Class Struggle 91 September/October 2010

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Class Struggle 91
October 20: Smash the NACT attack
Defend Union Rights!
Defend workers: jobs, wages and
conditions!
Defend the dole: access to
unemployment benefit!
The strategy of the union officials (leaders) has not
been to defeat this law, only to complain about it.
Existing union members who have collective
agreements can be protected against the 90day Act
when negotiations for the new collective agreement
come up to get agreements that bind employers to not
use the 90day clause, the sick leave provision, and that
allow union access. Unions officials have had their
power to force employers to the bargaining table on
these items weakened by employment contracts act
and the employment relations act is little better.
“Good faith” is a fluffy set of handcuffs that bind
unions into endless negotiations when employers do not
budge in negotiations. The ERA already binds union
rights to stop strikes by making them illegal, and it bans
political strikes – exactly what would be needed to stop
the 90day law.
…the next step
Blacklist employers who use 90day Act!
Protect all workers, employed,
unemployed and beneficiaries!
Picket WINZ offices if anyone sacked
under the 90day, until they grant
benefit!
No WINZ penalties for un(der)employed
workers who refuse jobs without
protection from 90 day Act!
Picket capitalists who use 90day Act
until they stop!
Smash the 90day Act!
Join Solidarity! (website and fb page)
Protect the most vulnerable
Benefits are so low that unemployed are forced to take
any work in order to survive – lowering wages and
conditions at the workplace. Unless unemployed are
protected by employed workers, they are vulnerable to
undermining wages and conditions and being brought in
as scabs. An injury to one is an injury to all. Marx
described unemployed workers as capitalism’s “reserve
army of labour”; meaning capitalists will use the
unemployed to fill any gaps in workforce as they want.
The way for organised workers to protect against this is
to unite employed and unemployed in the same
union(s).
September/October 2010
This is also sensible since any employed workers can
become unemployed at the whim of restructure or a
new employer using the 90 day law. For full union
membership rights to unemployed workers: currently
only the Unite union has specific unemployed workers
rights to be in the union. Even this has been under
threat. We are active in Unite union to protect
unemployed workers as in the constitution and to
maintain the participation of unemployed workers in
Unite – against attempts by the leaders of the “Unite
workers union” branch who moved to take unemployed
workers out of the Unite constitution.
If workers are sacked or made redundant for any
reason, they should have continued rights to full union
membership of their union –at 0 or nominal dues.
Unemployed workers need protection in the
constitutions of all the unions: Maori, pacific, gay,
women, youth and migrant workers should all have
rights within the unions which empower participation at
all levels of the union decision making, unemployed
workers need similar rights. For rights as full members
to access resources and participate, including the right
to meet separately (caucus) and to raise agenda items
& amendments.
For union dues to be scaled based on income: earn
more and pay more; earn less and pay less from for
example no dues below a wage of $10,000 pa
graduating up to $40 a week plus for incomes over
$100,000 pa. For the CTU Council of Trade Union
redistribution of union’s income from the “rich” unions
to the “poor” based on the average wages of the
union’s membership for numbers of members; in order
to fund organisers of unemployed workers.
Behind this governments offensive
This is an attack by the National-Act-Maori government
on the working class. They have attacked the whole
working class with the introduction of GST reducing the
buying power of our wages and given tax cuts for the
rich. They are attacking the quality of education at all
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Class Struggle 91
levels. They have health services focussed on waiting
times not on quality care, while cutting costs. They are
beneficiary bashing and kneecapping unions’ power,
with this 90day law. We need the whole working class
to unite the fights that are occurring in many areas into
one class struggle against the capitalist class. These
many attacks on the working class need a class wide
response – using pickets, strikes and occupations to stop
profits & build class solidarity that meets the needs of
workers.
Lessons of the Fight against the Employment
Contracts Act
The ECA passed in 1991 severely weakened the unions.
They lost ½ the membership from 600,000 union
members it dropped to 300,000 and total number of
employed has increased. Union leaders sold out the
fight against the Act. In 1991 Ken Douglas (then CTU
president) justified their sellout, saying unions will still
be here to negotiate. Peter Harris for the CTU (1996)
justified their mis-leadership again, and presented this
to the 1997 CTU conference. That CTU balance sheet
has been put online at
http://workerspartynz.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/ct
u.pdf .
Unions have been pinned down under the capitalists’
labour law: there is tight control of the union officials.
The main lesson to take from the fight against the ECA
was that it takes the fight of ordinary union members
to put up a real fight, and force unions leaders to show
their true colours either to do what the workers need
or to openly sell out the workers interests. Ordinary
union members put working class solidarity into the
unions.
Link to Workers Power “Smash the Act” pamphlet in our
archive. Compare this to Stalinist left Don Franks
http://workerspartynz.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/so
me-relections-on-the-eca-introduction.doc
http://libcom.org/files/The%20Myth%20of%20Passivity1
.pdf - anarchist review of 1991 ECA fight (published
2004) and Maori (Tino Rangatiratanga) and benefit cuts
fights.
CTU (Council of Trade Unions or Collaborators
Taming Unions?)
The union leadership is in “partnership” with the
bosses, this is class collaboration. They also are taming
the membership by dragging us into the same rotten
partnership. Tamed unions are the life support for the
Labour Party and so long as this collaborating
leadership runs the unions, workers will be sent to vote
for a worker friendlier parliament, which will not meet
our needs.
Failed union leaders who do not fight for the needs of
workers, back the Labour Party, and argue for working
people to support it as a “lesser evil” than the others.
Labour governments have continued to betray the
needs of the working class. The CTU leadership is as
rotten as the Labour Party leadership that they
continue to support. Rotten since they both are
September/October 2010
parasites on the working class, giving as little to
workers as they are forced to, while keeping their real
role for the bosses – as the brakes on working class
struggle.
Replace union officials that collaborate with the
bosses. Union resources should be accountable to the
membership. Fighting democratic unions must be based
on maximum independence from the ruling class and its
government.
Working class solidarity
We support Solidarity/Organise as a network of union
members who take action to stop the employers who
use the 90day Act. Forced labour is what beneficiaries
will be if this government cuts benefits of those who
refuse ‘90day’ jobs. We call for PSA members (WINZ
workers) to not force beneficiaries into jobs with 90
days of no rights and to grant benefits for anyone
sacked under a 90 day rule: without stand-down and
back dated to day of sacking. Take action based on the
workers who can stop the flow of profits for the
capitalist class.
• For unemployed workers protection in
solidarity with employed workers!
• Form worker activist networks as a left
wing within the unions!
• Turn lockouts into strikes, and strikes
into occupations of worksites, and set up
workers control of each worksite,
through elected (and recallable)
worksite leaders!
• For Workers Councils: local councils of
workers to run the towns and cities,
made up of representatives elected (and
recallable) by the local worksites. For
workers defence committees. For rank
and file committees in the armed forces.
Under capitalism the bosses’ labour law is a
tool in their attack on workers – to make
workers pay for capitalists falling profits. Only
the complete replacement of capitalism
through a socialist revolution can meet the
needs of workers.
• For an indefinite General strike to
defeat the bourgeois regime and win
workers power.
• For a Workers Government to plan a
socialist economy. (Only by the above
three demands being met can a real
workers government be formed – ie. not
through a vote every 3 yrs).
• For a Socialist Federation of the Pacific!
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Class Struggle 91
Actors stand up to union bashing
The Hobbit ‘blue’ shows us how the global crisis is
impacting on NZ in such as way as to reveal its semi-
colonial subservience to Australian, US and Chinese
imperialism. As the NZ
bosses bend over forwards
to attract investment in NZ
they are forcing down costs
especially wage costs. That
is why the NACTs are hell
bent to destroy the power
of the unions to fight this
‘race to the bottom’. The
NACTs are shit scared that
the 20,000 who rallied
against their new 90 day
fire at will Bill will be seen
as ‘labour instability’ and a
turnoff by foreign investment. This is why the NZ
Actors Equity has been turned into a whipping child
to discredit and bash the unions and ram through a
model law to outlaw collective action.
CTU head Helen Kelly stood up to the union bashing
of Peter Jackson and the NACTs desperate to
mobilise the mindless mass pulverised by the MSM
purveyors of lies. When 20,000 workers rallied
against the latest round of NACT attacks (90 fire at
will, on sick leave, on union access) designed to
smash union power in the workplace, Actors Equity
was made into a scapegoat by the billionaire film
maker Jackson and his backers Warner Bros., for
asking for a basic industrial agreement. This has the
effect of further polarising the country between a
growing section of the working class that this
standing up to the NACTs attempts to screw
maximum profits out of NZ workers, and that lumpen
section that sees the unions as the cause of all its ills
and identifies not with organised labour but with the
petty bourgeois middle
class social climbers.
The former is the unionised
base that is recovering
from 30 years of attacks
and declining membership
and reviving as the militant
layer that is resisting
NACTs cuts in jobs, wages
and social spending. This
includes the teachers,
doctors, radiographers, students, etc all engaged in
or preparing for protest or industrial action. But the
really scary spectre of Karl Marx giving the bankers
nightmares are the big battalions of low paid workers
in SFWU, UNITE, NDU and AWU who organise low paid
service workers and are heavily youthful, female and
Maori and Pasifica in membership. The 20,000 who
rallied against the NACTs attacks on October 20 were
overwhelmingly made up of low paid, casualised,
September/October 2010
impoverished workers who have not experienced big
defeats and who are prepared to fight.
The second anti-union
group is made up of the
small bosses and their
professional hangers’ on in
the law, management,
media and advertising,
whose incomes depend on
trickle down profits from
international capital making
mega profits from NZ.
But the biggest section is
made up of the lumpen or
backward layers of the
working class who have
been de-unionised since the onset of Rogernomics
and the 1991 ECA, combined with the big majority
that have never been unionised in every sector of
the economy. Many of these are the owner-operators
or self-employed such as the contractors in the film
industry and in all those related industries which
benefit from film making in NZ, especially
construction and tourism.
Two years into its term the NACTs are running out of
ideas. It has rushed through legislation under urgency
to pay off its backers but now the ACT party has
imploded in scandal and fraud. The Maori Party has
nothing to show for its existence. Hone Harawira is
breaking ranks over the neo-colonial blanket thrown
over the F&S. The bankers club has lost direct
control over Auckland and will try to retain it by
controlling the CCOs. The Labour Party takes a slight
left deviation back to Keynes. Then 20,000 workers
say NO to the 90 day fire at will. Hobbiton blows up
and Key promises the
Hollywood money moguls to
keep the unions out of their
industry.
The class divide becomes
more polarised week by week
proving that the class war will
intensify and become full-on
in the next year leading up to
the election in 2011. The
right has the advantage of
concentrated power and organisation. If the left is to
win it has to organise the mass majority from the
ground up based on the renewed vitality and power
of the unions. Workers need to rebuild the unions as
fighting, democratic organisations capable of
throwing out the treacherous collaborationist union
leaders, and building workers councils and defence
committees as a power base to launch a general
strike to defeat the NACT regime and open the road
to a Workers and working Farmers Government.
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Class Struggle 91
Brief Stuff
October 15 news
Tena koutou, we send out irregular updates on the
campaign to support the people arrested in the state
terror raids in Aotearoa (New Zealand) on 15th October
2007.
Although charges under the Terrorism Suppression
Act were never laid, 18 people are still facing charges
under the Arms Act and 5 are charged with being
members of an organised criminal group. At the
moment, the starting date for the trial is May 2011
(subject to change). DROP THE CHARGES! October 15
marks the third anniversary of the State Terror raids.
We wish you a cop- and terror-free day. The struggle
continues... The www.October15thSolidarity.info website is
regularly updated.
Socialise Drugs
Simon Prast actor, and one of the losing candidates for
Mayor of the new Auckland Supercity, called for the
legalisation of methamphetamine (P). Prohibition
causes crime and death and destruction. The legal drug
alcohol kills thousands every year. The criminalisation
of much less harmful drugs such as cannabis and P leads
to numerous violent confrontations with addicts and
innocent bystanders as well as cop deaths. Recently an
addict died in an Auckland chemist shop after a tussle
with the owner. Legalisation removes the causes of
gang crime and the risk of unnecessary deaths.
“The primary goal of the international drug control
regime, as set forth in the preamble of the Single
Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961), is the “health and
welfare of mankind”, but the current approach to
controlling drug use and possession works against that
aim. Widespread implementation of interventions that
reduce harms associated with drug use — harm-
reduction initiatives — and of decriminalization of
certain laws governing drug control would improve the
health and welfare of people who use drugs and the
general population demonstrably”. UN rapporteur on
Right to Health. http://www.humanrightsanddrugs.org/?p=1217
In California use of cannabis will be legalised if a vote
in November succeeds. Individual production in small
gardens 25 feet square will also become decriminalised.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/25/health/main6331419.s
html
This would be a move towards the state regulating and
taxing production of recreational drugs and using the
money to rehabilitate the social harm caused by
addiction. It also removes the pretext that the
capitalist class needs to criminalise a large section of
the working class allowing the police to ride roughshod
over basic individual freedoms. The legalising of hard
drugs would remove the main pretext to arm the cops.
Arming the cops
The reason that the NACTs are calling for the arming of
the cops, cheered on by the Police Association, is that a
September/October 2010
number of cops have been killed while engaged in the
surveillance or arrest of minor drug dealers or gang
members. Yet if cannabis was legal there would be no
gangs, there would be no violent crime to pay for drug
habits, or call to arm the police.
Minister ‘Crusher’ Collins (she wants boy racers cars to
be confiscated and crushed) says that police chases of
young people who don’t stop is OK even though there
have been 16 deaths in the last 5 years. If you speed
you will die is OK. Why not carry bazookas in police cars
to take them out before they can endanger innocent
third parties? Most kids who joy ride are boozed up and
risking death. Youth need booze to blot out the lies and
greed and power of the bankers and their stooges who
dominate this right-wing Government. Where is the
penalty for the booze merchants? No penalty but
plaudits, knighthoods and top jobs like that of the new
CEO of the Auckland super city, who goes from top
booze pusher to top bureaucrat tasked to implement
Rodney Hides plan to hijack and privatise the $28
billion of Auckland public assets.
So not only is Crusher Collins unconcerned about the
number of kids dying in police chases, she favours
firearms in locked containers in all police cars. The
Police Association want all police carrying pistols in
holsters. After the introduction of Tasers last year as
the alternative to firearms, the ‘lock em up and throw
away the key’ rednecks have got a government that
drives up the crime rate and creates prisons not jobs. It
needs a crime wave and a rabid armed police response
to divert attention away from its attacks on workers to
force them to pay for their bosses’ crisis.
http://tumeke.blogspot.com/2010/10/national-to-arm-police-now-
garrett-has.html
ACC sexual abusers outed!
David Rankin, former ACC manager, has revealed what
everyone knew, that the NACT government was refusing
sexual abuse victims counselling to save money. Result
untold suffering and at least two suicides. To do this
they had to change the rules and make sexual abuse a
mental illness to qualify for ACC funding.
Now it turns out that they used the research of
Auckland University professor Felicity Goodyear-Smith
notorious for publicly calling sexual abuse counselling a
‘scam’. Goodyear-Smith is the daughter-in-law of Bert
Potter the Centrepoint guru jailed as a paedophile.
Rankin knew her attitude to sexual abuse but didn’t
think that this was relevant as she was a scientist! So
Goodyear-Smith devised the test to assess sexual abuse
as to whether it was ‘mental injury’ or not, which was
then used to replace the ‘Massey University guidelines’.
Mental health is already hugely underfunded, so it is to
the credit of all those who responded in horror to this
ACC cost cutting and the price paid by those denied
treatment, that the ACC Minister Nick Smith has been
forced to reverse the ACC policy and re-instate at least
some minimal counselling for sexual abuse victims.
http://tumeke.blogspot.com/2010/09/denying-rape-victims-
counseling-all.html
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Class Struggle 91
Capitalists take F&S; with Maori Party consent.
The Maori party have failed to repeal the foreshore and seabed law – they have only re-named it.
Parliament is a blind alley for Maori resistance to colonisation by capitalism. The ‘Marine and Coastal
Area (Takutai Moana) Bill’ is nothing but theft of the foreshore and seabed by another name. Under this
new law the governments ‘ownership’ is not named as ownership but ‘the right to govern’. This is just
as good as ownership for the capitalist class, since it includes all the ownership rights that the ‘crown’
usually gives itself when they steal something.
The government can keep selling mining rights and
selling fishing quotas and fish farming zones. All these
capitalist practices carry on with no reference to the
local Maori. The government continues to sell off oil
and mineral exploration licences to multi-national
capitalists. Petrobras just gained a five year
exploratory license for oil and gas in the Raukumara
Basin by the NZ Govt. The license starts from just 4 kms
offshore and goes out to 110 km (and covers 12,330 sq
km). Petrobras has a rotten record with oil spills - and
oil rig explosions with workers deaths.
Customary Land Rights
Oh yes there is a pressure relief valve for Maori
struggles to be channelled back into court processes to
claim ‘customary rights’. All the burden of proof will
be on Maori. What a set up! At great legal expense,
time and energy; some Maori may be able to regain
some minimal level of ‘customary’ rights.
(http://thestandard.org.nz/on-the-foreshore/).This is
based on the Australian precedent that requires tribes
to prove uninterrupted occupation of the land in
question. Of course this is an impossible test for most
tribes who had their
land confiscated or
were forced to sell
it.
Meanwhile private
owners who have
inherited or bought
what was once Maori
land don’t have to
prove anything. The
capitalist state
protects private
property, their rights
to own bits of the
foreshore are
guaranteed.
Only one Maori Party MP, Hone Harawira, has stood up
to reject this law. It was much more than the lack of a
court option for Maori (under the Labour Party’s
‘Foreshore and Seabed Act’), which provoked the Hikoi
on Parliament. The kaupapa was for Maori control, and
against government theft!
The Labour Government used the Foreshore & Seabed
law to block a Nelson Iwi from starting its own
capitalist development; a mussel farm (in their
traditional area). Even with customary rights Maori
could be excluded from developing fish farming.
September/October 2010
The formation of the Maori Party (to defend Maori
rights to Foreshore & Seabed) brought Maori with both
capitalist and working class orientation. An ‘across
class’ party; has capitalist interest in ownership for
profits and capitalist development plans, as well as
working class Maori support.
Maori Party serves Tribal capitalists
Radical Lawyer, Annette Sykes condemns the Maori
Party for being the mouthpiece of the ‘Iwi Leadership
Group’ which is a euphemism for the tribal leaders who
use treaty settlements to boost an emerging class of
Maori capitalists at the expense of Maori workers. This
is clearly seen in the policies that the Maori Party has
supported in its
deal with the
National Party and
Act Party. They
have kept a right
wing government
in power that is
attacking Maori
workers jobs,
living standards,
housing, health
and education,
and building more
jails, in exchange
for a deal to get
the right to Iwi
exploit the
resources of the
F&S to boost Tribal capitalism.
The majority of Maori are working class who have to
work to survive, while the tribal elites have capitalist
plans for treaty settlement moneys. Working class Maori
have an interest in fighting for the return of the F&S as
the common property of Maori as the guardians of the
land for the whole working class. Non-Maori workers
have in interest in nationalising all private property
(not communal land) leasing back land to small
farmers, but expropriating the large holdings of
capitalists as the basis of agricultural communes.
Organise to occupy stolen foreshore!
Occupy stolen lands!
Occupy fish farms, drilling rigs and ships!
Organise to unite with the workers on these
developments to control production and demand
safety improvements!
For a Socialist Aotearoa!
For a Socialist Federation of the Pacific!
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Class Struggle 91 September/October 2010

Capitalist Crisis Shakes Christchurch

In the ‘shock’ (media drama) of post earthquake Christchurch, the capitalist class did not pause in their
attack on the working class. They abolished Environment Canterbury to get water rights for dairy
farmers. They paid out $1-7 billion to the rich predators who flocked to South Canterbury Finance to be
in on the kill. Now the government has ‘Nationalised’ the Christchurch earthquake. The NACT
government passed, with the support of ‘opposition’ parties, a law that gives Gerry Brownlee
dictatorial powers in Christchurch. This is a dangerous law, it has even been criticised by the Law
Society. They say it gives too much power to one person, without checks and balances of the usual legal
and parliamentary reviews. In fact they called it a ‘Henry the 8th Law’.

What government has been able to do, in midst of the Tsunami and in New Orleans after cyclone Katrina. In
media hype of the earthquake, is push through the Sri Lanka a ‘task force to rebuild the nation’ had
‘Canterbury Earthquake Restoration Law’. While the unbridled powers. Aid money (and World Bank and IMF
title is sensible sounding, its bullshit - the reality is the money) went into superhighways, deep water fishing
threats are in the detail. This law gives deputy PM ports (for international trawlers) and privatising
Gerry Brownlee unlimited beachfront lands for tourist resorts,
powers, with no rights of appeal. while fishing villages were
Capitalism (through Brownlee) relocated inland 3kms.
has armed itself with powers to
override any laws they want The capitalist class use the ‘shock’
(such as the Resource of a disaster to attack working
Management Act, industrial law, people when we are more
or giving building contracts and vulnerable and less organised and
council lands to National party able to fightback. The workers
supporters). This includes the big suffer post-traumatic shock and
bosses that back the NACT take some time to see what is
government like Fletcher happening to them. Klein says this
Challenge that won the contract is standard practice for the neo-
to oversee the rebuilding of all liberal bosses, but it’s obvious that
damaged dwellings. They will the onset of the global crisis in 2007
authorise all tradespeople has motivated the bosses to move
wanting to work on this even more quickly and ruthlessly.
rebuilding project. The big
truckers are notorious backers of Capitalism’s crisis of falling profits
NACT. So Brownlee has allowed is so profound that they want to buy
super-sized trucks on road – never and take profits from council
mind the roads and bridges services such as water/wastewater.
weren’t built for them. They support privatising council services and
construction for ownership and profits to private
Brownlee can keep the army in Christchurch for as long capitalists. Developers take a fancy to levelled sections
as he wants to keep the working class locked out, while for rebuilding more intensive / high profit,
the Brownlee Tsunami will level the real estate. He has redevelopments. The Canterbury earthquake provided a
allowed demolition of ‘heritage’ status buildings – perfect excuse for the capitalist class to rush through
leaving a blank page for the maximum profit a building the Brownlee law and attack the working class under
developer can squeeze from the land. the guise of a civil defence emergency.

When homeowners asked if the Government would bail
out those who didn’t have insurance Prime Minister Key
said that would be moral hazard. Nobody would insure
their homes if they were guaranteed a payout. He was
so class fixated he didn’t see the obvious irony that he
had just bailed out investors in the bankrupt SCF
company to the tune of $1.7 billion! When there was a
human earthquake of enraged citizens, Key changed his
mind and said he would look at compensation.
The response of the NACT government to the
earthquake is like what Naomi Klein described in her
book The Shock Doctrine: The rise of disaster
capitalism. Parallels with Christchurch are seen in her
pages about Sri Lanka after the boxing day (2004)
For a Workers Council of Otautahi/Christchurch
to control of the rebuilding.
No privatisation or contracting out of council
services.
No PPPs (public private partnerships).
For workers control of consents to rebuild.
No rezoning of land use or intensity.
Occupy against evictions.
Occupy council property threatened with
privatisation.
Unions bans on reconstruction without local
workers consents.
7
Class Struggle 91 September/October 2010

Education ‘Reforms’ pave way for privatisation

Part Two: Secondary Teachers’ Struggles
What is the crisis in education? It’s the crisis that the bosses don’t want to pay with their taxes
that are a drain on their profits, because they don’t need universal, compulsory, state funded
education to produce enough workers, when it is cheaper to resort to funding cuts, user pays,
performance pay for teachers, and to get the private sector to run schools. The trend towards
privatisation began with Labour’s Tomorrow’s Schools in the 1980’s and National’s bulk funding
during the 1990’s. It has been given new life by the current National/Act Government which wants
to introduce performance pay for teachers and to turn our schools into Public Private Partnerships.
In the last issue we looked at cuts in publicly funded early
childhood and adult education, and at how National
Standards at primary schools could lead to league tables
and increasing inequality between schools. We wrote about
the struggle of the New Zealand Educational Institute, Te
Riu Roa, (NZEI) the primary and early childhood teachers’
and support staff’s union, to stop National Standards.

This time it is the secondary teachers in the Post Primary

Teachers Association (PPTA) who are on the front lines of
defending public education; demanding decent pay for
teachers, and safe quality learning and teaching conditions.

With the appointment of Rodney Hide from the Act Party as

Associate Minister of Education the need for a fight back to
save public education is stronger than ever. In the long
run, this can only be achieved by abolishing the capitalist
system altogether. Capitalism will always try to exploit
human creativity to maximise private profits rather than
meeting social needs, especially so in times of crisis such as
today. Education is no exception.
Secondary Teachers Strike for Public Education
After months of unsuccessful struggle for improved wages and
conditions, 95% of the members of the Post Primary Teachers’
Association (PPTA), the secondary teachers’ union, voted in
favour of a strike. On 15th September, PPTA teachers went on
a one day strike for a 4% salary increase, reduced class sizes,
a safe school environment, better teacher recruitment and
retention, and an end to claw backs from the Ministry of
Education.
Teachers rallied in centres across the country. 1,000 teachers
in Wellington marched to Parliament, and 2,500 teachers in
Auckland rallied in Albert Part then marched down to Queen
St., grinding it to a halt on their way to Queen Elizabeth
Square. The one-day strike was the first in eight years for the
Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) and it affected
about 280,000 students from more than 450 secondary and
intermediate schools.
The PPTA asked Boards of Trustees to donate their missed
day’s pay to the Canterbury Earthquake The government is
offering teachers only a 1.5% salary increase. PPTA President
Kate Gainsford said that remuneration alone would not solve
the pressure put on teachers by growing classes and a bigger
workload under the NCEA system. Teachers, who are
required to redesign new standards, have described their
current workload as “insane”.( Teachers reject pay offer;
vote to strike, Isaac Davison ,New Zealand Herald 14/9/10)
New Zealand teachers are among the lowest paid in the
OECD, yet John Key is “disappointed” that they are not
prepared to accept the “real word” of public sector low pay
and cuts in order to help pay for the capitalist crisis and fund
its privatisation agenda. This includes an education staffing
budget cut of $95 million over four years in the 2009 budget,
at the same time as increasing spending on private schools by
$36 million.
http://www.nzei.org.nz/site/nzeite/files/misc%20documents
/Facts%20about%20NZ%20and%20education.pdf
The PPTA points out on its website http://www.ppta.org.nz
that teachers cannot carry out the personalised learning
programmes required by the NCEA with huge class sizes. Most
classrooms are designed for twenty five students, yet most
year nine and year ten classes exceed that number. In some
classrooms students even have to sit on the window sill.
Schools are being forced to fund extra teachers out of their
operations grants in order to try to bring class sizes down.
Around 10% of teachers are hired directly by the boards.
The PPTA points out that large sized classes are better suited
the factory method of education. This is not supposed to be
modern education practice. High class sizes create enormous
stress for teachers and students, reducing teacher retention
and student engagement. They are a health and safety risk,
risking increased violence and disruption at school, and even
impacting upon problems such as teen pregnancies and
suicides.
The PPTA has said enough is enough on class size, time for the
government to step up.
http://www.ppta.org.nz/index.php/safety-in-school.
Academic John Hattie stunned teachers in 2007 when he
suggested that class sizes were not a significant factor in
learning. He said instead that the main factor was the
relationship between the student and teacher. This may well
be so, but how is a student to develop such a relationship in a
huge class. The PPTA is adamant that the prevalence of over-
size classes in our secondary schools is at odds with the needs
of both students and teachers in today’s classrooms. The
biggest truths are not hard to grasp. The fewer students a
teacher has to deal with at once, the more likely he or she is
to reach all of them. Research both nationally and
8
Class Struggle 91
internationally proves that the smaller the class size the
better the students’ attendance, the longer they stay in
school, the more likely they leave with qualifications, and
earn more in later life. In short, they become more interested
in learning and engaging constructively in the world.
However the Minister of Education Anne Tolley is not listening
and Bill English says the PPTA is wasting its time as the
minister has no money to give them , indicating that National
is not interested in investing in education during their
capitalist crisis no matter what the long term costs to society
of refusing to do so.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&obj
ectid=10676529 )
The government seems incredulous that secondary teachers,
unlike nurses, junior doctors, policemen, civil servants, have
not buckled under and agreed to pay for the capitalist crisis
with substandard wages and conditions.
Mrs Tolley attended the PPTA national conference on 28
September. On the TV3 News, she looked worried and asked
the teachers to return to negotiations but she didn’t offer
anything and refused to rule out a lock out if the dispute
continues. (28/9/10, PPTA prepare for lock out, RadioNZ and
TV3 news ).
The PPTA has emphasised that safety and learning conditions
are equally as important as remuneration but the government
has made no offers to
reduce class sizes. On the
contrary-it’s planning to lift
the current limit on class
sizes. The PPTA originally
said that they were in for
the long haul with more
strikes planned. However
they have since pulled back
from full day strikes and
only plan to do eight partial
strikes where they refuse
to teach students at certain
levels, and do not attend
teacher only days, or
meetings after 5pm.
At the time of writing the
PPTA has called off industrial action for the rest of the week
from October 13th, because on the 12th the Government
promised to make an offer that would be “worth their while”.
However, after a day of negotiations the PPTA President said
that this claim was “astonishing”. Nevertheless, negotiations
continue this week with the PPTA planning to re-commence
industrial action next week if no satisfactory agreement is
reached.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&obj
ectid=10680303
The PPTA has strong positions on many broad issues, including
opposition to national standards, Public Private Partnerships,
and the 90 Day Act. The one day strike is a great start, but
stronger sustained action is almost certainly needed if the
teachers’ demands are to be met, The Aotearoa Workers
Solidarity Movement says that the leadership of the PPTA is
looking for negotiated settlement with the Government, and
are in danger of compromising too much. They believe that
teachers may need to take direct action. They talk about the
need for solidarity with members of other unions and
community networks, whereas we would say that the old
demand for One Education Union, under the control of the
rank and file, is the logical demand to raise.
September/October 2010
http://awsm.org.nz/?p=467#teachers www.ppta.org.nz
Media Criminalise Teachers
During this period of teacher activism, the media responded
with enthusiasm to the Ministers attempts to ‘criminalise’
teachers. The Sunday Star Times wrote a number of frantic
articles on “criminal teachers” reaching its peak with the
front page story: “Criminals in our classrooms” “the story the
Teachers Council did not want told” followed on page two by:
“Minister wants to know why criminals are still teaching”,
and: “Experts should monitor teachers, says Professor”.
(Sunday Star Times 29.8.2010 )
Instead of rejecting this as an attempt by the Minister to
discredit the teachers’ campaign, the Teachers’ Council went
on the defensive, sending an email around to all registered
teachers, explaining that the proportion of teachers with
criminal convictions was tiny.
This media assault on the Teachers’ Council is ironic
considering that in July we heard that the Teachers’ Council
had de-registered a pre-school teacher as an “unfit role
model” who had not declared earnings while on a benefit,
and training to be an ECE teacher. The defendant said “I
didn’t defraud/steal out of greed, I was doing it to survive
and provide for my daughter. I am sorry.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/elizabeth-
binning/news/article.cfm?a_id=163&objectid=10660885
Here we have a single
parent who had made a
supreme effort to overcome
social discrimination, to
qualify and practice as a
teacher and to support her
child; and the Teachers’
Council ruined her chance
for life to do this, even
though she posed no danger
to children whatsoever.
Despite its willingness to
issue such harsh and unjust
decisions, the Teachers’
Council is under enormous
pressure from the media to
de-register more teachers.
The Teachers’ Council is in a dual role, being appointed by
the Government yet supposedly representing teachers. It
recently made itself unpopular by issuing a huge hike in
teacher registration fees. Kate Gainsford sees the Teachers’
Council as a potential ally of teachers, and notes that it
opposed performance pay and new government plans for the
initial education of teachers. She says: “The question is how
to move the council away from being an arm of the
government into a genuinely teacher-led body.”
http://www.ppta.org.nz/index.php/annual-conference/1432-
pres-address-annconf2010
The fight to defend free, compulsory, universal,
public education from Early Childhood to Adult
Education is only just beginning. The NACTs attempts
to privatise education and cut state spending as a
drain on bosses’ profits will meet stiff resistance as
the unions and wider working class mobilises to fight
for their basic right to a fully funded public
education! Watch this space!
9
Class Struggle 91 September/October 2010

The DRC caught between the US and China

The UN Mapping Report on genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) released on October 1
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/ZR/DRC_MAPPING_REPORT_FINAL_EN.pdf highlights the
basic causes of the more recent wars that have raged over the Congo’s rich resources since its
independence in 1960. The report focuses on the period from 1993 to 2003 in the East of DRC, and
argues that Rwandan forces were among those of 7 armies from different countries that have been
active in the DRC to illegally exploit the mineral riches. The report has been toned down because of the
objections of Rwanda to its description of the genocide of Hutus in the DRC over this period.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2010/10/2010101129611907.html It is clear that behind these
wars is the scramble by a number of imperialist powers and their African proxy armies for control of
the huge mineral wealth of the DRC. Historically European powers and the US have been the major
imperialist partners. While Chinese companies have long been beneficiaries of the ‘informal’ mining of
Coltan, cassiterite (tin), gold and diamond wealth of the East of DRC, today China has become the main
official imperialist partner of the Kabila regime in taking over copper production in Katanga. The
situation is ripe for more explosive confrontations between the militias aligned to the interests of
Chinese and US imperialism over the exploitation of the DRCs mineral wealth.
As the author of the Mapping Report points out, the What underlies these decades of violence in the
focus on war crimes and genocide in this report DRC?
confirms what has been known for years: “The most
serious and systematic crimes are placed firmly on the In his response to the release of the Mapping Report,
doorstep of Paul Kagame’s Rwanda. The report not only DRC Justice Minister Luzolo Bambi points to the
mentions dozens of occurrences of war crimes and competition between Western companies for natural
crimes against humanity, but also points at resources as the basic causes of the violence described
“circumstances and facts from which a court could infer in the Report, but claims that: “The mapping project
the intention to destroy the Hutu ethnic group in the does not take into account the criminal responsibility of
DRC in part”, a reference to the genocide convention. all those corporations, multinationals and other
A UN investigative team already came to a similar international consortia
conclusion in 1998: “The of companies which
systematic massacre of have funded and
those (Hutu refugees) continue to fund the
remaining in DRC was an war in DRC...These
abhorrent crime against contractors and
humanity, but the supporters of war and
underlying rationale for death must also have a
the decision is material place reserved in a
to whether these killings criminal trial.”
constituted genocide,
that is, a decision to Bloomberg reports:
eliminate, in part, the “Congo holds 4 percent
Hutu ethnic group”. The of global copper
psychologically charged reserves, is among the
discussion of the ‘g world’s largest
word’ is not that producers of cobalt and
relevant: the other documented crimes are serious industrial diamonds, and is Africa’s largest producer of
enough to warrant the prosecution of suspects. The tin ore, known as cassiterite, according to the U.S.
report does not even address the tens of thousands of Geological Survey’s website.
civilians killed by the RPF in Rwanda in 1994 and
between 1997 and 1998. In 2002, a UN report on the exploitation of natural
resources in Congo found that 85 companies may have
Besides Rwanda, many other regional players were violated the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
responsible for serious human rights violations: the Development’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises
armed forces of Congo, Angola, Burundi and Uganda are by supporting the war directly or indirectly. The
mentioned, but also unofficial armed groups ranging guidelines are non-binding principles and standards for
from ethnic militias to rebel movements from Congo the behaviour of companies from OECD countries.
and neighbouring countries. Apart from a few militia Several mineral traders on that list, including U.S.-
leaders from Ituri and former rebel leader Jean-Pierre based Cabot Corp. and U.K.-based Amalgamated Metals
Bemba, no one has ever been prosecuted.” Corp. Plc, have denied they were doing business in
http://www.rnw.nl/africa/article/un-report-congos- Congo or eventually stopped working in the region.
atrocities-end-impunity-1

10
Class Struggle 91
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-10-
08/congo-wants-companies-to-face-trial-after-un-war-
crimes-report.html
Chapter 3 of the Mapping Report provides an overview
of the proof that the Hutu militia in the DRC, the FDLR
(Democratic Forces for the liberation of Rwanda), acts
in collaboration with the DRC armed forces - the FARDC
- to control much of the production of minerals in North
and South Kivu. These forces are aligned with the
Kabila regime but at the same time acting
independently to profit from mining minerals. They are
constantly engaged in warfare with the Rwandan and
Ugandan backed forces, in particular the CNFP
(National Congress for the Defence of the People) who
are likewise fighting to control mining and the lucrative
exports of Coltan, cassiterite, gold and diamonds. The
Rwandan and Ugandan forces are aligned with the US
and are hostile to the findings of the Mapping Report
especially the reference to Tutsi genocide of Hutus in
the DRC. . http://www.rnw.nl/africa/article/un-congo-
report-double-standards-human-rights
The UN Report of the Group
of Experts in 2008 goes
much deeper and traces the
illegally mined minerals
from their source through
the merchants to export
and finally to the
companies in a number of
countries which fund the
trade and exploit the
mineral wealth. They
include Traxys (Belgium),
Afrimex (UK) Thailand
Smelting and Refining,
Emirates Gold (Dubai) and
others. Thus much of the
DRCs mineral wealth ends
up in the hands of many
intermediaries including the
militias in the East of the
DRC, and the agents in Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe
etc, before finally ending up in many countries
including Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Hong Kong,
India, Malaysia, Thailand, South Africa, Switzerland,
Netherlands, Russia, UAE and UK.
China’s collaboration with the DRC
What about China’s growing influence? China has moved
into the DRC with a massive deal with the regime of
Joseph Kabila to mine copper and build infrastructure
in Katanga.
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/e
n/page67?oid=47452&sn=Detail
Joseph Kabila and the DRC army are also working with
Chinese interests in the informal mining of Coltan and
shipping it out via Zaire. This has attracted the
attention of NGOs exposing the inhuman methods used
by Chinese firms.
September/October 2010
From a RAID report of China’s mining operations in the
DRC:
“Concluding, RAID states that the report does not seek
to embarrass the People’s Republic of China (PRC) nor
to tarnish its image in the developing world. The report
does however provide first hand allegations of
widespread corporate misconduct and human rights
abuse by Chinese companies operating in Katanga,
which should prompt the Chinese and DRC governments
to take urgent measures. The report’s findings highlight
the need to promote greater awareness of responsible
corporate behaviour among Chinese companies
operating abroad. The problems described in the report
are not confined to Chinese operators and similar
conditions prevail in companies owned by Congolese or
nationals of other countries. But the Chinese are the
most significant operators in the mineral sector in
Katanga. According to the Governor of the Province
more than 60 out of Katanga’s 75 processing plants are
owned by Chinese companies and over 90 per cent of
the region’s minerals go to China.6 Congolese workers
and Chinese managers have given candid accounts of
the indignities, harassment, threats and abuse that
they endure on a daily basis.
They have set out what they
feel is needed to improve
workplace conditions,
environmental protection,
health and safety standards,
community relations and
corporate accountability. The
recommendations addressed to
both the DRC and Chinese
Governments are set out at the
end of the report. In RAID’s
view it is only by supporting
such improvements that China
can hope to reach the goals
that it has set itself in its Africa
foreign policy declaration
concerning sustainable
development and harmonious
relations between peoples.”
http://goodelectronics.org/news-en/chinese-mining-
operations-in-katanga-drc-supplying-the-electronics-
industry/
The DRC is an ongoing arena of inter-imperialist
rivalry over the illegal mining of valuable minerals.
The US and the EU imperialist powers have
traditionally been the main exploiters of the Congo.
But recently China has become the main imperialist
partner of the Joseph Kabila regime in the DRC. The
two main militias are the CNDP aligned to Rwanda
and Uganda and thus the US, while Kabila’s FARDC
and the militias it backs are aligned broadly to China.
The growing rivalry between these two imperialist
powers can be seen as the ultimate cause of the
ongoing barbaric wars, mass rape and slave labor
conditions suffered by the people of the Eastern DRC.
11
Class Struggle 91 September/October 2010

Zimbawe: New ISO fights for democracy

The global crisis is intensifying the international class war as the imperialist ruling classes fight to
survive by defeating their rivals and making the workers pay for their crisis. In Africa this class war is
expressed as a growing rivalry between the US and its EU partners UK and France, and the increasing
influence of China and Russia. The national bourgeoisies are lined up behind one or other of the two
blocs or trying to play off one against the other. In Zimbabwe we see the ruling national bourgeoisie
increasingly dependent on China which it promotes as a progressive force for development. The masses
in Zimbabwe as in the whole of Africa have to break with the illusion that China is the saviour of Africa
and a progressive alternative to Western imperialism. The new ISOZ has begun this task.
At one extreme we see in the DRC the intervention of regimes tie the working class through its unions and
Rwanda and Uganda as proxies for the US to plunder political parties to subservience to Chinese imperialism
the minerals in the North East of the DRC has caused as much as US imperialism.
ongoing wars and mass
murder for 20 years (see This is true also of Zimbabwe.
article on DRC). In other The current power sharing
countries we see a division regime unites the national
between the bourgeoisies bourgeois factions into one
creating the conditions for unstable regime to form a
proxy wars. This is most more powerful popular front to
developed in the Sudan and contain the Zimbabwe masses
most recently Somalia. In who are among the most
Nigeria, China has made oppressed and exploited in
inroads into the traditionally Southern Africa. Their
US and UK dominated oil factional differences have
industry with its massive been suppressed by the
loans for oil, which is being prospect of profiteering in
resisted by the US but has yet Zimbabwe’s ‘blood diamonds’,
to break out into open war. and by the need to unite to
contain the popular masses in
In Zimbabwe the Mugabe a patriotic, popular front. The
faction of the ruling class is question then is, who on the
dependent on China funding left can fight this renewed
the economy as a result of popular front and break the
the US/EU economic masses from the fake left
embargo. The MDC faction is aligned to the US bloc. bourgeois project of the new constitution? Not the
The new popular front regime between the ZANU-PF reformist left leadership of the ISOZ around Gwisai
and the MCD remains dominated by the Mugabe faction which fully participates in this popular front.
and so is increasing its ties to China. This relationship is
now reinforced by the ‘strategic partnership’ In 2009 the ISOZ split with a large faction breaking from
established between the ANC in South Africa and China. the international IST Gwisai line of backing the MDC
Zimbabwe’s fate is inevitably tied to that of the whole popular front party. This faction entered talks with the
of Southern Africa in which China is now the rising FLT of which the CWG and HWRS were part at the time
imperialist power. over the 23 points of the FLT program. However, before
any democratic agreement could be reached, a leader
The ANC paints the strategic partnership with China as of this faction Mutero formed a secret faction with the
one in which both partners ‘win’. This is because China WIVL leader Mo and joined the FLT by amending the
is regarded as a successful developing country that has minutes to say that the faction (unilaterally named by
managed to escape the clutches of Western the WIVL the International Revolutionary League)
imperialism. It is therefore seen as a partner in agreed to join the FLT (now the FLTI after the
economic development that will provide aid and low adherence of the South African WIVL and US HWRS in
cost loans as well as build infrastructure in exchange July 2009), on the basis that it agreed with the 23
for oil and other minerals. However, the ANC’s points and the FLTI majority line that China could not
strategic relationship with China comes a long time become a new imperialist power and was no more than
after China has made huge inroads into other Southern a semi-colony of US imperialism.
African states like Mozambique, Angola, etc. In those
countries China’s role is no less exploitative and The unprincipled fusion of the IRL with the FLTI led to
oppressive than that of the older Western imperialist the majority of the faction that has broken with the
powers. China is in Africa for cheap raw materials and ISOZ rejecting this fusion and held a special congress in
labour. The national bourgeoisies are junior partners of August to repudiate the IRL leadership of Mutero and
China in sharing some of the profits. The popular front the unprincipled politics of the FLTI. The congress

12
Class Struggle 91 September/October 2010

reconstituted the faction of the ISOZ on the basis of
workers democracy as the new ISOZ. It vindicated its
break with the popular front of the MDC and of the
rotten politics of the international Cliffite line in
Zimbabwe, and also repudiated the politics of the FLTI.
The FLTI and Mutero responded with a scurrilous
slander that the new ISOZ had misappropriated funds
and were petty bourgeois criminals. The ISOZ replied
rebutting these slanders and accusing Mutero and the
FLTI of lies and slanders. The new ISOZ which has been
supported on the basis of elementary principle of
workers democracy by our Liaison Committee (HWRS
and CWG – as the former minority of the FLTI on China)
has undertaken to produce a provisional program and
enter into formal discussions over our historic
differences between Trotskyism and Cliffism. We salute
the new ISOZ in its fight to restore democracy in the
only working class organisation in Zimbabwe that can
seriously fight the constitution process and the
formation of a new popular, patriotic front to
subordinate and subdue the Zimbabwe exploited
masses.
The FLTI has now tasted the bitter fruit of its
unprincipled opportunist fusion with the IRL. It has now
broken with the Mutero leadership of the IRL which has
re-entered the popular front and is holding a ‘Marxism’
conference at the end of October in which speakers
from the MDC popular front party are invited. But this
break comes with no public accounting by the FLTI of
its secret faction with Mutero to split the ISOZ. If you
fuse with opportunists who then become right wing
renegades, what does that make your fusion? It makes
it an unprincipled bloc with opportunists whose
internationalism only goes as far as their receipt of
international money transfers. We predict that what is
left of the IRL will be no more than an appendage of
the WIVL and the FLTI and faithfully reproduce the vast
tracts of ultraleft propaganda pouring out of the FLTI
full-timers in Buenos Aires and Cape Town. Any former
ISOZ workers who are caught up in this charade should
immediately join the new ISOZ!
We look forward to building a fraternal relationship
with the new ISOZ on the basis of serious discussion and
voting on our different histories, fundamental
principles and programmatic points such as the
character of China, blocking with them facing the
global crisis as it impacts Zimbabwe on the principle of
workers democracy, and jointly fighting to build a
Trotskyist vanguard of the masses for the first time in
Zimbabwe’s history, and regrouping with the militant
vanguards in all of the Southern African states.
• For a new vanguard World Party of
Socialism founded on the basis of the 1938
Transitional Program!
• For workers and peasants governments in
Zimbabwe and South Africa!
• For a Federation of Socialist Republics in
Southern Africa!

Ecuador: What’s behind the attempted Coup?

The cause of the attempted coup in October can be found in the backwardness of the Ecuador economy
and its new dependence on Chinese imperialism. The least viable of the ALBA and facing mounting debt
Correa has moved to the right to open up the country to Chinese investment. This has alienated
sections of his support base in the unions and the indigenous organisations (Conaie) who stood back
from the coup attempt. The Bolivarian populists blame these indigenous social movements as under US
influence, instead of blaming Correa for opening up the country to Chinese imperialism. Today it is
China that is spending billions building a new dam, opening up new mines and making loans for oil.

The Dam detail engineering", which he said is expressly

Under the heading ‘Has China just bought is own Latin
American Country?’ one source reports that China now
finances a majority of the public energy projects
underway in Ecuador. Recent deals include an 85%
stake in a hydroelectric dam that will cover a third of
the country's energy needs by 2016.
http://www.speroforum.com/a/35714/CHINA--ECUADOR---
China-to-finance-60-per-cent-of-public-works-projects-in-
Ecuadors-energy-sector
Chinese firms will also take charge of most
construction. As you can imagine if another country
controlled our utilities, many Ecuadorians are extemely
anxious, reports Asia Times: For his part, former
Ecuadorean vice president Leon Roldos (1981-1984)
maintained that the loan is illegal, because it finances
a "turn-key contract" without "definitive studies or
prohibited by law. Ecuadorians are also upset by loans
they call larger than necessary: Another contradiction,
Roldos argued, is that although it is a fixed price
contract, the financing deal is based on price indexing -
adjusting amounts by the change over time in prices -
for materials and labor power "using a more generous
formula than the one normally used for Ecuador's public
procurements". In an article published last week by the
El Comercio newspaper, the former vice president said
the dam was "severely overpriced" because the $1.98
billion price tag is $400 million higher than the cost
projected in 2008.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/coca-
codo-sinclair-ecuador-china-2010-6#ixzz13Riig700
13
Class Struggle 91
The copper mine
“Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group Holdings Co. and
China Railway Construction Corp. may invest as much as
$3 billion in a copper project in Ecuador, as China seeks
to control more commodity assets to feed its economy.
Production at the Corriente Copper Belt may start in
2013, Hu Guobin, vice president of a venture set up by
the two Chinese companies
for the project, said in an
interview. Annual copper
in concentrate output
would start at 30,000
metric tons and double a
year later, he said. Chinese
companies spent more than
$30 billion last year buying
oilfields and mines as two
decades of economic
growth averaging 10.1
percent made China the
world’s biggest metal and
energy consumer. Copper prices have doubled in the
past five years, driven by demand in the third-largest
economy...Tongling, China’s second-biggest copper
producer, and China Railway Construction, the nation’s
biggest railroad builder, in December agreed to buy
Canada’s Corriente Resources Inc. for C$679 million
($652 million) for the copper resources. The deal was
completed and Corriente was delisted this month,
according to a statement on Corriente’s website...The
rapid expansion of smelting capacity in China, the
world’s biggest producer and consumer of copper
metal, has increased ore demand and spurred
companies to invest overseas. Larger rival Jiangxi
Copper Co. invested in copper mines in Peru and
Afghanistan, and Zijin Mining Group Co. is seeking
copper and cobalt assets in the Republic of Congo. The
Corriente Copper Belt covers 17 deposits in the four
main mining regions of Mirador, Mirador Norte,
Panantza and San Carlos, China Railway said in
December. Copper resources are about 11.54 million
tons, based on initial studies, it said. Corriente was also
involved in the exploration and development of gold,
silver and molybdenum mines, according to the
December statement.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-13/tongling-
china-railway-plan-to-invest-3-billion-in-ecuador-copper-
mine.html
The loan for oil
“Ecuador's government signed a loan agreement for $1
billion with the China Development Bank on 31 August
2010. The loan will have two tranches, one for $800
million and another for $200 million. It will have a fixed
interest rate of 6% per year for a four-year term and an
additional six-month grace period. The loan will be
used to finance Ecuador's investment programme for
infrastructure and other budgetary outlays for the
2010-11 period. It will also be used to finance oil
projects of national interest, said Finance Minister
Patricio Rivera in a press release. The minister said that
with this loan Ecuador had ensured its budget financing
for 2010. In June, following meetings in Beijing,
according the minutes of the meetings reviewed by Dow
September/October 2010
Jones Newswires, Ecuadorean Finance Ministry and CDB
officials signed an agreement for state oil company
Petroecuador to supply PetroChina with 36,000 barrels
per day of Oriente and Napo crude or fuel oil until the
total amount of the loan has been paid. In a decree
signed on Friday by President Rafael Correa authorising
to sign the loan, Correa said the operation involves
Ecuador's Finance Ministry,
state-run Petroecuador,
Petrochina International
Company and the China
Development Bank. In July,
Ecuador's National Public
Planning Secretariat signed a
memorandum of
understanding with China's
National Construction &
Agricultural Machinery
Imp./Exp. Corp, or CAMC,
opening the door for potential
financing by Chinese banks
worth about $1 billion. Last year Ecuador's state-run oil
company, Petroecuador, and PetroChina signed a two-
year crude-oil supply contract. An initial $1 billion
advance payment for the oil was made in August 2009
to Ecuador, with an interest rate of 7.25%.”
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article228146.ece
The loan to cover the deficit
“Ecuador will probably tap the nation’s pension fund
and seek a loan from China next year to help finance its
estimated $2.7 billion budget deficit, according to Erich
Arispe, an analyst at Fitch Ratings. South America’s
seventh-biggest economy may need as much as 4.3
percent of gross domestic product to fund the
“relatively large” deficit...Ecuador is using debt to
increase spending on infrastructure projects and social
programs in a bid to lower unemployment and boost
economic growth, President Rafael Correa said in a
June 5 statement. The nation’s default on $3.2 billion
in bonds since 2008, declining oil production and a
slump in private investment has crimped funding
sources... The Finance Ministry said yesterday China
delivered $800 million of a $1 billion loan agreement
signed last month and will deliver the remaining $200
million in the “next months.” Ecuador owed China
$3.66 billion as of July 31, according to a Finance
Ministry report. The figure doesn’t include the $1
billion loan signed in August.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-30/ecuador-will-
probably-tap-china-pensions-to-finance-deficit-fitch-says.html
US backing for the police and military who staged the
coup attempt was probably to test the water to see if
it had the support to remove Correa and replace him
with a President aligned to the US rather than China.
Correa is backed by the Bolivarian left populists who
paint his reliance on China as THE progressive
alternative to the US. He is, with Castro, Chavez and
Morales, looking to Chinese ‘market socialism’ as the
answer to US imperialism. Revolutionaries have to
break this international popular front that unites
Castro with Hu Jintao!
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Class Struggle 91 September/October 2010

Draft theses on Crisis and the World Situation

1- Objectively we are living through a major structural crisis of global capitalism. We said when this crisis hit in mid 07
that it was a major crisis of falling profits endemic to capitalism. The subprime crisis was only a surface effect of
underlying failure to invest in production that was not profitable. So-called ‘financialization’ is just the appearance of
‘finance capital’ (understood in Lenin’s terms as the fusion of industrial and banking capital) being driven out of the
productive circuit by the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. The result has been many trillions of overproduced
surplus capital speculating in existing commodities driving up their prices creating a bubble of fictitious capital. The
crisis will only be resolved for the ruling class when they have devalued sufficient surplus capital to enable profits to be
restored.

2- The first phase of the crisis brought about the biggest rescue of capital by the state in history yet the crisis is not
over and capital is still facing trillions of bad debts which have yet to be devalued or destroyed. Nor have the ruling
classes yet imposed the deep austerity measures that they need to restore their profits. The initial reaction to the
financial crisis was to increase state spending i.e. reflation. According to Ticktin, however, this year the G20 made the
decision to reverse reflation and radically deflate by massively cutting state spending to balance budgets. Only the US
resisted this change, probably because the US is not bound by the normal rules and can run massive debts because the
dollar is the world currency. http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004129 The logic of a structural crisis as
the ‘solution’ to falling profits is to ‘restructure’ or devalue capital – both constant (plant and raw materials) and
variable capital (wages) - by concentrating and centralising capital as the weak firms go bankrupt and strong firms buy
up their cheap assets. This means necessarily in the epoch of imperialism a growing rivalry between imperialist powers
to re-divide the world in the survival of the fittest monopoly firms. This rivalry takes economic form in trade rivalry as
each state attempts to block imports but increase exports, but can only be resolved by imperialist war and class war.
Today at this point in history this rivalry is most intense between the US and China blocs, and it is this growing
antagonism that gives expression to the dominant aspects of the epoch of imperialism, of crises, wars and revolutions.
Once again we have to choose between socialism or barbarism and we are well on the road to barbarism.

3- The so-called currency war is a first step in a trade war with China that the US cannot win because its low labor
costs combined with rapid technological upgrading means it is the most productive of commodities with least labour
time (value) and can out-compete its rivals. China has overtaken Japan and Germany as the workshop of the world and
cannot be beaten in the trade war. The value of the yuan is therefore not artificially kept low but reflects China’s
capitalist productive dynamism. http://www.thenation.com/article/154484/china-drivers-seat What is more China is
moving rapidly from a capital importing country to a capital exporting country which means it is extending its high
productivity base globally in sourcing cheap raw materials and labor power and finding new markets outside the US and
Asia to manufacture and sell its cheap commodities. http://www.areadevelopment.com/StudiesResearchPapers/10-19-
2010/china-outward-foreign-direct-investment49930.shtml

4- China is winning the trade war rapidly expanding its spheres of interest at the expense of the US and its main
partners the UK, France and Spain. A number of countries have avoided the worst aspects of the recession through
trade driven by China. US allies like Italy, Germany and Australia are trading and investing heavily with China. Turkey is
turning from the EU towards China. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/LJ19Ag01.html In Brazil one fraction
of the national bourgeoisie is opposed to further growth in China investments especially in agriculture and in key
sectors such as communications. The ALBA states are becoming dependent on China and looking for new loans to
maintain popularity with the masses. In Ecuador, Correa is doing deals with China to build dams and infrastructure and
loan money to balance the budget. The recent attempted coup was a weak move by the US to exploit discontent with
Correa’s move to the right which was, not to appease the US but rather China which is driving hard bargains with
Ecuador.(see article in this issue of Class Struggle)

5- This growing rivalry with China and the increasing power of the China bloc (which threatens to split NATO) means
that the US must rev up its use of military force around the world to counter China’s influence. The struggle for
control of Central Asia that has justified the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan has not been able to contain or weaken
China or Russia. Russia is now looking to collaborate with NATO in its military intervention in Afghanistan.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/26/nato-afghanistan-russia-military. The iwi leaks expose the fact that
Iraq was always under the dominance of the Shi’ites. http://www.cpgb.org.uk/edition.php?issue_id=839 Kazai seeks a
deal with the Taliban. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/world/asia/26afghan.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper. The
dominant national blocs in Iraq and Afghanistan are aligned to Iran and Pakistan respectively both of which are closer
to the China bloc than the US bloc. Therefore the US must move on Iran and Pakistan to squeeze out China.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LJ27Ak01.html. The US is renewing its plans for building the pipeline
from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India to weld an alliance in South Asia to break Russia and
China’s domination of Central Asian oil. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/LJ30Ag01.html

6- The growing US drone attacks on Pakistan mean that the US wants to take direct control of Pakistan to isolate its
nuclear weapons and to checkmate China’s overland access to Arabian Gulf and Iran.
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/new-war-rumors-u-s-plans-to-seize-pakistans-nuclear-arsenal/
Bangladesh has now been incorporated into NATO South Asian allies and is sending troops to the war in Afghanstan. In
the growing military confrontation over control of Central Asia is that nuclear armed India is being pressured by
the US into buying Patriot 3 missiles to complete the ring of missiles surrounding Russia and China stretching from
Japan to Afghanistan. http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/india-u-s-completes-global-military-structure/.
India is also preparing for border wars with China over Kashmir http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LJ08Df01.html

15
Class Struggle 91 September/October 2010

and Nepal. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LJ16Ad01.html. Bangladesh is now part of the encirclement.

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/bangladesh-u-s-and-nato-forge-new-partnership-in-south-asia/

7- Ultimately, and inevitably these actual and impending wars must be at the expense of the workers of the world.
The huge cost of military spending is driving the US further into debt. While it is still reflating with Quantitative Easing
Mark 2 (printing money) this money is going to the banks which are not investing but paying out profits and bonuses. It
is not going to the workers who are still losing jobs and homes. With reflation causing inflation the US working class is
suffering an historic decline in living standards not seen since the 1930s. The US is bullying Japan and China to carry
the debt which becomes translated into attacks on workers living standards in these countries. China is easing back on
buying US bonds and shows no signs of bending to any of the threats being issued by the US. It appears instead to be
moving to more FDI in the US. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68C0TY2010091. Japan is more compliant but
unable to finance US debt but its economy is not strong enough. Japan under the Democratic Party government is under
pressure from Japanese workers opposed to paying billions for US bases.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/world/asia/17japan.html?th&emc=th

8- Thus the US and other increasingly bankrupt imperialists have no option but to impose the cost of the crisis onto
the backs of the worlds’ workers with so-called austerity measures. The bailouts of the banks has imposed big
budget deficits which the ruling class is determined to cut by cutting social spending and/or by “quantitative easing”
both of which cuts the value of variable capital (wages). The US, UK and EU imperialist states are forcibly
expropriating surplus value not only from workers today, but from workers in future generations, to maintain the
monopoly profits of their imperialist classes. This means massive unemployment and social spending. These so-called
austerity measures are draconian. In every country the ruling class is trying to solve its crisis of falling profits by
reducing taxes on capital, and this means massively cutting social spending on the social wage. In Britain the
Conservative-Liberal-Democrat Coalition government is promising a cut in public sector spending in excess of 20%. In
Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and France there are major cuts on social spending being imposed on workers.

9- As unemployment rises and services are cut, the anger of millions of workers facing poverty and destitution is
growing. But this anger is being steered by the main union bosses into token protests to build mass pressure to push the
bourgeois regimes to the left containing and diverting the rise of working class militancy onto the parliamentary road.
Where the social democratic parties are in power imposing austerity as in Greece and Spain, the fight-back is being
limited by the unions to pressuring these governments to make these austerity measures less damaging.. In the US
where the open bourgeois Democrat Party controls Congress and the Presidency, the One Nation Project is being
organized by the union tops to put pressure on the Democrats to adopt a new deal Keynesian counter-cyclic policy.
Where it is out of power, social democratic parties are shifting slightly to the left to head off mass militancy against
the ruling conservative parties, so that this fightback is contained and channelled into the election of Social Democratic
governments at the next elections. In Britain the Blairite Labour Party under Ed Milliband has feinted slightly to the
left in recognizing that if the CONDEM regime cannot contain a mass fightback and is brought down, then social
democracy can still try to play a role in containing militant industrial action from developing into a revolutionary
challenge to the bourgeois system itself.

10- These social democrats or left liberals are arguing that austerity is a wrong policy since it leads to deflation and
depression. They hope to direct workers anger into social democratic and left liberal programs that can solve the
crisis. In Britain the fake left SWP (see New Left Blog) argues that the CONDEM austerity is not necessary for the
restoration of profits! Of course this exposes their non-Marxist view that capitalist crises are merely the result of
wrong policies and elite greed. Marxists know that capitalist crises are the inevitable result of capital over-
accumulation, and while reformists sow illusions in the possibility of reflation to boost jobs and incomes, crises can
only be resolved in the bosses’ interests by massive deflation. The crisis forces a devaluation of total capital by
destroying the weakest banks and firms allowing the strongest to concentrate and centralize their ‘good’ assets into
even bigger monopolies. We can see this has been happening since 2007. It is not in the interests of Morgan Stanley,
HSBC, Citibank etc., as well as the big Euro banks and big Chinese banks, resort to reflation if it devalues the good
assets and prevents the devaluing of bad assets. These gigantic monopolies completely control their nation states and
dictate economic policy to protect their class interests. This is why the bailouts have gone into bosses’ pockets and not
into new investment in production. This means that the ruling class will close ranks behind their national states in
defence of their monopoly corporations and make weakest firms, nations, and of course workers, go to the wall.

11- The result is that the destruction of total value to restore profits includes the total value of labour power through
job losses and wage cuts. Thus it is the working class that ultimately always pays for their crisis. As the austerity bites
we can see the spontaneous fightback spreading from Greece to Spain, to France in the EU. From the first strikes that
began in 2008 in Greece we have seen a succession of strikes controlled by the bureaucracy. In Spain it is the same, no
strike call has lead to a national coordination of strike actions, or an indefinite general strike. Not until France have
we seen the strikes spread and threaten to break out of the control of the bureaucrats. Yet even here we do not see a
breakdown of bureaucratic control, because no revolutionary leadership has emerged that can turn spontaneous strikes
into a general strike to bring down the bourgeois government and put a workers government in their place. The fake
Trotskyists of the NPA say that they will not call for a general strike and will back the negotiations between the
bureaucrats and the bourgeois regime. (Le Monde).The IMT calls for a general strike to defeat the government and
paralyse the economy, and for the Communist Party to demand the nationalisation of the big companies and the banks!
http://www.marxist.com/france-leaflet-october-28-paralyse-economy.htm

12- The objective dynamic of worsening crisis clashes with the subjective absence of a revolutionary leadership to
lead the working class to solve the crisis in it class interests. The failure to build this leadership will mean that
working class struggle is unable to challenge the power of the ruling class leaving the middle classes who are also hit by
the crisis and the more backward non-unionized sectors of the working class ripe for fascist mobilization to smash the
16
Class Struggle 91 September/October 2010

workers organisations as responsible for the flood of migrant workers, and for the loss of jobs and the austerity
measures rather than the capitalist class itself. In France while the unions mobilise strike action there is almost no
organized opposition to Sarkosy’s campaign of forced extradition of Roma and the ban against the wearing of burqa in
public. It is clear that the bureaucratic leadership of Labour and social democratic parties are part of the national
salvation blocs that are always formed by the imperialist and national bourgeoisie to unite workers and middle class
with the bourgeoisie against foreign workers and against the international threat of a socialist revolution.

13- In the face of mounting evidence of man-made climate change and big changes in weather patterns that cause
devastating floods and crop failures, the climate change denier lobby is working for the corporates to enflame the
populist petty bourgeois and backward workers into blaming carbon taxes on profits as more taxation of the little
person by big states. The oil giants like BP can still get away with massive destruction in wars for oil in the Middle
East, and a catastrophic oil spill in the Caribbean and pays only a small part of the social and environmental costs of
such capitalist disasters. Here we see the full face of capitalism riding roughshod over national states to destroy the
forces of production including the habitat of whole populations as in Pakistan and in the Gulf of Mexico. And while
China is now leading the world in ‘green’ technology, it is still building dams
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LJ14Ad03.html and nuclear plants, rail-tracks through tundra and forests
around the world, high speed rail even in California, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68C0TY20100913
cultivating vast tracts of agricultural land despoiling natural habitats in Brazil and Tibet, enlarging its carbon footprint
with each giant step around the world.

14- We can see the proto-fascist movements already in existence. In Britain the national salvation bloc is the Bj4Bw
campaign of 2009 which sought to protect jobs for British workers against other EU workers. This puts the British trade
unions in the same reactionary national camp as the BNP and other extreme right forces. In Germany and the
Netherlands there are proto-fascist organisations campaigning against migrant workers, especially of Islamic religion.
Germany has had a backlash against immigrants and bailing out Greece. Merkel has called ‘multiculturalism’ a failure.
The EU is in danger of being torn apart by the centripetal forces of the bipolar world into rival xenophobias. In the US
the Tea Party is a rightwing populist movement aligned to the Republicans that can easily develop into a fascist
movement. As the crisis deepens we will see the working class organize to resist its attacks and this will pose a threat
to the bourgeoisies who will revive the old fascist arguments for national salvation against alien forces.

15- While Islam has been projected as the main enemy of freedom and democracy since the collapse of the Soviet
Union, it is now being rivalled by Chinese ‘communism’. http://www.thenation.com/blog/155317/china-bashing-
2010-election-echoes-cold-war. The US ruling class is leading the demonizing of China as a communist regime that is
putting capitalist democracy under threat. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/us/politics/10outsource.html. What
underlies this demonization of Chinese ‘communism’ is of course the rise of China as a threat to US hegemony. The
weakness of the US economy has prompted a suggestion by a US professor teaching in China that China could even
invest its excess finance capital in the US to fund a ‘new deal’? http://mpettis.com/2010/10/xin-fa%E2%80%99an-a-
modest-proposal-to-resolve-the-coming-trade-war/ That this can even be proposed marks the perception of a real
decline of the US as the hegemonic imperialist power to one that can become dependent on China as the newly
hegemonic power. This sense of a loss of hegemonic power is what underlies the blaming of the crisis on China. The
rallying of the Tea Party reactionary populism against liberal or ‘socialist’ elites implies that the US people have been
sold out to China and to Latin American migrants. China and Bolivarian ‘socialism’ becomes perceived as the
overarching enemy of the American people and the cause of its historic decline.

16- The fake ‘left’ defends Castro and Chavez from US imperialism, but sows illusions in their converging brand of
Chinese-style ‘market socialism’, or ‘green capitalism’, and so disarms the international working class against the
rise of anti-China xenophobia and proto-fascism in the imperialist countries. (Green Left News). The reformist left puts
its faith in bourgeois Bonapartist leaders (who balance between the masses and the imperialist bourgeoisie) in the ALBA
countries and the restorationist bureaucratic Bonapartists in Cuba rather than call for a political revolution because
they think that China as a global power offers a progressive alternative to the imperialist US and its allies. This
treachery leaves workers unprepared to stop the restoration of capitalism in Cuba and the coming counter-
revolutionary wars at the hands of all the imperialist ruling classes, including China.

17- Facing this objective crisis and the subjective crisis of the failure of revolutionary leadership this puts a huge
responsibility on the shoulders of revolutionary Trotskyists to struggle all the more urgently to re-found a
revolutionary international on the basis of the Transitional Program of 1938. Trotsky laid down the principles of
revolutionary internationalism to fight imperialist crises in the 1930s. In the epoch of imperialism workers have to
break from the patriotic popular fronts with their bourgeoisie, and with the labor bureaucrats that act as the agents of
the bourgeoisie, and refuse to fight against the workers of other nations. Instead they become brothers and sisters of
working class fighters in every nation. Facing a deepening crisis and the inevitable transformation of trade wars
between rival imperialist powers into military wars, we must demand the unity of workers of all countries to fight for
an international socialist revolution. We must defend all workers especially the most oppressed - on national, ethnic,
gender and sexual grounds - against attacks by uniting them into one force across national borders to defeat all
attempts by the ruling class and their labor lieutenants to divide and rule the world proletariat.

18- The refounding of a new World Party of Socialism based on a Leninist Trotskyist program will solve the crisis of
revolutionary leadership. The only way for workers internationally to stop the fascist counter-revolution is to break
from the Bolivarian and Chinese Bonapartist bourgeoisies and their bureaucratic lieutenants and organise their own
independent workers councils and workers militias to mount political general strikes to bring down the bourgeois
regimes and replace them with Workers and Peasants governments forming socialist federations on every continent!

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Class Struggle 91 September/October 2010

Tribute to Roque Sanchez, revolutionary fighter!

We reprint the tribute of the FLTI on the death of the young Peruvian militant Roque Sanchez on 29
October 2010. We first came to know Roque when he was a member of the Lucha Marxista of Peru in 2003.
The CWG and Lucha Marxista became members of the Collective in December 2002. When Lucha Marxista
and the Collective split in 2004, Roque Sanchez stayed with the Collective which then became the FLT in
2006. While the CWG left the FLTI (as it became in 2009) in 2010, we recognise that Roque Sanchez was a
revolutionary youth leader who dedicated his short life to the victory of the revolution. Long live Roque!

A young fighter for the cause of socialist revolution and for the re-
foundation of the Fourth International has passed away.
Today, at the age of 28, the young Trotskyist leader Roque
Sanchez has died. When he was very young, he joined
Peruvian Trotskyism. He lived his first experiences in
Trotskyism in the group Poder Obrero of Peru, Lucha Marxista
of Cuzco and was a founder member of the Collective for a
revolutionary international that LOI-CI of Argentina called to
set up in 2001 to regroup the forces of the internationalist
revolutionaries when the Ecuadorian and Argentinean
revolution hit and started the first fires of the Bolivian
revolution.
With the Split of collective, Roque joined the foundation of
the FLT, making a great international work from Peru,
collaborating in a decisive way in the work on the lessons of
the Peruvian revolution in ’78 and intervened decisively in the
process of the Bolivian revolution to where he travelled as a
true internationalist in order to intervene in the revolutionary
events that shook Bolivia and Latin America in 2003/2005.
In 2009, he was founder member and a delegate of the LTI of
Peru to the foundation Congress of the International Leninist
Trotskyist Fraction, in where they merged groups led by WIVL
of South Africa, the former FLT and observer groups from
USA.
He is co-author of the works on “Bolivia: an expropriated
revolution”, as well as a work on a deep research in polemic
with the GB of France on the “nature and fight against the
labour aristocracy and bureaucracy”.
A young and brilliant Trotskyist leader, but above all an
internationalist militant of the proletariat, has passed away
at the age of 28. The cruelty of nature finishes his life very
early. He died for a cardiac arrest and sudden death.
He passed away very young, as an adoptive son of the working
class since he was 17 years old. 11 years fighting for the cause
of proletariat. He gave the absolute majority of his conscious
life to the fight for the international socialist revolution and
re-founding the Fourth International. He was committed to
that fight as a member of the Secretariat of International
Coordination of the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction
thousands of kilometers away from his country. Roque had
understood perfectly that if we do not re-found the Fourth
International, Trotskyism will never be able to even dream in
setting up revolutionary parties in any place of the world for
the victory of the socialist revolution.
Today very early, after writing a new essay on the events of
the huge class struggle in France and in Europe, he went to
bed to have a rest. He never woke up again. His work, still
not finished, stated a call on French workers: “Our fight in
the streets of Paris must set on fire Europe! Out Sarkozy! Out
the Fifth Republic of the French imperialist butchers! For the
return of the Commune of Paris! Only in that way, by the
proletarian revolution and its huge historical upheavals, the
Europe and French working class will stop the brutal attack
that the ruling classes have launched without mercy to make
exploited of the world pay for the crisis they have provoked.”
From the FLTI, the leaders and militants who share his
combat can only say that he lived a short but fruitful life at
the service of the world proletariat. We do not have doubts
that if he could have predicted this tragic end, surely, he
would affirm, holding his fist high, “I would’ve given even
more years of my life for the cause of proletariat!”
Today, the bourgeoisie, like in Argentina, holds a wake one of
its heroes, such as Kirchner, that saved their interests thanks
to the treasons of the leaderships of the Argentinean and
Latin American proletariat. Roque told us that it was not
possible to have any condolence or to pay tribute to the
leaders of the proletariat’s class enemies whose government
and regimes had murdered thousands and thousands of
workers in Argentina and in the American continent. He said
that the hug of the bolibourgeoisies paying tribute to Kirchner
only hid, under a sweet veneer, the gunmen of the union
bureaucracy that had massacred the young Ferreyra, militant
of Partido Obrero. How right Roque was! We only pay tribute
and we honour the militants of the world proletariat, to the
heroes (many times anonymous and other times popular) who
die while fighting for the program of revolutionary Marxism.
For our honour of revolutionary workers and militants of the
Fourth International and of the fight for re-founding it, we
know we will continue this fight. Roque was part of the new
generation that feverishly sought the continuity and legacy of
the Fourth International of 1938, which was destroyed and
liquidated during decades of adaptations and capitulations
with which the destroyers of Trotskyism left no tracks of
bolshevism.
FLTI has been nourished and is nourished by a new generation
of revolutionary workers youth. Comrade Trotsky reminded us
that when a movement becomes impotent to lead proletariat
to the victory in history, it disappears and the generation who
carried it out degenerates. Our comrade Roque was not part
of those tired souls, and for that reason he crossed thousands
of kilometers to set up a fighting international centre to fight
for re-founding the Fourth International.
This new generation of revolutionaries has and has had the
perspicacious of thinking with their own head, seeking
feverishly for the lessons of the great combats of the
international proletariat to give continuity to the Marxist
theory, that is, the theory of the proletariat revolution, a
thousand times trampled on and falsified by revisionism in
Marxism. Roque used to say that it is not possible to walk
ahead in the fight for the socialist revolution without fighting
resolutely for giving continuity to the program of proletariat

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Class Struggle 91
so that it does not start again facing each decisive combat in
the history. To that cause, he dedicated great part of his
forces during the last years as a publicist. The lack of facility
he had to speak and express himself orally was perfectly
substituted in a brilliant way for his magnificent and acute
blessing as a publicist.
In his essay on the events of France, Roque said that the
imperialist French bankers and owners of the transnational
companies are the grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and
great-great grandchildren of those who stuck their umbrellas
in the Paris communers massacred in 1871, heirs of those
who, with the popular front in 1936-38, delivered the French
proletariat with their hands and feet tied up to Marshal Petain
for him to give Hitler the keys of Paris. The imperialist
bourgeoisie of today, daughter of De Gaulle, Mitterrand,
Giscard D’Estaing, Pompidou and other dregs of the
imperialist Fifth Republic, remembers very well how they
managed to defeat the heroic revolution of French May in ’68,
with the treason of Stalinism.
The exploiters inherit the property and the lessons of how
their previous generations smashed the proletariat. The
comrades of the African secretariat of FLTI pay tribute to him
by stating that his program –the program of the entire FLTI-
on France is already being cooked with low flame in the
barricades of Paris, in the pickets of the oil workers…in the
worker youth immigrants of the Citiés-the vanguard of the
exploited in the combat- which are treated like vandals by
the union bureaucracy and aristocracies-servants of the
imperialist bourgeoisie. The new uprisings and new general
strikes of Guadeloupe and Martinique pose the unity of the
proletariat of colonies and semi-colonies with the proletariat
in the metropolis. That is the way. The starting point to get
the victory is there. You have put a great effort in this
combat. Perhaps, it caused that your health to break earlier
and in a cruel and premature way it cost you your life. We
know that if you had known it beforehand, you would have
done the same and much more for your convictions.
The crisis of our world party prevents the new generation of
the proletariat from entering the combat with that legacy of
historical lessons to win. Roque insisted that the treacherous
leaderships force the proletariat to start always from the
beginning, snatching proletariat here and there the landmarks
of socialism it won throughout its combat. The fight to re-
found the Fourth International, the world party for the
socialist revolution, is that the proletariat -with lessons of its
historical combat- build the leadership that leads it to
victory, that is, to the international socialist revolution. This
was understood by the new generation of revolutionary
Trotskyists to whom the old generation only gave promises of
victories but left nothing else than landmarks of miserable
defeats.
Comrade Roque Sanchez: today we pay tribute and honour to
your revolutionary militancy, your combat that is the same
fight that the new generation of the proletariat is already
giving in the streets of Europe, in the enslaved Africa, in the
untamable and rebel Palestine, in the streets of USA and is
fighting toughly in the American continent. We say goodbye
to you and honour your struggle for the socialist revolution.
In your tribute we re-vindicate the Fourth International and
its founder members of ’38, and state with you, as we have
always done, that between Trotskyism and Stalinism there is
a blood river. Thus, the FLTI (of which you are a founder
member) is at the front line of combat against the impostors
of socialism who, under the name of socialism, attacks on the
September/October 2010
masses like in Cuba by dismissing hundred thousands of
workers, similarly or in a worst way than Sarkozy, the Queen
of England, the German transnationals and bourbons of Spain.
This is what the Cuban Stalinist bureaucracy does, who is
today ready to become the agent of capitalist restoration, as
yesterday were the Stalinists, giving away the workers states
and becoming new managers of Citibank and the Morgan
Bank.
We pay tribute to a militant of the Fourth International whose
historical task will be to clean the way of the proletariat and
remove so many treacherous leaderships that sell out its
combat and gains. We pay tribute to nothing more and
nothing less than an internationalist revolutionary who died
proud of being part of an international centre that fights for
re-founding the Fourth International. In our tribute, no
hypocrisy exists. Sometimes, your distractions prevented you
from focusing on your tasks more coherently. Your passion to
re-found Peruvian Trotskyism, sometimes, separated you from
the combat for an international centre. However, you always
tried it over and over again. Always. And to think that petty
bourgeois, servants of the social-imperialist parties, dared to
expel you applying the worst Lambertist methods of the
Peruvian Trotskyism, accusing you of “crazy”… “sick boy”…We
looked at each other and we recognized ourselves. They used
the same treatment used by Stalinism against its dissidents.
Stalinism masked as Trotskyism. We cry out: “Long live the
‘crazy’!” and thus, we advanced towards a Bolshevik merger.
You were proud of that fight. Such fight is already heritage of
our tendency, as every fight we wage when we broke
relentlessly the parties that far of serving at proletariat, they
submitted it to the bourgeoisie and did that in order to back
every treacherous union bureaucracy that led proletariat to a
dead end.
His comrades in Lima are aware of his work among health
workers, the uprising mining workers in Casapalca know about
his internationalist combat when he took there the solidarity
of hundreds of worker organizations of the world; solidarity
with their struggle and against the repression they had
suffered that was led by FLTI groups at world-wide level. The
agricultural workers of Trujillo met him fighting for the
general strike together with the comrades of Nucleo Obrero
Revolucionario of that province who today are sympathizer of
FLTI.
The comrades of the Liga Trotskista Internacionalista --
Internationalist Trotskyist League-- of Peru are losing an
international leader. The health workers, the revolutionary
students will feel his absence. The mining and agricultural
workers will ask for him. But we, the workers of Paris, and
Africa, the revolutionaries of the American continent and all
the members of the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction
will not feel less such absence. His revolutionary personality
will be irreplaceable, but his fight, without any doubt, will be
continued for the revolutionary worker youth.
Our Transitional program states that the battlefield is full of
fake politicians, of rubble of the counterrevolutionary and
reformist currents. That there are more corrupted than
incorruptible ones in the planet. You are one of the latter, of
the upright militants for the proletariat cause who was in the
battlefield entirely.
Comrade Roque Sánchez: For socialism forever! Forward to
the victory of the international socialist revolution! Long live
the fight to re-found the Fourth International!
Fracción Leninista Trotskista Internacional (International
Leninist Trotskyist Fraction)
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Class Struggle 91
What We Fight For
Overthrow Capitalism
Historically, capitalism expanded world-wide to free
much of humanity from the bonds of feudal or tribal
society, and developed the economy, society and
culture to a new higher level. But it could only do this
by exploiting the labour of the productive classes to
make its profits. To survive, capitalism became
increasingly destructive of "nature" and humanity. In
the early 20th century it entered the epoch of
imperialism in which successive crises unleashed wars,
revolutions and counter-revolutions. Today we fight to
end capitalism’s wars, famine, oppression and
injustice, by mobilising workers to overthrow their own
ruling classes and bring to an end the rotten,
exploitative and oppressive society that has exceeded
its use-by date.
Fight for Socialism
By the 20th century, capitalism had created the pre-
conditions for socialism –a world-wide working class and
modern industry capable of meeting all our basic needs.
The potential to eliminate poverty, starvation, disease
and war has long existed. The October Revolution
proved this to be true, bringing peace, bread and land
to millions. But it became the victim of the combined
assault of imperialism and Stalinism. After 1924 the
USSR, along with its deformed offspring in Europe,
degenerated back towards capitalism. In the absence of
a workers political revolution, capitalism was restored
between 1990 and 1992. Vietnam and China then
followed. In the 21sst century only Cuba and North
Korea survive as degenerate workers states. We
unconditionally defend these states against capitalism
and fight for political revolution to overthrow the
bureaucracy as part of world socialism.
Defend Marxism
While the economic conditions for socialism exist
today, standing between the working class and
socialism are political, social and cultural barriers.
They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology and
its agents. These agents claim that Marxism is dead and
capitalism need not be exploitative. We say that
Marxism is a living science that explains both
capitalism’s continued exploitation and its attempts to
hide class exploitation behind the appearance of
individual "freedom" and "equality". It reveals how and
why the reformist, Stalinist and centrist misleaders of
the working class tie workers to bourgeois ideas of
nationalism, racism, sexism and equality. Such false
beliefs will be exploded when the struggle against the
inequality, injustice, anarchy and barbarism of
September/October 2010
capitalism in crisis, led by a revolutionary Marxist
party, produces a revolutionary class-consciousness.
For a Revolutionary Party
The bourgeois and its agents condemn the Marxist party
as totalitarian. We say that without a democratic and a
centrally organised party there can be no revolution.
We base our beliefs on the revolutionary tradition of
Bolshevism and Trotskyism. Such a party, armed with a
transitional program, forms a bridge that joins the daily
fight to defend all the past and present gains won from
capitalism, to the victorious socialist revolution.
Defensive struggles for bourgeois rights and freedoms,
for decent wages and conditions, will link up the
struggles of workers of all nationalities, genders,
ethnicities and sexual orientations, bringing about
movements for workers control, political strikes and
the arming of the working class, as necessary steps to
workers' power and the smashing of the bourgeois
state. Along the way, workers will learn that each new
step is one of many in a long march to revolutionise
every barrier put in the path to the victorious
revolution.
Fight for Communism
Communism stands for the creation of a classless,
stateless society beyond socialism that is capable of
meeting all human needs. Against the ruling class lies
that capitalism can be made "fair" for all; that nature
can be "conserved"; that socialism and communism are
"dead"; we raise the red flag of communism to keep
alive the revolutionary tradition of the' Communist
Manifesto of 1848, the Bolshevik-led October
Revolution; the Third Communist International until
1924, the revolutionary Fourth International up to 1940
before its collapse into centrism. We fight to build a
new, Fifth, Communist International, as a world party
of socialism capable of leading workers to a victorious
struggle for socialism.
Class Struggle is the bi-Monthly paper of the
Communist Workers’ Group of New
Zealand/Aotearoa, in a Liaison Committee with
Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism.
PO Box 60620, Auckland, New Zealand.
Email cwg006@yahoo.com
http://redrave.blogspot.com
http://communistworker.blogspot.com
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