Greece: Brief overview of the situation in 2022

M. Santaskidis, Communist Revolutionary Action – Greece

the Greek president standing in front
of a border wall, signifying at the highest
level the anti-migrant policy of the state

Greece, with its current neo-liberal government voted upon a racist, anti-immigration, rhetoric and fear mongering is in a peculiar spot, where after a decade of austerity and turmoil, similar policies and practices by the state, are not being challenged. New anti-labour legislation, the normalization of a work environment with low wages and high working hours, new types of employment –detrimental to the workers-, the rise of rent and prices in general, are the new living conditions in which, the people are forced to struggle for survival.

US Politics: Imperialist Decline and Fascist Threats

Consistent Democrats - UK

Trump’s mob storms Washington Capitol to stop Trump’s
election defeat being certified, Jan 6 2021.

After nearly a year of Joe Biden’s presidency, politics in the United States appears to be heading towards another confrontation involving two different layers of the masses, mobilised behind two bourgeois-imperialist factions. Current incumbent President Joe Biden heads the modern-day ‘liberal’ party of US imperialism, the Democrats. Their opponents being the Republicans led by Trump, who lost the November 2020 Presidential Election by over 7 million votes. In a strange sense, both parties have become variations of cross-class blocs. The baleful influence of the two blocs is causing a political paralysis of the working class which is creating a danger of confrontation along racialised lines, and indeed threatening to bring to power a fascist-like regime in open negation of the traditionally illusory American capitalist ‘democracy’.

Draft LCFI Programme

Trotskyism Balance Sheet and LCFI Programme Foundations for a Communist and Revolutionary Programme in the 21st Century

The following programme was drafted by a commission of LCFI comrades from Argentina, Brazil and Britain. It has not yet been adopted by the LCFI, but we are planning an international meeting soon to discuss, amend, and adopt it. We intend this to be a fully comprehensive international revolutionary programme and around 18 months of concrentrated work has gone into it so far. It is a genuine international collaboration and we hope it will play an important role in rearming the revolutionary movement internationally for the struggles to come in this century, which will undoubtedly decide the fate of human civilisation and likely humanity itself.

Argentina: Alberto con FMI, Cristina contra

Acuerdo de Alberto Fernández con el FMI provoca crisis política en el Frente de Todos

Publicamos a continuación el análisis de nuestra corriente hermana argentina TMB sobre la crisis del gobierno del FDT (El llamado Frente de Todos), debido a las negociaciones entre el presidente Alberto Fernández y el FMI, criticadas aquí por nosotros. Es interesante señalar que en Argentina se da un fenómeno simétricamente inverso al de Honduras, aun teniendo en cuenta todas las diferencias entre ambas coyunturas y entre las naciones. En Honduras, hubo una rebelión parlamentaria proimperialista de una fracción de parlamentarios del partido Libre contra la recién electa presidenta de Libre, Xiomara Castro (ver aquí). Los rebeldes se aliaron con la oposición de derecha, el partido del expresidente JOH, contra la presidente para intentar imponer al entonces líder parlamentario de Libre como mandatario del congreso. Fueron expulsados de Libre. En Argentina, la rebelión tiene un signo de izquierda. La fracción kirchnerista del partido Frente de Todos del presidente Alberto Fernández se rebeló contra el acuerdo con el FMI y el acercamiento de Argentina a EE.UU., un movimiento de Fernández que cuenta con las simpatías de legisladores opositores de derecha vinculados al expresidente Macri.

Chile

La socialdemocracia posmodernizada prepara nuevas derrotas para los trabajadores

Christian Romerno

El voto a Gabriel Boric representó una tendencia progresista de los trabajadores de Chile a oponerse al avance del neofascismo. Sin embargo, la coalición socialdemócrata posmoderna de Boric (una especie de PSOL brasileño, o Syriza griega), representa una continuación, en la instancia económica, del neoliberalismo chileno, inaugurado en el mundo por la dictadura del general Pinochet.

NATO Hands Off Ukraine!

NATO Hands Off Ukraine!

Defend Russia and China against NATO/AUKUS Cold War!

LCFI Statement

The current confrontation over Ukraine is the consequence of the fundamental drive of United States imperialism, as the world imperialist hegemon, to reconquer the two main countries in the world where capitalism was overthrown during the 20th Century, Russia and China, for capitalism.

That might sound odd considering that everyone knows that ‘Communism’ was overthrown in Russia in August 1991, and that China now, though the ruling party still calls itself the Communist Party, nevertheless has considerable power in capitalist terms, and has been powerful enough economically both to provide the United States with financial relief during the Credit Crunch/Financial Crisis of 2007-9, and to initiate infrastructure projects such as the One Belt, One Road initiative that have challenged the power of US imperialism in Eurasia and even as far away as Africa and Latin America.

Honduras

¿Cómo evitar un nuevo golpe de Estado?

Qué nos enseña el primero intento de Golpe de Estado desde de la cooptación de parte de la dirección parlamentaria del proprio Libre y fue develado con la movilización popular

Declaración del Comité de Enlace para la Cuarta Internacional, una organización internacional de trabajadores comunistas

Honduras (2009), Libia (2011), Paraguay (2012), Ucrania (2014), Brasil (2016), Bolivia (2019)...? Los golpes de Estado han vuelto con toda su fuerza a ponerse de moda entre los mecanismos de Estados Unidos para no perder el control del planeta ante un bloque de países enemigos, como China, Rusia, Irán, Venezuela, Cuba,... Las viejas justificaciones también han vuelto, la supuesta lucha contra la corrupción, el comunismo, la “guerra contra las drogas”. Queda también el objetivo, imponer gobiernos títeres en contra de la voluntad de la mayoría popular y seguir saqueando el sur del continente como si fuera su patio trasero.

Kazakhstan

In the aftermath of the defeat of another colour revolution

Note: this is an amended version of the original declaration, amendments being proposed by some additional signatories, who are now represented here.

Color Revolution: Pro-Imperialist regime change

We regard the recent 10-day anti-government armed riot in Kazakhstan as one of the strategies to expand the power of the U.S.-centered NATO imperialism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the revival of capitalism, NATO is moving toward its ultimate goal, Russia, subjugating countries close to Western Europe one after another. The goal of the operation is not only to revive capitalism, but to establish an obedient pro-imperialist regime to maximize super profits.

The Trumpist invasion of the Capitol

On The Anniversary Of Jan 6 Fascist Insurrection, A Call For Action
Socialist Workers League and LCFI are republishing this call out for action issued by the United Front for a Mass Labor Party. We are endorsing it and call on all working class organisations and individuals internationally to endorse and share this call out in the build up to January 6th.

The victory of Biden and the Democrats in the 2020 election did not stop nor could it stop the rise of fascism. The only group in society that has the force to stop the fascists is the working class. Trump’s systematic efforts to transform the Republican Party into a fascist outfit, will lay the basis for an overturn of the election in 2024. Trump’s conspiracy theories are being used as a litmus test to purge anyone in the Republican Party who is not loyal to the Trump cabal thus moving the political landscape further to the extreme right with the inevitable result of moving in the direction of a fascist takeover.

In Defence of Cuban Revolution

In Defence of Cuban Revolution

LCFI Statement

No to the Gusano mobilization that is being prepared in Cuba as part of imperialism’s hybrid war against the workers’ state!

For the unconditional defense of the workers’ state of Cuba!

The Dialectic of the New Cold War

Russia and China strengthen ties of mutual defence against imperialism

On December 15, 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping agreed to create an independent financial structure, something like a common market shielded from international influence, above all from US interference.

Cuba

Defence of Cuba Against 15 November US/Gusano ‘Colour Revolution’ Attempt

Statement International

U.S. imperialism – within which the gusano bourgeoisie is an organic component – as part of its criminal campaign against the workers’ state is promoting a right-wing mobilization this November 15 in Cuba, which it hopes will lead to the overthrow of economic planning and the full scale restoration of capitalism.

The Counterrevolution in the USSR

Forthcoming LCFI book: "The Counterrevolution in the USSR"

Preface to the English Edition

This book is the first the LCFI has produced. Its purpose is to address problems that are of major significance to socialists and communists today. The context is an important historical anniversary, the 30th anniversary of the destruction of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1991. The USSR, for all its degeneration, was the state that was created by the world’s first successful proletarian insurrection in 1917. Its survival for 74 years, albeit for most of that period in a bureaucratically degenerated form, inspired numerous revolutionary struggles around the world.

On AUKUS

US tries to stop its own decline with a new anti-China imperialist ethnic alliance
New threat of imperialist nuclear war amid climate danger!

LCFI Statement 

AUKUS Launch Press Conference, 15 September

Hot on the heels of the US cutting its losses in Afghanistan in August, comes the formation of AUKUS, a new imperialist bloc between the United States, Britain and Australia, transparently to target China in the Asia-Pacific region. This carries a potent war threat for the future to try to preserve US world dominance and exposes completely the nonsense being talked by Biden et al about doing something about climate change. They prefer a good old dose of aggressive nuclear blackmail with the threat of a nuclear holocaust. As does British Labour’s execrable imperialist thug leader Starmer, who saluted this in the House of Commons and seemed even more enthused about it than Johnson himself. So much for fighting for human and ecological survival. Fighting for the hegemony of the US and its lackeys over the workers and oppressed of the world is much more important for such reactionary rabble.

Soviet-bloc Counterrevolution

Still Traumatises Humanity

LCFI Statement 

– 30 Years since August Coup and Collapse of the USSR.

– Almost 20 years of imperialist occupation in Afghanistan collapses in days.

– A critique of a flawed analysis of the counterrevolution and its effects

Climate disaster

Climate disaster: Is 2021 the year that the world reached its tipping point?

Consistent Democrats - UK

While 2020 was seen as the year that unleased COVID into the world, which in many ways was a product of exploitation of the natural world, 2021 has commenced with a series of apocalyptic weather driven disasters across the planet, with one scientist describing one cataclysmic mass die off along Canada’s Pacific coast as a-one-in-a-1000-year-event.

Open Letter

To AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka

The following letter was a creditable and supportable initiative of Class Conscious, a leftist trend based in Australia, which we are pleased to endorse and publicise.

To Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO President

We defend the right of the Vermont AFL-CIO to have passed a motion authorising a General Strike if the 2020 election results had been overturned in a coup. This motion voted on by the rank-and-file delegates at the Vermont AFL-CIO 2020 Convention was in the proud tradition of labor fighting together against the threat of fascism and dictatorship. We defend the right of workers and the organised labor movement to strike together to defend their democratic rights.

Amazon

The strategic direction of the fight against Amazon

Amazon is the largest online retailer on the planet. The company currently employs about 1.3 million people worldwide, placing it among the top 10 employers in the world, along with the US Department of Defense, the Chinese Army, the UK National Health Service, and private corporations like MacDonald’s and Walmart.

May Day 2021

The Working Class faces Pandemic, Depression, Wars and Global Heating

LCFI Statement

This year gone many billionaires doubled their wealth and 500 new ones emerged. While 150 million more pushed into extreme poverty.
Capitalism must be overthrown!

USA, Iran and China

Biden’s ‘Progressive’ Imperialist Attacks on Iran and Provocations against China

LCFI Statement

U.S. forces based in Iraq have bombed pro-Iran militia units in Syria. This is a clear sign of continuity with Trump’s US foreign policy under Joe Biden’s new presidency. Imperialism is not only a particular phase of capitalism, but also expressed by a policy of war (conventional or not) of the state at the service of financial capital and multinational monopolies.

The Trumpist invasion of the Capitol - CD - UK

Bourgeois Democracy and Workers Democracy

Consistent Democrats - UK

The statement by the American comrades dissociating them from our position of defence of the outcome of the November US elections from Trump’s Beer Hall putsch misunderstands the relationship between bourgeois democracy and workers democracy, misunderstands key elements of US social reality, and confuses the struggle against imperialist wars abroad with the defence of the workers movement and democratic rights at home.

Differences within LCFI about the current process of civil war in the US

About our differences over the Trumpist invasion of the Capitol

Socialist Workers League (USA) – Bolshevik Militant Tendency (Argentina) – Frente Comunista dos Trabalhadores (Brazil) – Sections of the Secretariat of the Americas of the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International

1. There are differences within our international current about the current process of civil war trends taking place in the US.

2. SWL, FCT and TMB understand that only the organized proletariat can be trusted to crush Trumpism and they have no illusions in any bloc or support for the imperialist military measures of the Democratic Party. They do not believe that the coup plotters of the Democratic Party, who carried out coups against oppressed peoples, are the best allies of the US workers to combat Trump’s coups. They do not defend the “democracy of the rich imperialists” nor its decadent institutions that deliberate all the evils of big capital on the oppressed peoples of the world and the workers of the United States. This nation was built on the pillars of slave oppression and patriarchy. The Democratic Party is a structural and historical component of that state. Until the 1930s, the Democratic Party was the wing of the bipartisanship that best represented southern historical slavery (1). Therefore, the Democrats have neither strength nor interest in destroying the supremacist wing, nor in eradicating its tradition that is part of the Democratic tradition itself, but only in attenuating them and using them as justification to expand their political power. We advocate a political uprising (far beyond the social or racial) of the indigenous, Latino, Afro-descendant and exploited masses, Muslims, oppressed whites against the carnage promoted by the corporations of all their governmental agents.

Trump’s “beer hall putch”

Trump’s “beer hall putch”

Socialist Workers League (USA); Frente Comunista dos Trabalhadores (Brazil); Tendencia Militante Bolchevique (Argentina)

1. For those who have not yet recovered from the year 2020, 2021 started on January 6 with an unprecedented event, indicating how much can be a convulsive year. We recall that, from a geopolitical point of view, 2020 started with a US drone attack that murdered Iran’s top military chief in Iraq, Qasem Soleimani, an event of great regional repercussion that was followed by the global economic crisis and the pandemic.

Revolutionary Working Class organisations on the anti-racist mass upsurge in the United States

Revolutionary working class organisations on the anti-racist mass upsurge in the United States 

LCFI Statement 

SWL - LCFI on Black Lives Matter demonstration in New York

George Floyd was another worker murdered by the imperialist police state, the mortal enemy of blacks, workers and the oppressed of the world

The flagrantly racist May 25th murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis has set off an enormous wave struggles in the United States, at least as big as those in the 1960s that were the culmination of the Civil Rights movement against Jim Crow segregation, the legacy of the defeat of reconstruction after the US Civil War abolished slavery. This struggle is against the results of decades of racist reaction that began at the end of the 1970s, with the rise of Reagan, neoliberalism, and the prolonged movement of American society to the right that carried on under Clinton, with its expanded death penalty and mass incarceration of blacks, deepening more under George W Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ militarisation of the cops, hardly dented by the first black Democratic President Obama, culminating with the openly racist Trump since 2016.

Free Julian Assange now!

Free Julian Assange now!

We republish below the statement of the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International on Julian Assange’s case from April 2019, immediately after he was expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy and sent to Belmarsh in preparation for planned extradition to the US Gulag. This is a pretty good summary of the issues and smears that were used for years to undermine Assange’s defence.

MARCHA A LOS EUA

"¡Los migrantes no son criminales, somos trabajadores internacionales!"

¡Trabajadores del mundo uníos por sobre las fronteras en contra los tiranos del capital y el imperialista Trump! ¡Por la defensa del derecho democrático de trasladarse de un territorio a otro! Todos los derechos para todos los inmigrantes!

USA, The Lowest Rate of Productivity since WWII

More precarious work, less productivity, more misery, more barbarism

The USA counter-offensive managed to advance the world and established a national truce between the two wings of imperialism (Democrats and Republicans, with all their contradictions and fractions, from Bernie Sanders to the Tea Party).

Nicaragua

In defense of Nicaragua, against the USA and its coup agents

Statement International

Workers Socialist League – USA
Frente Comunista dos Trabalhadores – Brazil
Socialist Fight – Britain
Tendência Militante Bolchevique – Argentina
Communist Revolutionary Action – Greece

A new focus of tension emerges from the current cold war, a new operation “regime change” is underway, the US now support a campaign to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Since April 18, armed right-wing paramilitary groups have carried out a wave of violent attacks against public institutions, leftist demonstrators and police, to create chaos and promote civil war in the country. 10 people were killed and more than 80 were injured, including at least 30 policemen. Most of the deaths resulted from the lethal use of firearms by right-wing provocateurs.

Cosmos

 The Big Bang Never Happened

Eric J Lerner

In 1991, my book, the Big Bang Never Happened (Vintage), presented evidence that the Big Bang theory was contradicted by observations and that another approach, plasma cosmology, which hypothesized a universe without beginning or end, far better explained what we know of the cosmos. The book set off a considerable debate. Since then, observations have only further confirmed these conclusions, although the Big Bang remains by far the most widely accepted theory of cosmology.

This website provides an update on the evidence and the debate over the Big Bang, including the latest technical review and a reply to a widely- circulated criticism as well as a technical reading list, a report on a recent workshop and links to other relevant sites, including one that described my own work on fusion power, which is closely linked to my work in cosmology.

Hawking is wrong on the the Big Bang

The Poverty of Philosophy; why Stephen Hawking is wrong on the Big Bang

Gerry Downing

The death of Stephen Hawking on 14 March involved this author in four separate Facebook debates. Many comments were simply ignorant attacks on me for having the gall to attack the conclusions of the great scientist, some sneering bigots who were open renegades from Trotskyism, former comrades who wanted to ingratiate themselves with the capitalist establishment vis Labour reformism to enhance future career prospects by attacking revolutionary Trotskyism.