calling each other pricks.

Despite its American (and Jewish) roots, the show will remind you of British
comedy. The improvised dialogue, as well as the tendency to demonstrate human
frailty and self-deception at its worst, will remind you of Mike Leigh. In
addition, the universal tendency of each show to end up in some kind of calamity
will remind you of "Fawlty Towers". In recent episodes, Larry David and his
Hollywood buddies' attempt to open up a restaurant keep meeting with
Fawlty-esque disaster. When a pet German Shepherd that has been trained to sniff
out corpses goes frantic in the kitchen trying to dig something up, the
restaurant is closed down until a police investigation is finished. A murdered
body assumed to be under the floor turns out to be a soiled brassiere. (Larry
David himself was flattered to learn that British critics view his show as
having a British sensibility.)

Larry David and all of his big-time Hollywood players come across as total
creeps. They will stab each other in the back in one episode and reconcile in
the next on the most insincere basis. Utterly protective of their class status,
they treat their maids and gardeners as serfs. When Christmas rolls around,
Larry David goes around dispensing tips with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.
When he fears that he has tipped one of his waiters twice by accident, he goes
up to the man and demands the tip back. The waiter asks him, "You mean the
single tip that you gave me?"

The show also sends up the phony liberalism of Hollywood big-shots. For example,
an environmentalism benefit is seen mostly as an opportunity to hear pop-star
Alanis Morissette who has been hired for the occasion or to make an appearance.
When Larry David learns that a terrorist attack is planned for the same weekend
as the benefit, he decides to leave town even though his wife wants to stick
around to hear Morissette.

Cheryl: Do you think that's a good idea, for us to be apart if something did
happen?

Larry (chewing gum): Then at least one of us would survive.

Cheryl: It just seems if we're gonna go we should go together.

Larry: Not necessarily. It almost seems a little selfish that you would want
both of us to perish.

Cheryl: So you'd be fine going on without me.

Larry: It would be very difficult at first, sure, but hopefully at some point I
could get back some semblance of a life.

Cheryl: OK. If you feel good about one of us dying and the other one surviving
and you can live with that for the rest of your life, then you should go golf
this weekend.

Larry: I'll think about it.

Cheryl: Think about it.

Since Larry David is notoriously reclusive and refuses to give interviews, it
might be difficult to understand why he has created such a deliciously
misanthropic show. Fortunately, Robert B. Weide, the show's Executive Producer
and frequent director, is much more forthcoming. There's an interview with him
on the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" website that I invite you to check out:
http://www.hbo.com/larrydavid/interviews/ (You can also watch excerpts from the
show there.) He also has a website at: http://www.duckprods.com/

Weide has a very interesting resume. He is the director of "Lenny Bruce: Swear
To Tell The Truth" and cites Bruce's use of language as an inspiration for "Curb
Your Enthusiasm". In the episode of the ill-fated restaurant's opening, the
chef, who suffers from Tourette's Syndrome, yells out without provocation "Shit,
motherfucker, cocksucker" at the top of his lungs. This inspires David and all
his friends and partners to begin shouting out similar curses just to lessen the
tension. Pure Lenny Bruce.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

What's new at Links: Venezuela, Australia, China, UCal students,
Stalinism, Tamils, population, Mexico, Portugal, Canada, Quebec

* * *
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(http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to
consider an article, please send it to links@...

*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links.

* * *


     Venezuela: Socialists debate party's direction
     <http://links.org.au/node/1364>

By Kiraz Janicke, Caracas
November 16, 2009 – The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) held
nation-wide delegate elections on November 15 for its First
Extraordinary Congress which will be held over the next several weekends
in Caracas. Up for discussion at the congress are the party’s program,
principles, organisational structure and most likely the mechanism for
selecting candidates for the national parliamentary elections of 2010.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1364>


     Australia: Elected socialist's goal of `campaigning' local council
     gained wide support <http://links.org.au/node/1363>

Justine Kamprad is a co-convenor of the Fremantle branch of the
Socialist Alliance, in Western Australia (WA), and was the party's
campaign director for the October 17, 2009, Fremantle City Council
election, which saw socialist Sam Wainwright top the poll and get
elected with 33.44% of the vote. Wainwright is the first member of the
Socialist Alliance to be elected to public office in Australia, and one
of only two socialist party members currently in an elected local
council position in the country. Jim McIlroy spoke to Kamprad about the
successful campaign.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1363>


     China today: socialist or capitalist? <http://links.org.au/node/1355>

By Chris Slee
November 13, 2009 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
has published a number of articles on the Chinese Revolution
<http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/404> and the subsequent restoration
of capitalism in China. This article aims to give more detail on the
current situation, including the Chinese government's efforts to
ameliorate some of the harmful effects of capitalism.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1355>


     Join the 2010 `May Day’ solidarity brigade to Venezuela! April 24 -
     May 2, 2010 <http://links.org.au/node/1368>

Registrations close February 1, 2010
The Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network’s brigades to Venezuela are a
once-in-a-lifetime experience - the opportunity to see first-hand an
unfolding revolution that is not only radically transforming the lives
of Venezuelans, but is challenging the greed, exploitation and
destructiveness of global capitalism by showing that a better world is
possible.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1368>


     United States: Photo essay -- Students occupy Berkeley university
     building to protest fee hike <http://links.org.au/node/1367>

Story and photos by David Bacon
Berkeley, California -- November 20, 2009 -- Students occupied Wheeler
Hall on the University of California campus in Berkeley, protesting
against a decision by university regents to raise tuition fees by 32%,
bringing them to US$10,302 per year for undergraduates.
At the beginning of the occupation the students made several demands,
including the reinstatement of 38 laid-off custodial workers, and
amnesty for protesting students.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1367>


     Paul Le Blanc: Theories of Stalinism <http://links.org.au/node/1366>

     The Marxism of Leon Trotsky
     By Kunal Chattopadhyay
     Kolkata: Progress Publishers, 2006, 672 pages

     Western Marxism and the Soviet Union
     By Marcel van der Linden
     Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2009, 379 pages

Reviews by Paul Le Blanc

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1366>


     Cuba and ALBA let down Sri Lanka’s Tamils
     <http://links.org.au/node/1362>

By Ron Ridenour
November 14, 2009 -- I think that the governments of Cuba, Bolivia and
Nicaragua let down the entire Tamil population in Sri Lanka, as well as
“proletarian internationalism” and the “exploited”, by extending
unconditional support to Sri Lanka’s racist government.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1362>


     Population control’s dark past <http://links.org.au/node/1361>

Review by Simon Butler
November 16, 2009 -- A select group of billionaires met in semi-secrecy
in May 2009 to find answers to a “nightmarish” concern. Their worst
nightmare wasn’t the imminent danger of runaway climate change, the
burgeoning levels of hunger worldwide or the spread of weapons of mass
destruction. The nightmare was other people – lots of other people.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1361>


     A new united movement stops Mexico for a day
     <http://links.org.au/node/1360>

By Tamara Pearson

November 14, 2009 -- Mexico City -- In the many metro stations of this
giant city, amidst the ugly smell of Pizza Hut and the newspapers
vendors yelling out, “Grafico! 3 pesos!”, every day young people crowd
around the handwritten posters recruiting for the national police. At
12,000 pesos (US$1000) per month, and with increasing unemployment and
harder prospects, the offer is very tempting.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1360>


     Portugal: What's behind the success of the Left Bloc?
     <http://links.org.au/node/1359>

By Raphie de Santos
Portugal’s Left Bloc has achieved a major breakthrough in the last five
months. It polled nearly 11% and 10% respectively in the recent European
and parliamentary legislative elections in June and September 2009. For
a party that is firmly established outside of left social democracy this
is a major achievement. How did it happen?

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1359>


     Canada/Quebec: Québécois denounce Supreme Court attack on language
     rights <http://links.org.au/node/1358>

By Richard Fidler
November 9, 2009 -- The October 22 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada
overturning yet another section of Quebec’s Charter of the French
Language (CFL) has been met with angry protests by a broad range of
opinion in the French-speaking province.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1358>


     Four goals for a new left party <http://links.org.au/node/1357>

By Duncan Chapel

November 14, 2009 -- The people on this platform share a lot of ideas.

     * We want a working-class party to the left of the Labour Party,
       with a socialist program that confronts the dual crises of the
       ecology and the economy, which the ruling class is struggling to
       contain
     * We want a party in which anti-capitalists are hegemonic, but not
       monolithic. We have to be open to everyone who’s for the class
       struggle, not just those with Marxist ideas
     * We want a party of struggle, based on the ground, that’s
       developing a movement of resistance as well as an electoral campaign.

That’s a lot of agreement. It’s meaningful. It’s new. We like it. But
what’s the next step?

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1357>


     Canada: Vale Inco strike shows need for international action
     <http://links.org.au/node/1356>

By Marc Bonhomme, translated by Richard Fidler
A Québécois militant, member of Québec solidaire, discusses the global
implications of the strike by 3500 workers at Vale Inco, the world’s
largest nickel mine, in Sudbury, Ontario.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1356>

* * *
Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing
socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

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http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/2009/11/is-chavezs-call-for-5th-international.\
html
Is Chavez's call for 5th International Premature? Is it principled?

First Extraordinary Congress of the PSUV - Chavez calls for the Fifth
International
Written by Alan Woods, from the Congress of the PSUV Monday, 23 November 2009

At the opening session of the PSUV congress Chavez made a very radical left-wing
speech, calling for the setting up of a new international, explaining that it
was necessary to destroy the bourgeois state and replace it with a revolutionary
state, but also referring to the bureaucracy within the Bolivarian movement
itself. It was clearly a speech that reflects the enormous pressure from the
masses below who are getting tired of talk about socialism, while real progress
towards genuine change appears to be frustratingly slow.

On Saturday November 21, the First Extraordinary Congress of the United
Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) commenced its sessions with the attendance
of 772 red-shirted delegates. The majority were workers, peasants and students,
elected by around 2.5 million voters (the total membership on paper is seven
million!). The atmosphere was one of enthusiasm and expectation.

After a warming up session of revolutionary songs and a couple of opening
speeches from visiting dignitaries from Nicaragua and El Salvador, Hugo Chavez
opened the proceedings with a five hour speech that finished shortly after
midnight.

The main emphasis of the first part of his speech was the need to set up a new
revolutionary international, which he referred to as the Fifth International.
Chavez pointed out that Marx had set up the First International, Engels
participated in the founding of the Second International, Lenin founded the
Third International and Leon Trotsky the Fourth, but that for different reasons,
none of these Internationals existed today.

Chavez pointed out that all these Internationals were originally based in
Europe, reflecting the class battles in Europe at that time, but that today the
epicentre of world revolution was in Latin America, and especially in Venezuela.
He pointed to the presence at the Congress of 55 left parties from 39 countries,
which had signed a document called the Caracas Agreement (El Compromiso de
Caracas), based on the idea of a worldwide fight against imperialism and
capitalism, for socialism.

He stressed this idea repeatedly in the course of his speech, which also
contained many radical ideas, attacks against capitalism, which he said was a
threat to the future of the human race. Referring to the world capitalist
crisis, he condemned the attempts of western governments to save the system with
lavish state bailouts. Our task, he said, was not to save capitalism but to
destroy it.

Referring to the situation in Venezuela, he stated that they had not yet
succeeded in eliminating capitalism but were moving in that direction. His
announcement that they were going to take over seven banks was greeted with
enthusiastic applause. He denounced the Venezuelan oligarchy as a Fifth Column,
which had sold out to imperialism.
Chavez pointed out that the state in Venezuela remained a capitalist state and
this was a central problem for the revolution. Waving a copy of Lenin’s State
and Revolution (which he recommended all the delegates to read), he said that he
accepted Lenin's view that it was necessary to destroy the bourgeois state and
replace it with a revolutionary state, and this task remained to be carried out.

Turning to the problem of bureaucracy, he warned that he was aware that some of
the delegates present had been elected by irregular means and that some people
were only interested in getting elected to parliament or as mayors and
governors, which he described as unacceptable.

On the recent conflict with Colombia, he repeated his demand for the
establishment of a people's militia, and that every worker, peasant, student,
man and woman, should receive military training, and that this must not remain
on paper but be put into practice.

“I attach great importance to this congress,” Chavez said, “and intend to
take an active part in its proceedings.” He insisted that the congress should
not end tomorrow (Sunday) but should continue to meet periodically for the next
few months, so as to debate all these questions thoroughly. He insisted that the
debates must be democratic, taking different opinions into consideration and
that delegates must report back to the rank and file and discuss with them all
the different proposals and documents.

The President emphasized that the next year would be difficult. The opposition
would do everything possible to win the elections to the National Assembly in
September 2010. “After that they will go for me,” he said. At this point one
delegate shouted out: “They will go for all of us!”

All this highlights the central problem. After 11 years there are signs that the
masses are becoming impatient and frustrated with the slow pace of the
revolution. The crisis of capitalism is having an effect, and many are disgusted
with the bureaucracy and corruption they see everywhere, including within the
Bolivarian Movement itself.

This frustration sometimes expresses itself in strikes. The President expressed
his frustration at some strikes, although he appealed for a dialogue with the
workers. But behind this is a general feeling that those in the leadership of
the revolution are out of touch and do not listen to the masses or understand
their problems.

During his speech, Chavez also stressed the need to recover the traditions of
revolutionary trade unionism, since the working class has to play a leading role
in the revolution. "The consciousness of the working class is key to the
building of socialism", he said, adding that there must be a close alliance
between the party and the workers.

It is clear that Chavez is attempting to use the congress to breathe new life
into the revolution. Let us hope that this will be the starting point for a new
advance of the Bolivarian Revolution, which can only succeed by going onto the
offensive, braking radically with capitalism, striking blows against the
reactionary oligarchy and establishing a genuine workers' state as the necessary
condition for advancing to socialism and launching a revolutionary wave
throughout the Americas and on a world scale.

Caracas, 21st November

   a..
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       c.. New Labour, racism & and how to fight it all
       d.. Jonathan Swift on endless wars
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       g.. Walter Dean Myers: A Marxist view
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       h.. Satire from Товарищ Х: the Capitalist Dictionary
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       l.. The global economic crisis and imperialist quest f...
       m.. George Plekhanov: Dialectic and Logic The philos...
       n.. Who to Thank on Thanksgiving by Clifford D. Connor...
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       p.. The fraud of health care reform under capitalism
       q.. Bosses use layoffs to raise worker productivity ...
       r.. Aspects of the economic crisis and the Obama admin...
       s.. UK Postal strike: one step forward, two steps back...
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       j.. Black is Back Nov. 7 March: reports and analysis
       k.. November is dialectical materialism month - 2


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After the revolution�s universally acknowledged leader, Vladimir Ilyich
Lenin, died in 1924, a sharp struggle erupted over future perspectives,
between the intransigent revolutionary Leon Trotsky and the seemingly
more patient and easy-going Joseph Stalin. Victory within the Russian
Communist Party went to Stalin � who then guided the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR) into what was called a �revolution from
above�, involving the forced collectivisation of land and a fiercely
rapid industrialisation. By the 1930s, the Stalin regime claimed that it
had finally achieved �socialism�, a claim accepted with hope and
rejoicing by many workers, peasants, students, intellectuals and others
throughout the world.

As time went on, increasing numbers of people came to the conclusion
that what existed in the USSR had little to do with the socialism
forecast by Marx � a �free association of the producers� in which the
labouring masses had won the battle for democracy to create an abundant
society of the free and the equal. Instead, it was a society which
continued to be marked by a considerable degree of inequality, drudgery,
scarcity and extreme restrictions on freedom.

If this was not the socialism that the Stalinists said it was, then what
was it? How could its emergence be explained?

Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1366

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http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/2009/11/november-is-dialectical-materialism_22\
.html

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Story and photos by *David Bacon*

Berkeley, California -- November 20, 2009 -- Students occupied Wheeler
Hall on the University of California campus in Berkeley, protesting
against a decision by university regents to raise tuition fees by 32%,
bringing them to US$10,302 per year for undergraduates.

At the beginning of the occupation the students made several demands,
including the reinstatement of 38 laid-off custodial workers, and
amnesty for protesting students.

The hall was surrounded by hundreds of supporting students, faculty
members, campus workers and community members. The day before the
occupation, two university unions -- the University Professional and
Technical Employees and the Coalition of University Employees --
together with students and members of campus faculty mounted a
campus-wide strike.

Full article and photos at http://links.org.au/node/1367

Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism

Weekly Worker 794 - Thursday November 19 2009

The latest edition of the Weekly Worker is now available on the CPGB
website at www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/794

In this week's issue:

SWP: THE FIGHT GETS UGLY
What does the SWP majority think democracy looks like? asks James Turley

LETTERS
Misunderstood; Bedroom guardians; Collaborators; Can't miss it;
Catholic jihad; Mock shock; Who's confused?'; One country; No letter;
No to cuts

IS IT THE OIL, STUPID?
Noted US-based academic Cyrus Bina, author of The economics of the oil
crisis, has developed a sophisticated Marxist theory of the oil
crisis, oil rent, and monopoly and competition in the oil industry.
Here he makes a convincing case that the US under George W Bush was
not concerned with obtaining direct control over oilfields.

WORKERS ORGANISE AGAINST REGIME
More than 300 workers in the Abadan oil refinery gathered on Thursday
November 12 to protest against non-payment of wages and bonuses,
saying they had not been paid for more than three months. Yassamine
Mather reports

RIVAL CNWP LAUNCHED
Another month and yet another call for a halfway-house working class
party - this time by the Trotskyist group, Workers Power. Peter Manson
is not impressed

WAITING AND HOPING: LRC
The Labour left is hoping just to maintain its foothold in the party
and in parliament, writes Dave McAllister

NO COALITION WITH �SON OF NO2EU�
Issues of left and right are not so clear-cut when it comes to
Respect. Mike Macnair reports on its annual conference, held in
Birmingham on Saturday November 14

BRING LOFTUS TO ACCOUNT
Dave Isaacson condemns leading SWP members who continually undermine
and sabotage attempts to forge rank and file organisation

NATS AND LEFT TAKE A BEATING
Sarah McDonald assesses the result of the Glasgow North East by-election

LOOKING GOOD
Robbie Rix asks for shows of appreciation

A PDF version of the paper can be downloaded at
www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/794/794web.pdf

By *Raphie de Santos*

Portugal�s Left Bloc has achieved a major breakthrough in the last five
months. It polled nearly 11% and 10% respectively in the recent European
and parliamentary legislative elections in June and September 2009. For
a party that is firmly established outside of left social democracy this
is a major achievement. How did it happen?

Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1359

Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism

http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/


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What's new at Links: US-Colombia, Venezuela, Berlin Wall, queerphobia,
green jobs, Karen Silkwood, S. Africa, Honduras, Ireland, US health

* * *
Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism

Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed
(http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to
consider an article, please send it to links@...

*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links.

* * *


     US-Colombia military deal: Threat of imperialist-backed war on
     Venezuela <http://links.org.au/node/1346>

By Kiraz Janicke
November 9, 2009 -- The possibility of an imperialist-backed war in the
Americas came a step closer on October 30, when Colombia and the United
States finalised a 10-year accord allowing the US to massively expand
its military presence in the Latin American country. The move comes as
the US. seeks to regain its hegemony over Latin America - which has
declined over the past decade in the context of a continent-wide
rebellion against neoliberalism spearheaded by the revolution in
Venezuela, led by President Hugo Chavez.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1346>


     `Freedoms won, freedoms lost' -- left views on the fall of the
     Berlin Wall <http://links.org.au/node/1354>

November 15, 2009 -- For the past few weeks the international capitalist
mass media has been awash with triumphalist hoopla about the so-called
``collapse of Communism'' as it celebrates the 20th anniversary of the
1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Below Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewal posts a number of commenatries from the left that deal
with facts and fictions of those dramatic events, and how the people
most effected are faring today.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1354>


     Capitalism, sexism and queerphobia's social basis
     <http://links.org.au/node/1353>

By Jess Moore
There are social expectations on everyone, men and women, to act in
particular ways based on our sex. This is bad for everyone because it's
stifling, but it's worse for women and queers.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1353>


     Britain: The Lucas Aerospace workers' plan -- A real Green New Deal
     <http://links.org.au/node/1350>

By Hilary Wainwright and Andy Bowman
October 9, 2009 -- Thirty-five years ago, workers at the Lucas Aerospace
company formulated an ``alternative corporate plan'' to convert military
production to socially useful and environmentally desirable purposes. We
consider what lessons it holds for the greening of the world economy today.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1350>


     Convert the ailing car industry to socially necessary production!
     <http://links.org.au/node/1349>

With the economic recession and environmental crisis alternative plans
for socially useful, sustainable production have never been more
relevant argues Lars Henriksson.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1349>


     Karen Silkwood: an inspiration to fighters for environmental justice
     and workers' rights <http://links.org.au/node/1348>

By Sharyn Jenkins
Thirty-five years ago, on November 13, 1974, US anti-nuclear activist
and trade unionist Karen Silkwood was killed in a car crash many suspect
was deliberately caused. Karen Silkwood will be remembered as someone
who fought an uphill and often unpopular battle against the ruthless
nuclear industry. She is an inspiration to all who believe in
environmental justice and workers' rights.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1348>


     What is 'left' about 'the left' in South Africa?
     <http://links.org.au/node/1347>

By Dale T. McKinley
November 5, 2009 -- For several years now, but particularly since the
ascendancy of Jacob Zuma and his South African Communist Party (SACP)
and Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU) allies within both
the African National Congress (ANC) and the state, ``the left'' in South
Africa has come to be almost completely associated with (and presented
as) the SACP, COSATU and, to a lesser extent, the ANC itself. Even
though this state of affairs ignores a wide range of organisations and
people that can stake a serious claim to being part of ``the left'', the
fact is that contemporary politics in South Africa are dominated, in one
way or another, by these three alliance partners. As such, it is a good
time to pose a critically important question: What is ``left'' about
``the left'' in South Africa?

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1347>


     Honduras: Why the resistance will boycott the November 29 election;
     Zelaya on accord <http://links.org.au/node/1345>

November 10, 2009 -- Ricardo Salgado, an Honduran analyst of the
``crisis'' in Honduras, explains to Australian community radio's Warwick
Fry the latest developments in Honduras and the postion of the
resistance movement. In spite of pressure on the coup regime to
recognise the legitimacy of Zelaya as president ten days ago, Zelaya is
still trapped inside the Brazilian embassy. The ``agreement'' (designed
more to save face for the US and the coup regime rather than the
restoration of a democratic solution) has failed. The coup regime has
failed to meet the one-week deadline to restore Zelaya to his post as
president in a reasonable amount of time to allow a ``clean'' election
process.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1345>


     Ireland: (slideshow) Political murals of West Belfast
     <http://links.org.au/node/1344>

By Lauren Carrol Harris
November 9, 2009 -- Belfast -- Though Northern Ireland has slipped from
the nightly news, "the troubles", including ongoing deep sectarian
divisions and low-level violence, are a daily reality for Irish
republicans. Just one reminder of the struggle for a united Ireland, and
example of the Irish people's creative resistance, is the multitude of
political murals that smother the walls of West Belfast, a republican
stronghold. Many commemorate the activists and civilians whose lives
were taken in the struggle. But the murals don't just discuss Irish
politics -- on these walls are messages of international solidarity for
other peoples' movements for change and self-determination. Here are
just a few.

View at http://links.org.au/node/1344


     United States: Where's the socialism? The good, the bad and the ugly
     of health-care reform <http://links.org.au/node/1343>

By Billy Wharton
November 9, 2009 -- Where is the socialism now? Frenetic right-wingers
spent a good part of the US summer shouting about the "government
takeover of health care" or the "stealth socialist health-care plan".
Now that the Affordable Healthcare for America Act has been passed by a
slim margin in the US House of Representatives, on November 8, there are
few traces of anything even resembling socialism. Instead, Americans
will find the good, the bad and the ugly of health-care reform all
contained within the 1990-page bill.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1343>


     Michael Lebowitz on Venezuela: `Socialism requires a new state from
     below' <http://links.org.au/node/1341>

Michael Lebowitz interviewed by Jos� Sant Roz
<http://www.aporrea.org/tiburon/a89208.html>, translated by Kiraz Janicke

November 5, 2009 -- On the question of the Bolivarian revolution in
Venezuela, Michael Lebowitz is one of the thinkers who has penetrated
deepest into our process. He plunges his scrutinising gaze into its most
diverse and conflicting issues, in order to calmly and forcefully reveal
its truth with knifelike clarity. He talks like a peasant or a worker
who dips into the reality that they experience, that they suffer and feel.

     * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/1341>

* * *
Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing
socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

Follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism


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 PROTEST AGAINST

THE INDIAN STATE’S DECLARATION OF WAR ON ITS POOREST!

 

SOLIDARITY WITH THE OPPRESSED TRIBALS FIGHTING AGAINST INTERNATIONAL MINING
COMPANIES

 

 Speaker : G N Saibaba, General Secretary, Revolutionary Democratic Front,
India

               
Friday 27th November 7pm, Marchmont Community Hall

            62 Marchmont Street London. WC1N 1AB, Russell Square tube
Station

 



 

Organised by:

 

CO-ORDINATION COMMITTEE OF REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNISTS OF BRITAIN

(c/o BM Box 2978, London WC1N 3XX)

 

Supported by:

George Jackson Socialist
League                         
         Britain-South Asia Solidarity Forum

World People’s Resistance Movement-Britain                  
Indian Workers Association (GB)

Second Wave
Publications                                  \
                     Democracy & Class Struggle

 

 



Maoist revolutionaries marching in tribal Chattisgarh, India







Click to Join Yahoo Group Maoist Revolution

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MAOIST_REVOLUTION/
 

Click to join MAOIST_REVOLUTION
 
THE WORLD IS WATCHING MAOIST REVOLUTION WEB SITE - CLICK THE MAP !!
 
 




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

November 15, 2009 -- For the past few weeks the international capitalist
mass media has been awash with triumphalist hoopla about the so-called
``collapse of Communism'' as it celebrates the 20th anniversary of the
1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Below /Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewal/ posts a number of commenatries from the left that
deal with facts and fictions of those dramatic events, and how the
people most effected are faring today.

More at http://links.org.au/node/1354

Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism

http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/2009/11/to-hold-our-class-together-opening-up.\
html

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Weekly Worker 793 - Thursday November 12 2009

The latest edition of the Weekly Worker is now available on the CPGB
website at www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/793

In this week's issue:

IRANIAN WORKERS GAIN NEW COURAGE
Iranian demonstrations have given a real boost to working class
opponents of the regime, writes Yassamine Mather

LETTERS
Monotonic; Confused CS; Got it in one; Political road

WE WON'T PAY FOR THEIR CRISIS
Anne Mc Shane reports on a meeting that could be a spark

CONFIDENT AND BOASTING OF GROWTH
The Socialist Party in England and Wales held its annual school,
Socialism 2009, on November 7-8. Tina Becker reports on the opening
rally

MARXIST PARTY OR LABOUR PARTY MARK TWO?
SPEW's Socialism event had a session on young people. Laurie McCauley
reports and asks what politics the working class needs

NATIONALIST COMMON SENSE
Nick Rogers attended the No2EU session at SPEW�s Socialism event

SOVIET 'PLANNING' AND BOLT-ON DEMOCRACY
SPEW�s Socialism event had a session on Stalinism�s collapse. Mark
Fischer points out what it represents for Marxists

TOWARDS AN ELECTION COALITION
November 7 saw the latest in what now seems to be an annual conference
on working class political representation, organised by the RMT union.
Peter

Manson reports

THE WORKING CLASS INTELLECTUAL AND THE APPARAT
James Turley offers an appreciation of the life of Chris Harman, 1942-2009

GET THE TROOPS OUT NOW
Eddie Ford examines why UK politics now questions troops being in Afghanistan

REGIME'S MOST PERSISTENT OPPOSITION
Ali Pichgah is a veteran of the Iranian oil strikes of 1979-81, when
he was a representative of the Tehran refinery workers shora (council)
on the

National Shora of Oil Workers. He spoke to Yassamine Mather about the
current situation in Iran

MILITANTS CONDEMN SELL-OUT
Abandoning postal strikes in the run-up to Christmas is at best
mistaken, writes Jim Moody

GO FOR IT
Robbie Rix was a bit surprised not to receive more cash

A PDF version of the paper can be downloaded at
www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/793/793web.pdf

�
The Jharkhand Andolan Samanway Manch (JASM) was formed on 13th March, 2009
in a meeting, which I had the privilege to convene. It was attended by three
CPI (ML) groups - CPI (ML) PCC, CPI (ML) - ND and CPI (ML) - SOC and three
Jharkhandi parties, the Jharkhand Party (Aditya), the Jharkhand Janamukti
Morcha (led by veteran Jharkhand leader Manoranjan Mahato) and Jharkhand
Kranti Dal. The People's Committee against police Atrocities (PCPA) led by
Chhatradhar Mahato was also invited to the meeting but they did not attend
it.� All constituents of JASM were participants in the Lalgarh movement
against police atrocities. The JASM considered the movement as an expression
of people's long standing aspiration for self-rule and decided to launch a
movement with the demand of "Autonomy for Paschimanchal" under Art 244 A of
the Indian Constitution. The demands raised by JASM are :
�
1.������� Form Panchimanchal Autonomous Region under Art 244 A of the
constitution with 54 blocks under Paschim Medinipur, Bankura and Purulia.
�
Proper administrative and financial power vested in the hands of the
Autonomous council. The council will be elected on the basis of territorial
constituencies with proportional representation for SC, ST, OBC and
minorities.
�
The members of the council will be electable, responsible and revocable by
the electorate on the basis of universal suffrage. Panchayets are to be
given more statutory power in the matter of land, forest and water.
�
2.������� The communities like Kudmi Mahatos and Bagals be included in the
Scheduled Tribe List.
�
3.������� Forest - management is to be handed over to the forest-dwellers
committees (At present they are under the bureaucrats of the forest
department. The Joint Forest Management [JFM] exists only in name). Forest
revenue should go to the forest-dwellers.
�
4.������� The whole population in Paschimanchal (except a few government
servants school-teachers and traders) should be treated as poor and given
cereals at Rs.3/- per Kg., universal health care and universal education.
�
5.������� Water-harvesting programmes to be taken up on a large scale to
ensure irrigation.
�
6.������� Santhali, Mundari and Kudmali are to be introduced as medium of
instruction at primary level and teachers employed from these communities.
�
7.������� One Ekalavya school (free residential schools) to be set up in
each block and its doors to be opened to SC, ST and OBCs.
�
8.������� Polluting industries like Sponge Iron factories to be closed
down.
�
Immediate demands:
�
1.������� Stop state repression and release people arrested in connection
with mass movements.
�
2.������� Remove police camps from schools.
�
3.������� Allow the Panchayats to function and exercise supervision of
Gram-Sangsad over the functioning of Panchayats.
�
4.������� The government starts a bilateral and multilateral dialogue
involving the various political parties including the Maoists, mass
organizations, social organizations and the Panchayets. In order to create a
conducive atmosphere for dialogue the state stops "operation green hunt" and
the Maoists stop killing.

The above demands have been formulated in the specific situation of Lalgarh
and adjoining areas where unlike Jharkhand, Chhatishgarh and orissa land
acquisitions have not taken place.
�
Santosh Rana
One of the conveners of JASM

Lal Salam (Red Salute)

P (India)


www.geocities.com/marxistfront
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"When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I
asked why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist."
--Dom Helder Camara

*****


       The INTERNET now has a personality. YOURS! See your Yahoo! Homepage.
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

By *Dale T. McKinley*

November 5, 2009 -- For several years now, but particularly since the
ascendancy of Jacob Zuma and his South African Communist Party (SACP)
and Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU) allies within both
the African National Congress (ANC) and the state, ``the left'' in South
Africa has come to be almost completely associated with (and presented
as) the SACP, COSATU and, to a lesser extent, the ANC itself. Even
though this state of affairs ignores a wide range of organisations and
people that can stake a serious claim to being part of ``the left'', the
fact is that contemporary politics in South Africa are dominated, in one
way or another, by these three alliance partners. As such, it is a good
time to pose a critically important question: What is ``left'' about
``the left'' in South Africa?

Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1347

Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism

Plenty of interesting stories at MarxistUpdate this week.

   a.. November is Dialectical Materialism Month
   b.. The fall of the Berlin Wall: 20 years later Writte...
   c.. First as tragedy, then as tragedy
   d.. The 21st century "scramble for Africa"
   e.. Wall Street's permanent war economy explained
   f.. 1989-2009: Who won the Cold War?
   g.. 1989-2009: the end of "the end of history"
   h.. Health care bills: healthy for whom?
   i.. Founding the CIO: labor's giant step
   j.. Booklet highlights resistance by Palestinians
   k.. Saving Hegel from the Academy
   l.. Large disciplined countermobilizations against ult...
   m.. Fort Hood: "this shooting does not come as a shock...
   n.. Outbreak of the Second World War: 70 years ago
   o.. Chris Harmon's "A People's History of the World" r...
   p.. New York Times fears jobless recovery, but Marxist...
   q.. From the Cleveland "Capital" Study Group: Global N...
   r.. Chris Harman, Presente!
   s.. JUMP You Fxxkers!


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