Class Struggle 107

October-December 2013

Class Struggle 107

October-December 2013

Brief Stuff
Rape Culture an !atriarc"#
The Roast Busters scandal created a national protest about teenage boys bragging about getting underage girls drunk and having sex in fact rape. Many agreed that there was a culture of rape that made this sort of behaviour OK. Moreover the police share rape culture hiding behind excuses for failing to act on written complaints for three years. Many said this culture was part of the patriarchy a system of male gender domination of the female gender. This is only half the story however. It reduces rape to a symptom of male power over women that can be changed by social reforms. The problem with this is that it doesnt explain why patriarchal power and a rape culture exist today. Humans lived in relative gender equality for tens of thousands of years before men imposed their dominance on women. Engels called this the overthrow of Mother Right. The matriarchy where public wealth was allocated through the female line for the benefit of the whole society became the patriarchy where men now controlled the accumulation of private wealth. Patriarchy was the first class society to come into existence. Women fought their oppression and were met by male violence and a culture that justified oppression. The real herstory is the resistance of women to the changing forms of patriarchy over the ages. It has persisted through slave and feudal class societies where women were oppressed in ruling and ruled-class families. Today it serves capitalism which exploits unpaid domestic labour to produce each generation if wage-labourers. Since the patriarchy originated in the overthrow of gender equality it can itself be overthrown and gender equality restored. But to do that women and men have to join forces in the working class to overthrow capitalism. We learned all this from the Marxist women who participated in the Russian Revolution and the German Revolution from 19171923. Women took active roles in the revolutionary parties fighting male prejudice to be treated as equals. Because they were socially oppressed under capitalism they won the right to form independent caucuses and present motions in their name. Moreover they played key roles in leading these socialist revolutions. In Russia in 1917 it was striking women textile workers demanding bread that sparked off the February revolution which led months later to the October Revolution. In Germany, Rosa Luxemburg was the main leader of the German revolution before her cruel murder in 1919. She was betrayed and killed because she would have played a decisive role in making the German revolution a success. We urgently need new generations of Bolshevik women. Can the Pussy Riot women jailed by Putin as hooligans give us some pointers? It is significant that they brand Putin as an ex KGB dictator and draw inspiration from the Trotskyist resisters who stood up to Stalin in the 1930s. Rather than making friends with pseudo Marxists like Slavoj Zizek, they should look to the life and work of Rosa Luxemburg, the many Bolshevik women, and those who fought as Trotskyists against Stalinism, then join the struggle for a new revolutionary Marxist Party today.

Dirt# Dair#ing
Dirty dairying arises from the large scale expansion of dairying by corporates who are hungrily exhausting land, destroying environment and producing dirty products to extract as much monopoly rent as possible. Rent is the value that labour-power produces on the land arising from the inputs of soil, climate, location etc. Monopoly rent arises from the limited supply of land that is fertile, in a temperate climate and has good access to markets. The expansion of dairying in Aotearoa makes use of all of these factors to meet a growing demand for milk in the emerging economies of Asia. The business takeover of Dairying is not a new gentry or new feudalism as some argue. Its capitalist farming. NZ farming since British settlement has always been part of the global capitalist economy. Large scale farming employed agricultural workers, while small scale family farming was a source of profits for the banks, stock agents, meat works and shipping companies. During depressions indebted farmers walked off the land and governments made the less valuable land available. Wealthy farmers bought up the best land and got wealthier. The amalgamation of farms in the recent decades continues the trend towards the concentration of large scale or corporate ownership of capitalist agriculture. Rod Oram writes about how this concentration of assets is highly debt-laden as amalgamations, new technology and economies of scale, require big outlays usually financed by bank loans. Oram shows how this is leading to the growing involvement of foreign investors. The word foreign here is misleading as most of NZ big business is always been owned by banks and firms that operate globally. Agriculture is no exception. Fonterra, NZs biggest dairy corporation now operates globally. Its only a matter of time before it will offer shares that are not under the control of the cooperative producers making it a target for takeover or merger by some other big food monopoly. The concentration of ownership in large scale international British, US, Japanese, Australian and Chinese monopolies on the one hand, and the increasingly internationalised working class on the other, proves Marx prediction that as capital becomes global, so does the working class. This is the international class structure that underlies the increasing inequality globally. It is certainly inherently unstable as it requires one class to exploit the other and pretend its doing it in the common interest. Workers first response is local and national. For example, as the social costs of Fonterras dirty dairying become clear, when contamination, dumping of excess milk, poisoning of catchments etc become better known, there will be working class demands to re-nationalise dairying, with cooperative ownership under working class management and control. Capitalism will not collapse but be revolutionised by the vast millions who already constitute its global productive apparatus. Those multi-millions are also part of capitalism. It is their power over the productive apparatus that will render the political power of the tiny parasitic class impotent. The only question is whether this revolution will happen before global warming kicks off enough feedback loops to make as all equally extinct.

Class Struggle 107

October-December 2013
unions. By 20 December 1913 the strike was over, and Massey was able to give Waikato farmers medals for strike breaking. In case anybody thinks that that episode can never be repeated it most certainly was in the 1951 lockout, and will inevitably again when organised labour stands up for its rights against the class that owns the means of production and controls the state to enforce its class rule.

Comra es an Cossac$s
Putting up a memorial to Cossacks who broke the strike of the Auckland wharfies and helped set up a scab union in 1913 is a provocation to todays workers and the Labour Party which evolved out of the Federation of Labour formed in 1909. That FOL (known as the Red Fed because of its socialist principles) broke from the Arbitration Court because it refused to increase wages in 1908. The Miners Federation became the FOL and other unions like the wharfies, flaxworkers and shearers joined. Acting as free unions registered under the 1878 Trade Union Act. There was no prohibition on strikes and these workers gained better wages and conditions than under the Arbitration Court. Also formed in 1909 was the Reform Party led by Bill Massey a small farmer. Small farmers newly settled on land broken up by the Liberal Government in the 1890s and assisted by state loans became a new force for private property opposed to the more progressive wing of the Liberals who favoured state leaseholds over freehold. The prize of capital gain was the main route for the landless out of the working class. From 1910 the freeholders and business class behind Massey organised to force the FOL back into the Arbitration Court. It became the Government in 1912 and the first major fight was at the Waihi gold mines in 1912. The Waihi Miners Union joined the FOL in 1911 and won better wages and conditions. The mine owners used the Arbitration law to form a scab union imposing a wage cut on the FOL miners locked out until they agreed. For six months the miners held out supported by the FOL and overseas unions. Police, scabs and armed thugs attacked the locked out workers. George Evans was killed. 68 of the miners including all of their leaders were jailed for attempting to keep the scab union out of the mine. This dispute was a dress rehearsal for the 1913 strike which again began as a lockout this time of the Wellington Watersiders by British shipowners who refused to employ men not in an arbitration union. Now the bosses were emboldened to smash the whole Red Fed and the newly formed Social Democratic party and force all workers into the Arbitration Court. Strikes in support of the locked out Watersiders spread around the country and were faced by police, armed scabs, the Cossacks, and even the army and navy (the latter with permission of the British crown). According to WB Sutch in Poverty and Progress in NZ p. 165: Young farmers, Masseys Cossacks, rode into the main ports as specials to intimidate the strikers and the public, to form arbitration unions and take the place of watersiders and seamenWhen police and specials took over the Auckland waterfront so that scab labour could work the ships, many other unions (including craft unions) struck in protest. There was almost a general strike in Auckland. Strike leaders were put in jail (there were 169 convictions); at the ports the Employers Federation formed new arbitration unions, often based on the young farmers were there partly for this purpose; the ports were worked by these people and other scabs; and the Supreme Court decided that arbitration unions could not contribute strike funds to another union. The arbitration unions formed by the employers were registered, and the watersiders told that if they wanted to work again on the wharves they must join these

!i$e Ri%er Disaster is us all

The NACTs are so far refusing to be shamed into making state corporate and ministries pay court ordered compensation to the Pike River families. After Keys crocodile tears at the public rally following the disaster, he now claims there is no legal or moral reason to compensate the families. What do you expect? The NACTs crony capitalist regime is speeding up its rip, shit and bust style of plundering Aotearoas natural resources. This means privatising land, water, minerals into the hands of crony capitalists, destroying nature and furthering the carbon burning climate collapse of the failing capitalist system. The Royal Commission, numerous testaments of miners, crusading journalism like Rebecca Macfies book, and committed working class histories like Paul Maunders book, put the case beyond reasonable doubt: capitalism rapes nature and chews up and spits out workers and their families in the process so it can make its profits out of their blood and guts. What we have said consistently about this disaster is that it is typical of capitalism in its terminal decline and no faith in the bosses state or in any of the capitalist parties, NACTs, Labour or Greens will change that. Labour and the unions are part of this retreat into rip, shit and bust. The old miners union has been replaced by the EPMU who are committed to working within the confines of capitalist laws. We need to fight like the Red Fed of the early 1900s before the labour movement was co-opted into parliament. The Red Fed was notorious as a federation of labour that put the interests of workers before the bosses law. They broke from the IC&A Act labours leg iron in the words of Harry Holland and fought the bosses attempt to break their federation by violent attacks and force them back into the Arbitration Court. This year, 2013 is the 100 anniversary of the 1913 General Strike that signified the defeat of the Red Fed. A Red Fed today would be in a very different situation than 100 years ago. As Maunder points out, the capitalist world division of labour has changed. While the NZ economy is still based on extraction and export of raw materials, workers interests do not lie in defending their jobs by the further plunder and destruction of nature. A Red Fed would face climate catastrophe not by fighting for fair shares in the destruction of the planet, but by fighting for a new sustainable socialist system in which the working class plans production for our need and not the profits of the 1%. So while the families should get their compensation in this life, the workers need to go on the offensive. The alternative to ongoing destruction of nature and deaths of workers is to rebuild their unions and fight for a Workers Government that would socialise the strategic industries without compensation to private owners, and plan production under workers control for a socialist economy. http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/classstruggle-107-rape-culture-dirty.html

Class Struggle 107

October-December 2013
Director and Chief Scientist at the UK Department of Work and Pensions, and now HOD in an academic chair sponsored by Unum, the world's largest disability insurer. The AFOEM has acknowledged his leadership and he has had the ear of Welfare minister Paula Bennett. Not only has Unum been thoroughly discredited for the scale on which it has attempted to evade payouts, it has demonstrated an interest in taking over the UK welfare system. It was Sir Mansell who devised the Personal Capability assessment (PCA) to which British claimants are subjected, the administration of which is contacted out to a private sector firm ATOS. The United Kingdom is further down the path of workfocused welfare reform than is New Zealand, and the results it has achieved- little published in New Zealand, are truly alarming The Express Jan 17th 2013 reported: Former Labour minister Michael Meacher accused the firm (ATOS) of ruthlessly pressurising the sick and disabled into work. Opening a Commons debate, he said 1,300 people had died after being placed in the work-related activity group, for those currently too ill to be in a job but expected to take steps towards an eventual return to employment. Some 2,200 died before the assessment process was completed and 7,100 died after being placed in the group for those entitled to unconditional support as they are too ill or disabled to work. No wonder the disability support group opposing the UK's benefit reforms has adopted as its symbolic title "Black Triangle" after the stigma worn under duress by disabled citizens in the Third Reich. To return to AFEOMs position statement: this document does not shrink from making recommendations to the government, but recommendations that poverty be abolished are not amongst them, despite the link between ill-health and poverty clearly shown in the evidence it marshals, which demonstrates beyond doubt that the children of welfare beneficiaries are more than averagely prone to illness. This is something the Child Poverty Action Group, the Childrens Commissioner, and a wide variety of community health practitioners have been pointing out for years. Is the fact that the government has been able to ignore this for so long due to the influence of the RACP and those who in turn influence it? Do the learned physicians of the AFOEM really believe that it is lack of work that is making the children sick? Should we anticipate a return to Victorian era child labour laws? The Position Statement includes further evidence that it is poverty, not unemployment that creates ill-health by acknowledging the existence of an unemployed stratum of capitalist parasites which is nevertheless able to remain in good health. We say the pressure to force the poor into work is to drive down wages and create cheap jobs so that the whole working class is forced to pay for the bosses crisis. No way! For the working class to live parasitic capitalism must die! http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/winz-spin-doctors-andhealthy-work.html

&'()* Spin Doctors an +ealt"# &or$

On 30th Sept the NZ Herald quoted Welfare Minister Paula Bennett as reporting that on average 3500 benefits are cancelled weekly, 2000 being due to 'other reasons than the recipient finding employment). Most of these are presumably results of the harsh new sanctions regime against those failing to comply with job-seeking requirements. Amongst these will be sickness and invalid beneficiaries who have been declared fit to work by WINZs designated doctors. Enquiries made under the Official Information Act have revealed that designated doctors are being indoctrinated at WINZ training seminars in the health benefits of work and in the doctrine that benefit dependency is an addiction In its crusade to reduce benefit numbers by 40,000 the government has found a powerful ally in the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) and its Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (AFOEM), which is currently conducting a campaign to convince doctors of the health benefits of work. So well does this fit with the governments plans that WINZ quotes the AFOEM's Position Statement on the application form for the work capacity medical certificate in a blatant attempt to educate doctors signing it. The WINZ form erroneously attributes the quotation to the AFOEM's Consensus Statement, misleadingly implying that the signatories have all examined the evidence for the hypothesis advanced and agree that it is "compelling." (Thanks to George Bush Jr and Tony Blair we have learned that when government agencies start to talk of "compelling" evidence, it is time to start doubting). The other words, the government is cynically intervening in the education of doctors to promote a theoretical model of dubious validity, not out of any concern for the health of the population but because it happens to correlate so well with neo-liberal policy goals of workfare to drive down wages and restore profits. The medical theory it is promoting is the so-called bio-psychosocial model of illness (BPSM), which has some grounds for criticising traditional medicine for ignoring social and environmental factors in the causation of illness. But while it has indeed become part of regular medical practice to mobilise multi-disciplinary teams comprising psychologists and social workers in the treatment of illness BPSM has failed to achieve recognition as a comprehensive theory of medical causation. Moreover, the BPSM restricts its definition of social to the immediate social situation of the patient without inquiring into the mediated power-based relations of the class-based wider society. As expounded by some of its champions, it claims that if a person is treated as if they were ill they are likely to become so, which is not much of an advance on Christian Science and Norman Vincent Peale. Prominent among the advocates of the health benefits of work is Sir Mansell Aylward, formerly Chief Medical Adviser, Medical

Class Struggle 107

October-December 2013

,abour %s Capital
Our position of giving critical support for Labour is to vote for it to put it in government to prove to workers that no Labour-led Government however leftwing will be able to legislate to meet the demands and needs of workers. Social Democracy sows illusions in a peaceful, egalitarian, environmentally friendly capitalism. There is no such animal. Capitalism is brutal, barbaric and destructive, especially in the epoch of imperialism. Already we see that Cunliffes promises of reforms are hedged around with financial constraints imposed not by neo-liberalism, but by capitalism itself. Will Labour challenge NZs status as an economic semi-colony of the US and China in its position on the TPPA, Oil and Coal and asset sales, GCSB and TICS, SkyCity casino capitalism, and disaster capitalism in Christchurch. Will Labour recognise the role that the working class plays in creating the nations wealth and stand up and fight for the unions and workers by implementing full employment, a living wage, welfare rights, pensions etc? Right now the Labour Party represents Capitals profits expropriated from Labour. What is needed is a revolutionary socialist party that will socialise capitalist property under the ownership and control of the working class and create a planned socialist society. -!!. an t"e coming /S0C+'(. 1ar
To implement a sustainable economic policy, NZ would have to regain its economic sovereignty over the ownership and control of its resources. The TPPA is the most dangerous threat to such a national strategy. The TPPA is a tool of recolonisation by US to keep China out of the Pacific. Extending the power of crisisridden US imperialism into whole Pacific to recolonise Pacific and to simultaneously block Chinas bid for a regional TPA, and also gain more access to Chinas internal market. Thats why its the US state taking over every other Pacific state as a means of taking over the Chinese state. Its a showdown of the two giants of capitalism as the US declines and China rises. . The US is in decline as its economic power wanes and its dollar ceases to be the only world currency. This is because a currency propped up by oil is being challenged by the Yuan which is based on Chinas expanding productive capacity. The US wants to grab onto China to halt its decline. It has done so with one hand the offshoring of manufacturing to Asia. But to grab with two hands it has to break into Chinas economic sovereignty, especially the dominance of its SOEs. Its strategy is to restrict Chinas growth while at the same time sharing in it. By blocking China from the TPPA it puts China at a disadvantage. Yet the US corporations in those states that already have TPAs with China can piggyback into China on equal terms. Both US and Japan are big producers inside China within the free trade zones, but they want to extend into the state sector, especially in privatising the SOEs. The Labour Partys position so far is to take credit for the TPPA! It is acting as a US lackey in a US imperialist drive against its No 1 trading partner, China! Its position is that it will not agree to an agreement that is secret. Its position should be that it will reserve the right to unilaterally leave a TPPA that is signed in secret. Otherwise the Labour Party is signing away what is left of NZs national sovereignty and signing up the NZ working class to a war between the US and China in the near future! growth such as that of the Greens? Labour is torn internally between short-term jobs driven growth and longer-term sustainable growth. It is trying to suppress this conflict in its position on oil drilling by opposing it until it is proven safe. But just as like its position opposing mining on conservation land, this evades the larger issue of climate change. There is no way that burning carbon can protect jobs now let alone in the future. The NACTs rip, shit and bust quarry mentality destroys jobs as well as the environment. On the other hand the Greens reforms dont have the social support to win. The issue of global warming is now one of human survival where capitalism as a system is destroying our future. Labour needs to rally its working class base to take control of the issue and make stopping climate collapse the heart of its economic development program. A real Labour Party would recognise that climate collapse is a crisis many times more life threatening than the depression of the 1930s. What it needs is an emergency program to meet this crisis. First and foremost, the ownership and control of energy production should be socialised under workers control with no compensation to the owners of privatised state assets. These assets should then be developed into 100% renewables (hydro, solar, wind, biomass etc). Energy efficiency and conservation should be the criteria for all industrial and agricultural production. State producer boards should plan and regulate the major industries on the basis of sustainability as well as health and safety. Problems with key industries such as a dirty dairying would be regulated and state subsidies would become the basis of state shareholdings or cooperatives. The imperative of sustainability would bring a slow socialisation of the economy with the workers and independent producers along with the state sharing in the true costs and benefits of production.

2CSB an -'CS
These laws are major challenges to NZs economic sovereignty which means increasing dominance by imperialist US and China. Yet Labour has always bought into spying on behalf of its imperialist masters. From the SIS reds under the bed on behalf of the UK and US to the GCSB and the war against terror justifying the US global rule of terror. State spying serves only the rule of capital. Specifically the great powers use spying to advance their economic and political interests over their

Carbon* .ssets an Climate Collapse

Oil drilling and coal mining is a litmus test of Labours economic and climate change policy. Will it go with the NACT line of the global capitalist economy wherever it pushes profits in NZ, or will it opt for a state-managed sustainable economic

Class Struggle 107

rivals. Loewenstein in Guardian updates NSAs latest global spy network of which NZ is a US team player. So the Labour Partys demand that NZs spy role be subject to an inquiry does not challenge the assumption that secret state spying is necessary. If a true Labour Party is to represent the interests of Labour against Capital here is what its policy should be. First, a true Labour Party would challenge the view that the interests of Labour and Capital can be reconciled - crony capitalism is not an aberration but the norm. It would reject an official inquiry and set up an independent workers inquiry into spying. Second, it would abolish all state spying on its citizens, close down its installations, refuse to participate in spy networks with other states, and instead set up a public Tribunal where any accusations of spying could be heard. The decisions of the Inquiry and the Tribunal would be made by delegates elected to represent the views of workers, women, youth, indigenous, social and environmental groups that comprise the broad labour movement.

October-December 2013
expected to work longer for lower wages and low pension (if they survive). The Labour Party should take a stand on principles not affordability (neo-liberal bullshit about balancing the budget while taxes on capital decrease). Labour produces the wealth. The working lifespan should decrease as productivity rises. Taxes on the rising share of capital should increase. The state can easily fund a living pension for a longer retirement from age 60. The irony is that a Labour Government led by Cunliffe who has spoken of renouncing neo-liberalism, has adopted the ACT policy of increasing the age of retirement so that workers work more productively and longer for a diminishing share of the wealth they produce.

4rom &elfare to &or$fare

The Cunliffe Govt appeals to the memory of the Labour Party of Mickey Savage of the 1930s. That government was under such pressure from unemployed and destitute farmers that it responded with a social security package as a right of citizenship. It recognised that it was the capitalist economy and not and underclass that was to be blamed for unemployment and poverty. The Blairite 4th Labour Government retreated to the neo-liberal view of social security as a responsibility that has to be earned. Labour has remained silent on the NACTs slashing of welfare since failing to restore Ruthless Richardsons benefit cuts of 1991 all the way to Paula Bennetts abusive workfare reforms today. While David Shearer was briefly Labour leader he displayed his underclass prejudice with his reference to the beneficiary on the roof. Will a Cunliffe-led Labour Party break with this neo-liberal workfare history? A true Labour Party would return to the social welfare as a right of Savages day and abolish all workfare measures introduced since the 1970s. First, it would implement full employment and job creation by public works. Free health, education and housing would be paid for by a 100% capital gains tax on all property and assets. It would create a UBI based on a living wage and administered by the unions as a right whether one is working or not. Even outright capitalists like Gareth Morgan argue that a living UBI is more profitable for bosses than growing inequality and poverty. These measures would help to recognise the working class as the creators of wealth and shift the blame for NZs economic recolonisation by the US and China off the underclass and back onto the decadent, parasitic and rapacious capitalist class that is destroying Aotearoa.

S$#Cit# an Casino Capitalism

Symptomatic of how decadent the NZ capitalist class is, is Skycity. The NACTs are so cynical that they will pay out of workers taxes for Skycity to build its entertainment precinct in Auckland to fleece tourists and workers all, on the promise of more jobs. On the basis of this cost-benefit analysis, all the costs fall on the workers and all the benefits go to the parasites. Yet the Labour Party does not challenge Casino Capitalism at its heart, the global financial capitalist class that parasitically lives off the working class driving down their wages to increase their profits and then cynically exploiting their poverty by encouraging them to gamble. After all this is a metaphor for the way global capitalism in crisis works: stagnation of real growth combined with massive speculative booms parasitic on growth. Labour needs to declare its intention to revoke NACTs corrupt deal with SkyCity and ultimately to revoke its casino licence.

C"ristc"urc" re-t"in$3
If Labour is serious about going back to its working class roots then its role in ChCh is a test of that. Labour voted for the sacking of ECAN which ripped off water rights to boost dairying profits. Has Labour had a change of heart? Cunliffe announced Labours decision to set up KiwiAssure attached to Kiwibank. Will this meet the need for a state insurer of disasters? Not if KiwiAssure is just another insurance Co like Kiwibank is just another bank. KiwiAssure needs to be a comprehensive no fault insurer of disasters and funded on the model of ACC Otherwise Labour is filling a gap rather than coming to grips with the larger question of the NACTs disaster capitalism model in Christchurch. Where is the workers alternative based on a return to democracy and a comprehensive plan for the rebuild? Unless Labour steps up with major proposals it will have abdicated any leadership of its historic constituency in Christchurch.

Re%olutionar# ,abour !art#

Is the Labour Party capable of standing up for Labour against Capital? It is the very nature of the party that it has the main contradiction between Capital and Labour running through it. Capital is devoted to exploiting workers for profits, while Labour (not the Party!) is devoted to securing a share of the value going to securing a living wage. But such is the crisis of capitalism today all attempts at reconciling these objectives will fail. Profits must drive down living standards and destroy jobs and lives. Labour to live must challenge Capitals right to rule by socialising all the essential resources that are necessary for life and for the survival of the species. The Labour Party will split sooner or later into those who defend Capital, and those who are defend Labour. http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/labour-vs-capital.html

!ensions pensione off3

ACTs neoliberal pension policy was adopted by Labour just before the 2011 election! The retirement age should come down to 60 not go up to 67.The generational argument is a red herring (making Labours red rather fishy) Society is more productive every year, yet the proportion of the increase that goes to labour decreases. The result is that capital creams it while workers are

Class Struggle 107

October-December 2013

/S.5 -"e B.R- Stri$es5

Once again on t"e rele%ance an met"o of -rots$#s -ransitional !rogram
'ntro uction
Every strike potentially becomes a school for revolution and the two BART strikes of 2013 posed questions of revolutionary dynamics: how does the working class improve its position in a period of capitalist crisis and what worker democratic organizational forms and political program are needed to win the battle? These questions are provisionally answered by the Transitional Program. In this report we illustrate our differences with opponent political tendencies in the practice of the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee (TWSC). Much could have been learned, lets see who refuses to learn and why. The workers' program cannot be reduced to slogans or bullet points. Yet when we raise it as an action program it is roundly derided by all variants of centrists and reformists as a "laundry list". The workers' program cannot be reduced to one point unless that point is the Socialist Revolution; which while correct in explaining what is objectively called for, does not take workers from their current backward consciousness to class political consciousness and the understanding of the need for and how to prepare for the Socialist Revolution. Those right centrists and reformists who adapt the workers program to the ruling class' desire for and need to keep our wages below the livable take the workers further away from preparing the class for revolution. The Sawant campaign and centrists in the Bay Area like Oakland Socialist Blog and Facts for Working People blog argue for the anti-working class minimum wage instead of demanding that labor take on the fight for Jobs for All and a livable wage-a prevailing wage that labor defines- a demand which raises the questions of the sharing of work and shortening of hours with no reduction of pay and the sliding scale of wages and prices. We are told by these centrists and their reformist friends that even doubling the minimum wage would be a great step forward for the workers and thus we should build the link of the organized to the unorganized by calling for labor to campaign for a new higher minimum wage. Yet they continue to peg that wage below the prevailing rate and thus below the living wage. To win the prevailing rate will take a mass struggle that unites the class, develops democratic workers organizations, develops the workers program and breaks from the Democrats. This is more than the right centrists and reformists have stomach for. So they meet labor where it is (in the hands of the Democrats) and spice up the minimum wage demand (either by calling for $15 or $20 and a minimum $5 increase for all with pension and medical,) just so they can appear more radical than the Greens, who call for $16.00 minimum, and the likes of Professor and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who is for a $15.00 minimum, and thus put pressure on the unions and Democrats to do what they are in the process of doing already; raising the minimum wage to $10 by 2015 in California. This fake attempt to mobilize the low wage workers for a subliving wage has been used by the labor aristocracy to mobilize support for and pressure the Democrats. We even have one retired OEA "militant" here who admits that $36 an hour is the living wage for the Bay Area but looks for a way to saddle the labor movement with a sub-living wage demand as the means to unite with the unemployed. These labor fakers refuse to see that winning the most modest reforms is not possible without titanic political struggles during this period of renewed capitalist decay. Indeed they adapt to the Roosevelt era minimum wage which supplanted labors traditional fight for a living wage. Even the early AFL program "A fair day's work for a fair day's pay" is more germane to workers lives than the sub-living wage promoted by the Democrats, Greens, labor leadership, labor aristocracy and the reformists and centrist leaders who pose as revolutionary socialists. Labor is shell shocked by the onslaught of the bosses. The decades old labor/management team approach and even limited strikes will not keep workers current with inflation. The crisis forces big capital to crush the workers movement and chip away at gains which were made by labor since WWII. The BART workers, as representative of all public workers, are targeted as the largest remaining unionized sector of the economy. Transit unions wield tremendous social power in the major metropolitan areas. The once powerful United Automobile Workers (UAW) is a shadow of its former self, while the ILWU longshoremen are under heavy attack. Wisconsin and Michigan, bastions of organized labor, have suffered heavy defeats. This must not continue! It is time to draw a line in the sand! The defeat engineered on the BART workers by the strong arm of the business community, the political class and with the union leaderships in tow represents a setback for the entire working class. In every contract negotiation the class lines are drawn bare; the crisis of leadership of the working class, the complicity of labors leadership with the bosses, the lack of working class political independence and the degeneration of the Marxist left leave the workers without their own party and completely at the mercy of the bosses onslaught. Traditional craft and industrial unionism in America restrained and accepting of the restraints of laws like the Taft Harley Act, transferring hope from the selfmobilization of the workers in strikes and acts of class solidarity to a strategy of political subservience to the Democrats, has left far too many strikers alone on picket lines that do not stop scabs (the nurses), do not mobilize the class solidarity needed to win, and thus defeat after defeat is racked up, demoralizing the workers.

Despite ruling class spin t"at a B.R- stri$e 1oul cost 673 million a a#* t"e# irecte +oc$ to pro%o$e one an#1a#7
With malice toward all who dare interfere with the right to accumulate, the Veolia Corporation, whose tentacles are grabbing up public transit (and water) systems across the country and around the globe, acting in consort with the ruling class Bay Area Council (BAC), together made a start at preparing the ground for the privatization of the jewel of the Bay Area, the BART public transit system. Veolia has Para-Transit contracts in the Bay Area, competes with AC Transit for riders from BART to the Oakland Airport and runs public transit systems for profit on 6 continents. So it should have come as no surprise

Class Struggle 107

that Veolia was standing by with hundreds of buses and drivers and a contract to drive BART passengers during the strike. Clearly, the BAC ensured Veolia it would profit both on the provocation and on the consequences of the BART strike. Across the country Veolia provides privatization solutions for public transits systems and then proceeds to degrade them and bust the unions. The Boston public school bus drivers launched a wildcat strike against Veolia in Oct., 2013, in response to the canceling of the workers contract with the city of Boston. Like in the Bay Area, strikers have been victimized. We say drop the charges against the Boston 5, restore the contract, defeat privatization! Workers need to know that negotiator for BART, Tom Hock, and Veolia were not engaged because he was the best negotiator BART could buy for $399,000.00; rather, he was running an expeditionary mission for the ruling elites who sit with BART general manager Grace Crunican on the Board of Directors of the BAC. In conjunction with and on behalf of the BART directors and board he provoked a strike, more to antagonize and test the patience of the riding public than for reasons of the BART systems financial solvency. The ruling class wants profit from public transit and Veolia and Hock have a record of making profits, a fact which SEIU 1021 staffers researched thoroughly. The Democrats stepped forward capitalizing on the publics displeasure with the service interruption. Doing his masters bidding, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsome (product of the Getty billfold) scolded labor in no uncertain terms, and stated This has got to be the last time this happens! Alongside promised legislation to outlaw transit strikes and possibly all essential service workers strikes, and in consideration of attempts by Governor Brown and Mayor Reed (SJ-D) to destroy the public workers defined pensions, the hiring of Hock is another interlocking piece of the ruling class strategy to commodify everything, drive down the median wage, make the workers pay more for their pensions and trap those pensions in the financial services industry, while pushing more of the medical insurance costs onto the workers, all in order to restore profitability to capital. The crisis of the overproduction of capital has drawn vast reserves of otherwise idled capital into the privatization process. The tendency of the rate of profit to decline (detailed by Roberts) puts pressure on individual capitals (whether held in trust or corporations) to maximize their rate of profit against the competition of all other capitals, which share among themselves the consequences of an ever-diminishing rate of profit. The incursion of private capital into publicly run works as a business model has been described as privatization or the commodification of everything. This Hayekian/Randian dream-come-true allows individual capitals to accumulate profit (a share of the total social surplus value) from essentially notfor-profit enterprises, while at the same time socializing the costs and risks. Rather than creating new value, the privatizations in education and the public transit turns over public capital resources to private industry and guarantees profit to the privatizer, while mollifying those who disparage public works and services (Tea Party and neo-liberal ideologues).

October-December 2013
Committee (TWSC) leaflet, and despite a small turn out, the frustrated workers challenged local President Antonette Bryant for the leaderships lack of communications about the negotiations and for not preparing the membership for the strike, which was being provoked actively by the BART negotiator. Unfortunately, a stirring of frustration in the rank and file had not resulted in a timely formation of a rank and file opposition caucus or broad-based strike committee. Although supported by the TWSC, an organic rank and file opposition never coalesced around the handful of outspoken rank and file militants who explained how the leadership was acting to sink the strike preparations, how the leadership was refusing to mobilize the membership and was making common cause with both the Democrats and management to prevent this thing from getting out of hand. Two community/labor marches were organized and relatively well attended, as the routine model labor protests go. Each march, one in August and one in October, was attended by some 1500 workers and community supporters, far short of the massive gatherings the labor councils could muster if they were serious about setting the stage for victory. The control of the stage and microphone was in the hands of the union leadership, but under pressure from the community groups, Uncle Bobby (Oscar Grants uncle) and an Alan Blueford family representative addressed the crowd. The representatives of the Mario Romero family from Vallejo were not included among the speakers. Not until strike leader George Figueroa spoke at the second rally, after being victimized by management and abandoned by the union leadership, did any union speaker call for a clean break with the Democrats and the formation of a Workers Party. No wonder the leadership has abandoned this courageous strike organizer. The CWG calls for the complete restitution of Brother George Figueroa without further victimization, including all back pay, benefits and privileges! No peace for the leadership until brother Figueroa gets justice!

Throughout the struggle ATU Local 1555 made its office available to an ad-hoc support committee which served as an intersection between the union leadership and the community activists. Under the guidance of Local 1555 Recording Secretary Chris Finn, these forces came together to take up support of the strike. The resulting committee brought together activists from the Alan Blueford coalition, a number of left groups activists and many of the same activists of the TWSC who were organizing strike support; groups like PSL, Solidarity, the Left Party, ANSWER, BAMN etc., et.al. Neither the ad-hoc committee nor the TWSC attracted the rankand-file BART workers. The rank and file was not looking for an outside or support vehicle to be active through. They were taking leadership from their organization, which was doing

-"e B.R- Stri$e5 . 8e# Battle for ,abor

At the September 11 ATU Local 1555 meeting, apparently bolstered by the distribution of the Transit Workers Solidarity
th

Class Struggle 107

everything it could to prevent the mobilization of the memberships of the various unions in BART and AC Transit from coming together with other out-of-contract unions, the port truckers and the low wage workers in fast food and big box distribution centers, for united class-wide strike action. No mass or regular strike committee meetings would be convened. The leadership rightly gauged the sentiment of the rank and file as expressed by two rejections of the TAKE AWAY tentative agreements by the membership of their sister union, ATU Local 192. Tentative agreements the leadership had negotiated and tried unsuccessfully to sell to the AC Transit drivers. Fear of the growing frustration of the masses and with the logic of a united transit strike on everyones mind, reinforced and kept the leadership on message, which was all conciliation and 100% obsequious in tone. As proof of their servility to big capital, the union leaders enforced gag rules over rank and file militants, throwing them off the negotiations committees because they fought the concessionary bargaining, fought for transparency, for community outreach and mass mobilization to bring the membership the truth about the leaderships sellout perspective.

October-December 2013
contract,) and they quickly caved under the political and corporate media pressure on pensions and medical. All the while the membership was atomized and demobilized, watching their future being bargained away. The vacuum of leadership was becoming apparent and management smelled blood. The long-term dependence on politicians, lawyers and the teaming with management had the effect of demobilizing and demoralizing the membership over many years. The memberships were never gathered for mass strike committee meetings to discuss and develop, of their own will, a fighting strategy! The memberships were of course polled but then demobilized and only called in for informational meetings and strike logistics planning (so unserious as to be a joke was the call-in opinion airing session organized by the leadership of ATU Local 1555 which provided scant mechanism to translate members demands into negotiating positions.) The union leaders were pressured on the one side by the union busters of the BART board, the Veolia Corporation and their commitment to the capitalist Democratic Party and on the other side by the workers determination to make up for sharing the pain during the first years of the current crisis. This explains how the leadership stumbled reluctantly into and out of two strikes, giving it away at the negotiating table only to catch a 3% hail Mary pass tossed by management after the deaths of two scabs killed by management-run scab trains. With the end of the stimulus payroll tax relief on November 1st, this 3% will never appear in the workers envelope as money. In fact, that same 3% was sold as make-up for the new pension contributions. The union leaderships response to this manslaughter was a quasi-religious candlelight vigil. The CWG calls for a workers' tribunal to be convened by the labor movement to try those responsible for this crime! To avoid labor taking advantage of the changing public sentiment against management, and for fear that the strike might have spread to AC Transit, the Port Truckers and beyond, management kicked in 3% in order to sweeten the deal and prevent the anticipated No vote from the membership for the TAKE AWAY AGREEMENT, which was presented as the Last Best and Final offer on the table before the scab train accident. This sweetener also served as a Get Out of Town Free Card for Tom Hock, and his $400,000 fee, which, despite the corporate media black-out, was becoming public knowledge, as was his role in stalling the talks and provoking the strikes. The union leaderships recommended the membership accept this TA despite the fact that it did not catch up with nor will it keep up with inflation. The CWG consistently advocates NO votes on TAKE AWAY tentative agreements. The passage of this agreement is a setback for the BART workers, AC Transit workers and all other workers. In preparation for this defeat, a cast of characters, from the union locals on up to the international unions and across all the legitimate organs of labor, including its many self-styled socialist champions, particularly those of the economist persuasion, all took special effort to make certain that nary a finger would be raised to assure a worker victory.

Reformism an t"e B.R- stri$e

The servility of the leadership to capital pinned by the strong arm of the Democratic Party has long been apparent. At an early summertime barbeque at Oaklands Mosswood Park prior to the strike, members of the three main unions met together but no organizing was discussed. Nor was any speakout organized to discuss how to win the upcoming struggle. Rather the leadership ushered in the local Democratic Party committeeman who praised the local leadership and promised that the Democrats would be on the workers side. Yet in the days leading up to the strike and for its duration the local Democrats and their Party leaders not only denied any support to the workers--and by the end of the struggle the entire power of the Democrats would be brought to bear on the workers--with Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom proclaiming This has got to be the last time, signaling that the growing unity drive of Republicans and Democrats alike to legislate against the rightto-strike for transit workers (and possibly essential workers) is near the top of the Democratic Party agenda. Friends of Labor? Who needs friends like these! Hand in hand with the bosses, the labor movements leadership held back the solidarity actions needed for the BART workers to win decisively. They could mouth the words, A loss for BART workers is a loss for all workers, but their role as managements enforcers assured they would not mobilize against the attacks on public workers. An AFSCME Local 444 delegate to the Alameda Labor Council argued that labor should ante up with full page advertisements in the bay area newspapers to counter the corporate media spin, but even ATU Local 1555 delegate Chris Finn opposed the recommendation, so labor gave up the media war without spending a dime! The nicest thing you can say about the BART union leaderships of ATU Local 1555, SEIU Local 1021, and AFSCME Local 3993 is that they were not prepared strategically to protect or advance the compensation or conditions of their workers in this negotiation. Long in the pocket of the Democrats, the leadership had nowhere to turn when faced down by every significant Democrat from the mayors to the governor and President. The leadership quickly backed down from the demand for a commensurate COLA (to cover losses imposed in the previous

-"e enemies arra#e against t"e -ransitional 9et"o 5 Centrism in t"e labor mo%ement :Continue ; http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2013/11/usa-bartstrikes-once-again-on.html

Class Struggle 107

October-December 2013

(uclear !o1er 1ont stop Climate Collapse

Prominent climate change pioneer James Hansen and a number of others including Guardian journalist George Monbiot are now publicly advocating new nuclear power generation as the only viable solution to burning carbon. Yet we literally do not have the time to debate the cost-effectiveness of Nuclear energy 60 even 20 years ahead. Climate collapse will have turned nuclear plants into nuclear disasters by then. We should be shutting down nuclear plants now if we are to survive as a civilisation. Environmentalists and reformist politicians who think that capitalism can find a nuclear fix to climate change delude themselves and attempt to delude the masses. The evidence is clear that nuclear energy is as potentially destructive of nature and society as is burning carbon. The sun is the only nuclear plant which socialists should advocate as the source of our energy.
Capitalists produce for profit no matter what the expense in terms of social and environmental damage. Any social progress under capitalism is due to working class struggle. That is why socialists never put their trust in capitalist solutions to social and environmental problems. The current structural crisis of capitalism is creating worsening global instability and threat of inter-imperialist war. In wars nuclear reactors are vulnerable to damage and destruction. Israel has bombed Syrian and Iraqi nuclear facilities and continues to threaten to destroy Irans nuclear facilities. Moreover the major imperialist powers have nuclear powered fleets which if involved in military hostilities would endanger their reactors. Even without war there is a long list of nuclear accidents and release of radiation. All this is the living proof that as capitalism nears the end of its existence it intensifies its destruction of the forces of production. Today this has taken an unforeseen dramatic turn. The destruction of the forces of production today all fuse into the global destruction of anthropogenic climate catastrophe and the threat of human extinction. The standard rejoinder of nuclear advocates is that the risk of nuclear meltdowns and resulting harm is vastly overstated by anti-nuclear campaigners. Or at least, as Hansen et al argue, these known dangers are much less than that of carbon induced global warming. The official method of measuring radiation poisoning originates from methods of measuring doses of radiation from nuclear weapons. But obviously there are also longer term environmental and health effects. There are huge differences in which measures one uses. Monbiot, for example, quotes from the UN agency Unscear for his numbers of 43 dead from Chernobyl, while Caldicott and others think this agency covers up and lies about the true extent of health effects and quotes the NY Academy of Sciences review of a mass of epidemiological research. More important than Chernobyl as an indicator of future risk from climate change are the measurable effects of the Fukushima meltdown because they simulate the extreme weather conditions associated with climate collapse. We have already seen nuclear plants flooded in the US. In 1992 Hurricane Andrew caused major damage to the Turkey Point plant in Florida. Fort Calhoun in Nebraska was shut down because of flooding in July 2011 and remains shutdown. Nuclear whistleblowers in the US claim that there no adequate preparation for upstream dam failures facing many plants. During Hurricane Sandy more than a dozen plants on the eastern seaboard were threatened and the oldest nuclear plant in the US, Oyster Creek in New Jersey, was shut down as flood water came within two feet of its backup diesel cooling system. Since Fukushima, US nuclear plants have been subjected to inspections and found wanting, the worst being at Monticello, Minnesota. In Britain, unpublished government analysis shows sites are at risk from flooding due to climate change. [Sizewell graphic].In Europe, heat waves have caused problems with nuclear plants that have to be shut down. In 2003 and 2006 and 2011 heatwaves forced the shutdown or reduction in production of nuclear plants in France, Spain and Germany. In the US the 2012 heatwave forced the shutdown of one reactor at the Millstone

Risk is real, not hypothetical or alarmist

Nuclear plants are too risky, too expensive, too insecure and too slow to build in the time left us. The danger of nuclear meltdown is top of the list. Fukushima Daiichi and TEPCO are evidence of the negligent design and operation of nuclear power plants. Far from rescuing capitalism from climate change there is the 'potential' for nuclear meltdowns due to climate collapse. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima were Level 7 (highest known) meltdowns caused by human failure. Chernobyl involved operator error compounded by design deficiencies and inadequate operating instructions. Fukushima was built on a fault line, without adequate protection from a tsunami, and also had major design deficiencies. Climate collapse adds much greater risks of accidents as an exponential increase in extreme weather events that will render many existing plants vulnerable to flooding. This is why nuclear plants should be closed down now before they are inundated by storms and floods and no new ones built by big nuclear subsidised by the dominant imperialist states.

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Class Struggle 107

nuclear plant in Connecticut. Inside Climate News reports on the many instances in the US and Europe where heat and drought have interrupted production of nuclear power. So, climate change is already bringing extreme weather events such as droughts and flooding that are testing the poor design and safety of existing nuclear plants.

October-December 2013
proving the viability of a nuclear future, on the contrary, the verdict of Fukushima is that the future of nuclear power generation is very much in doubt. Japan is proving that once the real human costs of nuclear disasters become known, public opinion is mobilised and far from settling for more carbon burning as envisaged by the Abe Government, can become the decisive factor in the rapid growth of renewables. What the pronuclear lobby fails to recognise is that public pressure in Japan, Germany and other countries is now making possible the viability of energy renewables to replace coal, oil and gas plants.

Fukushima Daiichi and nuclear Armageddon

The disaster at Fukushima has altered the debate dramatically. Here we have a combination of design defects and administrative blunders combining with a natural disaster a 9 point earthquake and a massive tsunami. Here is the perfect storm that simulates what many argue will be the future natural disasters compounded by extreme climate change. Fukushima has activated both sides of the debate, but now ramped up many decibels in response to the potential extreme threat. On the pro-nuclear side Fukushima supports the need for a nuclear future. A Forbes writer claims that the radiation leaks from Fukushima are no worse than eating bananas. In any case like Hansen et al, the writer claims the risks of Fukushima leakages are far less than continued carbon burning. He states that the German decision to close the nuclear stations means much greater reliance on damaging brown coal burning plants. He concludes: The point being that Fukushima went through absolutely the worst natural disaster that the world could throw at a nuclear plant: and yes, that plant was wrecked but wrecking the plant hasnt killed anyone and wont do. The amazing thing about nuclear power is not how dangerous it is but how safe it is. And given that we do indeed need to have some power if were to keep this civilisation thing on the road, given that renewables simply cannot scale up in time, were going to have to replace some of our fossil fuel fired generating capacity with more nuclear. Which is exactly what Hansen et al are pointing out. The anti-Nuclear side point out that the real threat has not yet been revealed. While the effects of Chernobyl forced the authorities to disclose what led to the disaster and the small numbers of deaths are seriously challenged, in Fukushima we still have a lot of political and corporate secrecy and denial. Koide Hiroaki is a nuclear engineer and one time advocate of nuclear power who now wants these plants closed down. A longtime critic of nuclear energy, after March 11, 2011 he is now seen as a sort of official nuclear whistleblower in Japan. Not only has Koide exposed the safety defects of nuclear plants, he links this fact to the secretive corporate state regime that disregards public safety. His message is clear, the plants containment systems were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami and the leaking of radiation continues and is not under control. Existing levels of emissions are much worse than consuming bananas and future emissions and their health effects are as yet unknown. The latest information on emissions is very scary. There is an excellent coverage of Fukushima by Japan Focus. It is clear that far from convincing us that Fukushima has survived the worst that even global warming can throw at us

Renewables come cheaper and faster

At the same time as downplaying the risk of nuclear disasters the pro-nuclear advocates underestimate the viability of renewables such as solar, wind and biomass based on increased cost efficiency even without the nuclear industries massive state subsidies. Renewables are already competing with nuclear and increasing their share and do not take 10 years or more to construct. Moreover the multibillions needed for new nuclear plants takes money away from the rapid expansion of renewables. In a comment to an article on the call in the Hansen et al Open Letter for nuclear power as an alternative to burning carbon, Amory B. Lovins from the Rocky Mountain Institute wrote: "There's an important missing point here: Building new nuclear power plants would reduce and retard the climate protection that Drs. Hansen et al. (and I) want. Why? Because new nuclear power plants (of any kind) are so costly and slow to build that they'd save ~3-20x less carbon per dollar and ~20-40x less carbon per year than investing the same money in efficiency, cogeneration, and modern renewables. This unavoidable conclusion from these technologies' empirically observed market prices and deployment speeds was summarized in 2009. I wonder if Drs. Hansen et al. would please enlighten us about exactly why they believe renewables cannot scale fast enough. The empirical data show that non-hydro renewables are adding 80+ GW/y, have already added more capacity in less than a decade than nuclear power has achieved in a half-century, and are attracting a quarter-trillion dollars of private capital per year. Nuclear energy is losing capacity (and was even before Fukushima), will soon fall behind nonhydro renewables in output as it already has in capacity (even China's nuclear power was outgenerated last year by its windpower), and is unfinanceable in the capital markets. More fundamentally, non-hydro renewables are scalable, massproducible manufactured products. They're exploiting the economies of mass production and fast marketwide installation that for nuclear power are a remote hopeand unrealistic due to poor economics. It's strange to tout new reactors when the US has terminated 14 operating or planned ones this year alone because just their operating cost can't compete. If the concern is the supposed challenges of grid integration, I'd invite the authors to explain why Germany and Denmark (with 23% and 41% renewable electricity in 2012) have Europe's most reliable electricity, and how the lights stay on in Spain (48% in the first half of 2013) and Portugal (70%), all without new bulk storage.

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Of course, the cheapest and fastest options are on the demand side. U.S. weather-adjusted electricity use per dollar of real GDP fell 3.4% last year alone, and we're barely scratching the surface of profitable efficiency.

October-December 2013
We demand the immediate closing down of coal and gas plants (other than emergency backups) through worker occupations of big oil and its operations. We demand the transfer of the multi-billion state subsidies to big nuclear be spent instead on rapidly expanding solar and other renewables to reach zero carbon by 2030. We demand a crash program of public works in renewables to meet the climate collapse deadline of 2030 and to put the industries under workers control and administration. Energy production must be socialised under the democratic control of the working people! Capitalist resistance to our basic survival demands will prove than it is necessary to overthrow the capitalist ruling class and replacing it with a worldwide Workers Government. Without this we cannot act in time to reverse climate collapse, stop human extinction, and create a socialist society based on planned production that restores the balance with nature and produces sustainably to meet human needs.

Workers Power!
While the capitalist market is already showing that energy renewables are cheaper, more efficient and practicable as the alternative to burning carbon. But state monopoly capitalism facing a terminal crisis is driven by massive energy corporates that have interests in pushing coal, oil, gas and nuclear rather than energy renewables. To survive as a ruling class, they will fight a dirty class war to dig, drill and frack the remaining stockpile of carbon and turn the world into a ball of fire. Climate scientists are coming to the view that climate catastrophe is unstoppable. We therefore face a very stark choice of capitalism in all of its destructive drive to survive, or socialist revolution for humanity to survive. Facing capitalist crisis and climate meltdown the working class needs a political program that can meet its needs. To have a chance of surviving we have to get rid of capitalism and create a socialist society! We put forward a program of Transitional Demands for urgent debate among the worlds workers: Basic demands for decent jobs, wages, houses, transport, health, education, social security etc all pose the urgent necessity for workers to self-organise their own class power!

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2013/11/nuclear-power-wont-stopclimate-collapse.html

2reetings to t"e Secon Congress of t"e Re%olutionar# &or$ers 2roup of )imbab1e7

from the Communist Workers Group (USA) December 6, 2013
Since independence in 1980 the ZANU-PF and its predecessors have made Zimbabwe safe for imperialist exploitation. The Program of Permanent Revolution is confirmed in the negative results of the national revolution, which gained for the national bourgeois forces the role of administrator over and champion of a capitalist economy which can neither support its people nor gain its independence from the dictates of the world market. They are playthings of imperialism; they cannot avoid the economic and military ravages intertwined with the inter-imperialist struggle over Africas resources. The ZANU-PF regime has not always been a favorite with the former colonizers and they are tolerated in the breach because the cost of overthrowing them was judged to be too steep by the Blair and Mbeki regimes. Sanctions imposed at that time impacted the lives of the working masses and ordinary poor. By design they did not interfere with the profits of the giant extraction companies.[1] In the epoch of imperialism there is no national program for the liberation of the semi-colonial countries and their people. The pan-Africanist vision also has not liberated Africa. While touted from many corners of the continent by liberation fighters turned capitalist state administrators, it serves as an ideological and organizational roadblock to the African workers revolution in particular and the world revolution by extension. The tasks of the bourgeois revolution, the completion of the agricultural reform, national independence and democracy have not been completed by the ZANU-PF. How could they be with their political program? A layer of veterans has become a new ruling class. Their privilege derives from and is maintained by the counter-revolution from within the anti-imperialist revolution, and is just a cost of doing business for the imperialists. Had these tasks been completed Zimbabwe would be able to feed its people and would not be trapped into mono-cropping for the world market. The starving of the masses fills the prisons for want of bread and democracy. Yet in the prisons hundreds have died because the state cannot find the funds to feed the inmates but one meal a day.[2] The capitalist system is the crime and the prisons are the result! We say tear down the prisons! Complete the agricultural reform by uniting agricultural workers under the leadership of the working class to seize Capitals assets, plan and implement a rational production of food to meet the needs of the people. Had these tasks been completed the resources of the state would prevent the epidemic (reportedly 100,000 victims) of waterborne disease, and cholera would not be a threat today. Yet by subordinating the national revolution to imperialism, the mineral wealth of the nation keeps the miners and their families living in poverty without clean and safe water supplies.[3]

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We hear Anglo American tooting its own horn for having donated a preposterous $100,000 to the Red Cross and showcase plumbing projects to fight cholera. The fake concern of these imperialists is notable on two accounts. Capital proclaims its beneficial role as a big investor, yet the historic impoverishment of the nation is the product. We say complete the revolution! Expropriate the assets of foreign capital! Make the imperialists pay![4] Rio Tinto, Anglo American, Impala Platinum drain the nations wealth by keeping the miners wages at the starvation minimum wage of $227 a month. The Chamber of Mines is fighting the unions demands for $800 for diamond miners, $700 for platinum miners and $573 for gold miners. The impasse in negotiations last week (Nov 26) will once again put the ZANUPF to the test as the state arbitrator adjudicates on the dispute in January. We say no faith in the state arbitrators! VICTORY TO THE MINERS IN THEIR FIGHT FOR A LIVING WAGE! TO WIN AGAINST THE INTERNATIONAL CORPORATIONS UNITED STRIKES ACROSS SOUTHERN AFRICA ARE NEEDED! In Bloomberg.com we read, The union believes that its fair and just for each sub-sector to remunerate its employees at rates that are proportional to its performance We say union leaders who tie labor costs to the price of the ore workers extract from the ground are not committed to the workers but to the market and its dictates! The LCC demands a living wage for all! For wage and price committees tied to mass assemblies of workers, the unemployed, agricultural labor and students! We must reject wages being determined by the wild fluctuations in the price of the ore workers mine. Imperialism has extracted its profit and super-profits when the ore was selling at high prices, yet they did not raise wages then, and now the labor fakers tier the wage demands referencing the imperialists excuses about the fall in demand! Repatriate the stolen super-profits! Expropriate the Expropriators![5] We have noticed a big increase of the Chinese influence in Zimbabwe and it is not limited to the economic sphere. The 98 million dollar loan to build the Harare military base signals a long-term partnership with the ZANU-PF regime. It will garrison forces aimed squarely at the working class, as Zimbabwe is not the imperialist proxy of choice for enforcement on the continent. For the present we dont see Zimbabwe making military moves against its neighbors. This base will constitute the security of the state at the expense of the masses who will have to pay back the loan. And the Atlantic Monthly raises the question about what it represents about future projections of Chinese military power onto the continent. We well remember that imperialists have made Africa their battleground in both inter-imperialist world wars and we see Africom as an early placeholder for US imperialism and its NATO allies.[6] The Marikana example is an object lesson in the need of the working class to organize self defense of its ranks and its struggles. We know the ANC colluded with the mine owners against the Marikana miners and shot them down in cold blood. The ZANU-PF is no better and we must warn the workers against faith in the state and prepare the masses to defend their strikes, to arm the people and disarm the police. As Trotsky observed in his history of the Russian Revolution, The way to the soldiers rifle leads through the revolver taken from the Pharaoh. [7]

October-December 2013
From the belly of the imperialist beast and on behalf of the vanguard workers of the USA we salute this second congress of the Revolutionary Workers Group! We salute the programmatic conquests that have resulted in the formation of the RWG. The RWG is the ripe fruit of the battle against Cliffism and its surrender to the Popular Front and entry into the MDC. We would wish to caution vanguard fighters everywhere of the Cliff/Schachtman tendencys history of reducing class struggle to economism. Recently, these willing class collaborators (the ISO-Z) tried to hitch their failed economist project to the unsullied standard of the RWG which proudly defended the transitional method against a fake unity of the working class and its vanguard around the minimum program of reformism. The RWG likewise rejected the schematicism and target fixation of the FLTI which refuses to recognize Chinese imperialism though it stares workers in their face anywhere they care to look and particularity in the southern hemisphere. The RWG has successfully defended the revolutionary position on the August 1991 coup and counter-coup in the former USSR and has done so against the considerable pressure from the backslider RCIT whose break from the method of Cliffism is incomplete as demonstrated by their support for Yeltsin faction and their objectively pro-imperialist position in support of the Bosnian breakaway state and the NATO bombing of Serbia. We salute the RWG for raising the banner in Africa for solidarity with the Revolutionary fighters in Syria and in solidarity with the deepening Arab revolution against the misguided calls for retreat to bourgeois parliamentarism and the Constituent Assembly while trade unionists on strike in Egypt are daily fighting the military regime and while the order of the day across MENA is to organize workers councils and militia. We are united in our internationalist vision and resolved upon the tasks of building a revolutionary workers international. The very survival of humanity depends on our victory. Capitalism, the impending inter-imperialist conflict over resources and markets and the devastation of climate change will devastate the billions in the semi-colonial world whose infrastructure is least prepared to adapt. The impact of drought driven by climate change on the Syrian economy has driven the people to revolt and we will see case after similar case as the comprador bourgeoisie seek to keep the cork in the bottle. Hurricanes, typhoons, natural disasters combined with capitalist lack of planning and the anarchy of production that gave us Fukushima cries out for the formation of a planned world economy. Our tasks are monumental but our program of class independence and the dialectical method of the transitional program guide us to build our fighting party to lead the workers to victory.

.ll po1er to t"e 1or$ing class7 <ictor# to t"e )imbab1e miners7 =ustice for 9ari$ana7 4or t"e unite socialist state of sout"ern .frica7

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/greetings-to-secondcongress-of.html

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October-December 2013

Re%ie1 of5 2oing Dar$3

2u# R> 9c!"erson
!ublis" .merica* Baltimore* 2013> "ttp500re ra%e>blogspot>co>n?020130120re%ie1-of-going- ar$>"tml Guy McPherson is rapidly gaining a reputation as Guy McStinction as the climate scientist who is predicting near-term human extinction beyond the 2030s. He makes the case that Climate Collapse (CC) is upon us and that only industrial collapse could stop it. When that happens we as a species will as he says, Go dark as it becomes extinct. The 26 positive feedback loops (PFLs causal chains that are self-reinforcing and increase exponentially) are many and almost all are already beyond human control. McPherson accepts that against all odds there are (currently) two positive feedbacks that we can influence. These are the ones that set all the other PFBs in motion. Broadly they are the extraction and burning of fossil fuel. The only way McPherson thinks we can reverse and stop those positive feedbacks is for industrial civilisation to collapse. The problem is that while McPherson has the scientific credentials to understand and explain CC, he lacks these credentials when it comes to explaining the industrial civilisation that caused it. One requirement of science is that if you are postulating human action to stop an effect you need to understand the cause. Before we talk about industry collapsing we need to know what it is and how to make it collapse. McPherson understands industrial society as that of empire controlled by corporations. He sees industrial society ruled by those in power now using a police state and NSA to keep a hold over the people. He hoped that the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 would bring about the collapse of industrial society. But that did not happen. The big banks and big business rallied with big bailouts and bonuses from big government that then turned the big cops on Occupy. Far from collapsing, the monopoly capitalist state then embarked on a crash program to extract and burn all known fossil fuels to boost profits. What will it take to build a citizens crash program to stop the corporate crash program turning the planet into a ball of fire? McPhersons response to this is the need for total revolution, anarchy and freedom but he has no road map for how this can be made possible. This is the main problem with Going Dark and the rest of this review is about spelling out that crash socialist program for survival. the consequence of this is the increase in investment in the tools of production (machines etc) that cannot produce value, relative to the wages of productive workers, who do. This is the famous organic composition of capital. This sows the seeds of crisis in the form of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (TRPF). The capitalists fight the TRPF with counter-tendencies, plundering the world for cheap resources, cutting wages, and of course inventing better machines to make labor more productive. But inevitably the capitalists cannot screw enough surplus value out of workers to make a profit on their investment and the TRPF wins. A crisis of falling profits results leading to a fall in investment, the classic capitalist slump, and an overproduction of capital which must be devalued to restore the rate of profit. The last major slump began in the 1970s but despite devaluations of capital, particularly in the neo-liberal years, surplus capital remained. It found an outlet in speculating in existing values creating fictitious values was above true values. The 2008 GFC was a collapse of several of these overvalued speculative markets, beginning with housing but spreading to the whole banking system. To prevent this system collapsing along with these fictitious values, the banks were bailed out by central banks which created $trillions of debt to be paid for by future generations of workers in cuts to living standards - hours, wages, pensions, conditions etc. But $trillions of fictitious values remain to be destroyed before profits recover back to their post-WW2 boom levels. The GFC did not lead to the collapse of industrial civilisation because it was no more than a symptom of that long decline as capitalism exhausts its capacity to plunder the earth and the labor value of workers sufficient to sustain its profits. The capitalist class treated the symptom of an ailing capitalism but it has not yet been able to cure the disease falling profits. This explains why the ruling class is ruthlessly mining, drilling, fracking the earth, and ruthlessly spying, militarising, and repressing workers, activists and terrorists who resist its headlong rush to destruction. It is the crisis-ridden capitalist system in extremis that accounts for the polarisation of the global population where the ruling class, with its political parties, fake social movements, and media bullshit oppress the global working class which is fighting to survive as part of the natural world that parasitic capitalism threatens to make extinct. This contradiction is becoming more extreme and can be resolved in favour of nature and humanity only by the international working class, the proletariat, overthrowing and replacing the capitalist system.

Capitalist crisis meets Climate Catastrophe

Why didnt the 2008 GFC bring about the collapse of industrial civilisation? The short answer is that the capitalist class did not allow it to collapse. Industry is capitalist industry owned and controlled by capitalists. They are motivated by profits which they screw out of the working class surplus-value. Capitalism is a dynamic contradiction. It develops technology to increase labor productivity to get more surplus-value out of workers. But

Green capitalists and socialists

McPhersons terms, anarchism, freedom and total revolution are subversive concepts, but they need to be

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translated into revolutionary strategy and tactics to overthrow capitalism. Logically, total revolution is the only course of action in stopping the positive feedbacks still within our control. If we succeed then survival makes Freedom possible. But are Anarchism, ecosocialism and even Marxism up to the task? The first test is to reject Green Capitalism which is both utopian and reactionary. It is utopian because capitalism cannot coexist in harmony with nature. It is reactionary because it limits itself to non-violent civil disobedience. This is a sort of passive-aggressive behaviour activist against the corporate elite but pacifist against capitalism. Who are the Green Capitalists? James Hansen calling for more nuclear power; Bill McKibbens 350.org and anti-Keystone campaigns funded by Rockefeller and other business foundations to the tune of $10million to stop the tar-sands and shale fracking; Climate Ground Zero and the defenders of Coal River Mountain, or Greenpeace climate activism all over the world. All assume it possible to stop fossil fuel burning without overthrowing capitalism. While they act out this passive aggression the positive feedbacks keep burning us up. Total Revolution also means going beyond Green Socialism (or ecosocialism) which claims that socialism can be achieved by redistributing the worlds wealth and stopping capitalist growth without smashing the capitalist state and creating a centralised workers government. This is Green capitalism with a socialist gloss. It deludes workers into the belief that capitalists can be made to forgo their carbon burning destructive profiteering without making workers pay dearly with loss of livelihoods and loss of lives. The best known advocate of Green Socialism is John Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon. Forster shares with the Green capitalists the belief that we have the time to mobilise to stop climate change by pushing for reforms. He critiques Hansen et al for failing to see that capitalism will repress any direct action to enforce a carbon tax but at the same time pins his hopes on such reforms leading to the development of revolutionary consciousness. Such reforms include a carbon tax, opposition to capitalist waste, to capitalist growth that does not meet needs and so on. The problem is we do not have the time for a struggle for reforms that may lead to revolution. Marxists have always argued that reforms only result when the bosses want to head off a revolution. We have to take action now to shut down oil and gas plants as well as the major industries that rely on them such as the auto and plastics industries. Inevitably such mass direct action targeting the ruling class right to rule will bring down the spy, anti-terror state forces on activists and prove to those on the reformist road that a leap to revolution that destroys the capitalist state is necessary.

October-December 2013
capitalist agency that destroys the forces of production in its mad rush to exhaust millions of years of stored up carbon. For revolutionary Marxists capitalism is way past its due date. A socialist revolution is way overdue to stop the massive destruction of the forces of production (nature). Yet while socialist revolution is necessary now there can be no immediate transition to a socialist society in which newly invented technology will allow the forces of production to developed in harmony with nature allowing a reduction in labor and a situation of plenty. First, the destruction of nature has to be stopped. The immediate priority will be the conservation of resources while a transition to new technology is developed along with a global plan that reorganises production on the basis of meeting the basic needs of all. For revolutionary Marxists then, total Revolution means overthrowing capitalism and replacing it with a transitional workers government that acts to stop the carbon burning feedback loop. Only if and when that has been achieved can production be planned sustainably to meet the needs of the 7 billion earthlings. Climate change demands a total revolution to dump corporate capitalism. Anarchism is not sufficient. Anarchism is premised on the petty bourgeois individual who is a creature of capitalism. The proletariat is the progressive class within capitalism but whose historic mission is to be the gravediggers of capitalism and the builders of socialism. The proletariat needs to control and conserve its resources to survive as part of nature. Grass roots movements like Idle No More, and trade unions and community activists, need to join forces as the universal struggle of the proletariat. This is class war. We need to organise democratically but act globally. This requires an international organisation a world socialist party. We must take the power and wealth off the ruling class take over the Banks and all the big business.. We must smash their state apparatus that indoctrinates us, spies on us and represses us. There is one positive mega feedback a socialist revolution can stop. It is the capitalist exploitation of nature as the source of corporate profits. We as workers are the source of those profits. Our labor-power (along with the rest of nature) is the source of all wealth. We need to mobilise our own class power. We have to build a system of workers power to defeat the state power of the ruling class. That power has to be based on its source our labor. We need to withdraw our labor in many strike actions that build into a General Strike that shuts down capitalist production world-wide. To hold onto this power we need to occupy the workplaces and defend them against the armed forces of the state. All of this will mean a program for an alternative society. This will start with local strike committees and defence committees that coordinate nationally and internationally. Here the various currents of anarchism, socialism and Marxism will debate strategy and tactics to win support for the best course of action. Arising from such committees will grow councils or communes where the working people will debate political tactics and plan the production of the goods and services we need to survive. There is no guarantee that we can do this, or that it will be enough to stop Capitalist Climate Collapse. Generation Zero will not go quietly into the night. For revolutionary Marxists there is no question that we go with a bang and not a whimper!

Total Revolution and Survival Socialism

For Marx the forces of production included nature (importantly the labor-power of workers) that was subordinated to capitalist production for profit. The capitalist exploitation of nature did at that time not pose Climate Catastrophe. Today we are faced with consequences of centuries of capitalist plunder a blowback by nature. This is not anthropogenic but capitalogenic Climate Collapse. For thousands of years before capitalism humans had to coexist as part of nature. So it is not human agency but

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Class Struggle 107

October-December 2013

&"at &e 4ig"t 4or

O%ert"ro1 Capitalism
Historically, capitalism expanded world-wide to free much of humanity from the bonds of feudal or tribal society, and developed the economy, society and culture to a new higher level. But it could only do this by exploiting the labour of the productive classes to make its profits. To survive, capitalism became increasingly destructive of "nature" and humanity. n the early !"th century it entered the epoch of imperialism in which successive crises unleashed wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions. Today we fight to end capitalism#s wars, famine, oppression and in$ustice, by mobilising workers to overthrow their own ruling classes and bring to an end the rotten, exploitative and oppressive society that has exceeded its use-by date. barbarism of capitalism in crisis, led by a revolutionary 4arxist party, produces a revolutionary classconsciousness.

4or a Re%olutionar# !art#

The bourgeois and its agents condemn the 4arxist party as totalitarian. 3e say that without a democratic and a centrally organised party there can be no revolution. 3e base our beliefs on the revolutionary tradition of Bolshevism and Trotskyism. (uch a party, armed with a transitional program, forms a bridge that $oins the daily fight to defend all the past and present gains won from capitalism, to the victorious socialist revolution. 6efensive struggles for bourgeois rights and freedoms, for decent wages and conditions, will link up the struggles of workers of all nationalities, genders, ethnicities and sexual orientations, bringing about movements for workers control, political strikes and the arming of the working class, as necessary steps to workers7 power and the smashing of the bourgeois state. )long the way, workers will learn that each new step is one of many in a long march to revolutionise every barrier put in the path to the victorious revolution.

4ig"t for Socialism

By the !"th century, capitalism had created the preconditions for socialism %a world-wide working class and modern industry capable of meeting all our basic needs. The potential to eliminate poverty, starvation, disease and war has long existed. The &ctober 'evolution proved this to be true, bringing peace, bread and land to millions. But it became the victim of the combined assault of imperialism and (talinism. )fter *+!, the -((', along with its deformed offspring in .urope, degenerated back towards capitalism. n the absence of a workers political revolution, capitalism was restored between *++" and *++!. /ietnam and 0hina then followed. n the !*sst century only 0uba and 1orth 2orea survive as degenerate workers states. 3e unconditionally defend these states against capitalism and fight for political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy as part of world socialism.

4ig"t for Communism

0ommunism stands for the creation of a classless, stateless society beyond socialism that is capable of meeting all human needs. )gainst the ruling class lies that capitalism can be made "fair" for all8 that nature can be "conserved"8 that socialism and communism are "dead"8 we raise the red flag of communism to keep alive the revolutionary tradition of the7 0ommunist 4anifesto of *9,9, the Bolshevik-led &ctober 'evolution8 the Third 0ommunist nternational until *+!,, the revolutionary :ourth nternational up to *+," before its collapse into centrism. 3e fight to build a new, :ifth, 0ommunist nternational, as a world party of socialism capable of leading workers to a victorious struggle for socialism.

Defen 9ar@ism
3hile the economic conditions for socialism exist today, standing between the working class and socialism are political, social and cultural barriers. They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology and its agents. These agents claim that 4arxism is dead and capitalism need not be exploitative. 3e say that 4arxism is a living science that explains both capitalism#s continued exploitation and its attempts to hide class exploitation behind the appearance of individual "freedom" and "e5uality". t reveals how and why the reformist, (talinist and centrist misleaders of the working class tie workers to bourgeois ideas of nationalism, racism, sexism and e5uality. (uch false beliefs will be exploded when the struggle against the ine5uality, in$ustice, anarchy and

Class Struggle is t"e bi-9ont"l# paper of t"e

Communist &or$ers 2roup of (e1
)ealan 0.otearoa* in a ,iaison Committee of Communists 1it" Communist &or$ers 2roup :/S.; an Re%olutionar# &or$ers 2roup :)imbab1e; Online at "ttp500re ra%e>blogspot>com !"one ABC 0272D000D0 Email c1g00BF#a"oo>com .rc"i%e of publications before 200B "ttp500communist1or$er>blogspot>com0

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