North America has voted

Imperialist democracy goes further in its decomposition

On Tuesday night, November 3^rd, the results of the US presidential election were still unclear. Without a landslide victory, nor winning the state of Florida, the Democrats already knew they were entering the quagmire of an election challenged by Trump, who had been preparing the ground with accusations of fraud since at least the first debate. A little over a week later, Trump's judicial strategy to challenge results in several states is coming from failure to failure, but it’s not at the legal level that we should focus our attention. Biden has a good chance of becoming president when the electoral college meets in early December. However, the idea that he won by fraud has permeated a large section of the population and his talk of healing wounds by seeking unity after the extreme polarization that the election only partially reflected has, for the time being, no perspective of being based on material elements, something that only a way out of the crisis could provide.

The winding process of political crisis opened on the night of November 3^rd is still underway, since for the moment the so-called transition is bogged down and Trump and the Republicans are not giving up on challenging the election result. Here we will limit ourselves to pointing out some elements of the situation.

Trump and Trumpism were not repudiated

Far from all forecasts, Trump obtained so far (the count continues in several states) over 72.5 million votes in the election. He is the second-largest vote-getter in history, second only to Biden himself, who received more than 77.5 million votes so far. The difference between the two is much greater than the one Hillary Clinton obtained in relation to Trump himself in 2016, it’s true. However, after almost 4 years in the White House, with a policy that shook up political and ideological polarization, a disastrous handling of the pandemic, and a very recent entry into recession, Trump won more votes than in 2016 and presents a gigantic electoral base that complicates the pretensions of the cream of the Republican Party (RP or GOP) to go to a calmer transition process. Trump has not been repudiated at the polls; on the contrary, he has received the support of just under half the population.

The mass voting signals a crisis of imperialist democracy

Obviously, if with such a number of votes Trump did not win the presidency, it is because Biden managed not only to overcome him in the so-called popular vote, but also to achieve sufficient differences in the so-called swing states. This means a massive influx of voters to the polls, the largest since 1908 (65.7% participation), considering the votes counted so far (63.9% participation), but which could even surpass it if the projected 66.5% is reached. (The Washington Post, 5th November) When Obama was elected amid the 2008 crisis with a turnout of 61.6%, we had already stated that this, far from showing the strength of imperialist democracy, represented a crisis. With this new surge of electoral participation, the relationship of the masses with the bourgeois institutions, in their decline, comes into question, since the US electoral system is based on an elite democracy. But before the failure of those elites, the irruption of the great masses who go to vote generates a contradiction that imperialists have not yet managed to solve. That irruption in politics blurs the role of the organized elites in the two big parties of imperialist democracy, the Democratic and Republican parties, which remain both, after harvesting such results, in a profound crisis.

The institutions of the republic lose their historical basis

The challenge posed by Trump in ignoring the results and denouncing electoral fraud makes the series of state institutions that make up the so-called US "republic" crunch. First, the relationship of the federal union with the states and the mediation role played in presidential elections by the electoral college that elects the president. Then, at the federal level and in each state, the role of bourgeois judiciary and its relationship with the rest of the public powers. We count more than a week now with an administration operating on these mechanisms and putting them under extreme tension.

A sector of the so-called progressive or democratic socialists in the US, which are echoed by a number of variants of Trotskyist centrism, intend to develop this questioning in terms of a radical democratic program, by raising the unicameral parliament and the end of the electoral college to replace it with the direct vote of the president. But political institutions are the product of history, and in the US, they have served as a state mechanism to attenuate class contradictions, in their labyrinthine manifestations, like the tensions between the countryside and the city, between different bourgeois sectors, and between these and the working masses. After WWII, these institutions acquired a broader mass base, with the extension of the New Deal policies and the undisputed US hegemony in the design of the post-war equilibrium, based on its preponderance of labor productivity, Fordism, the dollar, Bretton Woods and its institutions like the IMF, the World Bank and the UN. Perhaps we are witnessing the open clash between these state institutions of the main imperialist power, result of previous historical processes (independence, constitution, civil war, post war equilibrium), with a divergent development in the bases of society and in the contradictions developing within it, spurred on by the irreversible historical crisis of imperialism. If all these institutions functioned as an attenuator of the social contradictions, this was based, as Lenin and Trotsky put it, on the special position of certain imperialist countries in the world market, that 'fat' came from the spoliation of the colonies, the semi-colonies and, later, a relationship of tutelage over Europe and Japan. The program of revolutionaries should not be oriented towards renewing those institutions of imperialist democracy, which moreover is a utopia from the material and historical point of view, but to develop that contradiction between the development of the economic base in its dynamic of crisis and the inertia of the scaffolding of the political superstructures. It’s on the basis of these historical contradictions that revolutions, coups d'état and counter-revolutions are produced. The task is to prepare the workers' vanguard for that kind of development, by opposing the institutions of the imperialist state, the revolution to destroy it, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, which puts forward a new relationship with property by socializing the means of production.

Biden doesn’t represent a way out for imperialism

Clearly, the Trumpist project had as its axis to deal with this crisis of the postwar equilibrium, going to a change in the imperialist orientation to take the initiative and to disrupt all that institutional scaffolding. That project was halfway through, since Trump modified several of those relations, but he didn't manage to carry it through to the end. Biden's victory, besides being totally questioned by Trump's campaign against the legitimacy of the elections and the perspective of having the Senate against him (there are still two seats left to be defined in Georgia), puts a weak government in the White House, also from the point of view that all its proposals are, at least for the moment, to reverse the changes that Trump made in 4 years, trying to return to a status quo that no longer exists. That is not a serious plan for a way out of the crisis, far from it. To be clear that it’s necessary to have a firmer policy towards China and Russia to develop the assimilation of the former workers' states does not say much if the strategic question that has been running around in the imperialist heads for at least three decades is not answered: How to do it? For now, the future government of Biden has already been labeled by US imperialism as a transitional government.

The political crisis in the United States is disrupting world politics

At this conjuncture, the tortuous nature of the presidential transition, which has two long months ahead of it, is deepening even more what we have been seeing since the beginning of the pandemic and the crisis: as US imperialism is embroiled in its own internal crisis, different class sectors and the governments that represent them are taking positions in the world. China is advancing in a more aggressive approach (China Sea, conflict with India, Hong Kong and Taiwan), Turkey is developing its own agenda in defiance of the EU (conflict with Greece in the Eastern Mediterranean and Cyprus, support for Azerbaijan in the war in Nagorno-Karabakh), important conflicts are taking place within the EU. There is even concern that Trump will take untimely international policy action in the two months remaining to his administration. In addition to this, processes of mass struggle continue to develop in various countries of the world, with different contents, but all under the shadow of the advance of the world crisis and the lack of a clear north for the different bourgeois and petty-bourgeois factions.

The containment of the movements of struggle is only temporary

As for the movements of struggle within the US itself, which put on the table all the social contradictions that have accumulated since the 2008 crisis and their deepness, we must be clear that the diversion to the elections under the banner of "getting Trump out" and the massive support that progressives and the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) gave to Biden do not mean that these processes have been closed. Although the leaderships of the movements are likely to be co-opted by the bourgeois state and its institutions, the historical and social basis of the movements remain unresolved and we can foresee that they will explode with greater virulence, now against a State led by the Democrats, whose party already appears divided between the conservative wing of the political elite that leads it and the sectors that are under pressure from the movements, as shown by the debate began the day after the election on the loss of seats in the House of Representatives (the Democrats maintain their majority, but with a smaller margin).

The working class continues to act diluted

Two points to consider in the election are the open support of the AFL-CIO union bureaucracy for the Democrats (this is nothing new), but also of some unions that have led important struggles in recent years, and, on the other hand, to note that Trump lost the election when the Democrats regained their strongholds in the historic industrial regions of the so-called Rust Belt (specifically the states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania). The latter does not mean, by any means, that there has been a turnaround in the preferences of industrial workers in those areas. As always, the intervention of the working class in bourgeois elections is an intervention in itself atomized and diluted, and even more so when there are no candidates from any party with a program of class independence. Rather, the option was to follow Trump's Bonapartism, which attempts a direct "connection" and in already cultural terms (because little was left of the discourse of recovering the factories from the 2016 campaign) or the class conciliation that represents the old alliance that unites the trade union bureaucracy with the imperialist bourgeoisie of the Democratic Party. But, in addition, the working class did not play a role as such either in the processes of struggle, although we did see the intervention of some unions in the mobilizations over racial issues and against the police, vanguard experiences that we must propagandize and develop as part of the programmatic elaboration of our class, taking up slogans like throwing the police out of the unions or not transporting repressors on the buses. Undoubtedly, the tasks of self-defense to confront the repressive forces and even the armed forces through the arming of the working class is today a central debate for every conscious worker and for every revolutionary.

An International Revolutionary Leadership is Urgent

For the working class and its industrial proletarian core to intervene in the situation, it’s not enough to agitate for class independence. It’s necessary to develop, on the basis of the experience that a vanguard sector is gaining in the current crisis and the open confrontations, the elaboration of a transitional program where the proletariat stands, through its control of the economy and its role in the administration of things, as capable of giving a way out of the capitalist crisis by confronting the military bureaucratic apparatus, whose role is not only to dominate the working class of a country, but to maintain the survival of capitalism in its putrefaction on the whole planet. Confronting imperialism and the US State is a colossal task and can only be posed in an iron unity with the workers of Europe and Japan, and above all with the semi-colonial peoples who are fighting against the interference of the IMF and the US armies in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, in short, in the whole world. The aim is to lay the foundations of a revolutionary party in the United States, a party armed with the theory of permanent revolution, as a section of the reconstructed Fourth International. Once again, we insist on our call for an International Conference of the currents and tendencies that defend the program of the dictatorship of the proletariat to discuss the preparatory tasks to achieve this objective. The acceleration of the crisis is extreme; our challenges are urgent.

 COR Chile - LOI Brasil - COR Argentina

A crise econômica deflagrada em 2008 continua se aprofundando. A pandemia acelerou acentuadamente os processos por ela abertos, contra os quais a burguesia não consegue apontar saída e sobretudo o imperialismo não tem conseguido, em detrimento de “recuperações conjunturais”, reverter a alta do endividamento e a tendência geral de queda na lucratividade da produção. Frente ao mergulho das economias numa recessão de dimensões históricas, os Estados intensificaram o controle da produção, aproveitando-se da política de quarentena e intensificaram a injeção de crédito e subsídios através da ampliação e do rolamento das dívidas, que ultrapassam os U$255 trilhões e tornam-se cada vez mais impagáveis, isso aponta uma espiral ainda maior da crise, que caminha para a depressão mundial.

Todos esses processos catalisam a decadência do imperialismo e suas contradições agudizadas pela crise pandêmica e empurram a classe trabalhadora para a barbárie. Decorrentes disso, seguem em curso a implementação de processos que redefinem as relações de classes dentro dos Estados com a instituição de um novo pacto entre capital e trabalho, o que impõe aos trabalhadores em todo o mundo uma ofensiva com reformas que ampliam a retirada de direitos, precarizam e flexibilizam as relações de produção e reduzem o valor da força de trabalho com demissões massivas.

Em consequência dessa dinâmica depressiva da economia, crescem as disputas interestatais por mercados e aprofundam as crises políticas internas em inúmeros governos, demonstrando o avanço das acirradas disputas interburguesas em andamento, e, consequentemente, promovendo o desgaste das instituições do regime burguês. Os últimos governos são governos da crise e em crise e essa máxima não se alterará de uma hora para outra. Recorremos aqui ao famoso preceito de Lênin “Vivemos em um período de crise, guerras e revoluções”, quando se expõe as contradições do capitalismo, o qual avança à máxima exploração sobre os trabalhadores. As crises econômica e política têm colocado em xeque a dita governabilidade e em última instância o próprio regime. Isso pode ser notado em todo espectro político de Estados, desde o imperialismo às semicolônias.

O histórico recente mostra as crescentes polarização e disputas políticas, expressadas em diversos processos. O Brexit ainda vivencia suas contradições, aprofundam-se disputas intestinas nos EUA, a imensa dificuldade do parlamentarismo europeu em definir governos, as constantes crises de governos na América Latina e a deflagração de conflitos em várias regiões do mundo, a exemplo da situação explosiva nos ex-Estados operários da periferia da Rússia.

Esse movimento de crises escancara, portanto, os limites do regime democrático burguês e suas instituições. Contudo, a “democracia” segue sendo a principal arma de controle ideológico, que se concretiza no discurso em defesa do voto e das eleições. A cada disputa eleitoral “temos o direito” de escolher quem vai melhor gerir os negócios dos patrões, pois não nos esqueçamos de um detalhe, quase sempre o óbvio precisa ser dito, o Estado é burguês e carrega todo o conteúdo da classe dominante.

A quarentena, nesse sentido, serviu como política de Estado muito mais para salvar o capital que resguardar a condição de vida dos trabalhadores. Revelou-se como uma das principais estratégias do Imperialismo para a implementação de uma reação para conter a onda de mobilizações que explodiram nos quatro cantos do mundo no final de 2019.

Contudo, em detrimento dessa conjuntura, eclodem processos mais radicalizados de luta de classes, rompendo até mesmo as políticas de isolamento social. Contra isso, governos em crise recorrem também ao seu forte aparato repressor, nesse caso nenhum pouco ideológico.

Atualmente, as manifestações contra a repressão policial e o Estado racista não cessam nos Estados Unidos, desde o caso George Floyd. Em vários países da Europa, são inúmeras as manifestações contra as medidas de isolamento, diante da segunda onda do coronavírus. Na América Latina manifestações massivas também ocorrem em meio a violência policial e os efeitos das reformas e os planos dos governos, a Colômbia é o maior exemplo disso hoje. Na Indonésia, os trabalhadores se organizaram em grandes mobilizações, fortemente reprimidas, contra a Reforma trabalhista do presidente Joko Widodo. Como já mencionado, a periferia da Rússia também explode diante da crise e dos desdobramentos do processo de assimilação pelo capitalismo dos ex-Estados operários. Em Belarus, o governo de Lukashenko segue contestado nas ruas, as manifestações não dão trégua. No Quirguistão governos não se sustentam e são enfrentados forte movimentos de massas, sem dizer do conflito armado entre Armênia e Azerbaijão.

Estes processos demonstram a incapacidade das instituições da democracia burguesa em absorver as contradições de classe, acentuadas pela crise, todos esses processos têm dois pontos em comum, colocam em xeque os governos de turno e escancaram o problema de direção revolucionária mundial.  Só a intervenção organizada e consciente da classe trabalhadora nestes processos pode alavancar a luta rumo a destruição do estado burguês como forma de dominação capitalista.

CHILE, EUA E BOLÍVIA: A QUEM SERVIU O VOTO?

A história recente nos remete a inúmeros exemplos de processos eleitorais/plebiscitários que serviram para estancar crises políticas e o ascenso das lutas. Em 2020, marcado pela crise pandêmica, vimos três importantes processos de ascenso das massas serem canalizados para processos democráticos eleitorais burgueses. Chile, EUA e Bolívia viveram meses de massivos protestos e grandes mobilizações nas ruas que questionavam e enfrentavam os governos.

No Chile, que viveu forte ascenso das massas no final do ano passado, os trabalhadores, a juventude e estudantes avançaram suas fileiras de forma semi-insurrecional contra as medidas do governo de Sebastian Piñera, que em conciliação com o reformismo, estabeleceu um acordo de unidade nacional com todos os partidos burgueses e pequenos burgueses, desde o Pinochetista União Democrática Independente (UDI) até a coalizão de Frente Ampla (FA) de esquerda, um acordo assinado pela "paz, ordem pública, defesa da institucionalidade democrática e uma nova constituição". Desta forma, o governo de Piñera abriu a porta para a mudança da Constituição projetada pelo pinochetismo, ao qual todo o espectro político do parlamento burguês veio acudir para salvar o governo e preservá-lo. Ocorreu, assim, o plebiscito em 25/10, quando mais uma vez votou-se para escolher aqueles que vão legislar em prol da manutenção das bases do capitalismo.

Na Bolívia, por sua vez, tivemos em 18 de outubro a eleição presidencial, que elegeu Luis Arce, do MAS. Processo que se deu após um ano da renúncia de Evo Morales e em meio a processos agudos de luta de classes, nos quais uma pequena fração burguesa aliada ao exército e à polícia foram capazes, através da repressão, de mudar a relação de força que havia sido estabelecida com as massas, após vários anos de governo do MAS. Essas eleições são o resultado do acordo costurado entre o MAS e o governo de Janine Áñes. Foram as mesmas bases do estado semicolonial boliviano que conduziu a renúncia de Evo e, em seguida, através de um acordo parlamentar com os demitidos, convocou novas eleições.

Fica claro, com isso, que disputavam para abordar suas diferenças e para ver qual era a fração mais pró-imperialista e quem poderia garantir sua forma de dominação. Tal encaminhamento revela o nível de decomposição da semicolônia e as frações de classe que defendem esse estado.

Os EUA, por seu turno, encerrou um processo eleitoral dos mais acirrados entre Trump e Biden. O pano de fundo da conjuntura política norte-americana é a explosão da crise social, cujos elementos vêm se acumulando no aprofundamento das contradições de classe diante da crise sanitária. Essa situação vai na contramão da propaganda da “recuperação” econômica nos últimos anos, discurso disputado por republicanos e democratas, puxado por crédito barato e política fiscal. Os últimos períodos foram marcados por intensas manifestações que explodiram contra a violência da polícia sobre trabalhadores negros. Mobilizações tomaram as ruas e não só se fizeram e se fazem presentes na luta do povo negro e no forte questionamento à instituição policial, mas também em várias lutas sindicais, onde se luta para recuperar o que foi perdido em mais de uma década de crise econômica. Na outra ponta da luta de classes, a burguesia defende a linha de que a classe operária deve em troca dar maiores “concessões” às empresas face à recessão atual. A situação polariza-se ainda mais com o surgimento de grupos radicalizados pela direita, alguns armados, que levantam as bandeiras do racismo, os valores religiosos e a liberdade burguesa. Esses grupos são a base dura do voto em Trump, os quais recuperaram o discurso da “Lei e ordem” de Nixon.

Com uma apuração acirrada e em meio às manifestações pela continuidade da contagem de todos os votos, Joe Biden foi declarado eleito novo presidente dos EUA. Há um clima de celebração e euforia, uma vez que a “democracia” derrotou o Trumpismo e seu conservadorismo. O fato é que, independente do vencedor, não se pode esquecer a dimensão da crise que os EUA estão mergulhados, a linha apontada é de um aumento brutal da dívida pública, na tentativa de alavancar o crescimento, maiores gastos se farão necessários, o que pressionará para um ferrenho disciplinamento fiscal não muito distante. Apesar de Biden defender um discurso mais “multipolar” nas relações exteriores, segue a necessidade de o imperialismo manter uma política de disciplinamento da China, para a manutenção de sua influência na economia mundial.

Qualquer um que viesse a vencer, uma coisa é certa, haverá o aumento da crise social e a ofensiva será dura contra os trabalhadores estadunidenses, com maior recrudescimento da repressão aos movimentos e às lutas operárias. Nesse sentido é fundamental que se rompa com a ilusão do voto para avançar com os métodos e total independência de classe na construção de uma greve geral para enfrentamento necessário contra qualquer governo.

A luta de classes, portanto, desenrola-se no bojo da ofensiva dos governos em crise. A cada movimento dos trabalhadores, a burguesia responde recorrendo a seus instrumentos de controle das massas, de um lado põe em ação a força repressora de seu aparato policial e militar e de outro, como dito acima, forja ideologicamente a democracia como a principal rota a ser seguida, apontando  o voto como a pedra de toque para a superação de crises. Nos processos descritos acima, a que serviu votar senão para a governos estancarem os processos de lutas abertos nesses países na defesa dos interesses políticos e econômicos da burguesia.

A democracia burguesa não serve aos trabalhadores, é a ditadura de classe do capital, é a democracia da ínfima minoria, a democracia dos ricos! As liberdades democráticas nunca impediram o massacre diário da classe trabalhadora, nem a utilização das Forças Armadas para reprimi-la nos processos abertos de luta de classes. Como defenderia Lenin, a liberdade que não é capaz de emancipar a classe trabalhadora da opressão do capital, não é liberdade, mas pura demagogia.

 BRASIL: NAS ELEIÇÕES MUNICIPAIS O VOTO É NULO!

No Brasil, desde as últimas eleições para presidente, quando houve o ascenso de Bolsonaro, permaneceu desenrolando-se forte instabilidade política e aqui também cabe o preceito de que temos um governo da crise em crise. Segundo as direções políticas reformistas (PT/PC do B/PSOL) e centristas, depois de 15 anos de governos de conciliação de classes do PT, tivemos o ascenso do Fascismo na semicolônia, afinal os “militares voltaram” e as instituições democráticas se viram sobre ataque. Diante disso, a tarefa central apontada por esses setores configurou-se da defesa da democracia, antes não havia problemas para os trabalhadores, afinal “estavam representados” no poder.

Dois anos depois, a dinâmica da crise empurrou o governo para os braços fisiologistas do centrão e o governo atua nos mesmos marcos da “velha política” dos governos anteriores, avançando ainda mais nas condições para a aprovação das reformas. Cabe aqui frisar, portanto, que o fascismo é uma forma de dominação imperialista, “a mais selvagem e abominável forma do imperialismo”, não é possível sua existência histórica nos países semicoloniais, como o Brasil. Nos países semicoloniais, a luta contra o fascismo só pode ser a própria luta contra o imperialismo e não contra representações ideológicas do fascismo.

Dito isso,  há que se reafirmar também que a recessão econômica acentuada pela pandemia também acirrou a crise política no país, especialmente o jogo de ataques entre o governo Bolsonaro, o Congresso e o Judiciário, que expressam as disputas entre frações burguesas, contudo, forjam consensos e acordos para pautar a agenda de privatizações e reformas, já aprofundaram a reforma trabalhista, já fizeram a reforma da previdência e agora discutem a reforma administrativa transformando o funcionalismo público na bola da vez dos ataques.

Em São Paulo, os governos Doria e Covas (PSDB), sendo o segundo é candidato à reeleição no município, liderando as pesquisas, não fazem nada diferente, avançam com a privatização, a flexibilização das relações de trabalho, a precarização dos serviços públicos. Está cada vez mais claro que na esteira da reforma administrativa federal o centro do ataque é o servidor e os serviços públicos.

É diante desse cenário de ampla instabilidade que ocorrem as eleições municipais de 2020 no Brasil. Os dados, em nível nacional, apontam a queda acentuada da produtividade, o aumento do desemprego e precarização do trabalho, a desvalorização da moeda, a fuga de capital estrangeiro. Consequentemente, por trás destes índices, existe uma crise social imensurável, com o desemprego beirando a taxa de 15% e com a inflação galopante, um contingente imenso entregue a barbárie.

O fato é que em meio a uma ofensiva dos governos sem precedentes, os trabalhadores seguem isolados, desmobilizados e impedidos de se organizar, pois os sindicatos permanecem com a política do imobilismo e calando-se diante da crise que assola o conjunto da classe. Frente a isso, o que decidem fazer as direções políticas e sindicais? Defender a democracia burguesa! Chamar os trabalhadores a votar.

Desse modo, as burocratas sindicais, mais do que nunca, se voltam para o parlamento e se lançam candidatos. É o exemplo do Presidente do Sinpeem, Cláudio Fonseca (CIDADANIA), um aliado defensor da fração da burguesia que ocupa o governo e que durante todo o ano esteve focado na reeleição para a vereança.

Nesse campo, o reformismo mantém-se nos marcos que sempre esteve, única e exclusivamente na defesa da democracia, da atuação no parlamento e nas fileiras de conciliação com a burguesia para se manter no poder. O principal candidato na linha reformista é Guilherme Boulos do PSOL, que, por sua vez, objetiva ocupar o posto do PT. Boulos alça um discurso conciliador e de democratização da economia. A velha ideia de humanizar o capital. O PSOL que cavalga no vácuo do petismo, avança com sua plataforma oportunista e eleitoreira, que não o diferencia dos partidos burgueses, fechando coligações em vários municípios com aqueles a quem há pouco chamava de “golpistas”, a exemplo do PSDB, do MDB e do DEM, sem dizer da política voltada para o polícia, sobretudo no Rio de Janeiro.

No centrismo, o PSTU e  o MRT (o segundo retira as candidaturas nas cidades onde o PSOL fez coligação com “golpistas” ou tem candidatos policiais, mas finge que o partido não é nacional e mantém candidaturas, por exemplo em SP) também mergulham no processo eleitoral e seguem defendendo que uma “boa” administração do Estado burguês pode salvar os trabalhadores. Ambos também encerraram suas ações na defesa da quarentena como política dos trabalhadores. Desconsideram que essa é a política aplicada pela própria burguesia para salvar o capital e não vidas. Seus programas de saída para a crise não saem dos marcos de um estatismo exacerbado. A crítica deve ser feita, principalmente, às organizações trotskistas e que se autodenominam “revolucionárias” estarem rendidas ao oportunismo, mascarando o caráter de classe da democracia burguesa, enquanto forma de dominação.

A política para os trabalhadores não pode ser definida pelas eleições e consequente disputa pela administração do estado burguês, alimentando a ilusão de uma “democracia pura” cujo aparato estatal pudesse ser preenchido com determinado conteúdo de classe. Os ataques da burguesia sobre o conjunto dos trabalhadores estarão na ordem do dia, independentemente do governo eleito para “administrar seus negócios”. É nossa tarefa imediata, portanto, a batalha pela recuperação dos nossos sindicatos da burocracia, para que possamos organizar o enfrentamento desses ataques com independência de classe e com nossos próprios métodos de luta. 

 A política para os trabalhadores só pode ter como centro a necessidade de construção do partido revolucionário que dirija a derrubada do estado burguês e imponha a nossa ditadura de classe. Não há saída para os trabalhadores dentro do regime burguês. Por isso, defendemos o VOTO NULO.

U.S. Elections

Disoriented, imperialism chooses leadership

Marked by the pandemic and the economic and social crisis, the next U.S. presidential elections will confront the two historic imperialist parties. Current President Donald Trump is leading the Republican ticket; Obama's former Vice President, Joe Biden, the Democrat. These are expressions of the last two administrations, both of which failed.

Polls show Biden as the favorite, with 51% of the popular vote against 43% for Trump according to a BBC "poll of polls" (10/27). However, North American voting system is not direct, but through an electoral college, so these figures are relative. A more detailed analysis also favors the Democratic Party (PD) candidate. The electoral college is made up of delegates from each state according to their representation in congress, and whoever wins in each one gets all the delegates; on the other hand, many states are historically defined for one party or another, so those who determine the result are the so-called “swing states”. In this study by the BBC, Trump would keep 4 of the swing states he won in 2016, and would not get any back, while Biden would keep 4 of the ones won by Hillary Clinton, and would get 6 of the ones won by Trump. In some, he appears with a clear advantage, as is the case of 3 important industrial states that helped Trump win in 2016: Michigan (dif 9%), Pennsylvania (dif 3.8%) and Wisconsin (dif 5.5%), the three of them members of the so-called "Rust Belt". However, the same authors of the study warn that one must read the polls with skepticism, not only because of the latest gaffes in elections around the globe, but more specifically because of the uncertainty created by the pandemic and its effects on the world economy and the vote itself on November 3rd. In fact, the pandemic conditions have led to an unprecedented flood of early votes: 84 million to date.

Crisis elections

This uncertainty must be attributed not only to COVID-19, which in fact accelerated the world crisis that was already developing, but also to the quagmire of the change in imperialist orientation promised by the Trump administration. This is reflected in the electoral campaign itself. Trump left out several elements of the speech that led him to the presidency in 2016. Although he continues his bravado against China, he cannot show any substantial numbers of industrial job recoveries that he was supposed to create through the trade war with China and other countries like Mexico to repatriate factories. And although some North American companies took their industrial plants out of China, it was only to move them to semicolonies in Southeast Asia, while another part of the industrial companies turned to supporting Biden, angry at the increase in the price of intermediate products imported from China due to the application of tariffs. On the numbers side, the trade deficit with China continues and the worst blow is related to the pandemic: China is positioned as the only large industrial economy that will close 2020 recovering pre-crisis production levels. This may explain the possibility of losing several industrial Rust Belt states electorally. Trump's campaign no longer emphasizes these problems and puts in the center the slogan of "law and order," polarizing with old contradictions that the formation of the North American State as such could not and will not resolve, such as racism, the subjugation of Black people, the relationship of the States to the central government and of the State institutions to each other. In effect, the appointment by the Republican majority in the Senate of Amy Coney Barrett as a new member of the Supreme Court as a right-wing bulwark to overturn the judiciary in favor of conservative sectors has displaced the pandemic in the political discussion of recent weeks. As for the position of imperialism in the world, although the current administration made progress in breaking the old scaffolding of post-war international institutions like the Paris agreement, the WTO or even the WHO, it has not been able to negotiate a new configuration that defines a strategic orientation for capital. On the international level, the most important achievement was the defense to the hilt of Israel's diplomatic and military advance over Palestine and the Middle East in general, although this is also being questioned by mobilizations within the Zionist monstrosity.

Biden, on the other hand, has very little to show for it. He needs to contain the movements that have been developing in the face of the accumulation of social contradictions generated by the impossibility of giving an imperialist solution to the crisis of 2008, on which the new contradictions generated by the current crisis are mounted. With the help of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the trade union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO, he has managed to develop a discourse that tries to co-opt these movements and at the same time avoid alienating the sympathies of the imperialist bourgeois sectors that support his campaign. We are talking about the cream of finance capital on Wall Street and the giants of the "new economy" of Silicon Valley. Biden knows that if he has any chance of winning, it is by bringing together all the anti-Trump sectors: that is why he is attacking him on some angles, like his drift in policy towards China and Russia, promising a supposed "multilateralism"... to sustain an even more aggressive advance on China. This is probably the only serious element of Biden's proposal: sustaining an offensive to try to accelerate the assimilation of the former Workers' States is undoubtedly the only strategic solution that imperialists have had in mind for decades. The problem is the objective obstacles that the imperialist decomposition itself opposes to this task. Other points that Biden enunciates are the reform of state spending, taxes, even the minimum wage, a rather absurd discussion for an imperialist country but which is also raised in the European Union. It so happens that the aid introduced by Trump to try to get out of the current crisis, the biggest rescue package in history (US$ 2.2 billion), as well as the packages of China’s central state and provinces and the one voted for by the EU, are generating a spiral of indebtedness which lays the foundations for a new jump in the world capitalist crisis.

Recession and Pandemic

Trump's gruesome handling of the pandemic is unquestionable: with 230,000 dead and 9 million infected, even the administration itself confesses that it has become an uncontrollable problem. But the new data of a 7.2% growth of the GDP in the 3rd quarter of this year against the previous quarter has allowed the Trumpists to resume the offensive in terms of which candidate is handling the economy better. The truth is that even before the pandemic, economic growth had been slowing down after a decade of growth under the previous administration following the 2008 crisis. And the consequences of the pandemic drove the economy into recession, with huge job losses. Neither GDP nor employment levels have returned to pre-March levels. And what's worse, the so-called second wave of the pandemic, both in Europe and in the US, calls into question whether the 3rd quarter recovery will be maintained, at least at that pace. In fact, the IMF puts the year-on-year fall for the end of the year at 4.3%. In the face of this gloomy outlook, the answer is a new stimulus package that Trump tried to put in place by decree but finally got stuck in Congress. This package will probably be approved once the election is over, whoever the winner is, increasing the state's debt, to which we must add the stock market bubble that marks that the recovery, as happened in 2008, is only being shored up with the issuance of fictitious capital. The difference is that this time it appears as a "preventive issue" that far from stimulating growth could drown the vigor of the companies in their dispute for the world market, where the tendential laws of capital are fully in force.

We have already talked about the weaknesses of the trade war launched against China. This does not mean that China is emerging as the winner from this confrontation. The Chinese CP is taking advantage of the fact that U.S. imperialism is concentrated on settling its internal crisis to take up positions in the world, but at the same time it is also resorting to unparalleled indebtedness to encourage its manufacturing sector and its internal market, feeding another type of bubble. The imperialist disorientation, added to the development of the crisis of the world economy, gives rise to all kinds of political crises, from the EU, to the different regions where the semi-colonial sub-bourgeoisies are left without an axis that would at least allow them to curb the social crisis and the crisis of the State institutions. All these elements, far from making "America great again", lay the basis for all these contradictions to strike even harder at the foundations of US imperialism.

Class struggle

The most novel element of the US situation, even worldwide, is the outbreak of the social crisis whose elements have been accumulating in the depths of the class contradictions at least since the crisis of 2008. Movements that emerged after that crisis, like Black Lives Matter and others like Occupy Wall Street, although they were institutionally incorporated at the time through Bernie Sanders' campaign, are precedents to the enormous mobilizations for the continuous murder of Black people by the police, whose turning point was the murder of George Floyd in May, in the midst of the states' quarantine policies. This social deterioration clashes with the propaganda of 10 years of growth, a banner disputed by the two parties of the imperialist order. And this clash is not only evident in the struggle of the Black people and the massive questioning of the police institution, but in several union struggles, where workers are fighting to recover what they lost in the post-2008 collective negotiations, while the bourgeoisie is outlining that the working class should instead give greater "concessions" to the companies in view of the current recession.

The situation is polarized, with the emergence of radicalized groups by the right, some armed, that take up the banners of racism, religious values and bourgeois freedom. These groups are the hard core of the Trump vote. Just as he polarizes with the idea that BLM and the ANTIFA are chaos and are managed by the Democrats, to galvanize his base, the AFL-CIO and progressive sectors are calling to confront the possibility that Trump will not recognize the results in a kind of "self-coup" to consolidate Biden's vote. This is the same role that the left wing of the Democrats played to co-opt the post 2008 movements, making the inorganic organic, but with a greater degree of decadence and decomposition. The idea would be that the refusal from many of Sanders’ voter to bite the bullet by voting Hillary in the 2016 was what led Trump to the presidency ... now they are calling to bite the bullet by voting conservative Biden, and in defense of the institutions of imperialist democracy that are based on that police that the masses questioned in the streets and barricades of Oregon, Wisconsin and the whole country. That democracy that was already being questioned because of its murderous role in Afghanistan and Iraq, something that Obama and Trump took into account to camouflage and curb their adventures abroad, although they have had them as in Libya, Syria or dropping the "mother of bombs" in Central Asia.

The counter-revolutionary role of Bernie Sanders’ reformism without reforms takes on a more organized form in the DSA, which in its document "National Electoral Strategy" denounces the PD candidates as a "neoliberal establishment," while its maximum referent, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calls for a vote for Biden with the argument that “it’s central to get Trump out”.

The worst thing is that a similar logic leads currents of Trotskyist centrism to, while calling for abstention, promote nevertheless a democratic United Front against an eventual 'self-coup' by Trump, as is the case of the PO from Argentina. Or they dilute any idea of a workers' program in order to try to "splice" with this left wing of the regime and with the movements, as if the latter had no leadership, as in the case of Left Voice, linked to the PTS-FT. Altamira's tendency celebrates beforehand a big electoral participation, as it did in Bolivia and Chile, strengthening from the left the main deception that the bourgeoisie tends to the masses: making them believe that they are voluntarily electing their representatives, when in reality it is imperialism that is defining it’s leadership. The elections are a distorted reflection of reality, and in them the orientation of the imperialist bourgeoisie is measured in its relation to the masses through the regime of domination, the State and imperialist democracy and its institutions. In this U.S. imperialism has a serious problem. The mechanisms of co-optation and the new counter-revolutionary leaderships are ephemeral, because the material, economic bases of capitalist domination are rotting. The key is to prepare the forces of the proletariat and its vanguard to be able to confront the imperialist state, and not to support a supposedly democratic wing of the bourgeois regime against its "right" wing.

Transitional Program and Revolutionary Leadership

The centrist currents that we listed above, and many others, propose abstention in the face of the disgraceful of the candidates of the big imperialist parties and also of the small liberal, reformist and green formations that swarm in every presidential election. However, they accompany this with a radical democratic program, which they arrive at by different paths, whether it be subordination to the movements of the Morenistas and neo-Morenistas or the theory of camps such as the one of PO in Argentina. To give an example, they flirt with Jacobinist ideas such as the abolition of the electoral college and the implementation of direct voting, and institutional reforms of that kind, and with the confrontation with Trump's "fascist right" and the paramilitaries. It is not discarded that Trump and the groups he inflames will move out of the balance of power by ignoring the results and putting an even greater political crisis on the table, even though it is unlikely, but in any case it would not be a matter of confronting them with a program of democratic reform, but with a workers' program and with the methods of our class.

From the TRFI (TRCI in Spanish, TRQI in Portuguese) we propose to develop a movement of abstention to confront the candidates of imperialism, from a stance of class independence. We call for organizing in each industry, for the recovery of the unions, for organizing the factories and workplaces against the bosses and for the massive entry of immigrants, Blacks, Latinos, youth and women into our class organizations. We call on the U.S. proletariat to take the lead in the struggle against the oppression that imperialism exerts throughout the world, to stand in solidarity with the semicolonial peoples who are fighting against the IMF and the lackey governments, thus strengthening workers' unity with the immigrants within the U.S. itself. In the face of capitalist crisis, it is necessary to develop a transitional program, that responds to the hardships of the masses from a workers' solution to leave us on the threshold of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In this way, the bases will be laid for a revolutionary party in the U.S., which will raise the anti-imperialist banners high as a section of the reconstructed Fourth International.

COR Chile - LOI Brasil - COR Argentina

El pasado 25 de octubre se realizó el plebiscito, elección en la que se consultaba sobre la opción de aceptar o rechazar avanzar hacia un nuevo texto constitucional y adicionalmente, en caso de ser aceptado, si el organismo redactor de la nueva constitución iba a estar integrado en un 50% por actuales parlamentarios en ejercicio o por la totalidad de ellos mediante la opción convención constitucional. El resultado de estas fue un abrumador triunfo para la opción “apruebo” con un 78% de los votos y , con un porcentaje similar, que el mecanismo redactor de la nueva constitución sea con constituyentes 100% electos.

Si bien la abstención al proceso fue un poco menor que en otras elecciones, llegando al 50% del total de inscriptos, se puede indicar que existió un mayor grado de participación tanto en las poblaciones como en particular de amplios sectores de la juventud que, teniendo en cuenta el contexto la pandemia, no dejó de ser expresión de que un amplio sector de trabajadores de la juventud y la pequeña burguesía se volcaron ampliamente por este plebiscito y el cambio constitucional como una salida a la crisis que evidenció el proceso iniciado por la semi-insurrección del 18 de octubre del año pasado.

Tanto desde el gobierno como desde la oposición coincidieron en la retórica de plantear que todo el problema se reducía a la existencia de una “constitución que nos divide” y en la necesidad de avanzar hacia “una constitución que nos una” en clara referencia al intento de fraguar un pacto social que dé por cerrada la crisis que abriera la lucha de clases. Es así que dirigentes políticos, autoridades, periodistas “progresistas” y demás desfilaron durante todo el día de la elección hablando de que ésta era una “fiesta de la democracia” llamando a participar activamente de la misma. Amplios sectores de la población luego de cerrado los comicios salieron a festejar el resultado en plazas y calles públicas situación que pretendió ser leída por el gobierno como una “gesta cívica de unidad nacional”.

Es efectivo que las fuerzas más reaccionarias como el partido pinochetista UDI o los grupos fascistoides que fueron los que llamaron a votar el “rechazo” salieron más debilitados de lo que pensaban, generando una crisis interna en la coalición gobernante. Este voto también manifestó aquello que muchos sectores replicaron de que “no eran 30 años sino tres comunas” en relación a que en los únicos lugares donde el “rechazo” fue mayoritario fue en las comunas donde viven los sectores más privilegiados de la burguesía y la alta pequeña burguesía.

Sin embargo lo anterior, se equivocan quienes pretenden ver una expresión de clase en un voto tan amplio y difuso como el del apruebo a un cambio constitucional, tanto por el diverso contenido político de quienes lo impulsaban, entre ellos la misma oposición burguesa de la vieja concertación e incluido un sector importante del propio gobierno de Piñera y de "Chile Vamos", como el carácter heterogéneo de los distintos sectores de clases y estratos de clase participantes del proceso. Y es que en toda elección burguesa no puede expresarse más que de forma distorsionada la lucha de clases, más aún cuando el mecanismo plebiscitario está contemplado en el mismo sistema de dominación política de la burguesía, que si bien es utilizado por lo general en momentos de crisis del Estado, no deja de ser una expresión de un mecanismo utilizado por los explotadores para maquillar la dictadura del capital.

Tampoco se trató como otros señalaron de una suerte de "voto popular" o dónde se habría expresado el pueblo entendiendo por éste a un todo homogéneo. Volvemos a hacer nuestras las palabras de Lenin a este respecto para evidenciar la necesidad de luchar contra “la ilusión pequeñoburguesa de que el pueblo es un todo único y de que la voluntad popular pueda ser expresada en algo que no sea la lucha de clases”, por lo que un sufragio de esta característica puede expresarla sólo de forma distorsionada.

Es sintomático eso si qué la opción por candidatos constitucionales 100% elegidos expresan una alta desconfianza a todos los representantes políticos burgueses y pequeños burgueses evidenciando una vez más la separación entre el aparato de estado y las grandes masas. Y al mismo tiempo, el proceso de elección de constituyente será el telón de fondo de la disputa por el botín del Estado en los cargos municipales de las elecciones de abril donde primarán las diversas componendas y alianzas de las coaliciones políticas atravesadas por la crisis del semiestado burgués.

La esencia de la democracia de los ricos se basa en la exclusión de los explotados, de las grandes mayorías obreras populares, del ejercicio del poder político dándole un carácter de clase. Por más que las alas izquierdas de la democracia semicolonial pretendan reforzar el proceso constitucional con cabildos locales, asambleas populares o encuentros organizacionales, orientados de este modo no serán más que otras formas de legitimar al aparato de Estado, una máquina a la cual hay que destruir y no hacer esfuerzos por reformar. Sólo el norte de la revolución, de la toma del poder político por la clase obrera, puede abrir las puertas del ejercicio del poder a las grandes masas incorporándolas en el manejo de su destino.

La semana previa al plebiscito se cumplió un año de la semi-insurrección espontánea que comenzara la juventud aquel 18 de octubre. Este aniversario repitió de forma fidedigna todo la indignación y explosividad combativa de los sectores en lucha; se sucedieron las manifestaciones en todas las regiones del país, el enfrentamiento a la represión, los ataques a la institucionalidad reaccionaria, barricadas en las ciudades y poblaciones etc. Fue la descarga de energía acumulada en las masas contenida en tiempos de pandemia y de crisis social, una evidente muestra de qué las masas, pese a los distintos momentos de flujo de reflujos de sus luchas, de la represión persistente, de los ataques constantes de la burguesía descargando la crisis, o de los desvíos de la coyuntura política, no han sido derrotada y, por el contrario, todos los fundamentos que ocasionaron la crisis siguen vigentes. Y esto es así porque pese a las formas nacionales de las luchas y las particularidades el llamado Chile “modelo” para el imperialismo, modelo de país semicolonial, los fundamentos de la situación objetiva hayan su fuente en la crisis del capitalismo internacional que descompone a los sistemas de Estado, a sus bases económicas y acelera las contradicciones entre las clases, cómo lo dejan en evidencia los procesos abiertos en distintos países de la región como en Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia etcétera.

La burguesía pretende que el plebiscito y la comisión constitucional sea el punto final del proceso abierto el 18 de octubre. Sin embargo es difícil decirle a toda una generación que los muertos, los mutilados, los presos políticos, justifican el tránsito de los escudos y las piedras de “las primeras líneas y las brigadas” en las luchas callejeras al lápiz azul de la normalidad democrática, de la naturalización de un régimen en descomposición.

Es necesario que los trabajadores y la juventud fortalezcan el próximo período la organización obrera y de la juventud. Se dirijan a fortalecer cada una de las luchas que se han venido dando, aunque de forma aislada pero si persistente, a esos millones de trabajadores productores de la riqueza social, recuperando sus sindicatos, promoviendo a nuevos dirigentes decididos a las directivas, unificando a los mismos por rama productiva, impulsando todas formas de control obrero, levantando la necesidad de una sola central de trabajadores con presencia fundamental de trabajadores mineros e industriales. En esta perspectiva es necesario pelear por un programa revolucionario que levante la independencia política de los trabajadores, e impulsar un congreso de delegados de base de todo el movimiento obrero para votar un plan de lucha para imponerlo. La batalla estará en dotar de conciencia y de organización a nuestra clase y no en ponerla a la rastra de las diversas expresiones del régimen burgués.

Para ello es fundamental luchar por forjar un partido revolucionario como “la dirección consiente del proceso inconsciente de la historia”, parte de la pelea por reconstruir la cuarta internacional, el partido mundial de la revolución socialista.

*(en la foto Fabiola Campillay y Gustavo Gatica, víctimas de la represión policial)

The dispute over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, or Upper Karabakh, between Azerbaijan and the Armenian independentists who control the area has triggered a war that has blown two ceasefires since it began on 27 September.

The current territories of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the southern Caucasus were part of the tsarist empire and were incorporated into the USSR after the October revolution. The territory of Nagorno-Karabakh maintained a special status within the Soviet federation, as an autonomous territory with an Armenian majority integrated into the territory of the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. The break-up of the USSR led to a confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan from 1988 onwards, and after its fall a bloody war began which, following the intervention of Russia and imperialism, ended in a precarious ceasefire in 1994. Azerbaijan is an oil and gas extraction power, linked to Turkey by language and history. Armenia is a small mountainous country of just over 3 million inhabitants, whose industrialization advanced with its integration into the USSR and then fell back abruptly with its fall, and receives large remittances from the so-called diaspora, some 10 million Armenians who live outside this republic, after being expelled from eastern Anatolia by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, through the genocide of over a million people.

The social basis of disorder

What characterizes the present historical period is, on the one hand, a tortuous process of assimilation of the former laboring states to the capitalist system and, on the other hand, the advance of imperialist decomposition that at the same time determines the difficulties to complete this assimilation. This is exacerbated by the disorientation of the US imperialism, which has not had any coherent policy in the region and is rather plunged into its own internal economic and social crisis and electoral dispute. On the other hand, the EU, which was the supra-state structure that was supposed to organize the assimilation of the former workers' states of Eastern Europe, is, on the contrary, immersed in the negotiation of the exit of one of its main partners with Brexit. And it has been paralyzed in its policy for its south-eastern border, because of divided positions on its relationship with Turkey, whose bourgeoisie defined to stop fighting for the entry into the European bloc (which led to a coup attempt in 2016). This division is exposed by the different positions in relation to the Turkish advance in the hydrocarbon prospections in the Eastern Mediterranean, its policy in Cyprus, its interventions in Libya and Syria and finally its position of open support to the Azeri government in the current war in High Karabakh. While the French President, Macron, is trying to lead a policy of more confrontation with the Turkish Erdogan government, with the support of the right-wing Greek government, Merkel and the German government prefer a policy of appeasement. However, it is necessary to say that the obstacles for the assimilation of the former Soviet states are not given by a flaw in the foreign policy, but by the tearing apart of the European imperialist project in its material capitalist bases, especially since the outbreak of the crisis in 2008. Today, we can speak of a new crisis that is a continuation of that, but not a linear one, exacerbated by the pandemic and by the disastrous consequences of the destruction of workers' conquests of the previous decades, which the European imperialist bourgeoisie used under the banner of austerity to try to find a bourgeois way out.

Before this imperialist decomposition and the erratic foreign policy of the metropolitan states, the Turkish bourgeoisie tries to design its own road map as a regional power, what could be called an "operetta empire" with totally semi-colonial bases, not less brutal and murderous. In its turn, the Bonapartism of the Russian proto-bourgeoisie led by Putin must face the contradictions that burst in the borders of its state rule, as it is the case of the crisis in Belarus, the semi-insurrection in Kyrgyzstan and the war we refer to in this note. Here, we find it interesting to take up Leon Trotsky's hypothesis in relation to capitalist restoration, which proposed that the counter-revolutionary leadership that would lead the restoration processes, in its contradiction of not being able to conform in class, would generate, in its relation to the tendential laws of the world economy, a capitalist chaos. In this case, it extends to the periphery of the former USSR, where sectors coming from the state bureaucracy and the petty bourgeoisie of these countries are pushing for territorial control under the guise of arguments of international law and nationalist ideologies in an attempt to establish new, undoubtedly semi-colonial states, seeking a balance between the different surrounding international forces (both Armenia and Azerbaijan belong to countless post-war international coalitions) in a period of capitalist decline and, therefore, of the decline of the state form of bourgeois domination, the nation state.

The truncated experience of the USSR

In the face of the current war, which already counts dozens of deaths, hundreds of refugees and the bombing of major cities in Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, some groups and intellectuals are proposing a return to the "cosmopolitan and internationalist values" of the Soviet state as a solution for achieving peace between peoples. The Marxist basis of the revolutionary program, which led the Bolsheviks to seize power and develop the experience of the USSR as a state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, denies that a program is based on ideologies. Because it is the social being that determines the consciousness and not the other way around. The problem of the national minorities who were trapped in the then called "prison of the peoples", the Tsarist empire, was taken very seriously by Lenin. These oppressed nations were living under conditions of backward economic and social development. The appeal of the communists, materialized in the Congresses of the Third International, was to integrate into a Federation of Socialist Republics in a revolutionary alliance with the Russian proletariat in order to overcome this backwardness through socialist forms of economic and social organization, by compressing the historical stages. The transition from capitalism to socialism under the leadership of the proletariat through its dictatorship, these were the material bases that would allow the democratic reorganization of the peoples within the federation. A socialist future would pose new problems, but it would undoubtedly make it possible to liquidate the fratricidal struggles sown by backwardness and the subsequent needs for territorialization of profit typical of capitalism.

In fact, the experience of the USSR enabled the Caucasian nations to live together and achieve relative industrial development. However, the experience was truncated by the bureaucratic counter-revolution led by Stalin, who established the rule of this caste over the proletariat and national minorities in the USSR, strengthening the state apparatus instead of laying the social foundations for its extinction. The passage of the bureaucracy into the ranks of the open capitalist restoration in the early 1990s liberated all the centrifugal tendencies of capital, leading to wars like the one in the Balkans, and this process will continue to develop for a certain period of time, the duration of which we cannot define a priori, as we cannot find a stable capitalist way out given imperialist decomposition. And neither a progressive way out, given the crisis of revolutionary leadership. This conditionality will be determined, in turn, not by "values and ideals" to the taste of the nostalgic, but by class struggle, by the clash between the proletarian forces of the world revolution and the bourgeois counter-revolution. "To define the Soviet regime as transitional, or intermediate, means to abandon such finished social categories as capitalism (and therewith "state capitalism") and also socialism. But besides being completely inadequate in itself, such a definition is capable of producing the mistaken idea that from the present Soviet regime only a transition to socialism is possible. In reality a backslide to capitalism is wholly possible. [...] Doctrinaires will doubtless not be satisfied with this hypothetical definition. They would like categorical formulae; yes-yes, and no-no. In our analysis, we have above all avoided doing violence to dynamic social formations which have no precedent and have no analogies. The scientific task, as well as the political, is not to give a finished definition to an unfinished process, but to follow all its stages, separate its progressive from its reactionary tendencies, expose their mutual relations, foresee possible variants of development, and find in this foresight a basis for action.". (L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed)

We revolutionaries are opposed to the fratricidal war between Armenians and Azeris, which is led by the sectors that want to create small vassal states of imperialism in the region. It is part of the general militarism to which the Bonapartist tendencies around the world in the face of bourgeois decay are leading. We are fighting for a workers' solution, based on a program of expropriation of the expropriators, the defeat of the proto-bourgeoisies that run the republics of the former Soviet Union and for a Socialist Federation of the Caucasus. The Russian working class is called upon to support the Azeri, Armenian and Georgian workers in this task, starting with the paralysis of the arms and military equipment factories and their transport, intended to arm both sides for the benefit of Putin and his acolytes. We also call on the workers of Turkey, the European countries and the USA to labor actions against the intervention of their bourgeois states in the region, which as it was shown in Kosovo, only serves to increase the massacres and hardships of the workers and poor people. Once again, and in an increasingly urgent manner, we call on all the revolutionary currents that defend the historical necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat and fight for the reconstruction of the Fourth International to promote an International Conference.

Elecciones en Bolivia

Votar en blanco o nulo y organizar las fuerzas

El 18 de octubre se vota en Bolivia a un nuevo presidente. Esto ocurre casi un año después de la renuncia de Evo Morales, en medio de procesos de lucha de clases agudos, en el que una fracción pequeño burguesa aliada al ejército y a la policía pudo, mediante la represión, modificar la relación de fuerza que se había establecido con las masas luego de varios años de gobierno del MAS.

Estas elecciones son la culminación de una transición pactada a sangre y fuego, como dijimos en su momento en medio de los acontecimientos de la renuncia de Evo, ya que fueron los mecanismos de un semi Estado burgués los que se pusieron en marcha para forzar la renuncia a la presidencia y después, vía un acuerdo parlamentario con los destituidos, llamar a nuevas elecciones. Por eso los que se apresuraron a llamar a la renuncia de Evo como un golpe, como hizo gran parte de la izquierda, no pudieron sostener su caracterización seriamente, ya que no fueron los militares quienes tomaron el poder, no se cerró el Congreso, ni se anuló la constitución, medidas centrales de un golpe.

Los acontecimientos mostraron el nivel de descomposición de un semi Estado y de las fracciones de clase que defienden ese Estado, las que se enfrentaron para dirimir sus diferencias para ver cuál era la fracción mas pro imperialista y quién podía garantizar la mejor forma de dominación para los intereses de su clase y el imperialismo.

Es en este marco histórico donde se da la crisis política y social en Bolivia. Y las masas mostraron gran predisposición a la lucha para no perder posiciones ante el avance de una fracción más pro imperialista con los bloqueos de ruta, las tomas de fábricas y depósitos. Protagonizaron el enfrentamiento contra la policía y el ejército, a pesar de que las direcciones del movimiento obrero como la COB aceptaban una salida dentro del régimen. Estas acciones son la demostración de que los procesos en Bolivia son parte de las grandes luchas que se vienen dando en gran parte de América Latina. La transición pactada y la pandemia hicieron que los fenómenos de lucha de clase más agudos fueran desviados, pero no derrotados.

En estas elecciones los candidatos con más chance de ganar son Carlos Mesa de Comunidad Ciudadana, Arce Catacora del MAS y Camacho de “Creemos”, después de que la actual presidenta Añez y otros candidatos se bajaran para tratar de que la fórmula del MAS no gane en primera vuelta y forzar una segunda.

Algunas corrientes de izquierda llaman a votar al MAS (como el PO de Argentina en el FITU), otros llaman a organizar a la vanguardia, pero sin un pronunciamiento concreto ni campaña (como la LOR-CI, en la FT). Es una demostración de que se puede escribir y hacer eventos como la Conferencia latinoamericana, pero la adaptación a la democracia burguesa y a los nacionalismos burgueses no se puede omitir en la realidad. Ya mostraron la misma táctica cuando llamaron a votar a Haddad del PT en Brasil.  

Llamamos a votar en blanco o nulo y organizar las fuerzas para prepararnos para el escenario post electoral, ya que gane quien gane deberán pactar para atacar aun más a nuestra clase e intentar recomponer el semi Estado. El voto en blanco puede expresar la independencia de clases y la necesidad de organizarnos y desarrollar una vanguardia, para luchar contra esa transición pactada, levantando un programa que prepare los pre requisitos para la destrucción del semi Estado. Hay que recuperar nuestras organizaciones como la COB y acaudillar a los sectores campesinos e indígenas en esta tarea. Por el control obrero de los hidrocarburos y el litio. Por una revolución agraria. Por la construcción de un partido revolucionario como sección de la IV Internacional reconstruida. Por la unidad revolucionaria del proletariado latinoamericano. Por una Federación de Repúblicas Socialistas de América Latina, forma estatal de la dictadura del proletariado.

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Piñera  ha salido  a respaldar tanto al general Rozas como a la institución de conjunto, dando cuenta con esto de la importancia que tiene la represión en su gobierno, que después del 18 octubre eso se ha hecho patente, por eso los llamó “la primera línea contra la violencia en el país”, dando una definición de clase del carácter burgués de esta institución podrida. Es que para el gobierno ha sido fundamental asentarse en el cuerpo armado organizado por el Estado para la represión del pueblo trabajador. Desde un comienzo con la llamada operación huracán, todo un despliegue represivo y de inteligencia que resultó con el asesinato del comunero Camilo Catrillanca, ahora la reforma a la que se abre el gobierno es lo que vienen en llamar “de modernización de las policías” que busca establecer como norma el ingreso a la fuerzas armadas en el control social interno, y además otorgar mayores atribuciones para perseguir a dirigentes sindicales, estudiantiles etc. Además de la ley aprobada por el arco político burgués y pequeño burgués (UDI hasta el F.A.) conocida como ley  antibarricadas (ley n° 21.208), todo un reforzamiento del aparato burocrático militar, del cuerpo armado al servicio de la burguesía y su Estado contra la clase obrera y el pueblo.

También utilizaron conspirativamente a los gremios de los patrones camioneros para exigir al congreso una serie de leyes más represivas, como la de infraestructura crítica, ley antiterrorista, ley antiencapuchados, de mayores poderes a carabineros y la PDI.

Se han sucedido hechos tras hechos donde el actuar de los policías, lúmpenes organizados por el Estado,  han mostrado toda su descomposición en una línea de represión sistemática, que además de las decenas de muertos post-18 de Octubre, los cientos de casos con mutilación ocular, o pérdida visual total como en el caso de Gustavo Gatica, Fabiola Campillay, o Manuel Acuña golpeado hasta dejarlo en estado vegetal, a lo que se suma ahora Antony Araya joven que fue lanzado al lecho del río Mapocho. Es por esta razón que sectores de la oposición burguesa y pequeño burguesa plantean una reforma o refundación a esta institución irreformable, pretendiendo un lavado de cara a esta institución intentando ocultar que la esencia de ésta institución es la protección de la propiedad privada capitalista sostenida por el aparato represivo estatal.

Ante la negativa del gobierno de sacar al general Rozas, y por el contrario blindarlo, la oposición burguesa apunta sus dardos al ministro del interior utilizando el estéril mecanismo de la democracia burguesa como la acusación constitucional, mostrando  todo un cinismo porque bajo sus gobiernos reprimieron y asesinaron a luchadores obreros y populares, realizaron persecuciones y montajes, etc. Al fin de cuentas de lo que se trata para ellos es mejorar la maquinaria de opresión para proteger las ganancias capitalistas. No se trata del fuera Rozas, tampoco de embellecer a la PDI, o fiscalía que cargan son cientos de atropellos a los trabajadores, que mantiene presos a cientos de luchadores, no se puede regenerar las instituciones del Estado burgués.

En el programa de los revolucionarios se inscribe la consigna de disolución de las policías como una de sus tareas. La profundidad de la descomposición del capitalismo imperialista está evidenciando la naturaleza brutal reaccionaria de las policías en el mundo, como en EEUU, Colombia, Argentina, etc, donde los asesinatos y vejámenes llevados adelante por esta institución han quedado completamente expuestos. Esta pelea no podrá resolverse dentro del marco de la sociedad capitalista en descomposición. No será pacíficamente como se logre, todo lo contrario, significara una fuerte fractura del Estado, una alta conciencia de clase del proletariado, del desarrollo de su vanguardia, vale decir, en una dinámica de lucha entre revolución y contrarevolución.

Los sindicatos deben ponerse la tarea de organizarse contra la represión de los capitalistas y sus Estado. El enfrentamiento con su aparato de represión es inevitable, como lo muestran cientos de luchas obreras y huelgas, donde la disposición de las policías al servicio de los patrones queda más patente. Se debe pelear por la disolución de la policía, se deben organizar comités de autodefensa, para hacer frente a la represión y derrotarla

DESPROCESAMIENTO Y LIBERTAD A LOS PRESOS POLÍTICOS OBREROS, POPULARES Y MAPUCHES.

COMITÉS DE AUTODEFENSA LIGADOS A LOS SINDICATOS

DISOLUCIÓN DE LAS POLICÍAS

El 18 de Octubre las fuerzas elementales de la juventud y la población trabajadora irrumpieron súbitamente para cuestionar décadas de sometimiento, explotación y opresión, ejercida de forma despótica por la democracia capitalista. El punto más álgido de ese proceso se dio también de forma espontánea, pero no menos contundente, en una histórica huelga general el 12 de Noviembre que si bien carecía de fortaleza organizativa  dejó en evidencia el poder de la clase trabajadora, paralizando todo el aparato productivo, tomando al mismo tiempo las calles para enfrentar a la maquinaria de represión estatal. Este acto semiinsurreccional dejó al gobierno al borde de caer, y para salvarlo y salvarse a sí mismos, acudieron a él todos los partidos de la burguesía y la pequeñoburguesía para sacar la promesa de que este régimen de opresión y explotación, puede mejorar su cara, se puede reformar al Estado, se puede volver a edificar “la casa de todos” donde explotados y explotadores vivamos felices bajo el mismo techo.

Casi un año ha transcurrido desde estos acontecimientos y la pandemia mundial vino a profundizar la crisis económica y social que se desarrolla en el mundo producto de un proceso profundo de descomposición del capitalismo y del desarrollo cada vez más agudo de la lucha de clases. La injerencia represiva del Estado, no sólo en el accionar sistemático contra los sectores movilizados, los trabajadores, la juventud, las comunidades mapuches, etc, sino también en la intervención de las relaciones sociales con las políticas restrictivas de cuarentena, que han dejado en evidencia una y mil veces que a la clase dominante no le interesa la “salud” de la población, está dejando una crisis social de enormes proporciones.

Entre desocupados, los llamados “inactivos” (los que dejaron de buscar pega) y los suspendidos (por la ley de protección del empleador) acumulan la friolera de 3 millones de trabajadores. Una masa humana de fuerza de trabajo que se volcará, en la medida que la “apertura” económica lo permita y la necesidad lo exija, a buscar sustento, porque no tenemos más que nuestra fuerza de trabajo para vender. Esta masa de trabajadores hace que los empresarios se estén sobando las manos para abaratar el costo de la mano de obra, ya que para ellos somos una mercancía más. Una evidencia que empresas imperialistas como Unilever, estén aumentando el número de desocupados con cierres y despidos preocupados de que su cuota de ganancia no califica como “rentable”.

Al mismo tiempo los otrora abanderados del llamado “neoliberalismo antiestatista” utilizan fondos estatales y la generación de deuda con créditos multimillonarios al FMI para financiar este festín de despidos, para contener mediante dádivas fiscales el hambre y la carestía de grandes sectores de la población. En un puñado de meses el Chile modelo que habría superado la pobreza está comenzando a desarrollar la misma a niveles exponenciales. Algo que se expande más rápido que la pandemia  por toda la región. También el gobierno dispone de una batería de medidas “proempleo” para financiar la contratación, que no es más que otro eufemismo para que los empresarios abaraten aún más el valor de la mano de obra, rotando a los trabajadores despojando al mismo tiempo de sus conquistas a aquellos que son desplazados. Basta sólo dejar en evidencia que las remuneraciones reales no hicieron más que descender de marzo a la fecha mientras los ricos se hicieron más ricos, y las restricciones impuestas por los patrones y el Estado en las empresas llamadas “esenciales” aumentaron los niveles (estancados durante años) de productividad, esto es que produjeron lo mismo o incluso más con menos trabajadores, algo que la burguesía querrá extender e implantar.

Los recientes proyectos, rechazados momentáneamente en el congreso, de “salario mínimo” e “infraestructura crítica" no reflejan otra cosa que la orientación más decidida de la burguesía en vísperas del 11 de septiembre de imponer salarios de hambre y represión, incluso con la fuerzas militares, toda una provocación con un decidido simbolismo reaccionario.

Mientras este ataque en toda línea de la burguesía acontece, los partidos del régimen se preparan aglutinándose en “comandos” por el apruebo o rechazo a un cambio constitucional. Un cambio que ya quedó amarrado y maniatado tanto en su técnica electoral, a medida de los “incumbentes” de la burguesía, como en su esencia y su carácter de clase, pauteado para no cuestionar ni un ápice de la dominación imperialista. Es verdad que amplios sectores de los trabajadores depositan sus expectativas en esta opción, no tan esperanzados como amplios sectores de la pequeñaburguesía, pero si como la única vía práctica hoy por hoy para intentar torcer su destino. Sin embargo, esto sólo es un subproducto de la crisis de dirección, de las direcciones políticas reformistas contrarrevolucionarias que infestan y difunden la falsa ideología reaccionaria de que la democracia burguesa puede ser perfectible, de que aggiornando o limitando las instituciones más reaccionarias legadas por la transición del régimen pinochetista al democrático, se puede abrir al futuro.

Es así que también enarbolan la falacia de que instalando en una carta magna el “derecho” a la educación, la salud o la vivienda, esta se hará realidad como proceso de reforma democrática. Es aquí donde los grupos “estatistas” de la pequeñoburguesía como el PC o el FA pretenden ocultar el carácter de clase del actual aparato estatal, buscan arribar al botín del Estado semicolonial para favorecer a otras fracciones burguesas menores. Esto es lo que prometen en sus programas y proclamas, y en una eventual convención constituyente será procenio de debate, en una suerte de parlamento “ad hoc”, en definitiva, un podio de charlatantes.

También están quienes rechazando este proceso se expiden por una Asamblea Constituyente, libre, soberana, popular o revolucionaria. La levantan como un “puente” hacia la toma del poder o hacia formas de gobierno obrero, una abstracción absoluta que no identifica ni denuncia el carácter de clase de tal institución implantándola como obstáculo.

Se conmemoran 47 años del golpe contrarrevolucionario, que derrotó de forma brutal y despiadada a toda una generación de luchadores y de la vanguardia obrera. Este proceso contrarrevolucionario preparado directamente en el seno del imperialismo yanqui, se dirigió a aplastar un proceso revolucionario. No fue la interrupción de un proceso democrático gradual y en ascenso. Fue la liquidación de la posibilidad de que la clase trabajadora se hiciera del poder y extendiera una revolución hacia “patio trasero” del imperialismo. Fueron varias las medidas de contención que utilizó la burguesía antes del golpe de Estado, entre ellos las medidas de capitalismo de Estado, todo para mantenerse en la escena histórica. Esta mayor injerencia del Estado burgués en los 70s tuvo su punto culmine bajo el gobierno de la UP, presentado como la “vía pacífica al socialismo”, que difuminó en el movimiento obrero la farsa de un socialismo sin destruir el aparato burocrático militar, que constituye la esencia del estado, como maquinaria de opresión de una clase sobre otra.

A 47 años vemos que la decadencia imperialista se ha profundizado, y la burguesía vuelve a desempolvar viejas ideas de intervención estatal, aunque la mayor descomposición capitalista presentará a esta ideas reformistas ya no como una tragedia sino como una farsa, colocadas para salvar al capital de sus crisis, atacando al proletariado.

El actual proceso de ataque y descomposición del capitalismo sólo puede enfrentarse si se preparan y organizan las fuerzas del sujeto revolucionario. El gran triunfo del golpe contrarrevolucionario consiste en la dispersión y debilidad organizativa de la clase obrera. El poder de la burguesía reside en la producción, es prioritario que sea la clase trabajadora la que dé una salida con un programa de independencia de clase. A la actual crisis social sólo puede darle una salida nuestra clase. La desocupación creciente sólo puede ser enfrentada por la unidad de los ocupados con los desocupados levantando un programa de escala móvil de salarios por rama, peleando por salarios acordes a la canasta familiar, imponiendo el derecho al trabajo, así como el de la salud, la educación o la vivienda, enfrentando activa y decididamente despidos como los de Unilever. La burocracia sindical tratará de jugar de mediación para apoderarse del movimiento, pacificarlo y domesticarlo a los cauces de la democracia para ricos. Es necesario que levantemos la organización obrera, recuperando los sindicatos, impulsando un Congreso de delegados de base de toda la clase trabajadora que pelee por poner en pie una Central Única de trabajadores donde se levante un programa y un plan de lucha con una perspectiva para superar al capitalismo semicolonial decadente. No se puede repetir la historia quedándose en la trampa de la reforma estatal, es necesario superarla peleando por imponer la dictadura del proletariado extendiéndola internacionalmente, el norte de la vanguardia debe ser la derrota de la burguesía, la victoria del proletariado.

Las débiles fuerzas de los activistas y la vanguardia obrera no pueden desgastarse en fórmulas tácticas para las que ni siquiera se tiene ni el peso ni, por sobre todo, la claridad. La pelea por poner en pie un Partido Revolucionario, debe ser la bandera de la reconstrucción de la IV Internacional como el Partido Mundial de la Revolución Socialista.