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.

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How often this zine will appear depends on you!
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1. Draft Joint Declaration on Israel/Palestine -

2. Sweden-Workers begin to move!

3. The Trade Unions Again!
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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
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