Workers' Liberty

On February 5th teachers across Zimbabwe began an indefinite general strike for pay and conditions, joining doctors and nurses already taking action against poverty pay.
With inflation running at over 1,200% (the worst in the world), dictator Robert Mugabe is keeping public sector workers' wages down in order to have enough money to keep his regime afloat.

The victory of the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in this week's elections in Nicaragua, just days after a referendum banning all abortion in the country, got me thinking about the relationship between the Latin American left (or, at least, its demagogues) and the struggle against women's oppression.

Jack Strawsays that he asks Muslim women to take off their veils so that he can talk to them "face to face".

It seems bizarre to ask women to take off the veil in the name of "community relations" and avoiding "a visible statement of separation and difference". They should be able to dress and express themselves as they please, and it is strange to suggest that this makes it difficult to engage with them.

Sorry for not posting for a while, although full content is available at www.trotskyist.blogspot.com

The Revolutionary Awakening of Mexico is a new Socialist Appeal pamphlet on the mass protests against the fraudulent Mexican election which saw centre-right, Washington-backed Felipe Calderón defeat Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) by a suspiciously razor-thin margin. The margin of victory was 233,831 - the number of votes not counted was over 904,000.

After killing 54 civilians in Qana, Lebanon this morning, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hardly marked a conciliatory or apologetic tone.

He claimed that "all the inhabitants had been warned and we'd asked them to leave. No-one had had an order to fire on civilians, and we don't have as a policy killing civilians".

Hugo Chavez has made another friend on his international tour - none other than Aleksandr Lukashenko, president of Belarus. The latter is widely credited as "Europe's last dictator", his regime suppressing the press, rigging elections and using death squads against its opponents.

On Saturday I went to Socialist Resistance's Latin America dayschool, which had sessions focusing in particular on Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba. While there was open discussion where members from other groups could say what they thought - all too rare for many left "schools" - I felt that key questions about the character of these governments were ignored, and it had little focus on independent, working class politics.

The SWP's Respect coalition has taken an even deeper lurch into cross-class popular frontism with its participation in the "United Communities Protest March" against the Forest Gate shootings.

Their website reads

The Bolivian government has announced its plans to "draw up a living-plan to support poor people and select land to be redistributed." This is not enough to satisfy the landless peasants - they have begun to take their country's resources into their own hands rather than trust Morales' government to give them a few fragments which the landowners weren't using anyway. But in reaction the state today launched a violent backlash against the landless peasants' movement, seizing back "occupied" estates in the name of the ruling class.

From my blog - www.trotskyist.blogspot.com

Below is a - translated - letter sent to me by Angel Choque, one of the most important figures in the Movimiento Sin Tierra, a movement which fights to reclaim Bolivia's land so that it can be controlled by the indigenous campesinos who work it.

Reactionary landlords based in Bolivia's Santa Cruz province have pledged to set up "self-defence groups" - i.e. paramilitary forces - in the wake of Evo Morales' announcement that much of the country's land is to be redistributed to poor peasants. According to the BBC, "Bolivia's big landowners, he said, had to accept that the lands their ancestors stole during the Spanish conquest five centuries ago would now be returned to their original owners". The landowners' association will fight "by any means" to defend its "rights".

On Tuesday (6th June) at 19:30 Iraq Union Solidarity will be holding a public meeting at the Marchmont Street Community Centre - showing 2 new short films about the Iraqi trade union movement.

IFC GOES FORWARD

When, on the 11th, the Financial Times declared its worry over Evo Morales' alleged desire to expropriate gas without compensating multinationals, I was rather skeptical as to whether Morales' rhetoric at the Vienna summit had any substance to it. Indeed, reading major Bolivian daily La Prensa, we find some rather interesting nuggets of information about what else Morales said when he was in Europe. On Sunday the 14th, just 3 days after pretending that his government's position was not to compensate foreign gas companies, he had some rather different sentiments for the right-wing French President Jacques Chirac -

Alex Callinicos claims in today's Socialist Worker that, despite the fact that all 15 Respect councillors elected in London on May 4th were from the so-called "Muslim community" - indeed, always beating the non-Muslim SWP candidates for the party - Respect is not communalist.

Today the US government announced that it was going to impose sanctions on Hugo Chávez's left-populist government in Venezuela. On the grounds that Venezuela is allegedly soft on terrorism, all arms sales are going to stop - the USA has put pressure on Spain and Brazil to do the same.

According to the Financial Times, Evo Morales has announced that he is not going to compensate foreign companies for the state's "takeover" of their capitalised subsidiaries in Bolivia. He bolshily proclaimed that "We don’t have to talk, dialogue or negotiate when it comes to the policy of a sovereign state" - scary stuff for the multinationals...

Today I´m leaving from Bolivia, where I´ve had an excellent time on the Bolivia Solidarity Campaign delegation, meeting trade union and social movement activists.

What has been impressive is the sheer radicalism of the ordinary people here - the papers might tell you that everyone supports the Morales government, but talking with taxi drivers and trade union leaders alike, it is impossible to escape the fact that Bolivians want real change - changes that this government won´t deliver.

Today we were in Cochabamba, Bolivia´s second largest city and one that was at the centre of the war against water privatisation ("Water War") of 2000. It seems to be rather a hotbed of struggle - today me met not only the organising committee "Coordinadora" of the 2000 dispute, but also the pilots on strike at LAB.

As I have earlier mentioned on this blog, LAB (Bolivian airline) workers have been strike for some weeks over the failure of the state to nationalise the airline - Morales says he made no promises to mount an overall nationalisation of the economy, so refuses to save the industry, which is going to go bankrupt. 2,200 workers have already been mounting pickets of airports and hunger strikes to put pressure on Morales - no flights can come into or leave the country while their blockades are up. This is why the government has turfed workers out of airports using tear gas.

On Tuesday morning we met the leadership of the Bolivian miners´ federation, who were very militant and talked a lot about the need for a planned, socialist society to replace capitalist barbarism. They talked of their history, and the important role they played in leading the struggles of the last 5 years - of course, all social movements talk about their own importance relative to the others, but this simply shows their pride.

I had read on various websites that the social movements in Bolivia were hostile to Evo Morales´law calling a new Constituent Assembly, which gave the facade of popular representation to a body which will merely reflect the strength of existing political parties. What Bolivians had wanted was an Assembly representing the people who had fought against neo-liberalism, the social movements, workers and indigenous peoples who have always been under-represented in Congress.

Today we went to meet representatives of the Achacachi community near La Paz - indigenous people who played an important role in bringing down the regime of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

During the Gas War of 2003, workers and students mounted blockades around the town in protest at neo-liberal privatisation of natural resources. This was linked in to other demands, such as the re-instatement of sacked lecturers who had stood up against privatisation of education. The police and army moved in to suppress the rebellion - but rather than capitulate, the workers took over army stores and armed themselves to fight back. They did not use their weapons to kill the ordinary, poor, infantry soldiers, however, but the captains and officers.

After going to Zanon earlier this week, I was very enthusiastic about seeing more worker-run businesses in Buenos Aires (indeed, I bought several books about the movement from the bookshop within the occupied Bauen Hotel). So yesterday I went to Brukman, a textile factory, and one of the most prominent recuperated factories in Buenos Aires.

Yesterday I came to Neuquen, south-western Argentina, to visit Zanon - perhaps the best-known of the factories recuperated by their workers and put under democratic control. I decided to phone ahead, to ask if it would be OK if I visited the factory that morning - "No, sorry, we won´t be here this morning. We´re all going to a march in solidarity with striking lecturers. Maybe you could meet us there?" Wow. Talk about class consciousness.

Here is an article from the Partido de Trabajadores por el Socialismo about this week´s jeans factory fire, which killed 6 of the Bolivian immigrant workers and their children.

Another tragedy in Buenos Aires. Again a fire. Again an inferno. Just like other times, this wasn´t an accident. They died, murdered by negligent bosses and the government which defends them. It was super-exploitation of immigrants - not Dutch or German immigrants, no, but Bolivians forced to live like slaves.

The Partido Obrero comrades I spoke to at the Philosophy Institute were very critical of both Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales - they made all the key points, such as the fact that these "socialist presidents" haven´t nationalised anything, talk a lot about socialism without actually empowering the working class, and serve as the best defense for capitalism - giving a human face to the system, they lower the militancy of the class.

Last week´s official commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the 1976 military coup in Argentina was the focus of the Partido Obrero and Movimiento de Trabajadores por el Socialismo´s papers this week - how dare the establishment talk about the military dictatorship´s bloody regime and desaparecidos (´disappearances´ of dissidents) when it is itself so reactionary and oppressive?

Hola compañeros, from an extremely hot Buenos Aires where I arrived this morning.

Thanks to having to change my flight to Bolivia, I have plenty of time to kill in Argentina looking at the achievements of the Left here. On this blog I´ll be keeping you posted about my visits to worker-occupied factories in the country - I hope to visit Zanon, BAUEN, IMPA and Brukman - and also my meetings with militants of the Argentinian far-left.

Today [Friday]'s Lutte Ouvrière quoted Francois Hollande, leader of the Parti Socialiste, on the way to fight the CPE law:

"Si nous (le Parti Socialiste) sommes en situation de l'emporter, si les Français nous font confiance, le contrat première embauche sera supprimé, annulé, abrogé"

Despite Sarkozy's pathetic attempts to separate himself from the responsibility for the CPE law, student protests continued to grow today. Sarkozy, in a blatant attempt to seem more conciliatory than de Villepin, his rival for the UMP candidature in the 2007 elections, had yesterday offered to reduce the trial period for CPE from 2 years to 6 months.