Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 08:42:03 +0100 (MET) From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki) Subject: M-G: COCKROACH! #33 COCKROACH! #33 A EZINE FOR POOR AND WORKING CLASS PEOPLE. WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS. It is time that the poor and working class people have a voice on the Internet. Contributions can be sent to <malecki-AT-algonet.se> Subscribtions are free at <malecki-AT-algonet.se> Now online at http://www.kmf.org/malecki/ How often this zine will appear depends on you! -------------------------------------------------------- 1. Draft Joint Declaration on Israel/Palestine - 2. Sweden-Workers begin to move! 3. The Trade Unions Again! -------------------------------------------------------- Draft Joint Declaration on Israel/Palestine - The Palestinian uprising in September formally began over a hole in the ground, dug by the Israelis in Arab East Jerusalem to complete an ancient tunnel near the western wall of the ancient Jewish temple. The excavation was perceived by the Palestinians as an outrageous provocation: not only was it trampling on Muslim religious sensitivities by interfering with the Al Aqsa Mosque but it was a de facto repudiation of the Oslo Accord. In the words of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the opening of the tunnel 'expresses our sovereignty over Jerusalem'. He knew that his provocation would result in an uprising. He also knew that world opinion would condemn him. But all of that was for a purpose, to build support for his hardline among Israeli's and to force Arafat and the PLO security police to renegotiate a new deal with the state and at the same time enforce more concessions onto the Palestinians. The new Likud-led administration has stepped up the attack on the Palestinians. Netanyahu is using the settler group Ateret Cohanim to drive Arabs out of East Jerusalem. The Old City is already encircled by huge settlements built on confiscated Arab land. Arab houses, community centres and businesses have been illegally seized, occupied or demolished all over the West Bank and Gaza, but particularly in East Jerusalem, where the mayor, Ehud Olmeret, has exploited loopholes in the planning legislation. The disputed tunnel is being built without any planning permission at all. However, the digging near the mosque was the culmination of a series of provocations that began long before Netanyahu took over as prime minister after the elections in May of this year. In the three years since Labour leader Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn, Palestinian anger and frustration has been growing. The Oslo, Cairo and Taba Accords, signed by the Labour government, were supposed to lead to limited Palestinian sovereignty in Gaza and the West Bank. But the reality has been the continuation of detention and torture, endless curfews, and now a refusal to withdraw Israeli troops from Hebron despite the agreement. The systematic repression of the Palestinians has continued because the real aim of the agreements is not to bring peace, but to guarantee the control of US imperialism over the Middle East. The direct occupation and control of Gaza and the West Bank by Israel had proved extremely difficult during the six-year Intifada, so the Labour government sought to stabilise the region by using Arafat and the Palestinian Authority as their puppets. In return, the Palestinians were granted token concessions and an armed police force. The 30,000-strong Palestinian security force has been used to repress the growing opposition to Arafat's betrayal of the struggle for self-determination. Arafat and his police have been guilty of the most horrific repression and torture of these youth. But Israeli violations of the accord under the more right-wing Likud government are now eroding Arafat's authority and hence his capacity to control the Palestinians. Arafat used the tunnel question to provoke street demonstrations and limited confrontations as a tactic to press Netanyahu to stop ignoring him. The confrontation over the tunnel has caused divisions inside both the Palestinian police and the Israeli armed forces. Some Palestinian police opened fire on the Israeli army during the conflict, and on this occasion it was not only unarmed Palestinian youth who were killed but some Israeli soldiers as well. Although Arafat has now regained control over the estimated 20 per cent of his police who broke ranks, socialists must fight for them to come over to the side of the masses. On the Israeli side, about 400 retired soldiers have decided to relaunch the Yes Gvul movement that was active in the Lebanon war, and are demanding the right to refuse to carry out repressive actions against Palestinian civilians. The renewal of the intifada has been dreaded by Washington, Israel, the so-called moderate Arab states like Egypt and Jordan, and by Yasser Arafat. They are all aware that the three-year-old Oslo Accord does not grant the Palestinians self-determination. At best it would create a mini-state, a 'bantustan' under an Israeli-style apartheid regime, with Arafat as the dictatorial native 'chief'. Now even this miserable project is in doubt. Dependent on extreme right-wing religious groupings to keep him in office, Netanyahu is refusing to honour many concessions promised by Rabin and Shimon Peres. His government's policy is to strengthen the Israeli presence in the Occupied Territories by building yet more settlements. The Clinton administration has attempted to save the misnamed peace process, fearing a generalised uprising that would threaten the stability of the whole region. After the latest adventure in Iraq, Arab states are backing away from the US military containment policy, as are most of the European imperialist powers who have their own agenda to follow in the area. Although Netanyahu would no doubt like to return to the days of the Cold War, when Israel was perceived by the US as a strategic asset against Soviet-influenced Arab regimes, Clinton's aim is to draw the Arab regimes closer to the imperialist fold. But with the US presidential election in mind, Clinton also made it clear that he would oppose any pressure to force Israel to back down. Netanyahu's policies are also causing consternation in the governments of the 22 states of the Arab League, most of which are facing strong fundamentalist opposition to the Oslo Accord. Even King Hussein of Jordan, Israel's closest ally in the region, had to denounce the building of the tunnel as a 'violation of the sanctity of the holy city'. Peres, the leader of the Israeli Labour Party, has accused Netanyahu of undermining the peace process. He speaks for the wing of the Israeli ruling class which thinks it necessary to give up some territory to the Palestinians in exchange for stability and the chance to prosper. Socialists should participate critically in mass peace demonstrations, which have a progressive component despite their Labour Zionist leadership. Hamas has become the major organising force within the Palestinian resistance. While opposing its reactionary political aims and repressive social policy, socialists must critically defend its struggle against the Israeli state and Arafat's puppet regime, and campaign for the release of its political prisoners. The clerics use fundamentalist ideology as a means of social and political control over the masses in struggle, just as Khomeini did in Iran in 1979. The extremely limited and conjunctural nature of this 'anti-imperialism' soon became clear in Iran, as it will to the Palestinian youth if they continue to be misled by these reactionaries. Significantly, the Hamas clerics gave no lead in the uprising against the opening of the tunnel, preferring individual acts of terror which leave the masses unmoved and inactive. Youth in the Occupied Territories have not turned to the fundamentalists out of religious conviction, but because of the treachery and cowardice of both Arafat and the traditional working class leaderships in the region, in particular the Stalinists. Right now, fundamentalism seems to be the strongest political and ideological weapon at hand with which to fight their oppressors. Revolutionary socialists must intervene in the intifada, advocating the building of workers' and peasants' councils (with delegates elected and recallable by rank-and-file assemblies) and militias, and the forging of links with Jewish workers. At the same time, they must campaign for Jewish workers to support the Palestinians' right to self-determination and fight to break them from their Labour Zionist leadership. They must seek to exploit the contradiction between the Hamas leadership and base by the judicious use of transitional and democratic demands, directed at the clerics, to expose in practice their bogus anti-imperialism. This is the way to win the youth to revolutionary Trotskyism, and demonstrate that the theory of permanent revolution is the only real anti-imperialist ideology because it understands that the democratic revolution can only be completed by the socialist revolution under the leadership of the working class. What is missing is a revolutionary working class leadership that can unite Palestinian and Jewish workers in a fight against all oppression. Only unconditional support for the Palestinian uprising and right to self-determination will create the conditions for a joint struggle by Arab and Jewish workers to smash the Zionist state and stablish a multi-ethnic workers' council republic within a socialist federation of the Middle-East. Workers in the USA and the European Union must build an working class anti-war movement which brings the US military machine in the Middle-East to a halt. * Israeli armed forces and settlers out of the Occupied Territories now! * Release all Palestinian political and Jewish anti-war prisoners! * For the right of all Palestinian refugees to return! * Down with Zionism and imperialism! * For the unconditional support for the Palestinian right to self-determination! * For the unity of the Arab and Jewish workers to smash the Zionist state and for a socialist multi-ethnic federation of the middle east! 15 October 1996 Liaison Commitee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International (Bolivia, Europe, New Zeland, Peru) Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (Belgium, Britain, Canada, Germany, Jamaica, South Africa, Sri Lanka) Committee for a Revolutionary Regroupment -------------------------------------------------------- For the first time in decades the working-class in Sweden is beginning to move. A big demonstration is planned for tomorrow in Stockholm. This is not just any demonstration. In fact it is the Swedish working class going against the reformist Social Democratic Government and its bougeois allies! In fact this is unprecedented in Europe today! Usually like in England, Australia and New Zealand it is "labor against the Conervatives. This has been the scenario just about everywhere since the end of the second world war. Today when the Soviet Union has disintegrated, the central reason why the present attack against workers here in Sweden and Internationally, reformist solutions along the lines of Social Democratic reformism are no longer viable. And today as the Social Democratic leadership deserts the working class and the trade unions for the middle class with anti-trade union legislation, tax cuts which are directed at the middle class, massive unemployment, cuts and a general attack of dismantling the "welfare state" a massive grass roots movement is developing on a National level here in Sweden. The demonstration tomorrow is a direct attack against the Social Democrats! Against their politics since taking power in the last elections. Against the anti-trade union laws--against unemployment--against the cuts. And these cuts are hurting. Working class people and their families do not have enough money to eat today. Tens of thousands can not support themselves on unemployment insurance which the Social Democracy has cut and are forced on to welfare! Soup lines are becoming a fact here in Sweden! And the government has refused to take the surplus food from the common market as Finland does today in order to feed unemployed workers and their families! The Social Democrats refuse to apply for this food because of prestige and that they are responsible for this situation and the deepening crisis. The trade union bureacracy is beginning to crack at the seams. Whilst the central bureaucracy "supports" the demonstration they refuse to call for a mobilisation saying that this demonstration only makes matters worse. In reality they are the loyal supporters of the Social Democratic traitors in the parlimemt. On the other hand the local trade union bureaucrats are not only supporting the demo but mobilising people to take part. Under the pressure from the grass roots below they have no other choice! A National network for the unemployed is also growing. New Committees are popping up everywhere! And naturally will be supporting the demo. The left also is beginning to mobilise for the demo. However, this demonstration will be the first major demo directed against a reformist government in power ever here in Sweden. And the participants in the overwhelming majority are or were Social Democratic workers! There are still a lot of illusions. And the movement at present is certainly highly confused in regards to how to solve the crisis. We have people who are still hoping that the Social Democracy will change course. There are others who have completely left behind any support to political parties at all. There are people moving to the left towards the Swedish CP and others towards the "Trotskyists" formations. Naturally their are petty bougeois middle class people effected by the crisis also. What unites all of these people is a classical trade union United Front against the Social Democratic traitors in the government. A program directed against the government, against unemployment, especially against the anti-trade unions laws that will be voted for in December and the general dismantling of the welfare state. There are other slogans also like "Save Sweden" which shows how provincial at present this movement is. However this must be seen in the context of the fact that the left has been against membership in the common market. And the general tendency to blame membership in the common market as being the major reasons for all the cuts. This is partially true, but hardly the central reason. But the left continues to build the illusion that this is the main reason. The general tendency being towards Swedish isolationism and back to the good old days of the welfare state. Already the discussions about putting forth trade union candidates in the Social democracy is coming to the surface. Especially on the local level this is seen as a clear tactic to oust the present Social Democratic leadership who's overwhelming majority have never been in a work place in their lives! As if ONLY getting some trade unionists into the parliment will help turn back the clock. Naturally any serious independent list by Social Democratic trade unionists, that clearly says "Break with you bougeois partners" and a program of defending whats left of the welfare state and going back to the good old times could be given critical support. However, Communists must patiently explain that such a platform will not solve the problems of the Swedish working class and especially isolating Sweden from the rest of the class struggle in Europe is utopian at best. Only a program and a party that is prepared to fight for *real* political power with a program including not just saving the welfare state, but a workers government that will go all the way in expropriating the expropriaters. This linked to the struggle not only here in Sweden, but Europe and the rest of the entire world. The present period is quite clearly proving many of the things that the Leninists and Trotskyists have said about Social Democracy, The United Front, Trade Unions and Trade Union struggles, Politics and a program of struggle for political power linked to the vital and central issue of a political party along the lines of the Leninist model can only show the way forward. Especially the United Front and the rule march seperately but strike together presenting a clear alternative to the Social Democrats and the Euro-Communists will be essential in order to recruit to the vanguard party. The duty of the Communists in the coming period is a period of patiently explaining the reasons for this crisis and a program for its solution. Patiently explaining why the Social Democrats nor the Euro-Communists can solve the problem of leadership. While at the same time recruiting the most militant vanguard of the workers to a revolutionary party and a revolutionary International. Not tailing tjhis movement and echoing the slogans and political line of the traditional reformist Social democrats of going back to the good old times. Nor tailing the neo-Stalinist CPs who can provide no leadership and stand on the ruins of Stalinist politics Internationally. The tendency to build a "broadie" 9 and 1/2 International along the common denominater of the politics of the reformists and the Stalinist but also the liquidationist fake "Trotskyists" for the sake of "Unity" on principle must also be combatted. That road only paves the way to new disasters for the working class. Only the Trotskyist perspective of the Proletarian United Front can show the way forward and be a tool in forming and hardening the vanguard of the working class and recruiting them to the party. Thus the only solution is the building of a Bolshevik Leninist Tendency here in Sweden as elsewhere based on the politics of Leninism, the Left Opposition and the founding documents of the FI. Because the present crisis is ultimately a crisis of leadership. And that leadership can only be built on the great traditions of the historical Left Opposition to the Stalinist COMINTERN and the Social Democratic Second International. Today it is not "Unity" as the "unity mongerers proclaim that is neccessary Internationally. What is needed is a *real* Bolshevik Leninist-Trotskyist Vanguard based on all of the great historical struggles of the past decades that must be forged. Neo-Stalinism in its present clone form and Social Democracy have never nor can provide leadership in the past nor present epoch. Their politics only can mean a new round of defeats for the working class. Bob Malecki -------------------------------------------------------- The Trade Unions Again! Neil writes; > >I have never used any slogan of 'smash the unions' in my > union critiques on the list. This is a lie of careerists and >bureaucrat wannabees. Ah Neil takes a smallstep! He says that he does not want to smash the unions. What should Communists do ignore them Neil? And in practice your call for building small groups outside of the unions, because the unions are completely bankrupt is in fact a declaration of fake revolutionary blustering rather then taking part in *real* class struggle. > >Socialists and other worker militants need Revolutionary >politics to be able to foresee and to prepare for the future >creation of new mass organs of real class struggle and >to help turn the tide in a revolutionary attack. Not really Neil. In fact other organs will develop as the crisis deepens and the working class becomes more concious. History has show us that other organisation forms developed in many pre-revolutionary and revolutionary situations like the "Soviets" in the former Soviet Union. But these organs did not replace the trade unions-but were a complement to them. I think this will be the case in the future also. > >Reformists and careerists, stalinist, social dems. trotskyists, >want nothing to do with socialist struggle. >We need to realize what the legal unions are in this epoch, >they are mainly instruments of bargaining (independent of >leadership politics) the price and trade of labor power >between buyer-capitalist, and seller-the workers. >Sure, true this is a form of class struggle, but constricted >to the level of bargaining , based on the hegemony of the >capitalist social relationship. The above is a bunch of ultra-left romantism at best and proves that Neil has no tactics at all except going out into the desert and screaming revolution! In fact Communists and Socialists have tactics regarding the trade unions. Both in peaceful legal times, wartime, and also revolutionary or counter-revolutionary illegal times. That is because we try to analise living reality, the forces working in society and trying to change the situation in favor of the working class and its ultimate struggle to become the ruling class. But for Neil, no tactics are neccessary just blustering and ultra-left sloganeering will not change anything. Only by rolling up your sleeves and getting in there and taking part in the class struggle according to the conditions that exist and try to move things forward. >This is a main reason why unions arose and are still in >existence. Unions today are under increasing constraint >to mediate the capitalist interest inside the working class. >Unions don't operate on some kind of bargain-margin: >The capitalist economy as a whole survives today only >on the basis of wages overall being reduced. You are completely ignorant of why trade unions arose. And are trying to paint a rosy revolutionary pictures which goes along with you hate of the trade unions. In fact trade unions arose out of struggle against the incredible working conditions imposed on the working class by the ruling classes in every country of the world. For example it was the Adalen massacre by the Swedish bougeoisie that was one of the fundemental pillars of the trade union movement. In the United States it was some of the great revolution struggles by the teamsters that is part of the trade unions great tradition. You are trying to implant the present bureaucratic grip that the present trade union bureaucracy has on the unions on some of the greatest and most violent struggles and heroic struggles that brought the union movement into existence. Poof the trade unions stink says Neil: Who are you trying to kid Neil. Do you think that your are dealing with some typical student leftists of the campuses from the sixties. It might work there but not here and not in the workers movement. Because most workers would think you have completely flipped out! > >Of course the apologists for the unions role never say any of >this, or about the material basis on the systems overall >falling rate of capitalist profit , nor would they educate/alert >the workers on how capital adapts to compensate for this. >They just hide the fact that the continuing capitalist realtions >and disasters for workers are the very material baisis for >the existence of the unions. I at least am not apologising for the crimes of the reformist,Stalinist or pro-capitalists trade union leaderships. But I see a clear difference between the base and the top. And I defend the trade unions on principle as working class organisations despite this leadership. Do you? In fact Communists defend every economic struggle between the workers and bosses or any minimal reform which makes conditions for the workers better on principle. Although we understand that this is hardly enough and that only by taking political power and smashing the ruling class can really garantee any gains made in partial struggles. Do You Neil? Naturally the question of the present leaders of the trade union movement must be seen in the tactic of setting the base against the top and exposing their treacherous twists and turns or even more open class collaboration with the class enemy and the bosses. But one can not dop that by empty slogineering and wandering out in the desert Neil. > >Of course it would be idiotic to just shout mantras for the >"smashing of unions" as any serious political tactic. Good Neil! I like that. But you still want to run off and leave the working class in the hands of the traitors who presently control things. Instead of getting in there and trying to change things. >BUT it is also just criminal to call workers to the defense >of unions instead of calling on workers of the rank and >file and inside the ranks to build new rank and file >organizations for mass struggle outside and against >the bosses/state compatibilities, for defense of workers >immediate interests, and honestly delivering wide >information and agitation for a political attack, as >well as industrial, on capital. You have the same position as the Stalinists had in Germany. These tactics led to the victory of the facists and everything that it meant. The only difference is they called their groups the "red" trade unions. They thought that the reformists and their trade unions were more dangerous then the brown shirts and Hitlers national socialism. This was also the death of the Third International as and organisation that could be changed. It also proves that in reality your line is in fact in practice "smash the unions". So far from being anything new and revolutionary you are sounding more like a parrot of the Stalinist in the German KPD which got its orders from Moscow! How quaint my ultra leftist hero! > >Communists can agitate in the ranks in the unions- >and outside them too. hovever, The point here is the unions >are not any kind of leadership for attacking style class clashes.. >THe needed political leadership builds up inside the >raised class conflict, and that is somthing the unions >must combat to maintain their own institutional hegemony >in the system of wage labor. The last just does not fit Neil. You have been writting for days and in most of this letter your contemt for the trade unions. And in the final paragraph tell us that it is ok to agitate in the unions. Then you go on and say that the unions can not be "attacking style" in class clashes. Bullshit Neil. Everytime there is a strike. Or for example the French and Danish truckers today and their *real* actions or yesterday when the powerful miners union here up in the north of Sweden called for a political strike against the Social Democratic government and its bougeois partners in December-the question is posed who rules? The bougeoisie and its parliment or the working class and its organisations! The institutional hegomony you want to combat is really funny. Because your politics are the same as the German KPD. Ha what a joke Neil. I suggest thast you contact a Trotskyist organisation or even some socialist organisation that does some real class struggle work in the unions. You might learn something about tactics. But you also need a program and a party in the final analisis if the working class is going to be successful in smashing the bougeoisie and not the other way around. Because your ultra-left attitude even if which I believe stems from your real hate of the bougeoisie (that's good) will not move us one step forward but only backward. Warm Regards Bob Malecki ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------- --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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