UNITED STATES
AFTER THE ELECTIONS, OBAMA AND THE REPUBLICANS
WILL PACT A DEADLY ADJUSTING PLAN IN ORDER TO TRY TO AVOID THE “FISCAL CLIFF”
US: THE WORST IS YET TO
COME
AGAINST THE OBAMA-ROMNEY FISCAL AGREEMENT AND
THE FALSE ALTERNATIVES SUCH AS THE GREEN PARTY AND THE CHAVIST LEFT, LET’S BUILD
UP A WORKERS´ LEFT FRONT IN USA
SEBASTIÁN LAGUJA
LUCAS MALASPINA
USA elections on November
6th and 7th showed two critical political problems.
First, the conclusions to which workers have arrived in order to deal during the
coming months (between now and January 1st, 2013) with the reactionary pact
between democrats and republicans around the adjustment. The second problem is
closely related to this political challenge: how can the revolutionary left overcome
sectarianism and the false alternative of the populist Green Party in order to build
up a true Left Front in the United States. A Left Front that systematically
works to separate the labor and left movement from Obama and to re-establish
the continental political unity of the revolutionary left in Latin America in
opposition to the Chavist bourgeois nationalism that, in these very elections,
opposed itself to the development of the left (Chavist or not) and called to
vote for Obama.
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WON JUST BY A LITTLE DIFFERENCE, LOSING 10 MILLON
VOTES, WITH AN ABSTENTION OF 90 MILLION, AND HAVING THE REPUBLICANS CONTROLLING
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
So if anybody thought that
"Obama is the change" or at least that "he can stop the plans of
Republicans", the first thing to say is that Obama's victory doesn't
moderate at all the capitalist bankruptcy and its effects in the USA. Democrats
won by just 2.5 million votes (over 207 million American voters), mainly
because of its victory in some key places (the Yankee presidential election
system is indirect, through representatives per state).
Now Obama faces a House of
Representatives opposed: that´s why he said that he wants to pursue an
agreement with Republicans. "In the coming weeks I'm waiting to sit down
with Governor Romney to discuss how can we work together to move this country
forward" (El País, November 7th).
Actually, it's a government that stands up on quicksand. Even before the
results, it's known that "companies have voted with their dollars. During
the 2008 elections, the political action committees and corporate employees gave
$ 2,000 million, 55% for Democrats and 45% to Republicans, according to the
Center for Responsive Politics. In the current election, 60% of the U.S. $
1,800 million in donations given by corporations has gone to Republican
coffers" (online.wsj.com, November 2nd).
The dictatorship of capital is sharply exposed on the world's largest democracy,
where, besides, there is not a direct vote but a vote by anti-proportional
rules, and mediated by a College of Electors.
FROM CHAVEZ TO MERKEL, EVERYONE VOTES FOR OBAMA
At a global level the
victory was saluted by Chávez, Merkel, Cristina, Cameron, Saeb Erekat (OLP) and
Netanyahu, i.e. for almost the entire political capitalist international
spectrum: the different bourgeoisies crash about how to face the capitalist
bankruptcy, but they agree in keeping the status quo in the U.S. The political
fact is that the bourgeoisie bets on Obama to condense and amalgamate the
internal contradictions and international bankruptcy to ensure the interests of
U.S. imperialism and, in general, global imperialism. On the other hand, those
who should take note of this are the outdated Chavists who forget Che´s words in
his famous Algiers speech: "in imperialism we cannot trust, not even a
little bit, nothing" when Chavez votes... in favor of "the
imperialism under Obama´s control".
FACING THE PRESSURE OF THE CAPITALIST
BANKRUPTCY, USA IS GETTING CLOSER TO THE “FISCAL CLIFF”
In 2011, in order to put
the debt ceiling up, the congress decided to establish a “fiscal cliff”. This
implies a “reduction in public spending of almost one trillion dollars and a
taxes hike, also automatically. Both would take effect on January 2nd
and, considering the estimations, would take the American economy to a
recession in 2013” (La Información, November
16th).
After the elections, Republicans and Democrats are negotiating the terms of the reduction in Medicare and Medicaid (the state health plans) and the budget, and the terms of a tax hike that will affect wide segments of the population. The cynical justification to this spurious pact against the workers is an ultimatum for themselves: before January 1st 2013, they have to guarantee a brutal adjustment or a wave of bankruptcy of companies and creditor states will start. The real solution for the “fiscal cliff” (no adjustments, no debt payment, nationalization of banks under workers control and make the capitalists pay for the crisis) is totally out of discussion for supporters of the bankers and capitalists.
THE THIRD QUANTITATIVE EASING (QE) DIDN'T INCREASE EMPLOYMENT, BUT FINANCES THE BANKERS WHILE THE UNEMPLOYMENT RISES AND THE INDUSTRY COLLAPSES
Moreover, on September 13th, the US Federal Reserve started a new QE. However, this hasn’t resolved the American crisis: unemployment remains high, US companies keep producing in China where production is cheaper because of the labor costs and the printed paper money leaks from the country through the banking sector, as City Bank, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Nomura, among others. The monetary policy is not a way out of a crisis that’s founded on the capitalist overproduction and over-accumulation.
THE LACK OF A SINGLE LEFT CANDIDACY: CONFIDENCE IN OBAMA OR PROGRAMATIC
COLLAPSE OF THE AMERICAN LEFT?
Workers International League (Woods sympathizers), considers that all this would be superficial and that the election showed a “left turn”. This idea is contradicted by the last analysis. They are politically subordinated to Obama, what is shown by their campaign for setting up a new party addressed to Obama's bases (www.socialistappeal.org, November 8th). But, actually, a segment of workers and “indignados” are already going through an experience. So, the real factor that has blocked a left expression during the elections, independent of the American capitalists, wasn’t mainly the expectative on Obama. It was the total absence of an organized debate between left parties and unions in order to acquire a common political expression founded on a transitional program expressed in a united front to act in the struggles.
Occupy movement, workers from Wisconsin and Chicago's
teachers, for example, didn’t have their own united candidate in opposition to
Obama and Romney. The left is the main responsible for it. The left is the one
who has to work out the political problems of the mass movement and don't blame
the “insufficient development of the movement and its experience” for the
political impotence of the different American left tendencies.
A VOTE LIMITED TO “FACE BIPARTISANSHIP” IS A DEMOCRATISING AND
PRO-IMPERIALIST VOTE. NORTHAMERICAN WORKING CLASS NEEDS A LEFT AND WORKERS
FRONT
This political atomization
of the class-struggle left opened the way to the Green Party (Jill Stein was
its candidate). This party, whose leitmotiv was to break down “bipartisanship”,
had finally gathered a big part of that left and new activism. This has been
the policy of the Socialist Alternative (CWI, Peter Taëffe): their more
recognized activist, Kshama Sawant, an important immigrant from Occupy Seattle,
was integrated to the Green Party's electoral lists. It's also the policy of
the right-wing of the Unified Secretariat, the group Solidarity, which called
to vote either for Roseanne Barr (Peace and Socialism Party) or Steward
Alexander (Socialist Party). As well as ISO, a cliffist rupture and observing
organization of the Unified Secretariat, that called to vote for Stein (or
alternatively for Barr). Let's be clear: this political capitulation that has
been presented as a “tactical vote” for Jill Stein (Green Pary), as well as the
alternative for Roseanne Barr (Peace and Freedom Party), is a center-left and
anti-workers vote. This was showed by Barr's declaration telling that “attacking
the President during wartime is betrayal” and by Stein's program about Palestinian
Intifada, which demanded economic sanctions and boycott (www.jillstein.org, May
15th) a long time before Israel had attacked Gaza. Voting for these
different tendencies is voting against working class political independence in
name of “facing BIPARTISANSHIP”. That's a democratizing and pro-imperialist
proposal.
On the other hand, different political tendencies like the Socialist Workers Party (SWP, the historical party that used to be the main Fourth International bastion and ended dropping the formal adherence to trotskyism to support castrism, presented James Harris as its candidate), a split of healysm (SEP, submitted its own candidatures with Jerry White y Phyllis Scherrer), the Revolutionary Tendency, that participates inside the SP (and called to vote either for SP or FSP), Socialist Core (UIT voted for FSP) and Socialist Action, stood in opposition to vote for Barr or Stein. About CRFI's related group (through the Italian section and the ex-ITO, Refoundation & Revolution from Peter Johnson) we don't have any news about its position for the elections. In fact, we don't even know if it still exists or the reason of its dissolution. Socialist Action (Unified Secretariat´s organization, related with the minority that defended the vote for Antarsya against the leadership that voted for Syriza´s popular front) in the USA case called to vote either for SWP, PSL (Peta Lindsay and Yari Osorio, pro-stalinist), SP or FSP, without stating any difference. That is to say, a vote that blends and puts in a same level the anti-capitalist centrism, the chavist left and pro-imperialist front populism.
That's why it's very
important to develop workers’ action in order to break the negotiations and the
imposition of public spending cuts to defeat the attempt of the two main bourgeois
parties to unload the crisis on workers back. Considering Occupy, Wisconsin and
Chicago and all the Americans that are going out against Obama's government
fighting for their rights, as TPR, we call to open the debate in order to
develop a 100% left front which must be able to combat the austerity measures
and also the future war initiatives of the imperialism.
FREEDOM SOCIALIST PARTY'S (FSP) INVITATION TO THE UNION LEADERS AND THE
LEFT TO BUILD THE “SOCIALIST ELECTORAL UNITY AGAINST THE EXTREME RIGHT”: A
VALUABLE STARTING POINT TOWARDS A LEFT WAY OUT FOR THE CRISIS
In this sense, Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) candidature is worthy. Unlike the whole American left where self-referentiality is first, they had an outstanding position for the elections stating that a left front was necessary (Durham-López: Campaign statement - For a united socialist electoral alternative to the ultra-right, June 27th, 2012). Its great virtue is to point out that “without a strong working-class party—one that presents an alternative to the Democrats—the extreme right drives all debates and pulls political discourse in its direction. Meanwhile, meaningful differences between the two parties in this supposedly ‘bipartisan’ system recede into nothingness” (idem). Also, “as long as union leaders keep working-class tied to the corporate Democratic Party and U.S. socialists refuse to create leftwing electoral alliances, the far right will continue to use the ballot box to build a movement that offers the old, familiar ‘enemies of prosperity’ list that is brought out in every economic crisis. On that list are immigrants, people in need of public assistance, government workers, etc”.
Moreover, stating a sort
of parallelism between the USA and Greece, FSP draws the attention over the
massive vote for Syriza. It delimitates from it because “Its program is based
on dealing with the worst aspects of the crisis, not on putting workers in the
driver's seat”. Also, they argue for Antarsya and other “smaller revolutionary
parties” (by dismissing possibilities, they are talking about the EEK and
OKDE-Ergatiki Pali, ed note). This potentially means
that FSP is looking forward to draw conclusions about the capitalist bankruptcy
to intervene in the USA opposed to the popular front. Even more, it shows that
its call for a left front isn't casual at all; it's part of a political
strategy to separate the workers of Obama and the Green Party.
As it´s seen, Freedom
Socialist Party denounces left and American trade-unions subordination to
Obama´s government, and calls to independent organization. The limit of this
position is that it would be “an alternative to the far right” and not, from
the start, a unity against Romney and Obama.
AMERICAN WORKERS MUST BREAK WITH OBAMA OR WITH THE TEA PARTY? THE KEY IS TO CALL TO BREAK WITH OBAMA BECAUSE OBAMA PACTS THE ADJUSTMENT WITH THE REPUBLICANS
This way, a tactical
mistake is being made: putting the fascist rise in the center of the electoral campaign,
while the real center was clearly the Democrats-Republicans pact to guarantee
the fiscal adjustment. In the same direction, the whole European
characterization made by the comrades from FSP is focused in the “fascism
rise”, but in our opinion, the general strike on 14-N has clearly shown that
the main issue for European workers movement is to get rid of the tutelage of
the trade union bureaucracy that proposes “a social Europe” and to fight to
overthrow the adjustment's governments, no debt payment, the workers government
based on the united front of the workers organizations, EU rupture and the
Socialist United States of Europe. In a similar way, in USA the workers
movement issue is to break with Obama, not with the Tea Party. That's why the
counterpoint should be done with the Republican Party, denouncing that Obama is
agreeing with it. In this sense, a useful slogan could be: “If Obama doesn't
break with the republicans and guarantees the adjustment, the American workers
have to break with Obama and build a left alternative”.
IN USA, ANY TRUE WORKER PARTY THAT CLAIMS ITSELF TO BE
REVOLUTIONARY MUST CONTACT AND GUIDE THE LATINOAMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY PARTIES
TO COMBAT YANKEE IMPERIALISM
To look forward the international working class unity
and to separate workers from the bourgeoisie in the struggle for their own
government is the key to the Marxist´s tactic and strategy. Therefore, the
nature of a real Marxist (and Trotskyist in particular) organization is the
practical and unrestricted defense of proletarian internationalism and the
fight for the proletarian dictatorship. For these reasons and to intervene in
the world capitalist bankruptcy is very important to immediately refund the IV
International.
After SWP gave up Trotskyism and started to claim
itself to be Castrist, the American left (all its versions) broke with proletarian
internationalism. They started to vindicate a political counterfeit of Marxism
stating that internationalism is to support either the bourgeois nationalist
movements that capitulate and negotiate with imperialism (Chávez, Correa, Evo
Morales, etc), or the bureaucracies that are developing the restoration of
capitalism (in the first place, Cuban castrism).
So, they are denying the anti-imperialist tactic from the III
International of Lenin and Trotsky. This tactic was mainly founded on knowing
how to make an elemental distinction between reformist nationalism (the one
that looks forward a political understanding with imperialism under the
institutions of semi-colonial democracy) and revolutionary nationalism (the one
that’s more or less a protagonist of breaking with imperialism as part of a
process of national liberation). The concrete development of history has shown
that, during most of national liberation processes, nationalism has debuted as
“revolutionary” by appealing to the mobilization or even arming the masses; but
when it conquered power it became “reformist” and developed front-populist
practices (“the last resource of imperialism to stop proletarian revolution” as
Trotsky said) to finally develop the program of pro-imperialist right by using
their own Bonaparte’s methods (which can even include clandestine terrorism, as
Peronism did with the AAA during the 70’s in Argentina).
THE BOURGEOIS NATIONALIST GOVERNMENTS FROM THE OPRESSED COUNTRIES ARE NOT THE FIRST ALLY OF THE PROLETARIAT FROM THE IMPERIALIST COUNTRIES (NO MATTER HOW MUCH ANTI-IMPERIALIST THEY ARE). THEIR FIRST ALLY IS THE PROLETARIAT FROM THE COUNTRIES OPPRESSED BY ITS OWN IMPERIALIST BOURGEOISIE
However, once the contradiction of national liberation
processes (that revolutionaries have to seize through the tactic of
Anti-imperialist United Front and the strategy of Permanent Revolution) is
clear, the main issue is to register the obvious fact that THE BOURGEOIS NATIONALIST GOVERNMENTS FROM
THE OPRESSED COUNTRIES ARE NOT THE FIRST ALLY OF THE PROLETARIAT FROM THE
IMPERIALIST COUNTRIES (NO MATTER HOW MUCH ANTI-IMPERIALIST THEY ARE). THEIR
FIRST ALLY IS THE PROLETARIAT FROM THE COUNTRIES OPPRESSED BY ITS OWN
IMPERIALIST BOURGEOISIE.
The documents of the III International insisted on
this point (the Far East Theses say that Communist Parties should be
established in all countries without caring how smaller the proletariat was
there) and repeated, again and again, that every Communist Party in an
imperialist country must have a permanent commission of its Central Committee
devoted exclusively to organize the proletariat of the colonies and
semi-colonies. The reason was that that was the only effective way to fight
against imperialism itself and activate the plebeian segments of metropolitan
proletariat against the labour aristocracy and the union bureaucracy.
World socialist revolution is not just a sum of
identic proletarian revolutions because there is a qualitative difference
between oppressed and oppressor countries. But it´s also true that if the
political entity who leads the democratic-bourgeoisie revolution is not the
working class and its revolutionary party ahead, the world dialectic unity of
the proletarian revolution will be broken and, even more, the proletarian
internationalism and Marxism in general won’t have neither foundations nor
utility. That extremely dissolving speculation was precisely the reason that
led Pablism to the breakdown of the IV International in 1952 and the conclusion
that the American SWP finally set: if in Cuba it wasn´t necessary a Trotskyist
party, Trotskyism isn´t necessary as well for American workers. The American
left has to break with this Pablist and Stalinist political legacy, in order to
restore the political and organizational unity between North American and Latin
American worker parties. We can have many discussions and differences (of
course, it’s licit) but what’s unacceptable for an organization that claims
itself to be a guard of the proletarian internationalism is that workers
parties from metropolis and semi-colony ignore themselves and don´t coordinate
or at least debate.
IF CHAVEZ VOTES FOR OBAMA, THE AMERICAN LEFT THAT
DOESN’T VOTE FOR OBAMA HAS TO BREAK WITH CHAVEZ AND JOIN TO WORKERS AND
SOCIALIST LEFT FROM LATIN AMERICA. LET’S GO FOR THE IMMEDIATE REFOUNDATION OF
THE IV INTERNATIONAL
The clearest verification of the last is the fact that
much of the American left is being dragged by chavism. But Chavez… who did he
call to vote for in the USA elections? For the Chavist left from United States
or for Obama against the Chavist left? The consequences of giving up the proletarian
internationalism lead to extremely liquidationist conclusions: in order to
support “bolivarian revolution” the left should… vote the same imperialist
government that invades Middle East, sets up coup d’états in Latin America,
uses the IMF to attack European working class and guarantees the adjustment in
its own country making pacts with republicans.
Therefore, as Tendencia Piquetera Revolucionaria (TPR)
from Argentina, we think the American left has to stop messing around and come
to some conclusions. They can’t be apologists for "anti-imperialist"
Chavez, the one who votes for the political represent of imperialism, Obama. On
the contrary, in order to separate the USA left and workers from Obama is
necessary to separate that left from Latin-American declined bourgeois
nationalism. And it also implies its political and practical relationship with
the Latin-American revolutionary left which takes over the task of national
liberation and fighting against imperialism and the sepoy bourgeoisie, fights
for a workers and peasants government and for the Socialist United States of
Latin America- as our Transitional Program states.
Therefore, the American revolutionary left has a
double task: to separate the left and the workers from Obama and Chavez in
order to move forward on the fight to re-found the Fourth International. FSP’s
call for a left electoral alliance leads, therefore, to a debate that far
exceeds an electoral issue and matters to the international grouping of
Trotskyists revolutionary left. It represents, therefore, a valuable starting
point to build a left alternative in the heart of Yankee imperialism.
NOVEMBER 23, 2012
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