Why I Resigned From the Trotsky defense Committee, by Mauritz A. Hallgren

Why I Resigned From the Trotsky Defense Committee

Mr. Felix Morrow, Acting Secretary
American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky,
Room 511, 22 East 17th Street
New York, N. Y.

Dear Sir:

It has become necessary for me to clarify my position with respect to the Moscow trials and particularly with respect to Trotsky’s relation thereto.

Since joining your committee I have given deep and earnest thought to the whole problem here involved. I have examined, so far as they have been made available in this country, all of the documents bearing upon the case. I have followed closely all of the news reports. I have consulted some of the reports made by non-Communists who attended the first trial. I have carefully studied the published arguments of the partisans on both sides. And I have just as carefully restudied the writings of Trotsky concerning his case against Stalinism and his theory of permanent revolution, that is, such of his writings on these questions as have been published to date.

I believed when I joined your committee, and I still believe, in the right of asylum for persons exiled because of their political or other beliefs. Trotsky has been granted asylum in Mexico and this part of the committee’s task would seem, therefore, to have been brought to a close.

Second, there was in my mind at the time sufficient doubt concerning certain aspects of the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial to lead me to suppose that the trial was not entirely genuine. This doubt hinged upon the possibility that, while Zinoviev and his associates had been taken in conspiracy (for I have never seen any good reason to doubt their own guilt), they had been promised mitigation of their sentences in return for a public confession that would implicate Trotsky as well as their crimes. In view of this doubt I was glad to join with the committee in endeavoring to provide Trotsky with an opportunity to answer the charges brought against him. This was not because of any desire to be “just” or “liberal” in the meaningless sense that those terms as usually employed by American liberals, but simply because I would have regarded it as hardly less reprehensive and dangerous to the future of socialism for Stalin and his colleagues to be perverting Soviet justice to their own personal ends as for Trotsky to be plotting to overthrow the government of the only socialist republic in the world.

* * *

Very soon after the first trial, Zinoviev and his associates were executed. It has been asserted that they had been promised lenient treatment if they would for their part publicly accuse Trotsky of having conspired with them to overthrow Stalin and the Soviet government. In truth, it was largely upon this supposition that rested the contention that the first trial was a “frameup”. But now that the men were put to death Trotsky and his adherents declared that they, the defendants, had been “double-crossed”. To the Trotskyites this was further proof of their contention that the first trial had been “framed”. To the disinterested student, however, it might be just as easily have proved the contrary. After all, it is one of the simplest rules of logic that one cannot use a premise to prove a thesis and then use the denial of that premise to prove the same thesis. Logically, therefore, one should have looked elsewhere for an explanation of the executions, and the only other possible explanation was that the men were actually put to death in the regular course of justice and for the single reason that they were guilty of the crimes charges against them. Still it was possible, despite the rise of this counter-doubt, that they have been “double-crossed”.

Now we have come to the second trial. What is the situation? the men now on trial cannot possibly be under any delusion as to their fate. They must know and they do know that they will be put to death. Despite this they do not hesitate to confess their crimes. Why? The only conceivable answer is that they are guilty. Surely it cannot and will not be argued this time as well that there has been a “deal”, for men like Radek are obviously not so stupid as to believe that they are going to save their lives in that manner after what happened to Kamenev and Zinoviev. It has been said that they have been tortured into confessing. But what greater and more effective torture can there be than knowledge of certain death? In any case, the men in the courtroom have been shown not the slightest evidence of having been tortured or of being under duress. It is said by some that they have been hypnotized into confessing, or that the prosecution, working upon its knowledge of Slav psychology, has somehow trapped these men into confessing deeds of which they are not guilty. For example, the unamity with which the men have been confessing is taken as proof that the confessions are false and have been obtained by some mysterious means. Yet these assertions rest upon no tangible or logical proof whatever. the idea that some inexplicable form of oriental mesmerism has been used is one that sound reason must reject as utterly fantastic. The very unamity of the defendants, far from proving that this trial is also a “frame-up”, appears to me to prove directly the contrary. For if these men are innocent, then certainly at least one of the three dozen, knowing that he faced death in any case, would have blurted out the truth. It is inconceivable that out of this great number of defendants, all should lie when lies would not do one of them any good. But why look beyond the obvious for the truth, why seek in mysticism or in dark magic for facts that are before one’s very nose? Why not accept the plain fact that the men are guilty? And this fact, if accepted with regard to the men now on trial, must also be accepted with regard to the men who were executed after the first trial.

* * *

I now see no valid reason for believing the defendants in the first trial were unfairly dealt with. Certainly it cannot now be maintained that they were “double-crossed”, for that contention falls of its own weight when we stop for a moment to consider the fact that the Soviet government has brought a second group of men to trial on the same charges. Since the government could not hope to induce the second group to confess under the pressure of false promises, it is reasonable to suppose that it did not rely on false promises in the first case. Moreover, I am now completely convinced that the defendants in the first trial were given every opportunity to clear themselves, that they were denied none of the rights of impartial justice. It is significant that those who content that this was not the case have offered no evidence at all, apart from their own unsupported allegations and suspicions, in substantiation of their contention. On the other side we have not only the court record, but also the unsolicited reports of non-Communist observers who were present at the trial.

One such statement has been presented by D. N. Pritt, English lawyer and a Labor Party representative in the House of Commons. Mr. Pritt can by no means be accused of sympathy with the Communists or with Stalin. He has, indeed, stood with the Right wing of the Labor Party. But he has also been traiend in law, while, moreover, unlike Walter Citrine and others who have charged that there was a gross miscarriage of justice, he was present in person at the trial in Moscow. He reported later that he was “completely satisfied” that the trial was “properly conducted” and that the accused were “fairly and judicially treated”. He added that their appearance and demeanor were such as to indicate the “absence of any ill-treatment or fear”. He declared that there was “no ground for insinuating any unfairness in form or substance”. His view was been confirmed by all other non-Communist observers at the trial whose reports I have consulted. To be sure, Trotsky has now taken to denouncing Pritt for having rendered this “service” to “Stalinism”. But Trotsky has produced no evidence at all to show that Pritt was in any way prejudiced in favor of the Stalin government. Indeed, if I may repeat, while the evidence that the men were fairly tried appears both substantial and convincing, the counter-charge that they were not fairly tried is backed up by no evidence of any kind, convincing or otherwise. The same can be said for the conduct of the second trial so far as that has been reported to date.

It is a curious fact, which seems to have escaped the liberals both in this country and in England, that the Soviet government is hurting itself far more than it could possibly help itself by holding these trials, especially at this time. The very fact that the liberals and Socialists have been aroused by this event, the very fact that this defense committee has been formed, reveal the great extent to which the Soviet Union is being harmed. What has Stalin to gain by taking action that is tending to alienate these elements? It is obvious that he has nothing whatever to gain. On the contrary, he stands to lose a good deal. At the moment there is a grave danger of intervention. The Soviet government needs all the support it can get from workers and liberals and democrats in other countries. Without such support the rising tide of fascism might soon engulf Soviet Russia─whereupon, of course, Stalin and his government would inevitably disappear.

Shall we suppose, then, that Stalin has stupidly thrown all caution to the wind, merely to wreak vengeance upon his personal enemies? Shall we suppose that he is anxious to have popular fronts erected to guard the Soviet Union against an external danger and at the same time is so blind as to take action that might destroy these popular fronts in order to satisfy some purely personal whim or ambition? Shall we suppose that he is so thick-headed as not to appreciate the gravity of this external danger not only to the Soviet Union but to himself as well? Now, no one will say that Stalin is stupid. Even the Trotskyites complain that the menace of “Stalinism” lies not in stupidity but in diabolical cleverness. It must follow, since the Stalin government is apparently risking a good deal by holding these trials, that it has detected an internal danger hardly less grave than the external danger. In short, it must follow that the government has uncovered a conspiracy against itself, the evidence of which is so abundant and the peril from which is so apparent that it dare not without its hand, even though in destroying the conspiracy it may alienate its democratic support abroad and so increase the external danger.

Until now we have considered only the conspirators in Moscow. Little has been said of Leon Trotsky. Is he guilty, too? The conspirators say that he is. He denies it most emphatically (and brings other charges of equal gravity against Stalin). We have the Moscow evidence. Where is Trotsky’s evidence? One may grant that he has not had his day in court. And one may grant that toward the end of his stay in Norway he was literally held incommunicado. Yet he has been out of Norway now for several weeks, and still no tangible proof of his contentions has come from him, no documents, not even anything in the way of circumstantial statements. He has issued nothing but negative denials. Even some of these denials are of a questionable sort. His gratuitous attack upon D. N. Pritt, offered without any supporting facts, certainly did not help him. His statement that he had never heard of Vladimir Romm, a leading Soviet journalist and for years a stellar correspondent for Tass and later Izvestia, is simply incredible and goes far, indeed, toward discrediting Trotsky. But this is the sort of “proof” he has been cabling to The New York Times, the Baltimore Sun and the Manchester Guardian.

* * *

If Trotsky is innocent and has the documentary proof of his innocence that he says he has, why does he not produce it? The Hearst press would be only too glad to publish it and pay Trotsky fabulously well for his documents. The New York Times, the London Times, and other bourgeois journals would likewise be only too glad to give space to his documents. The Manchester Guardian has stood by him through thick and thin in the last several months; it would not desert him now. It has been said that he intents to put his proof into the new book he is writing on Stalinism. And it might also be argued that it would be better for him to put his proof before the projected international commission that is to give him a hearing. But consider the absurdity, the astounding cynicism, of such an attitude. Here are men awaiting death on charges that Trotsky says are utterly false and here is Trotsky who contents that he can prove that they are false—and yet he withholds this indispensable proof for the sake of a book, or for the sake of an international inquiry not yet arranged! And here are the countless liberals and Socialists who earnestly believe that justice is being destroyed at the command of Stalin, but who has not a shred of evidence to support this belief apart from their own fears and suspicions, and here is Trotsky who has the essential evidence—and yet he fails to produce it when it is most needed.

Consider one thing further. Trotsky has in recent years written many books and pamphlets expounding his doctrine of the permanent revolution and purporting to expose Stalin and Stalinism. He contends, not once but again and again, that Stalin must be overthrown if the revolution is to be saved. Now either Trotsky’s arguments and exhortations are wholly passive and academic, in which case they might well be forgotten, or else he means that they should be acted upon. It is obvious, however, that Trotsky is playing no passive role, that he is consciously the agitator, and that he regards himself as the active leader of the movement against Stalin. That stands out from every line he has written on the problem and it is apparent from all his activities. But how is Stalin to be overthrown? It is clear, even to Trotsky’s followers, that there can be no hope of provoking a popular uprising within the Soviet Union. It could only be done by foreign intervention, or by a conspiracy within the Soviet government, or by a combination of the two. Through whom might such a conspiracy be undertaken? Obviously, through persons within the government who have had experience in such work in the past. Even more obviously, by old conspirators who believe, or once believed, in Trotsky’s doctrine. And what have the Moscow trials revealed? They have revealed precisely this kind of conspiracy. They have revealed the very sort of plot against the Soviet government that Trotsky’s teachings call for!

* * *

To be sure, this in itself does not prove that Trotsky has conspired with the Moscow defendants. Yet the reasonable man is compelled to agree that, given Trotsky’s known disposition to action and his forceful presentation of his own case against Stalin, the circumstantial evidence against him is very strong indeed. It might well be said, and it cannot be denied, that the Soviet government’s case against Trotsky is not perfect. It has made mistakes. It has made assertions that are apparently contrary to fact. But then, there has never been a controversy in which the facts on side have been all black and those on the other side pure white. One must judge these matters, not by any rigid or absolute standards, but by weighing the evidence. And in the present instance the preponderance of evidence is on the side of the Soviet government and clearly against Trotsky.

I readily agree that Stalin has his faults. I am far from agreeing with everything that the Soviet government and Comintern have done or are doing. Yet every fair-minded person must concede that under its present leadership the Soviet Union has made remarkable progress toward establishing socialism. It is only among a few groups within the Second International, and among the Trotskyites that it is contended that the Soviet Union under Stalin and his associates is moving, not toward socialism, but toward capitalism or Bonapartism or something called “Red fascism”. Persons acquainted with the facts must and do consider these allegations preposterous. One who has an understanding of economics can readily see that it is socialism and nothing else that is being developed in Soviet Russia. To make any statement to the contrary is, in view of the established facts, mere wishthinking—or deliberate distortion. This being so, any attack upon the Communist leadership in the Soviet Union, imperfect though that leadership might be, that has for its purpose the overthrow of the Soviet government must be regarded as a deliberate and malicious attack upon socialism itself. This does not mean that I regard the Soviet government as being above criticism. Far from it. But it does mean that I regard dishonest criticism or any effort to go beyond criticism (for example, an effort to destroy rather than to aid in the development of socialism in the Soviet Union) as a betrayal of socialism. And that, quite apart from the outcry against the Moscow trials, is the objective purpose of Trotsky’s writings and agitational activities. If one is inclined to doubt this, one has only to compare Trotsky’s writings on “Stalinism” with the Webbs’ study of socialism in the Soviet Union.

* * *

Let us now sum up the situation. On the one hand we have the confessions of the Moscow defendants, the court record, the statements of disinterested observers at the first trial, and the reports on the second trial of such reputable journalists as Walter Duranty. These provide us with an abundance of evidence to prove that the defendants were fairly tried and that their guilt in conspiring to overthrow the Soviet government has been established. They also tend to prove that Trotsky participated in the conspiracy, or that he at least had guilty knowledge of it, though the direct proof of his part in the crime is not so substantial as that involving the men on trial. However, we also have his writings and they tend greatly to strengthen the presumption, if not of actual guilt, at least of moral responsibility. On the other hand, we have nothing concrete with which to offset the charge of conspiracy. We have only the unsupported allegations of Trotsky and the unverified fears and suspicions of numerous liberals and Socialists.

Possibly Trotsky can support his allegations. He should certainly not be denied the opportunity to produce the proof he says he has. But his reluctance or inability to produce his proof when it is most needed must count against him. Moreover, and this is a point of extreme important, it has to be borne in mind that Trotsky is not a disinterested party. He does not come into court with clean hands. He is a sworn adversary of the Stalin government. It must be presumed, therefore, that he is at least equally as much interested, and in all probability far more interested, in carrying on his campaign to destroy the Stalin government as he is in obtaining abstract justice for himself. Let him state that it is justice alone that he desires, and then let him publicly promise that, in the event he fails to substantiate his allegations against the Soviet government, he will promptly cease his effects to destroy that government. If he refuses to bind himself in this particular, the reasonable man must conclude that he is using his demand for justice solely as a means of enlisting additional support for his campaign against socialism in the Soviet Union. Chronologically, indeed, the evidence on this point is already against him. The outcry against the Moscow trials first came from the Trotskyites. It was they who first raised the charge that Soviet justice was being hamstrung by Stalin. It was not until later that certain disinterested liberals took up the cry. There can be no question the Trotskyites knew, when they shouted “persecution”, that they would win the sympathy and perhaps the active aid of these liberals. And there can be little question that this, rather than justice, was their true objective. Surely if they really believed, as they asserted, that the Stalin government knew no law and no justice, then they could not have expected the liberals to help obtain justice from the Stalin government for them. And as they still maintain this position, it is only logical to suppose that their real purpose in appealing to the liberals was not to win justice for themselves, but to win liberal support for Trotskyism, that is, for Trotsky’s campaign against socialism in the Soviet Union, and to do so in the name of that Holy but meaningless liberal principle known as abstract justice.

* * *

In any case, at least until Trotsky comes into court with his own hands clean, I shall remain convinced that the present liberal movement to win justice for him is nothing more than a Trotskyite maneuver against the Soviet Union and against socialism. I am equally convinced, as I must be under the circumstances, that the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky has, perhaps unwittingly, become an instrument of the Trotskyites for political intervention against the Soviet Union. Indeed, apart from the considerations cited above, it is abundantly plain that the whole approach and phraseology of the committee has been radically altered since the committee was formed. For example, those who were invited to join were asked to do so in order to provide Trotsky with the “fullest opportunity to state his case”. But now the committee’s literature talks of “working for a complete and impartial investigation of the Moscow trials”. The implications of this change in attitude are too obvious to need emphasizing here. It is the liberal who would give Trotsky an opportunity to be heard, but it is only the Trotskyite (or someone else with an ax to grind where the Community Party is concerned) who would demand the sort of political intervention that would be required to undertake “a complete and impartial investigation of the Moscow trials”. This is nothing but propaganda. It shows all too plainly that the Trotskyites have captured the committee.

Perhaps the liberal members are not aware of the real nature of the committee. But that cannot be ture of the political members, of the Trotskyites and others, who have but one purpose and that is to use the committee as a springboard for new attacks upon the Soviet Union. I do not intent under any circumstances to allow myself to become a party to any arrangement that has for its objective purpose (whatever might be its subjective justification) the impairment or destruction of the socialist system now being built in Soviet Russia. You will, therefore, withdraw my name as a member of the committee.

It may be unnecessary to point out that I speak for no party and no faction. I do not now belong and have never belonged to any political party or political organization. I speak for myself alone.

It is, however, necessary to add that I am putting copies of this letter at the disposal of certain individuals and groups who no doubt will be interested in its contents.

Respectfully,

MAURITZ A. HALLGRN.

Glenwood, Md., January 27, 1937.

PCB: Statement on the Occasion of 1 May 2011

National Forum of the Salaried Workers of Benin DECLARATION ON THE OCCASION OF 1 May 2011

Like the other workers of the world, those in Benin, for the purposes of taking stock of claims and to consider prospects, commemorate this day, International Workers Day. May 1, 2011, a day of demands from U.S. unions in 1884. Adopted in France by the Socialist International in 1889, it became a legal and public holiday in 1947.

As everyone knows, in fact, May 1 as a cause for celebration and festival is first and foremost a dedication to a great struggle conducted since 1886 by the workers of Chicago. This struggle has left important gains for generations of workers one hundred twenty to five (125) years later, such as the eight (8) hour work day.

In respect to that part of history, and in order to glorify the significance of past struggles and sacrifices, it is customary to celebrate May 1 as a day of struggle by active events such as marches and rallies, or the worker’s forum today under the theme: “Understanding how and why we must organize resistance to the new autocracy and pave the way for the power of the workers and peoples.”

In this sense, and to raise high the demands, the struggles and sacrifices made by workers of CHICAGO, workers in Benin and elsewhere have a duty to rise without restraint today against the constant manifestations of the cruel confrontation between capital and labor, and the hands of the imperialist powers through the channel of their multinationals (Bolore, Bouygues, Monte Santo etc.) Bretonwood and institutions (IMF , World Bank) and WTO. They want to maintain their hold on the neck of the oppressed by all possible means in order to preserve the chain of domination that is perpetuated as smoothly as economic exploitation and cultural alienation.

This, the source of colonization is also that of the neo-colonization and the most brutal attacks of imperialist re-conquest observable here and there, everywhere in the world today with the English, French and U.S. imperialists in particular at the head. For them, the economic re-conquest is almost complete regarding the essential states, especially holding a big reserve of raw materials, especially energy. It must be brought to an end by taking the top political leadership of these countries by force if necessary.

Looking back a little, (1990 for example), we can realize that the IMF and World Bank have prepared the groundwork by requiring disengagement of the state from activities of production and trade, consequently ushering in the all-out fire sale of state enterprises for the benefit mainly of multinationals retained either directly or as strategic buyers.

Thus, in West Africa for example, from Senegal to Benin through the Ivory Coast and Ghana, Bolor is the master of transportation, Bouygues that of telecommunications, the CFDT cap most of the cotton sector, etc. Coffee and cocoa in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana are the preserve of American and French companies.

No state budget is made or adopted by the National Assembly without the express permission of the World Bank and IMF. There is no sectoral policy adopted without the agreement of the imperialist powers and their pharmacies discreetly arranged recently under the title of technical and financial partners (TFP). Even the constitution of Benin is without the sovereignty of the people, the agreements signed with foreigners by these institutions. It is well-known that since colonial times, the currency, the CFA franc, was already firmly hitched to the French Treasury by its management.

It is clear that with all these tricks on their robust hand, they only needed a firmer hand on the heads of state, whether those hands are much more visible than Focart or Françafrique.

The U.S. has given the ultimate in arrogant and crumbling pretexts, such as Afghanistan, Iraq. SARKOZY joins them after the bitterly-contested elections in helping to install a son of a personal friend, Ali Bongo Ondimba, a son of Eyadema (Faure); There is ferocious force, under the cloak of United Nations here or NATO there, by installing the friend whom he performed the marriage as mayor in Côte d’Ivoire. With its American, British and Italian allies, it takes part in LIBYA as everyone knows, since energy issues, including oil, are great.

The brutality of the reconquest is even stronger than the competition from emerging countries grouped under the acronym BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

Similarly, to stem the financial crisis in the United States triggered in 2008, caused by the colossal benefits, fraudulent practices and huge profits that arrogant leaders of banking and financial institutions, has expanded rapidly in Europe. The victims are all designated workers, including Turkey, Spain and elsewhere in the world to take the bitter medicine of layoffs, restructuring, etc.

It is therefore clear that the greed and cynicism of capital in the service of imperialist powers have never let gains of the workers become or remain permanent unless constantly backed up and maintained in struggles.

In Benin, the recourse of Boni Yayi to tyranny, fascist methods and his own personal references for the management of political power will be seen sympathetically by SARKOZY and other masters as he continues to provide proof of security for the interests of French multinationals Bolor, Bouygues and others. The new autocracy takes its source of justification of this particular provision of security from the growing awareness of the people of Benin, who are likely to struggle in many areas to extract the necessary subsidies for survival. It shows its teeth and claws at the slightest unfavorable event, it banned all public demonstrations about the CEN-SAD, DANGNIVO affairs and the presidential election; it stops and beats peaceful demonstrators. This will not cause any commotion from his masters. It protects and incorporates into its ranks criminals known for dirty work underway or planned. The court and the lower court of Yayi multiply initiatives in order to maintain of power in their hands.

The 2011 presidential election has been an opportunity to demonstrate the strength of these initiatives (vote without voters’ list, no list of polling, the fraud of all kinds of pre-stamped ballots etc.) and logically led to unprecedented results in Benin, an electoral coup that reinstalled the power-hungry autocrats.

At the head of demonstrations relating to these elections, then the electoral hold-up, the labor organizations including in particular the CSTB and FESYNTRA-FINANCE, organizations of Human Rights, ODHP, political parties, including the PCB and many other organizations have rightly called for resistance and have established a committee for this purpose.

To complete the building of the new autocracy, the actors of the coup election have been campaigning during the general election being called for a comfortable majority in the National Assembly.

The people of Benin who experienced the horrors of autocracy will not allow themselves to be new victims.

Workers, better than other classes, have by their experiences of the past six months, given the evidence of their rejection of the decadent power of renewal and change along with their desire for their own power and that of the peoples from which they come.

Those who by this new misfortune happening to our people, those who went for making Boni Yayi President of the Republic, are, even if it could be a calamity for the country, going for a new trap for the people in an attempt to legitimize him, his court and his courtyard, after the robbery of political power in broad daylight from which he can neither win nor draw any glory.

It is for these reasons that the only response that such a deal, this new trap deserves is the firm rejection without appeal.

It should be remembered for those who have forgotten or pretend to have forgotten that political struggles are declared as such, are not painted or hypocritically masked under terms such as “citizen control” triggered at various moments in the history of the peoples and especially the workers, which have in turn led to the advent of the “Democratic Renewal” and “change.”

Workers, in tandem with all other strata, will fight through the necessary resistance to the new autocracy in order to pave the way toward their own power and the satisfaction of their basic demands. Meanwhile, they require:

• enjoyment of fundamental freedoms and the broader union;
• the removal of NPE in accord with the sentiment of the majority of the people, education in our mother tongues;
• stopping the incessant insults made to workers, the dictates of imperialist institutions to justify the non-satisfaction of claims;
• the election and the revocability of the managers o services and public enterprises (DG, DT, Directors and Project Coordinators, Heads services etc..) for an effective fight of the people against corruption;
• the halting of the privatization of Benin Telecom SA Sonapra, OCBN, Port, Sobemap, SBEE SONEB and all other public utilities;
• halting of layoffs in the public and private companies;
• recovery and publication of audits of departments of all companies and state institutions;
• shedding light on the current scandals (Cases of DANGNIVO, CEN-SAD Presidential Plane, agricultural machinery, ICC Services, not to mention the no less important deeds of the previous governments) and punishment of perpetrators;
• guaranteed freedoms, the judgment and punishment of perpetrators of violations of freedoms, the rehabilitation of victims;
• halting the infringement of gains in bonus and other benefits;
• the end of impunity for political crimes of blood (murder of Judge Coovi, the Commissioner of Police and Tossou Koundé) and economic crimes, including main leaders in government or the National Assembly.
• the development and rapid implementation on behalf of workers of the MEF, of all the achievements of recent union negotiations Confederation / Government and the wider wage Coëffic (at least factor 2) to all state employees on active duty or retired (pension).

Workers from all walks and backgrounds must reinforce confidence in ourselves for our major achievements and victories of the past.

Contrary to false propaganda networks developed by unscrupulous authority among workers, Treasury securities to pay back wages, the coefficient of 1.25 on the salaries of Teachers, the repayment of the contract are far from the results of the magnanimity of the power of Yayi Boni. In the minutes of the working meeting chaired Friday, March 7, 2003 by Kerekou, he said to save the academic year. It noted prominently:

• the lifting of the suspension of payment of financial effects of promotions, reclassifications and promotions, which give rise to Treasuries;
• lifting the hiring freeze imposed by PAS since 1987 and a rapid offset staffing, which will end the recruitment dropper according to retirements;
• the “dropping out of sectors on the Training of Public Service” which will give rise among other things to the coefficient of 1.25;
• the “contractual issues” which then lead to the reversal of the decrees;
• “problems of pay structures” the result of which consists of the institution of certain bonuses which are then removed.

Moreover, as workers and peoples of other countries, workers in Benin fought the PAS and contributed to to end it;

Workers have fought and prevented the application of merit-based promotion;

Workers have fought and prevented the enactment of Act 98-035 intended to modify the general status of APE for promotion on merit;

By their vote, workers were cornered, beaten and inflicted shame upon by opportunists by electing twice successively already CSTB as the most representative trade union confederation.

Similarly, in response to the multifaceted assaults and organized attacks of imperialist institutions, it is imperative that workers in the West African region, Africa and the world adopt appropriate crucibles to dispel these harmful actions, to incapacitate them and spawn in each country the way to revolution, the true power of workers and the peoples. The Forum of Workers in Benin launches a solemn appeal to workers of all countries.

STOP THE NEW AUTOCRACY!

VIVE LA DETERMINED RESISTANCE AGAINST THE YAYI BONI AUTOCRACY!

FORWARD TO THE BATTLE OF THE GENERATION, THE EMPOWERMENT AND THE MEETING OF THE DEMANDS OF WORKERS!

FORWARD THE POWER OF WORKERS AND PEOPLE!

LONG LIVE THE WORKING CLASS OF BENIN!

Cotonou, May 1, 2011

The Workers’ Forum

Communist Coordination Unit: May 1, Workers Day

These times of acute economic crisis that have created big business and banks in the capitalist countries mainly by speculation, greed and lack of control of an unplanned economy, paradoxically, are exploited by the perpetrators to rest on the shoulders of the class working and popular classes countless new social cuts and labor to ensure increased benefits for large employers continue to amass huge fortunes.

The government of the PSOE, as the opposition of the PP, have clearly shown which side they are. Public meetings with big business in this country, they have served to be giving instructions on what steps were: labor reform, reduction of wages to public employees, delayed retirement age and lowering of pensions … All this after having allowed an orgy of EREs and layoffs to large companies with huge profits. The last example is intended to fire directly at 6,400 workers, while its senior officials will be distributed 450 million euros.

Thus, the vast majority of the population suffer unfair eviction or mortgage while a few are shared billion euros (our money) with which the state “saved” the banks. We are listing more years to be entitled to receive pension, where representatives and senators charged the maximum with only 7 years of parliamentary activity. In addition, they put us in another war of plunder, which generates thousands of deaths of innocent Libyans, to steal their oil, and wasting in arms spending that have cut social spending. The crisis is not the same for everyone!

With demonstrations and call for general strike, workers try to prevent these attacks. However, the lack of conviction and the hesitant attitude of some union leaders missed the force that demonstrated the working class and the demobilized, giving the government and the employer another retreat from our duties.

We can not resign, nor why we beg anything. Workers and we are working with our effort we all wealth, are the engine of society and the economy, and therefore, we must unite to demand a government that responds to our interests, the interests of the Most of the population and not those of the powerful few.

We must keep fighting against all anti-worker and anti-social measures, from the labor reform to privatization, through the “pensionazo”, and for this we need to rebuild all our party, the working class, always ensure that our interests: the Communist Party. The PCE history of the Second Republic and the anti-Franco has been developed by reformist leaders in an instrument incapable of dealing with the domination of capital, despite the efforts of much of its membership base. But the Communists did not give up: we are uniting and rebuilding the party on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. Join us to keep fighting!

Saturday April 30, 2011

NO MORE LOOTING OF LARGE EMPLOYERS AND WORKERS AGAINST THE WORKERS!

LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE OF THE WORKING CLASS!

DOWN WITH CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM VIVA!

VIVA EL 1 º DE MAYO!

COMMUNIST COORDINATION UNIT (CUC)
September 27th Communist Collective

Kasama’s Anti-Stalinism: Furr on Bukharin

Carl: You wrote:

“But for Bukharin, GF, someone I and many others think highly of (although perhaps not so many in this forum), it was indeed a capital case.”

You ought not to “think highly of” this truly revolting person, Bukharin. Bukharin is not worthy of your respect, or that of any decent person.

Read our research on Bukharin, and Bukharin’s testimony at the 1938 Moscow Trial. Bukharin was a very dishonest, unprincipled person.

Getty has some good, and unflattering, things to say about him too, in that book Mike recommended to you, _Road to Terror_.

You wrote:

“You may write histories to your heart’s content. Those of us who are organizers think differently about the prospect of a bullet in the back of the head after a trial by former comrades..”

If you read that research you will see that we have evidence from outside the USSR that, for example, Bukharin was conspiring with his clandestine faction to assassinate Stalin as early as 1928.

This evidence has been available since 1971. Stephen Cohen’s 1973 biography of Bukharin cites that source — but conceals this particular piece of evidence from his readers, omitting it from his book, deliberately deceiving his readers.

Vladimir Bobrov and I have an article on Cohen’s book in the upcoming issue of _Cultural Logic_ (it’s already been published in our latest Russian book).

Cohen’s book is both incompetent and deliberately dishonest.

You continue:

“… later deemed flawed by the government that did it.”

No, it was not, and you must know it was not.

Gorbachev et al. were to the Right of Ronald Reagan, super anticommunists — and big-time liars too.

Gorby and Eltsin made possible the privatization of the collectively produced wealth of the USSR and the radical impoverishment of its working class. This has been termed “the greatest theft of the 20th century” — though IMO it was the greatest theft in world history.

Some years ago I discovered, in a little-known archive, the “rehabilitation report” on Bukharin by Gorbachev’s Soviet Supreme Court. This document is still top-secret inside Russia today.

Vladimir and I published it, along with an article about it. In that article we point out that the Soviet Supreme Court _lied_, big-time. The Court quoted from a document that, in fact, is the strongest evidence of Bukharin’s _guilt_. But they quoted selectively, to cite it as evidence of his innocence.

There was no way to know that until (a) the document from which they quoted was published in 2006, in a collection of documents from former Soviet archives; and (b) I discovered the Bukharin “rehabilitation” report in that archive.

This article is also in our latest (Russian) book. We hope to publish it in English before too long.

Read our research. We point out that Gorbachev’s Politburo commission searched all 250 volumes of the Bukharin investigative materials, looking desperately for any evidence that Bukharin was framed, that he was innocent.

They found none, nothing. That’s excellent evidence that no evidence vindicating Bukharin exists.

You wrote:

“As Mao once quipped, don’t be too quick to cut off heads, since history shows it’s not so easy to put them back on.”

Bukharin was used by Gorbachev to demonize Stalin.

But why demonize Stalin? To justify the world-class privatization and theft!

Gorby used Bukharin as an excuse to say: “Let’s revert to ‘Lenin’s’ way — to the NEP. Let’s increase the role of the market — which, as we all know, is the only road to ‘freedom’”.

To say that Gorby and all his academic minions lied, big-time, and about everything, is simply to gild the lily. OF COURSE they lied about everything!

Of course they lied about Stalin! All the anti-working class, pro-capitalist “reforms” were justified in the name of “anti-Stalinism.”

This is still going on, and accounts for the continued falsification of the Stalin period in the “mainstream”, “respectable” historiography. To say nothing of the Trotskyists.

Back to Cohen: Cohen concluded over 15 years ago that Bukharin was NOT tortured, could not have been. And Cohen is the world’s biggest Bukharin supporter!

As Getty shows in that book Mike E. recommended, Stalin was very partial towards Bukharin. But Bukharin was beyond dishonest, a real back-stabber, thoroughly unprincipled — and a plotter of assassination and sabotage on top of it all.

They just don’t get worse than Bukharin!

We have all been force-fed a bunch of lies about the Stalin period, and about this supposed “good guy” Bukharin, for decades. Some of us will never get past these lies.

Well, too bad for us if we can’t! New generations are coming up. They are not stuck in the anticommunist lies of the past, in the “cults” of Trotsky and Bukharin.

I find that most younger people want to know the truth! So do I. “The truth shall make us free.”

But we will never, ever get to that truth by remaining stuck in the lies of the past — including mainly, for present purposes, all the lies about Stalin, “Stalinism”, “frameups”, and so on.

Read the research! Study the evidence! Anyone who does this, and makes an attempt to be objective, will have no difficulty seeing the truth.

We have all been taught complete crap, lies and virtually NOTHING BUT lies, about Soviet history, for decades. PAST time to realize this, and do something about it.

Like Marx, Lenin, and Mao, Stalin was OUR guy, one of the heroes of OUR movement! One of the great ones, in fact.

Did Stalin make mistakes? Did Marx, Lenin, Mao? Does a bear shit in the woods?

OF COURSE they made mistakes! They also did a great many things that were RIGHT! Things we should imitate today.

But to learn from the mistakes, as well as from what they did that was right, we have to have the courage, and take the trouble, to study the evidence and look the truth squarely in the eye.

Grover Furr stomps Kasama Liberals

Thanks for all the remarks! Here are a few replies. I’ll be brief.

Mike Ely wrote:

“Give us a short, simple list of your evidence for this global Trotsky-Bukharin-Nazi conspiracy. You can’t because it didn’t exist.”

Either you have not studied the materials or you don’t remember them.

There were a series of inter-related conspiracies. There’s a huge amount of evidence of this. Some of this evidence is unquestionable – e.g. Trotsky’s and his son’s correspondence about the “bloc” – their word – of Zinovievites, Trotskyites, and others. But there’s lots more too.

Re: Bukharin: he never claimed to have been in touch with Germans or Japanese. But he was for sure involved in a terrorist conspiracy.

See Furr and Bobrov, “Nikolai Bukharin’s First Statement of Confession in the Lubianka”, at http://clogic.eserver.org/2007/Furr_Bobrov.pdf for the evidence just about Bukharin that was available a few years back.

There’s lots more evidence that does not directly concern Bukharin, who was only one figure among many.

We have lots of evidence about the Military conspiracy and its interrelationship with the other conspiracies. For non-Soviet evidence of this see the late Alvin Coox’s two-part article on Genrikh Liushkov and the Japanese in _Journal of Slavic Military Studies_, 1998.

Full references for this and other useful stuff is in my article, “Evidence of Leon Trotsky’s Collaboration with Germany and Japan”, at http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf

Mike Ely wrote:

“He is trying to prove something which is false, and there is mountains of evidence of many kinds about what actually happened.”

There is NO evidence that the Moscow Trials were frame-ups. None! ALL the evidence we have supports the hypothesis that these conspiracies were genuine.

Mike Ely wrote:

“For those interested in the actual history of this period, I would urge you to read J. Arch Getty’s book “Road to Terror”…”

Getty wrote this book 13-14 years ago. We have a huge amount more evidence, more documents from former Soviet archives, now than he had then.

Read it! You’ll learn something. And you will find nothing that disagrees with what I have written.

PatrickSMcNally wrote:

“The record of Bukharin’s performance at the trial shows that he attempted to give way on certain points while refusing to concede on others,…”

That’s true. But this isn’t:

“…and this was done in a way which strongly suggested a coerced confession.”

Had he been “coerced” he’d have confessed to everything. Instead he fights like hell on some points while confessing to other capital offenses.

Read the evidence in our article (cited above).

Bill Martin: Thanks for your sensible and supportive remarks! I don’t recall meeting you, but hope to have the opportunity before long.

One point: You wrote:

“Prof. Furr, on the other hand, at least contributes to our understanding of the complexity of the Stalin period, and to an understanding that there is more to what happened than the capriciousness of a one-person dictatorship.”

Stalin was not a “dictator” in any sense of the word. Wheatcroft, one of the very best historians of this period around, wrote an article almost a decade ago calling Stalin’s collective style of working “Team Stalin”.

“Dictator” is simply a shibboleth of respectability – you _have_ to say it, in order to be “acceptable” to anticommunists and Trotskyists.

PatrickSMcNally wrote:

“But the purges were an insane outburst of paranoia…”

No, they were not! You are ‘begging the question” – assuming that which must be proven.

You are voicing the “respectable anticommunist / Trotskyist viewpoint”. It’s completely wrong, and there has never been any evidence to support it.

PSM wrote:

“Stalin’s paranoid visions of Nazi agents everywhere…”

True nonsense! That there were, in fact, a large number of foreign agents in the USSR, is acknowledged by bourgeois historians. For example: Jeffrey Burds, in _Journal of Contemporary History_ 42 (2007), 267 ff.

“Furr’s thesis is only of utility as an example of how Leftists need to wary of getting sucked into a wish to confirm their old biases off of doctored versions of the past. That can’t lead anywhere towards the future, and a comparison with Creationism is entirely appropriate.”

PSM is not familiar with the research on these topics, but pretends that he is.

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

Anticommunist historians (and Trotskyist historians) do little but lie about Soviet history and Stalin.

Meanwhile, they all admire each other – yes, the anticommunists cite the Trots respectfully all the time, and the Trots return the favor. All are interested in anticommunist, and specifically in anti-Stalin lies.

Parallel with Mao: the same kind of thing is going on re: China and Mao. There’s a leapfront contact to “prove” Mao “killed” 20, 30 40, 45 million people in the famine, not to mention elsewhere.

The reality is this: I have been investigating “anti-Stalin” allegations intensively for the past decade. To this point, NOT A SINGLE ONE of them can be verified, and most can be DISproven.

That’s the situation. Obviously, many people on the “Left” find this inacceptable, intolerable.

To them I say: Think again! You are never, ever going to build a movement for a better society by basing yourself on anticommunist, anti-Stalin, pro-Trotsky and pro-capitalist lies.

Grover Furr defends research on Moscow Trials from Charlatan Mike Ely

-The following is a response written by Grover Furr on the Kasama Project website-

Someone brought to my attention that my research is being discussed here.

I asked Mike Ely if I could respond, and he agreed that I could. I welcome criticism! But to be valuable, it has to be accurate.

Here are some remarks that I believe are NOT accurate:

1. Mike E. wrote:

“Grover insists that he has proven that the Moscow Trials came to a justified verdict (i.e. that former leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) were spies and conscious agents of German and Japanese fascism (and Polish intelligence and in some cases British intelligence etc.) And he claims that this was proven by the confessions they gave at their trials, and by his own subsequent research.”

All evidence is relevant. Confessions are evidence. So it would be incorrect to ignore them.

The question is: Were these confessions “scripted” – written by the NKVD investigators? Or do they represent what the defendants wanted to say?

Note: NOT “were they truthful”. That’s a different question. We can say for sure that some of the defendants deliberately lied in their statements at trial, to mislead the authorities.

“But in fact (precisely because his work is pseudo-scholarship) the problem is at the level of method. In other words, his method is to try to discredit any fact that undermines his (preexisting) verdict. And his method is to inflate any detail that he can portray as document his (pre-existing) verdict.”

This is false.

My method is to be as objective as I possibly can, and get at the truth.

If Stalin “framed” people, I’d like to know about it. I’m not interested in “discrediting” those who disagree with me or “inflating” the evidence that I present.

2. Mike E. again:

“Similarly, Furr has decided to spend his life defending the disproven and discredited claims that Trotsky, Zinoviev, Radek, Bukharin, Tomsky, Kamenev, the heads of the Soviet military and dozens of other leading Bolsheviks were paid agents of foreign powers,…”

This is false. I never wrote this. For the sake of brevity I’ll just make two points:

* I have never written that Zinoviev, Radek, Bukharin, Tomsky, or Kamenev were “paid agents of foreign powers.” There’s no evidence that they were.

* The Moscow Trials have never been “disproven”. No one has ever presented any evidence that the defendants’ testimony was compelled by torture or threats, or that the defendants were innocent of the crimes to which they confessed at trial. No one, ever.

3. Mike E. again:

“You can’t refute Grover Furr’s evidence, because he has no evidence of his claims. He offers piles of facts, statements, quotes, documents… but they do not prove his claims. They simply obscure the lack of proof of his claims.”

This is false. I present lots of evidence, and analyze it too.

4. Mike E. again:

“Grover Furr is attempting to say that the 1930s claims of the Soviet party and leadership (of a vast Nazi-inspired conspiracy of assassins, wreckers and spies led by Leon Trotsky from exile) is justified by historical evidence (and particularly by the material in the Soviet archives). None of this is true:…”

Mike is mistaken. The concrete claims I make in my articles and book are well demonstrated by the evidence I present.

5. Chegitz Guevara wrote:

“You do not have to be an expert on the USSR to point out that Furr has failed to make his case, since Furr uses invalid argumentation.”

No, I do not. I would appreciate it if you could give me one concrete example of my “invalid argumentation.”

Not Mike Ely’s, or somebody else’s, “summary” or “description” of what I write, but examples from my articles / book. That’s all I can be responsible for.

6. PatrickSMcNally wrote:

“Neither is Grover Furr. Furr is an English professor, not a historian by profession.”

Pardon me, but that is nonsense. I was trained in literary history. This is a branch of the study of history.

Please see the opening section of my interview with _Literaturnaia Rossiia_ back in 2008, where I briefly explain this, at

http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/litrossiainterv0608_eng.html

7. Stiofan writes:

“Anyone who has the least familiarity with the work of Getty and Thurston know they do enot ven remotely support Grover’s conclusions as to the vast conspiracy of Trotskyite/Zhinovite wreckers doing the bidding of foreign intelligence agencies.”

EVIDENCE, not what X or Y says, is what we should be concerned about here!

I have a great deal of respect for both Arch and Bob. They are among the very best in what is unfortunately a field of study dominated by dishonest anticommunists and Trotskyists. But neither Getty nor Thurston presents any evidence that the conspiracies did NOT take place. Neither does anyone else.

As for the “Evidence of Leon Trotsky’s Collaboration with Germany and Japan” – the title of my 2010 article in _Cultural Logic_: to my knowledge no one else has ever bothered to find, collect, and study this material.

8. Carl Davidson writes:

“I thought his [Mike E.’s] critique of Furr’s ‘just so story’ method was pretty good…”

And

“Furr is not a ‘creationist dupe.’ He simply uses a similar flawed method, discounting whole categories of evidence as not really evidence.”

I think it is obvious that Carl D. has not studied my research at all. No one who has could ever call it a “just so” story!

9. Contrarian writes:

“Mike, having read Grover Furr’s work, and being a long time history of Soviet history, I tend to agree with you that he reaches false conclusions and that the problem is his method, including his disregarding of what Molotov wrote.”

I never “disregarded what Molotov wrote. I just sent Mike some evidence on this point.

Contrarian: I would appreciate some specific criticisms of specific passages in my research!

I do not agree in the least that there is anything faulty about the “method” I use. If you think there is, I’d appreciate your pointing it out to me.

10. Chegitz Guevara again:

“In fact, no need understand anything about the history of the USSR in order to be able to dismantle Furr’s work, because where it fails is not on facts, but on logic.”

Please point out a couple of examples of errors of logic in my published research.

_______________

In conclusion: I am grateful for all close, cogent criticism. Unfortunately, I don’t see any such criticism here, or on previous discussions of my work on Kasamaproject.

Feel free to email me privately with your criticisms, if you do not want to continue this thread.

Thanks for your time and attention, and thanks to Mike Ely for allowing me to post this response.

Sincerely,

Grover Furr

Albania’s Communists Seek Revival at Polls

Article from Balkan Insight

Two decades after Albanians rebelled against the Stalinist regime of former dictator Enver Hoxha, two communist parties are wooing voters at the May 8 local elections, hoping to garner support among those dissatisfied with the current political elite.

“We are communists, neither Socialists nor Democrats,” says Hysni Milloshi, leader of Albania’s Communist Party. “To vote for the Democratic Party or the Socialist Party-led coalitions, would mean only that poor people will vote for the rich to get richer and the poor even poorer,” he adds.

Apart from Milloshi’s Communist Party, Marko Dajti heads the Reorganised Labour Party of Albania, another self-proclaimed heir of the Labour Party, PPSH, which led the country with an iron fist from 1946 to 1991.

“For some it might be hard to admit, but apart from the bad things the PPSH did it also recorded some achievements and things should be viewed through this prism,” says Dajti, who is running a coalition with the Socialist-led ‘Alliance for the Future.”

World War II Communist veterans & Nexhmije Hoxha lay wreaths at Enver Hoxha's grave

After the collapse of communist rule, Albania’s Labour Party transformed radically into the centre-right Socialist Party, presenting a business-friendly attitude and pro-western political programme.

Milloshi’s Communist Party emerged from Enver Hoxha’s Volunteers Union in 1991, a group of hardliners that tried to prevent the downfall of the regime in its final gasps.

Milloshi is running as mayor of Tirana in the upcoming elections, against Socialist incumbent Edi Rama and ruling Democratic Party candidate Lulzim Basha. His party received only 11,000 votes nationally in the 2009 general elections, mostly banking on nostalgia for the old regime.

Marko Dajti & Ilir Hoxha, son of Enver Hoxha

Milloshi says that he has challenged the two other candidates for the municipality to a public debate, but so far they have not accepted.

“If they refuse the debate, it will mean that the two other candidates have no democratic culture and are cowards,” said Milloshi, a poet whose verse often sang praise to the rule of Enver Hoxha.

Dajti’s Reorganised Labour Party, which was established more recently, is only putting forward candidates only for councils, in alliance with the Edi Rama’s Socialists.

“They should not write us off,” warned Dajti. “No one should forget that he was in power for 50 years,” he added.

This article was made possible through the support of the National Endowment for Democracy.

Source

[Please note the organization "National Endowment for Democracy" listed above in the article contributed 80,000 American dollars to the US/NATO funded opposition, the Democratic Party in Albania during the early 90's]

The Working Class & the Labourers have won in the May Day

From the Labour Party of Turkey on May Day:

The May Day celebrations held all around the world and in Turkey has been a day on which the working class and the labourers have declared that they do not want to pay the cost of the crisis. The massive character as well as the prevalence of the celebrations has stood out and they have also revealed both the periodical weaknesses and the opportunities for improvement and reinforcement within the workers’ movement and the trade union struggle.

Both around the world and in our country, the May Day of 2009 has been witnessed to the most prevalent and massive May Day celebrations of the recent years.

The capitalist system is undergoing its most severe crisis after the Second World War. The role of the capitalist system’s attacks (such as dismissals from work, wage reductions, all the different forms of leave without pay and flexible work being implemented etc.) channelled by the hands of the states and governments and directed towards the sections forming the main body of the working class has been significant. In many countries, beginning with France, the trade unions and confederations have put aside the competition between them and have celebrated May Day together against the attacks of the capital.

The economic crisis collectivising the demands, to such a degree, in the celebrations held on an international scale has brought out the international character of the working class movement in the same degree.

More than 300 thousand workers and labourers have participated in the celebrations held around 100 different venues in our country. Another characteristic to stand out in the celebrations has been the Kurdish workers and labourers participating massively and in a widespread manner and claiming the May Day celebrations this year. The Kurdish workers and labourers have expressed their economic and democratic demands together with their class sisters and brothers. This picture gives strength and hope in terms of the future of the common struggle of the Turkish and Kurdish workers and labourers.

However and unfortunately, on the contrary to the tendency around the world, the confederations and trade unions in our country following a “dividing” line of action rather than one respecting the unity of the workers and labourers, has caused participation to remain at the current levels when conditions for different results actually existed. To such an extent that some of the confederations, not content with limiting the division based on “we must go to Taksim Square” to Istanbul, have resorted to dispatching written instructions to the trade union branches in other cities around the country telling them to stay away from joint celebrations.

It is gladdening to see that, despite these negativities the workers, labourers and the trade unionists feeling responsibility towards the labour movement have not paid attention to the “imposing from the top”, subjective approaches of the confederations’ and trade unions’ central administrations disregarding the unity and interests of the labourers and not taking the will of the grassroots into consideration at all and these forces have organised joint celebrations everywhere except for Istanbul and a few other locations around the country. This situation has demonstrated that the idea of the capital’s attacks being only repulsed with a complete struggle has been accepted among the labourers at the grassroots.

This attitude that is pro-unity has shown both that our Party’s May Day tactic has been claimed by the working class and the labourers and has, once again, put forward the path that needs to be trodden by the movement of the workers and the trade unions.

At the point reached today, the central administrations of confederations and trade unions should regard the class movement from a position in accordance with this tendency of the grassroots rather than their own positions and should immediately take the steps in order to build a united line of struggle. In addition to this, insistence on the policy of “We must go to Taksim Square” is one of the most fundamental obstacles in front of maintaining class unity. We must know that the discussions currently carried out around “Taksim Square”; beyond being a simple discussion among the working class and the labourers as to whether the “march took place or not in Taksim Square” or whether the “number of participants was reasonable or not”, is in fact an ideological problem existing between the working class and the elements outside of the class.

May Day will only correspond to the values it represents both historically and in terms of today as long as it is celebrated as a day on which the widest unity of the workers and labourers is maintained around the most urgent economic, social and political demands. A platform on May Day that does not ensure the unity of the workers and disregards their demands cannot be defended on behalf of the working class; no matter what the pretexts put forward happen to be. This is the reality that those insisting on “Taksim Square” refuse persistently in seeing.

Undoubtedly; celebrating May Day in Taksim, beyond being a wish, is the right of the working class of Turkey. However; a genuinely workers’ May Day will have been celebrated in Taksim Square when the workers and labourers have defeated with their own forces the restraints and bans pertaining to this issue imposed by the capital’s governments and the state and have rendered sovereign their own platform with their unity and their demands. What has been experienced in Taksim on the May Day of 2009 has nothing to do with this situation.

The subjectivist attitude and understanding put forward by those setting forth the symbols of the past and their own feelings in a manner alienated from the duties of the present day is a typical indication of the position they have been flung to that is outside of the class.

On the other hand, another reality made obvious one again by the events in Taksim is that the government as well as the Governor and the Chief of Police that are “at the head” of Istanbul as the government’s representatives, deem running this city with police terror as an accomplishment. The police terror storming around Taksim on May Day cannot be accepted by anybody or any organisation on the side of democracy nor can it be justified. The Governor and Chief of Police of Istanbul should immediately resign as those responsible for these actions.

Taking all of these facts into consideration, our Party will continue to offer all its accumulation and means of struggle to the service of the working class and the trade union struggle.

Long live May Day; the day of international unity, struggle and solidarity of the working class!

Long live the unity of the working class!

EMEP: May 1 – Workers of our Country & All the World, Happy Worker’s Day!

Unity, struggle and solidarity to all workers and toilers of our country and the world. Happy May Day 1. Unfortunately, the 20,011 in a Mayıs’ına peace, democracy and freedom in front of the demands of international capital, the imperialist powers and their collaborators sought by the conditions of blood and violence are going to repression.

The neo-liberal economic crisis of 2008 with the ship thoroughly rampant aggression is endless. Snow ambition eyes darkened in such a period, the country’s workers, victims of crimes over the business of death is news. The last two years, the economy grew significantly, while the social welfare of workers and working people’s share of unemployment, hunger and poverty.

On the other hand, the number of dollar billionaires s taking it to 36 while 3000 new millionaire. In short, the full capital and the AKP government vurgunculuğudur a crisis.

In this environment, to search for the right to organize trade unions, workers and workers who want to strike, Prime Minister Erdogan’s response, “do not ask me to strike” is. This attitude of Prime Minister Erdogan and the AKP government is not the first example showing that the levels of labor in which enmity. For miners who died in the mines of Zonguldak “would die knowing that entered the mines,” said the same Prime Minister.

Obstructing the search for ways to organize and the rights of the working class trade union, anti-democratic laws and practices of political extensions June 12 elections, the working class and toiling in front of our people was increased once more. Parties in order to help the trillions of treasure, while independent candidates to be nominated for the workers actually removed from the application fee of 7,800 pounds are prevented.

June 12 elections, wills have been obstructed from work the other cutting the Kurdish people. Anti-democratic Election Law (10% threshold), because “Labor, Democracy, Freedom Block” of the candidates participating in elections as independent candidates brought to the desired YSK veto of Turkish and Kurdish workers in all nationalities, workers, intellectuals and the people’s struggle püskürtülebilmiştir. ODP is the “missing paperwork” to enter the grounds that the elections are prevented.

It seems that he is, the AKP government, the working class, working people plugging their ears and attitude of the Kurdish people will continue to justify the demands. 1 million 700 thousand students in the future that it obscures the password rezaletindeki a continuation of the attitude of the government’s impassive.

There is no doubt that another compilation, Kürdüyle, Alevisi, all nationalities and all faiths Sünnisiyle workers and laborers, young people and women on May 1 in the attitudes and practices do not recognize the AKP government and the capital account front Pervan ask, before the June 12 elections, the AKP’s first big slap will take.

May 1: Workers of our country and all over the world, Happy Emekçilerine (Workers Day)!

Haydar KAYA
EMEP V. GENERAL CHAIRMAN

MLKP on May 1, for freedom and socialism!

The workers, laborers, youth, women, Turkish and Kurdish peoples!

The working class unity, solidarity and struggle on the May 1st is approaching!

May 1, from production to the power of the working class struggle for freedom and socialism per day pass!

May 1, workers and workers exploitation, misery and oppression, the double exploitation of women as the second sex, geleceksizliğe young people, the oppressed nations condemned the destruction and denial of the bourgeois order in which accountability is the day!

May 1, the working class, workers, youth, women, the fate of the oppressed nations and national minorities to get into their own hands, for equality and justice, freedom and socialism is the day to fill squares!

Popular revolts in North Africa and the Middle East, the so-called dictators defetti indestructible. “It does not go like that came,” said the Middle East’s rights, not only of imperialist competition in the region, oil conflicts, but also the will of peoples is peoples yaptırımcı, solvent and the result is catching the action and the power of the sovereignty of the most powerful appears to be able to show that precipitation mechanism of the knee.

In the Middle East is part of the future in our region, the rights and the power of united action to be written. The Kurdish issue, the laws of capitalism, and capital policies of the government from the political, social and economic problems, the solution will bring the working class and peoples.

The working class, laborers, women, young people, Kurdish people and other national minorities, religious and sectarian communities, the oppressed and the pressures on the political prohibitions continue in full force. Kurdish politicians, including dozens of elected mayors, hundreds of revolutionary, such as Ahmed Stylish Turkish bourgeois state, including dozens of journalists are turning to expose the dirty policies of the revolutionary and progressive journalist dungeons. Ayhan, such as the wheel is a registered confessions of murderers, practices dirty war in Kurdistan until December 19 dungeon massacre massacre exposed a number of government documents, despite the ostensible yargılamalarla aklanırken cuts off the line is being liquidated. Currently, “There is no Kurdish problem,” teraneleri continuing. The Supreme Electoral Council, the Kurdish liberation movement and the socialists show for the upcoming parliamentary elections, the political conspiracies will continue to veto candidates put forward. These are moves to promote institutionalization of the AKP government’s own fascist.

Still be trapped in the Kurdish politicians and elected YSK’nın veto, that phony elections, how, the will of the people on the street can have their own evidence among the action to life.
Economic crisis, dismissed the bill is still pulses, indirect tax hikes, the provisions of the basic livelihood of the working class and working people are paying zamlarla. Crisis of the bourgeoisie the opportunity to know, all the strikes and resistance, all the rights acquired at a price of trying to bury history, subcontracting and climbs bounce attacks.

Misery of the working class and working people in the imperialist world system of capitalist conditions etmekle not convicted, the sources of life suffered in the destruction of all humanity faces the problem of asset poverty brings. Energy radioactive nuclear crisis following the earthquake disaster in Japan, Japanese people living in both the earlier catastrophes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear destruction once again brought face to face, and the continents beyond Europe, America and even reached our region. The energy crisis of the imperialists for the competition and arms race of mankind is pregnant once again showed what a great disaster.

The workers, laborers!

Unemployment, hunger, poverty, political bans, sendikasızlaştırma attacks, all in the Middle East and the world takes similar forms. Against imperialist capitalism, regional and international organizations, international unity of the working class, the future is important to win. The working class unity and solidarity in the struggle can change the world. The workers all over the world will conquer the streets on May 1 and will show once again the fact that the will of the people. However, even the organization of trade unions of the working class is low, unorganized, disorganized, fragmented state, the action weakens. Inciting Turkish chauvinism, not only the destruction of the Kurdish people and deny the leaves exposed to attacks, but also by the Turkish workers and emekçilerini tool in this dirty politics, unemployment, work, pulses, poverty, misery taşeronlaşmaya hikes and against the AKP government against the fascist kurumlaşmasına break the power of action, the will of to break. The imperialists of the working class in this fragmented, dispersed and disorganized state of the class to take power from attacking.

Trade union and political örgütlülüğünüzü enlarge on May 1, working women, youth and oppressed peoples in the student union and social struggle to walk in the front ranks of the exit squares!

The Kurdish people!

Workers connect people with the Turkish workers and the fire burned Newroz’da Taksim Square! Maximize the power of the struggle for national democratic rights in the Middle East rebellion! Solution to the problem of Kurdish counterpart, Turkish workers and laborers! And an act of the will of the People!

Labor and laboring women!

Ongoing inequality in all areas of society, women’s murders, sexual assaults, family, society and state violence against women is not destiny! Just as in the front of the barricades Revolts in the Middle East, such as women, to cry out that the destiny of this life, March 8 at the forefront in the spirit of May 1 take place in squares!

Student youth!

YGS’de released May 1 this year have shown the face of scandal password magnification power of action, demands the general demands of combining working-class and working people, free, democratic, the struggle for education in mother tongue, do the springboard!

The workers, laborers, youth, women, Turkish and Kurdish peoples!

More than 30 years in a row, won the resistance and rebellion in Taksim Square, hundreds of thousands of workers, laborer, women and youths preparing to welcome one more time.
Taksim Square, united struggle, a symbol of solidarity and resistance.
Taksim Square, the symbol of the persistent and effective, action.
Taksim Square, in front of peoples yaptırımcı no action will not stop a symbol of power.
The capitalist system, working-class and working people, the source of all political and social problems. If the only alternative to revolution and socialism. For freedom and socialism on May 1 in Taksim Square to fill the ranks of MLCP!

Long live May 1 Long live socialism! Biji Biji Yek Gülan Socialism!
Long Live Long Live the People’s Fellowship of the Revolution! Biji Biji Biratîya Gela Sores!

The Central Committee of MLCP

Video: EPL Guerrilla on the Massacre of 16 of May, 1998

America’s Laziest Fascist

May 20, 2004 | Michael Savage doesn’t get out much. The hardcore conservative radio host of “The Savage Nation” has always been a relatively reclusive figure. He doesn’t do book tours or publicity stunts. He’s not exactly approachable either: He claims to carry a gun with him at all times, and he doesn’t like nosy journalists asking for interviews.

Not that he’s the shy, retiring type. Lately, as the Iraq torture scandal has dominated the headlines, he has taken to calling Arabs “non-humans” and has called for the U.S. to kill “thousands” of Iraqi prisoners and nuke a random Arab capital. Deciding whether to pay attention to Savage has always been tricky, though. It’s never clear whether he really believes what he says in his tirades or if they are simply ploys for public outcry. His is currently the third-most-popular radio program in the nation. Nonetheless, it may be hard for Savage to sit by and watch the FCC’s crackdown against fellow jock Howard Stern effectively lift Stern’s profile even higher into the stratosphere. But Savage’s outbursts are often so unhinged, so vicious, that ignoring them seems irresponsible, especially when so many Americans apparently are nodding in agreement. So when I learned that Savage would be making his first public appearance in three years Saturday night, it seemed worth checking out, if only to see who was paying attention to him and why.

“Savage Uncensored,” as the event was called, marked the end of what’s been a crummy year for the once-hot Savage. Last March, MSNBC gave him a weekly program only to cancel it after four months when he labeled a caller a “sodomite” and told him to “get AIDS and die.” Then the San Francisco radio station that gave him his first big break dumped him and rubbed salt into the wound with billboards that depicted Savage morphing into Sean Hannity, beneath the slogan “Out With the Old, In with the New.” When a couple of anti-Savage Web sites started a boycott of his advertisers, his syndicator, Talk Radio Network, tried to revoke their domain names. When that failed, it tried to sue them for $1 million. That failed too.

Savage’s star may have faded, but it’s still too early to write him off, with “The Savage Nation” pulling in 6 million listeners a week. His latest screed against fifth columnists such as liberals, gays and atheists, “The Enemy Within,” debuted at No. 8 on the New York Times nonfiction list. But when it comes to the true measure of a talker’s cachet — buzz — Savage has slipped several notches in the past year. The anti-Savage sites are now dormant, their owners apparently satisfied that he would never make it back on TV. Fans and foes who once duked it out in Internet chat rooms appear to have moved on. These days, it seems the only people paying attention to Savage are diehard fans and perhaps a few incorrigible rubber-necking journalists.

Savage was scheduled to appear at the Concord Pavilion, an outdoor amphitheater in the suburban hills east of San Francisco. As a Metallica cover band called Creeping Death wailed, 5,000 or so people filed in to see him in the flesh. A quick look around made the demographics of the Savage Nation quickly apparent: Ninety percent were men and a good 95 percent were white. During the next three-and-a-half hours, there would be clear affirmation that they like gay jokes, Arab bashing and mass displays of patriotism. They will offer to share their freedom fries with a complete stranger. And when that stranger fails to boo liberals, holler the phrase “under God” during the Pledge of Allegiance or show sufficient enthusiasm for torturing Iraqis, they are polite enough not to drag him out to the parking lot and pummel him.

The crowd at Concord had paid as much as $100 for an evening of rhetorical red meat for the right-wing faithful. At first, we weren’t disappointed. But by the end of the night, I wasn’t the only one checking my watch.

Savage’s son, Russ Weiner, kicked off the show. With his spiky, dyed-orange hair and calculated scruffiness, he was reminiscent of Dr. Evil’s son Scott from the Austin Powers movies. The resemblance was confirmed when Weiner proclaimed, “I’m proud to be the son of Savage!” The 30-something Weiner is the founder of RockStar, an energy drink that he developed with his dad, drawing on Savage’s previous career as a Marin County herbalist and ethnobotanist named Michael Weiner. RockStar’s herbal liver-cleansing formula is supposed to enable drinkers to “party like a rock star,” which presumably means drinking and doping. Generous free samples had been passed out to the crowd on the way in. It lived up to its hype: The antifreeze-colored, cough-syrup-flavored beverage can only be enjoyed if you’re taking drugs.

But while Weiner has cashed in on other people’s bad behavior, he made it clear that he’s a family-values kind of guy. “Who’s heterosexual and proud?” he asked, prompting manly cheers. “If you’re not, hopefully you will be soon!” Before handing the stage over to the man he called “our leader,” he advised the audience how to handle his hot-tempered dad: “Let him know you love him!”

Love — or an acceptably heterosexual version of it — filled the air as Savage drove onto the stage in a classic red Cadillac convertible. He warmed up the audience by riffing on the day’s news, joking that “Shiite” should be spelled with one “I” and calling Muqtada al-Sadr “a fat bastard in a burka.” Dressed in a calfskin jacket, slouch hat and blue jeans, Savage was at ease, swearing freely and peppering his speech with “Hey, mans” that evoked his days as a North Beach beatnik wannabe. Whatever was in his coffee cup was certainly helping. When it ran dry, he called out, “I need a drink!” and a young woman sauntered over and poured champagne into the mug.

Like everyone else these days, Savage was fixated on Iraq and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. He managed to combine the two dominant conservative takes: The first being Rush Limbaugh’s insistence that what happened in Abu Ghraib was a harmless prank; the other being Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe’s assertion that the prisoners got what they deserved.

“These are tough interrogations?” Savage asked. “My father put me through tougher interrogations when I was 16!” He portrayed now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison guard Lynndie England as a poster girl for the war on terrorism — an embodiment of the idea that kicking Muslim ass can be fun. “Let’s hear it for Laurie [sic] England!” he cheered. “The leash chick! Hey man, she had a great time over there!” He couldn’t understand why liberals were so outraged. After all, he said, the acts of sexual humiliation and degradation that took place in Abu Ghraib were no more perverted than typical homosexual behavior. Try to follow his tortured logic: Savage was saying he didn’t mind the Abu Ghraib abuses because they were good clean fun, like gay sex, which he openly abhors.

Savage moved on to another of his favorite topics: bombing the bejeezus out of Iraq. Just a few days before the Uncensored event, he’d been ranting on the radio about dropping fiery death on civilians throughout Iraq and the Middle East. “I don’t give a damn if they hide behind their women’s skirts,” he foamed. “Wipe the women out with them! Because it’s our women who got killed on 9/11! And it’s our women who are gonna get killed tomorrow unless we get rid of the bugs who are destroying us!” Tonight, Savage continued to elaborate on this disturbing vision of how to win the war in Iraq. He said he fantasized of being woken up by the sound of B-1 and B-52 bombers flying over his house on their way to the Middle East. Imagining bombers overhead at 4 a.m., he gushed about these nocturnal missions, “It’s better than an orgasm — it is an orgasm!”

Savage continued the psychological striptease, peeling off more layers of mainstream conservatism to expose his raging right-wing id. Though he has long billed himself as the original “compassionate conservative,” his brand of conservatism does not share George W. Bush’s pretense of caring about Muslim hearts and minds, much less lives. It appears that for Savage, the war in Iraq has nothing to do with spreading democracy or respecting human rights. It is about asserting American power by any means necessary, and screw what anyone else thinks. Predictably, and sadly, this notion went over well with the audience. When Savage blurted out, “Does anyone in this crowd give a shit about the Iraqis?” he was answered with a deafening “NO!”

But if the first half of the event showcased Savage’s ability to stir the faithful, the second half was an object lesson in how a performer can take his audience — and his talent — for granted. Basically, he bombed. He spent nearly 20 minutes sitting in a stuffed chair in front of a television set, free-associating as he channel surfed. Seeing footage of Jordan’s King Abdullah, he screamed, “Kiss my ass! Shut the hell up!” To a soccer match in Spanish, he quipped, “Reminds me of my gardener.” It was about as entertaining as watching a middle-aged man yelling at his living room TV. Savage eventually realized things weren’t going well. “You don’t like this shit,” he said. “It’s a bad act.“

Some fans — mostly older people and parents with small children — started to leave. If this were radio, they would probably already have changed stations. Most of the audience stuck around as Savage went into freefall, flailing wildly for something to catch his fans’ attention. He read from the Bible, played with his new puppy, moaned about his “mother issues” and asked for more booze. The evening’s low point came when he played the audiotape of Nicholas Berg’s beheading over the P.A. system. Berg’s pitiful, frenzied screaming filled the amphitheater. Having not heard or seen the gruesome tape before, I covered my ears in shock. I was not alone. If Savage was trying to incite the audience, it didn’t work. Playing the tape only revealed his desperation for a reaction, any reaction.

“What made you come out on this night?” he asked. “You see the vultures circling this great nation. We feel the vultures flying over the Concord Pavilion.” And perhaps they could smell Savage dying on the stage below.

In a last-ditch attempt to rouse the listless crowd, Savage tried to root out some closet liberals. “Is there any asshole here who hates me, who’s gonna try and rush the stage?” he asked. It was a long way between the cheap seats and the stage, but I was getting tired and bored. Rushing the stage might have prolonged the evening by a few more minutes, so I stayed put. Hurrying off stage, Savage promised, “Wait till you see the close.”

Luckily, the finale lasted all of 15 seconds. From the wings, Savage, obviously thinking he was off-mic, barked, “Play the Arab music!” A Middle Eastern tune blared as his red Cadillac lurched onto the stage. Savage was perched on the back seat, dressed in white robes and sunglasses, looking like a costume-party sheik. As the car disappeared off stage, he waved to the crowd, “Goodbye, infidels! I’ll see you in hell!” And with that, “Savage Uncensored” slouched to its perplexing though somehow fitting conclusion.

The house lights came on, revealing a few thousand blinking and bewildered fans — Savage had just resoundingly bombed on his home turf. “That’s it?” wondered one woman behind me, with real disappointment in her voice. “He said he was going to do Dr. UnSavage,” she said, referring to one of the jock’s longtime on-air characters. A couple of young guys shook their heads. “He misread his audience,” one said. His friend added, “He got into the champagne too much.” Maybe some RockStar would have helped.

His poor performance was not entirely surprising. Unlike his compatriots Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Dr. Laura, Savage often comes off as a remarkably amateurish and lazy showman. None of his colleagues — no matter how big their egos — would dare adlib their way through a two-hour live performance.

Savage’s unprofessionalism makes it easy for liberals to dismiss him as a crank. But that’s an easy way to overlook his ever-more xenophobic, homophobic and authoritarian political message. Ultimately, his invective may be what keeps his listeners coming back for more. Savage says what many mainstream conservatives can’t or won’t. As frustration with the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq adventure and the war on terror grows, his message holds appeal for those who believe nothing but desperate measures will work against an increasingly hostile world. And so, Savage will keep calling for Iraqi prisoners to be sodomized with dynamite. If he’s lucky, such antics may score him a public showdown with the FCC. Or perhaps he will finally rant his way into oblivion. Considering the recent developments in Iraq, even if Savage waits another three years to emerge from his veil of heavily armed privacy, there may be no shortage of fodder for his bizarre stage spectacle and the audience it attracts.

Source

Crisis increases the demand for works of Karl Marx

The recent world crisis was an incentive to the demand of socialist literature, especially “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx, in which he rejects the fundamental basis of capitalism.

In Sao Paulo, city bookshops already exhausted the sale of copies of works in less than a month. In the bookstore for example, the only works in the shop had sold out in less than 15 days.

This phenomenon also occurs in other countries. In Germany, for example, demand for the book increased by 300%. The publishing house Karl Dietz, one of the largest devoted to books has sold, this year alone, 1,500 copies of “Das Kapital.” The monthly sales surpassed the sales that were ANNUAL.

David Bamford of BBC says the population sees the current crisis as a failure of capitalism and Marx’s work could help to understand what went wrong.

Besides selling books, the number of visits to the birthplace of Marx, Trier, has increased to 40,000. The curator of the Museum said he has lost count of how many visitors he has heard say that Marx was right in his criticism of capitalism.

This reflects an evolution in the thinking of society, albeit slow and gradual. More people are concerned about the crisis, more people have begun to think seriously about capitalism, reading about politics and economics. Result: confrontational force to ideas and political awareness.

Tunisian Workers’ Communist Party: Great dangers threaten the revolution

Parti communiste des ouvriers de Tunisie حزب العمّال الشّيوعي التونسي

Translated by John Catalinotto

Two and a half months have passed since the glorious revolution of January 14. During this period, the people have made significant progress through their struggle and sacrifice.

Having brought down the dictator and the two consecutive governments led by Mohammad al-Ghannouchi, the Tunisian people have managed to win their demands for a constituent assembly and for the dissolution of the formerly ruling RCD party and the political police. It also widened the space for freedom of expression, organization, assembly and demonstration. Despite all these achievements, the revolution has gone only half-way, with great perils that grow every day lurking and threatening it.

Power is not in the hands of the people who rose up against tyranny, exploitation and corruption; it is still held by reactionary forces. These forces are attempting, by using the provisional president and the interim transitional government, to seize control of the revolution to reduce it into a mere facelift of the old regime. [President] Mbazaâ and [Prime Minister] Beji Kaïd Sebssi have placed themselves outside any popular control; they refused to recognize “the National Council for the Defense of the Revolution,” hoping to escape all control. As a counterweight they set up a consultative body, to which they have appointed members.

Although Mbazaâ and Beji Kaïd Sebssi accepted the plan to elect a constituent assembly, they also set an election date without taking into account the interests of the people. On the other hand, the formerly ruling RCD’s dissolution failed to prevent its return to the political scene in the cover of new parties. Also, organizations related to it still exist (National Union of Tunisian Women …). It turned out that the dissolution of the political police is little more than a formality: It still exists, practices repression, torture, surveillance, and wiretapping and Internet stoppages. Some of its leading figures occupy high positions in the Ministry of Interior, without being held accountable for killings and torture.

The same threatening language used during the final stages of the old regime — “resistance to violence and chaos” — has reappeared in recent days when the political police and military brutally repressed popular occupations of the Kasbah and Mahdia. Speeches attempting to manipulate the desire of the population for security have multiplied at the expense of social and political issues in order to divert the revolution.

Despite the suspension of the constitution, draconian laws are still in force: the press code and the laws governing associations, parties, meetings, demonstrations. These laws should have been repealed and replaced by decrees guaranteeing freedoms in order to avoid placing a knife to the neck of the people.

The administration is still in the grip of Destourian* tyranny and corruption, which have returned by force, their positions of power in the various governorates. They resumed their former practices oppressing the population, marginalizing the local committees to protect the revolution with a perspective of destroying them.

This situation is mirrored in the economic and financial institutions such as banks, where those involved in the looting of the people and country, working hand-in-hand with the “criminal gang,” hold onto their power as if nothing had happened.

The state of the judicial system, undermined by corruption, has not changed, a situation confirmed by the magistrates’ association. The media are still under the yoke of the censors of the Ben Ali regime and always work according to orders. There has been no progress in terms of prosecution and conviction of those responsible for tyranny and corruption, including the murderers of the revolution’s martyrs in Sidi Bouzid, Menzel Bouzayane, Regueb, Thala, Kasserine, Tunis and other regions. Members of Ben Ali’s inner circle have re-emerged to continue their provocative activities.

On the socio-economic front, the transitional government shows no willingness to take urgent measures needed in this critical period to assist the laboring classes. The vast majority of the population, especially in marginalized regions, feels that no change has occurred in their desperate situation. Unemployment and high cost of living persist, public services continue to deteriorate and the government shows no sign of determination to address these problems.

The government has not yet set its clocks to revolution time; it has not challenged the minority that has practiced looting based on despotism.

The government still is functioning under the budget determined by the dictator Ben Ali last December, where priority is given to the repayment of foreign debt owed by the former regime and to finance its huge security apparatus. Despite its temporary nature, this government has not hesitated to take on new foreign debts, while it has taken no action to lower prices, even for goods and services that were under the monopoly of members of the ruling gang. The families of the martyrs have not been compensated and no emergency assistance has been provided to impoverished regions…

The government justifies its behavior by claiming to be provisional and claiming not to have a “magic wand” to solve all the problems…

Yet it is the government itself that impedes the prosecution and trial of the gang that looted public money, as well as the seizure of their property. Moreover, what prevents it from suspending debt repayments temporarily and taking the opportunity to address the problems of our people, as has been done in other countries? Why can’t prices of basic foodstuffs, water and electricity decrease? Why can’t the TV license fee be eliminated? Why does it provide no help to the people of Sidi Bouzid for the electrification of their wells? Why does not listen to the teachers’ proposals to allow the hiring of unemployed senior graduates?

If the Communist Workers Party of Tunisia emphasizes the dangers that threaten the revolution it is because we assume responsibilities that are our own.

The people have the right to use all legal means to defend its revolution and its achievements, and to confront the dangers which threaten it. It is also entitled to struggle against the government that infringes on the freedoms and wants to confine any decisions to a minimal of closed discussions that involve only “the highest authority.”

This period requires deepening the revolutionary process in order to achieve the following objectives:

-1 - Maintaining the National Council for the Defense of the Revolution, as a tool to control the provisional presidency and the transitional government and safeguard the transition period.

-2 - The postponement of the election of the Constituent Assembly until after the summer, to allow the people the conscious choice and the political forces adequate time to prepare.

-3 - Prevent the leading figures of the RCD to organize new parties.

-4 - The effective and transparent dissolution of the political police and the prosecution of both those who ordered and carried out torture, killings and looting.

-5 - Purging the public and semi-public administration of corruption and symbols of repression.

-6 - Purging the judiciary and allowing judges to elect their Board of Governors.

-7 – Purging the media industry of the figures of the former era.

-8 - Repeal the repressive laws and respect people’s rights to freedom of expression, assembly and demonstration.

-9 - Deliver, urgently, to justice the murderers of martyrs and those responsible for crimes committed against the people; try leading figures of the old regime, seize their property and retrieve their fortunes placed abroad.

-10 - Suspend the repayment of foreign debt for three years and focus on job creation and development of marginalized regions. Refrain from contracting new loans at the expense of the independence of our country.

-11 - Lower the prices for basic consumer products, water, electricity and gas, and eliminate the television fee.

-12 – Compensate on an emergency basis the families of martyrs and victims of repression and looting during the revolution and during the events of the mining basin, of Benguerdane, etc…

Why was Bukharin Executed?

Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich

(1888-1938): Publicist and economist, member of the Bolshevik Party since 1906. In the years of World War I (1914-1918) adopted an anti-Leninist position on the issues of the proletarian dictatorship, the State, the right of nations to self-determination and others. In 1917 he denied the possibility of the triumph of socialist revolution in Russia. After the October Revolution he was a member of the Politburo of the CC of the Bolshevik Party and the Executive Committee of the Communist International, and the editor of Pravda. He manifested himself repeatedly against the general line of the party: in 1918 he spearheaded the anti-party group of “Left Communists” which opposed signing of Brest-Litovsk Peace; in 1920-1921 he supported Trotsky during the discussion of unions. Bukharin was the major spokesperson for the turn to the rich peasants during the NEP. After 1928 had was a leader of the rightist opposition party. Dismissed the following year from the Politburo of the CC, as well as the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International; expelled from the party in 1937 for his anti-party activities and executed after the Third Moscow Trial in 1938.

Under Gorbachev, there was an attempt to rehabilitate Bukharin, seeking for a theoretical and historical justification for “market socialism.”

For more information on the charges of 1938, see the Trial Transcripts available in the PDF page.

MPD will take legal action: great deception of Correa & Santiago Pérez was evident. 53% of Ecuadoreans rejected the proposal

The National Board of MPD announced that the referendum results show the political defeat of the government. Over 50% of the population rejected the proposal for consultation. The main leader of this organization stated that the GREAT DECEPTION orchestrated by the regime and pollster Santiago Perez of 20 points of difference between yes and no, came to the floor in a crude attempt to hide a series of irregularities that account for a brutal error of about 1,500,000.

Luis Villacis, said the Electoral Control Center organized by the MPD is consistent with data from the quick count of the CNE, in which there is a difference of less than 6 points between the YES and NO. There are 12 provinces in the country that said NO to the arrogance and corruption: Bolívar, Carchi, Cotopaxi, Chimborazo, Loja, Morona Santiago, Napo, Pastaza, Tungurahua, Zamora Chinchipe, Orellana, Canar. Abroad, gains in Madrid, Bogotá, Argentina, Switzerland and even in the case of Pichincha, NO wins in questions 4, 5, 7 and 9. Percentages compared to the last election, Correa was reduced by 17% of the vote, which is the result of discontent and betrayal by Correa.

Villacis said that MPD plans to initiate legal action according to Articles 148, 355, 201 and 257 of the Penal Code against the great deception committed by Santiago Perez to give false information, leading to a concurrence of crimes that must be investigated and punished.

The government is desperate to make this lie true, and therefore, the MPD and social organizations call for popular mobilization in vigil to defend voting to vote, because 60% of the records are suspended.

Luis Villacis reported that the PHD Enrique Mafla, Professor at the Polytechnic and technical delegate to the CNE, has been unable to verify and monitor the authenticity of the computer system and components of this system, a request made ​​from 5 May. To this date there has been no response.

“Unity & Struggle” No. 22 Released

Issue #22 of “Unity and Struggle” has been released. Unity & Struggle (Unidad y Lucha in Spanish) is the theoretical organ of the ICMLPO, or the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties & Organizations.

The 22nd edition numbers 166 pages in the Spanish version and has been published in Spanish, English, French, Turkish, Portuguese and Arabic.

Download this issue (in Spanish)

TABLE OF CONTENTS OF ISSUE 22:

Brazil
Long live 140 years since the Paris Commune!
Revolutionary Communist Party of Brazil (PCR)

Burkina Faso
Questions regarding the situation in South Africa and Côte d’Ivoire
Revolutionary Communist Party of Upper Volta (PCRV)

Chile
The potential for confusion is constantly narrowing
Communist Party of Chile (Proletarian Action) PC (AP)

Denmark
Greetings from Copenhagen, Denmark at the World Conference on Women’s Day in Caracas, Venezuela
Communist Workers’ Party of Denmark (APK)

Ecuador
The responsibility for organizing and carrying out the revolution is the work and the main objective of PCMLE
Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador (PCMLE)

Spain
The popular front: A tool for the current situation
Spanish Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) PCE (ml)

France
The peoples of the Maghreb and the Middle East
Communist Workers’ Party of France (PCOF)

Greece
Unilaterally stop payment of the entire debt outside Greece by Euro-EMU-EU
Movement for the Reorganization of the Communist Party 1918-55

Italy
Today, like yesterday, break with reformism and opportunism to set up a real Communist Party
Communist Platform

Mexico
The Soviets (workers councils), their role and their contribution to the proletarian revolution
Mexican Communist Party (Marxist Leninist)

Norway
The popular uprising for a living, democracy and national self-determination in Arabia is problematic to the imperialists and their stooges
Marxist-Leninist Organization “Revolution”

Dominican Republic
The Left is a minority
Communist Party of Labour of the Dominican Republic (PCT)

Tunisia
Interview with Hamma Hammami, spokesperson and member of the Workers Communist Party of Tunisia
Communist Party of Tunisian Workers (PCOT)

Turkey
Turkish Foreign Policy: Illusions and Reality
Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey (PCRT)

Venezuela
Amid the crisis, spread our theory, a project of great importance
Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Venezuela (PCMLV)

PCM-ML: May 1st – Class Unity, Solidarity, Protest!

No Gratitude, No Order!

Work Against Labor Reform; The Mobilization of Workers!

Year after year, from 1887, a proposal of Frederick Engels and Karl Marx to the First Founding Congress of International Association of Workers says the world’s working class should take to the streets to show the capitalists and their governments that without the strength and intellect of workers, the company will not moving and their wealth will not reproduce.

The bourgeoisie and their governments have always wanted to confine the first of May to a most senseless event. But this day, did not come from a nostalgic inspiration of workers to create a festive day in the calendar, but by the need to be organized and act together before the greed of the bosses for the 8-hour workday, employment security, collective bargaining, the right to strike, freedom of organization, trade union autonomy and a fair wage.

What Can We Do to Master the Nobility on this First of May?

Incomplete schools through the readjustment of personnel, managers and supervisors without the corresponding key, mayors and prefects creating teacher shortages, teachers working hours for merit; teacher entrance exams whose results are not respected. Schools falling for years without repair, accusations of right-wing organizations towards teachers of being responsible for low test results ENLACE and PISA, instigating society to press us to raise the quality of education. Teaching careers largely remain stalled; the bulk of teachers are in the lower levels and they always have excuses not to promote you.

Along with this, the Federal Government’s obsession to end the six-year scope of their educational measures, a competence education that replaces an comprehensive education, humanist and nationalist teacher entrance exams, recruitment fees, periodic certification of teachers, and soon a performance card to be given to parents to verify the results of their children, accountability for results, to which the government washes its hands, ignoring the economic, social and cultural situation, the unemployment and social crisis in which the PAN and PRI have left the country.

Do the SEP & the Government Really Want the SNTE (National Union of Education Workers) to Disappear?

Absolutely. Not only that, they removed all our rights and victories. Do not forget that the neo-liberal model is designed to operate without unions.

Now, the bourgeoisie and its main parties PAN and PRI have agreed to deal a blow to workers, and have submitted to Congress a bill to amend Article 123 of the Constitution, a regulatory law known as known as the Federal Labor Law. This reform has been for many years a demand of COPARMEX and other bourgeois agencies and and will have a catastrophic effect on the general working conditions of teaching.

This is a counter-reform intended to override collective agreements, the right to strike, and even responsibilities to workers when they try to organize and defend against employer abuses, to make it easier for employers to fire workers, making personnel adjustments in whatever way they please, reduction of salaries, and implement wages based on productivity and hourly pay, impose temporary contracts and work for periods of initial training or testing, at the end of which the employer is not required to concede space.

To ensure that this law passes, they are trying to override the role of unions as organizations for the defense of workers, making them apolitical and merely puppets of the bosses, pacts with the union leaders create strategies to divide unions, promoting the creation of others as in the SNTE, confront and repress others, such as the Mexican Union of Electricians and the miners’ union at Cananea. In response, only unity and mobilization make us strong.

All to March May 1st!

Totally Repudiate the Labor Reform!

Solution to all the Problems of Teachers!

Stop the Attacks against SME!

KPML: Good Commitment to 1 May

In Oslo, it was brilliant morning of 1 May. About 8500 were gathered at the Young Market, which is one of the best showings ever. KPml was present and handed out our magazine, both on and off the Youngstorget Grünerløkka solidarity event in Birkelunden earlier in the morning.

Special pensions were naturally the focus of the union’s slogans this year. Postkom highlighted strong opposition to EU 3 postal directive, a directive that paves the way for full liberalization and threatened einskapsporto in Norway. From the slogans, it is clear that the services directive is considered as the biggest threat to the academic rights today and it will open up even more social rollbacks. This is in contrast to the so called “guarantee” from Stoltenberg, who simply can not guarantee what the EU and the EFTA Court will add to the service directive.

In the international section, the Tamils​was by far the largest group, about 2000! Many Europeans also supported the slogans of their national rights and the genocide that the Sri Lankan government now finally leads. The same was the case with slogans against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

KPml handed out its free magazine in several places in the country, and the impression is that the audience around 1 May was good not only in Oslo.

UJC Madrid: May 1, Youth Respond to the Crisis of Capital

We are the first generation that will live worse than the one before. Currently, youth unemployment exceeds 43%. Almost half of young people cannot work when we leave the school and thus, it complicates the possibility of emancipation and subsistence in society.

Want to live in your parents until age 50? You think it’s more important to party, buy an iPhone or a Playstation then to fight for your future?

In addition, higher retirement age further complicates the ability to find work. While young people are unemployed, the elderly have to work longer. How do you intend to work more years if we don’t find work? And besides, we must add our job insecurity (grant contracts, temporary, training, etc …) that has facilitated the dismissal of many of us (and the threat of dismissal to those who still have a job) by employers (los Botín, Florentino Pérez, Entrecanales, Amancio Ortega, González, etc, the biggest culprit in the crisis) to sustain their huge profits and exploitation of labor in this time of crisis, in unsustainable conditions, young people, to compete for control the market and, therefore, to obtain the maximum benefit, have gained a lot of money speculating, when the economy was doing well and still winning it in the crisis.

There are possible solutions to the crisis that will not make our living and working conditions worse as public employees, end with garbage contracts and the Plan Bolonia, etc. But do you favor business? The answer is no. Entrepreneurs do not accept and will not accept progressive measures for improving the working and living conditions of workers because it undermines their private profits and makes them less able to control competition for the market, which props up capitalism itself.

They have demonstrated this over the years with all the labor reforms, including the last, and the recent Pension Reform. Through the various governments and purchased major trade unions they have been removing all social progress and struggles of their workers.

Who are the majority in society? Workers or employers? Why is the crisis more beneficial for the employer and the employee must pay? So in this “wonderful” democratic capitalism have all that we preach, or less?

It is necessary to build a different type of society to ensure economic survival and the decision-making ability of the worker, young or old. All young people, students and workers, we must fight for our future. In a future where working and living conditions of the poor are not precarious like the nineteenth century. A society that is more just, equitable and democratic for workers is outside the foundations of capitalism.

Do not stay at home. Fight for your future wherever you are: in your school, your neighborhood, from a union struggle at work, etc. Do not let your boss and the State squeeze you out of being young and hard-working. Your future is at stake. Defend your work and social rights.

Organize and fight! 

FIGHTING YOUTH COORDINATOR.

JCE-ML, CJC, UJC-Madrid.

APK: May 1, 2011 – the Character of the Class Struggle

Stop the wars! Start the welfare!
Endorsed by APK

We have seen people stand up in the struggle against dictators and tyrants, against thieves who live like kings and parasites, living on our labor. Most of North Africa is in turmoil and the people are demanding freedom, justice and work. A revolutionary storm has arisen – but imperialism and reaction will try to crush it and stop it before it seriously threatens the deeply unjust ruling world order based on plunder and exploitation of the proletariat and peoples.

Wars and occupations under false pretexts are everyday life in the ‘new world order’ – in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – and more are under preparation.

In Denmark, as elsewhere in Europe, we are working under increasing pressure. Hard-won rights are undermined by terrorism legislation and the collective responsibility of caring for the weak through our welfare system is being dismantled piece by piece.

Extensive attacks on education, unions, retirement and wages are all coordinated from the neo-liberal Europe.

War criminals form the government, while we participate in an illegal war, the persecution and oppression of other countries is also pursued here. But the rift and mistrust between the oppressed only reinforces power.

VKO’s government deserves, after 10 years of casualties, to be sent off into the murk of history. But S / SF / R does not represent a real alternative to war policy and EU policy with its welfare slaughter. Only a comprehensive popular resistance from below – from workers, civil servants, the working people and student youth – can slow down the capitalist crisis policy and set a new agenda that begins with stopping the wars and starting welfare!

Neither cuts or longer hours!

Unite against welfare slaughter!
Let the rich pay for the crisis!

Denmark out of the EU!
Stop the wars against Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya!
Stop U.S. and NATO! Denmark out NOW!

Stop force and climate destruction, NOW!

Unity and solidarity across borders!

Socialism is the future!

27. April 2011

APK

Enver Hoxha’s first reaction to 20th Congress of the CPSU

February 26, 1956
MOSCOW, Sunday

All night long I read the secret report of N. Khrushchev that he gave to us as he did the same with all other foreign delegations. The report rejects the figure and all the acts of the great Stalin.

I understood the position of Khrushchev and his other companions against Stalin and his glorious acts during the meeting of the congress where Stalin’s name wasn’t mentioned even once for anything good, but I never thought at that time that they could ever come to this point.

I shudder when I think how much the bourgeoisie and reactionaries will rejoice when they get this report in their hands, for I’m sure will they will launch a campaign of lies and who knows how much that will last. Tito should be very glad after reading this report, as I’m sure he has read it.

What an incalculable damage for the Soviet Union and the socialist camp! What an embarrassing responsibility in front of history!

I cannot put anything onto paper. It’s too little to say: “I am shocked!”

2010 presidential election in Côte d’Ivoire: Yes to popular sovereignty! No to reactionary civil war! No to foreign military interventions!

The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PCRCI) is a revolutionary party in the Ivory Coast. It participates in the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations and claims the line of Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour of Albania. As such, it is non-revisionist and fights for a proletarian revolution. Since 1990 it has been led by Achy Ekissi. Its militants have kidnapped, tortured and killed over the past ten years by the national-chauvinist “Young Patriot” militia organized by Gbagbo. The PCRCI called for a boycott of the elections between Gbagbo and Ouattara.

We have already written, Laurent Gbagbo has lost the presidential election on November 28, 2010 and must leave. But he is holding onto it despite the widely expressed popular will against him. He tries to present itself as a “resister,” a “patriot” that imperialism wants to “unfairly” deprived of his “office.”

All this is pure gossip to stay in power and perpetuate the interests of the mafia clan. It is even an insult to the Ivorian people to consider that Gbagbo is anti-imperialist and patriotic.

In October 2000, thanks to the support from the French government that has put him in a “safe place,” by lending him a powerful media (Radio France Internationale), he managed to win over General Robert Guei, one of his accomplices in the coup of 1999, and then rose to power under conditions described by himself as calamitous.

Power acquired with the strong support of French imperialism and which has always been devoted to the French Government cannot be described as anti-imperialist.

That French imperialism influenced the Ivorian election in 2000 (preferring and imposing Gbagbo) and then in 2010 (preferring and imposing Ouattara) simply means that the Ivorian people still have heroic struggles to be taken to achieve self-determination and to be a true sovereign state.

These are the depravities of the Gbagbo system which now imposes a threat of external military intervention, namely that of ECOWAS, with at least logistical support from French and U.S. imperialism. This depravity is the result of signing agreements against national sovereignty hoping to discard them when the time comes in a clear act of bad faith (call for foreign troops to settle the conflict with rebels, then request their departure because they do not support his electoral hold-up, signing of international agreements trampling on the Ivorian laws such as the certification of election results by the UN, etc.). The depravity is also going to accept an election to allegedly “end the crisis of identity” and reject the results from polls by the cancellation of the votes in all departments concerned with the basics identity problems to solve. This means the externalization of the populations of these areas compared to the national community and the electorate in particular. This is a snap back to square one, after 10 years of hard struggles against Ivoirité.

For PCRCI, Gbagbo is primarily responsible for the reactionary civil war that started since the announcement of election results. This reactionary civil war is already underway as the praetorian guard, the militias and mercenaries of Gbagbo have been at work since the first round of the presidential election.

People suspected of opposition to the camp of the incumbent president or belonging to specific groups are being hunted, taken from their homes in advance, marked with a cross and summarily shot. Hundreds of dead and missing were recorded to date with hundreds of people arbitrarily detained.

Faced with popular resistance, Gbagbo and his cronies who can no longer claim any legitimacy or legality of any more are forced to disclose the nature of civil-military fascist type of system.

In the face of external military intervention, Gbagbo opposes a call for a “civil war” with direct threats against certain national communities and abroad. In fact, Gbagbo called for the deepening of civil war with its emphasis on inter-communal conflict.

This military action is specifically requested by the Alassane Ouattara camp, opposed to popular struggles, and thus unable to mobilize the masses to a victory over the sham. The clan expects international imperialism to come to install it. Thus, French imperialism and U.S. imperialism prepare themselves through ECOWAS aggression, to act against Gbagbo in order to install Ouattara in power.

Aggression of imperialism will exponentially aggravate the suffering of the masses and imperialist domination. Gbagbo will excuse this intervention to enforce his threats against citizens of ECOWAS. This war will not give the people of Ivory Coast popular and national sovereignty — on the contrary, it will install senior bourgeois who will go with the imperialists to trample sovereignty even more.

Historically this is a textbook case of the imperialists in the political struggles in the country to hunt down the powers that do not please them and install their favorite.

For the Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire, the crisis was born from the 2010 presidential elections in Côte d’Ivoire, and has taken a dangerous step for the democratic and revolutionary movement. Under the guise of enforcing the people’s sovereignty, imperialism wants to install an armed intervention by the winner. This is unacceptable to the people. The liberation of the Ivorian nation from the impostors, fascists and torturers can only be the work of the masses themselves. People in this struggle must not put their fate in the hands of imperialism that they are ultimately fighting against.

Therefore, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire:

• denounces the menaces of foreign military interventions from wherever they come.
• denounces the use of mercenaries from Liberia and Angola by the Gbagbo clan.
• denouncing the demagogy of the Gbagbo clan, who want to call the masses to serve as human shields for a sauverson military fascist-type regime.
• calls on the peoples of Côte d’Ivoire to oppose by all means the abettors of reactionary war.

To give the best chance possible to win over the deceptions and to avoid reactionary civil war, the PCRCI calls for the formation of a united front directed against all those who want to use violence to impose Laurent Gbagbo and against foreign armies.

No to the reactionary civil war in which those bourgeois factions want to drag the people!

No to foreign armed intervention, no to imposing the sham of Laurent Gbagbo!

 All united for democracy, freedom and independence! 

Done at Abidjan, December 27, 2010.

Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire

Stalin Buses cause controversy on Victory Day

Moscow – The “Stalin buses” – the issued bus with the image of Joseph Stalin have been released in Moscow on the eve of the celebrations of Day of Victory over the Nazis.

PCE-ML: For a First of May of Unity and Struggle

In the last year, Zapatero and his government have adopted the toughest adjustment plans, assuming the positions of the major bourgeoisie. They have cut public spending, frozen pensions, reduced the salaries of public employees and increased the IVA. This does not make a left-wing politics, nor does taking measures to cut rights, labor reform, increased retirement age, etc. The government is fully aware that it acts on behalf of a handful of speculators and unscrupulous businessmen, and causes an untenable situation for millions of working families.

Let no one think that pressure will cease: The European Central Bank, instructed by the German government has just increased interest rates, but this more expensive debt will worsen the budget deficit of the Spanish economy and even more difficult things for working families and pymes. The European Union has ordered the prohibition by law of member states’ indebtedness and obligation to set wages based on productivity of enterprises. Zapatero and Rajoy must have committed to this must have for years, even if it means prolonging the crisis and its social consequences in Spain.

In the last three years have proved that they are unwilling to spend money to create jobs for all groups, improve social services, implement the Dependency Act or guarantee a minimum income to the unemployed, but they are willing to spend thousands of millions of euros to support bankers, merge and privatize the Savings Bank, and engage in military interventions decided by the imperialist powers: the latest aggression against Libya.

Very hard times ahead, further ahead are new blows coming to the rights, living conditions and wages of millions of workers. We cannot cope with these challenges, if we remain scattered and disorganized. The irresponsible fear of most of the direction of CCOO and UGT, their distrust of the strength of the working class that was shown in the General Strike of September 29 has led them to engage in pension reform, and perhaps also in collective bargaining, which remains open, rather than continue the fight.

But the conciliatory and cowardly attitude and Toxo and Mendez cannot be  the argument to further disperse the forces of the proletariat and weaken their organization. The Communists call on the working class to prepare for the fighting that will come by strengthening their organizations, and firstly, unions, developing unity and fighting to disperse the enemy forces and weaken their political objectives.

We need unity, but the trade union unity cannot be an excuse to give up the fight. On the contrary, within the unions we have to do battle against opportunistic leaders who are committed to the reconciliation of classes and social peace, supporting trade unionists in class; in the special manner of the CCOO Critical Sector, which is the only organized reference.

The political forces of the bourgeoisie, led by the PSOE and the PP (and there is no difference between them, neither between the Catalan or Basque nationalists) have made clear their aim is to go as far as we let them in reactionary reforms. They openly acknowledge that unemployment and recession will extend at least until 2015, however, they insist over and over again in new cuts, as announced by the Generalitat of Catalonia.

In these circumstances, to face the future, we need to unite against the common enemy: those 1400 families who take more than 70% of the wealth we create, and those who represent their political interests. So far, we have responded to adjustment plans adopted by different governments and we move on to define our own alternatives. We need to express our goals in a political agenda.

The measures required by the working majority have already been exposed by workers: a deep fiscal reform to ensure more resources to the State, to make the wealthy and privileged pay and end the employer tax fraud, business leaders and financial resources, increased public spending to ensure the protection of the unemployed, the coverage of public services and improved social benefits, measures to ensure loans to pymes and families and stop the antisocial attitude of the financial sector, leading to the nationalization of banks; momentum industrialization, etc.

Without these and other measures to put the state’s role in the general interest and collective rights at the heart of economic policy, it will take a long time to overcome the crisis and what will we do with a brutal loss of employment, a weakened ability to organize and defend our achievements, and having sacrificed the rights of an entire generation, doomed to live in worse conditions than their parents and respond in a massive debt, incurred to further the interests of the handful of parasites that caused the recession.

The problem we face is that this program is diametrically opposed to a political structure, economic and administrative, controlled by unscrupulous elements, educated in the impunity of fascism, a political class is undermined by corruption and judicial system increasingly right-wing.

The monarchy continues a political cycle drowned in scandal and misery, overwhelmed by a continuous spectacle of miserable confrontation between institutions and corrupt politicians, with the levers of power in the hands of bandits who are allowed to give advice to a working class which have been forever fleeces, among the rustle of robes and the false glitter of his old and reactionary imperial dreams.

If we do not sweep away this scum, we cannot dream to change the course of events. They continue sending their markets, they apply their policies and continue to accelerate democratic degradation.

On this first of May, at the gates of separate elections which may make a radical shift to political landscape, with a government thrust into the hands of the big business, an emboldened right and a weak and dispersed left, we must realize that the coming months will not be sufficient to recover the social mobilization. We must move to raise the struggle in political terms, to change the regime and conquer and the Federal Republic, to hold against the reactionary oligarchy and lay the groundwork for further progress in the struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation.

There’s no escape – continue or else they will consent to follow marked public policy, make laws and ignore them at will and destroy the gains that our class has won after more than a century of hard struggle.

VIVA MAY DAY OF UNITY AND STRUGGLE!

LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE OF THE WORKING CLASS!

AND LIVE THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC!

Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist)

MPD: May 1, combative unit to say NO to Correa

The National Director of the MPD, Luis Villacis Maldonado, said the Labor Day of May 1 is the expression of multinational unity of workers, peasants, students, indigenous people, teachers, shopkeepers and other popular sectors. He reported that the MPD will participate in the parades that are organized in 24 provinces to vindicate the rights of workers and to say no to Correa in the referendum of May 7.


Villacis said that Labor Day is celebrated with joy and courage and combative unity, to defend labor rights such as organization, collective bargaining, the right to strike for better wages, etc. This date is on a journey to say no to bullying, no to authoritarianism, the assault on justice and the prosecution, NO to the criminalization of social struggle, NO to the persecution of journalists, NO to attacking freedom of expression and thought and, NOT covering up corruption.


Villacis said that in these 4 years, the government has affected workers in their legitimately acquired achievements with anti-labor,  anti-popular, and neo-liberal laws that demonstrate that the scheme is the service of capitalism and represents the right-wing of the XXI century.

Video: MPD – Revolución es el camino ciudadaNO!

“Revolution is the Way, Citizens!”
 [Title uses a pun on the Spanish word for citizens]

Communist Ghadar Party of India (CGPI): Video of May Day 2011 Celebrations in Delhi, India

PC (AP) on May Day

FOR MAY 1, 2011 FOR IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION, POLICY MAKING AND THE INITIATIVE FOR WORKERS

In this 1st of May 2011, a new day of the International Solidarity of Workers, the following criteria, expressed in simplified form, against its political and organizational, that in many others, are unavoidable and essential to address the development of policy and successful struggle of workers and peoples:

1 – Internationally

It is urgent to raise to a new level of consciousness the development and the mobilization of workers and peoples against the imperialist powers, which with some degree of disputes between them and with unity in essence, attack people and nations with impunity, subjecting them to exploitation and destruction, leading to the virtual annihilation of the economies of regions and even continents, as in much of Africa.

Support and help from the interests of workers and peoples to the struggle for democracy, people and socialism carried out at different locations, particularly in Arab towns, greeting the Iraqi and Afghan resistance, and the people of Libya to the imperialist military intervention and sovereign governments with varying degrees of resolution facing reactionary policies and imperialist domination such as, among others, the governments of Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Belarus, Nepal, Venezuela and Bolivia.

We encourage and promote coordination and unity of workers, the union movement internationally, from the common interests of the proletariat and the radicals to the anti-capitalist struggle for popular democracy and socialism.

2 – In the national

We decisively promote the revitalization of the trade union movement on a class basis, unity, struggle and the construction of trade unions independent of the bosses’ parties and government agencies. It is time that the current union leaders live up to the struggle to rectify a long, demobilizing and submissive period of inactivity and conciliation with governments and employers. It is time for a new and superior labor movement, for union leaders and worthy fighters, or to leave our old union leaders and appeasing political passivity or must be replaced by new and superior leadership willing to defend both the immediate interests as working class and workers in general.

We must continue with greater energy by putting the political demands in the center, and with it, the Constituent Assembly and a new Constitution, through which we can and must place the various demands for the current historical period presented to the workers and people of Chile.

In terms of the trade union, it is urgently required, through mobilization or imposition of demands in the areas of trade union rights, labor laws and union operation. We must remember that beyond the legal guarantees that may be imposed, the focus is on organizational strength, ideological and political union – the only guarantee to fulfill its natural role in the organization of the working class and the workers.

In the face of ridicule and the shameless profit from monopolies and banks, and the cheerful figures from the corporate government of Piñera, it is URGENT that decisions are made to build from the active trade union movement, using practices of workers’ democracy and association, a platform of fighting for the period, which must account for the immediate demands in defense of life, salary, job security, pension rights, health, etc.

For the workers, the immediate aim, and only as a starting point to build the platform, is demanding a minimum wage of 350 pesos a month and a bonus for locomotion not less than 40 thousand (apart from salary) for each worker.

The first of May is for Chilean workers a day of Unity and Struggle determined by their economic and political demands, not a party with their employers and the government. This day is when we remember that the working class is one and international, which is own project of society, socialism.

We have to remember, otherwise we cannot pay homage to the martyrs of Chicago!

Long live the workers and their struggles for better living conditions and for socialism!

Long live international solidarity of workers and peoples!

Forward, a unionism of anti-capitalist struggle, anti-boss, anti-Piñera!

Only the fight given that the laws, standards and refuse Piñera!

Central Committee Political Secretariat

Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action)
PC (AP)

www.accionproletaria.com

May Day: From the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to the ICMLPO (Unity & Struggle)

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of the Soviet Union, on behalf of working people in Russia and the various republics of the former Soviet Union, received fraternal greetings and congratulations on the 1 May Labour Day.

The proletariat of Russia celebrates the day in the fight against semi-fascist dictatorship Medvedev-Putin that each passing hour, more is revealed as the regime of capital, the Mafia and genocide.

Despite the brutal repression, the announcement of “lawless”, equivalent to a death sentence for the leader of the PC (b) Smirnova Zinaida, despite the prohibition of our newspapers and endless attempts to defeat the masses, the Bolsheviks in Russia are in the front ranks of the fighters against the dictatorship.

This year marks 20 years since the breakdown of the USSR and the ultimate recovery in the homeland of Lenin and J. Stalin of the powers of capital. The experience of the Socialist State, first in the world, the experience of past victories and defeats of socialism remain valid today, for the revolutionary forces in the world. The Communist Party throughout the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) is addressed to all parties and organizations with the proposal to hold together the first of May.

With communist greetings:

Alexander Lapin, First Secretary of Central Committee PC (b)
Dr. Zinaida Smirnova, PC Central Committee Secretariat (b).