Socialist Resistance, the Fourth International in Britain, has launched a free newspaper. The action update is being given away by activists across the country to help mobilise students, trade unionists and anti-cuts activists onto the March 26 national demonstration against cuts. The tabloid explains the struggles against the Conservative-led government, and spotlights the struggles of students, women and people with disabilities. The eight-pager also explains the lessons of Ireland, whose economic meltdown is the topic of a new book published by Socialist Resistance. Issue one can be downloaded from http://bit.ly/SocRes1 or read online.

The Irish Republican Prisoners Support Group has announced that its Bloody Sunday anniversary meeting in London on 31 January, to support political status for Irish Republican prisoners, has come under threat from the far right. The event has been passed on to right wing websites who are planning to protest at this event as they believe IRA members will be present and there is a chance that fundraising will be taking place. The local police has been advised as well.

“Because we refuse to be intimidated by these threats we have decided to appeal to the labour movement and to Unite Against Fascism for protection on the night. Martin Og Meehan of Republican Network for Unity is a confirmed speaker who is coming from Ireland and others high profile speakers have been invited. We have long understood that it is only a matter of time before the far right EDL and BNP begins to attack meetings of the workers movement, anti-imperialist solidarity groups etc. We must not let them gain confidence by a victory here”, explained Gerry Downing, its secretary.

Readers can discuss what is needed and make arrangements for the night by email: irpsgroup@gmail.com.

Bloody Sunday Anniversary - London Bloody Sunday Anniversary meeting in London, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square Monday 31 January 2011 7pm

Paddy Power of the Birmingham 6, Mairtin Og Meehan and other speakers welcome

On behalf of the IRPSG
the Irish Republican Prisoners Support Group in London are an independent group of activists who campaign for the restoration of political status for ALL republican POW’s of whichever wing they profess to belong. We are opposed to the GFA and the campaign aims to highlight the plight of the men in Maghaberry and demands the implementation of the agreement reached between the POW’s and the prison regime

Women’s Liberation & Socialist Revolution is the title of the latest book from Socialist resistance, co-published with the IIRE’s Notebooks for Study and Research. Its subtitle, Documents of the Fourth International, places it in our “documents and debates” series, which aim to collect documents and articles around a particular question.

Socialist educational courses often discuss how, and explain why, the international movement of women fighting their oppression and exploitation reached a new level during the 1960s. The resolutions collected in this volume are a product of that movement and the discussions it has prompted. They explain the Marxist analysis of the roots of women’s oppression, and the tasks facing socialists around the world.

The Fourth International, the principal organization of revolutionary socialist groups around the world, adopted the main resolution in this book in 1979. It places the oppression and exploitation of women in the context of class society. It shows that this oppression will end only when we get of class society. The resolutions adopted subsequently and published here analyse the uneven advance of women in the face of the global neo-liberal offensive. They look at the position of women in the imperialist countries and in the developing world as it stands at the beginning of the 21st century. They include a major resolution on the need for the positive actions used by socialist organizations to develop and develop their feminist work and profile.

The book opens and closes with two important contributions by Penelope Duggan, a Fellow of the IIRE who has directed the Institutes women’s studies programme and who edited both this volume and the NSR on Women’s Lives in the New Global Economy.

The 226-page book is available for £7 plus postage and packing (Britain £2, Rest of Europe £3, Rest of world £4) through paypal.com. Vist that website and click on ‘Send money’. Forward the right amount, along with your address, to us at resistance@sent.com

The Green & Black Cross is circulating guidance to protestors and parents affected by the protests in Westminster this evening. Read the advice for parents if your son or daughter is arrested and those those assaulted.

It is interesting to read the debate among Chinese on Liu Xiaobo being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Although most liberals welcome this as encouragement for fighting for democracy in China, there are people who claim that Liu is not the proper candidate for the prize. They have a loud voice especially among those who are exiled in the west. In a petition letter to the The Norwegian Nobel Committee, a group of exiled dissidents wrote that they thought Liu is not the appropriate candidate for the prize because he has not been standing firm in upholding human rights, and has even practically cooperated with the authorities by inappropriately praising the CCP’s human rights rhetoric.

On the other hand, on the Utopia (Wuyouzhixiang) website, which is well known for being associated with some of the ‘new leftists’, articles were posted echoing the authorities’ attack on Liu, suggesting that Liu is an agent of US imperialism. In one of these articles, the author Xibeifeng denies that Liu’s sentences has anything to do with freedom of speech, arguing that Liu’s advocacy for Charter 08 is as criminal as a drunk driver demanding freedom to violate the rules of traffic.

Those Who Act are Spared, Those Who Talk are Indicted
Not everyone who criticizes Liu share Xibeifeng’s crude defense of the authorities’ absolute intolerance though. Two professors in Hong Kong, Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong, agree that ‘there was no need to imprison Liu’. ‘Rather, there has only been a need to bring to light Liu’s self-proclaimed goals. If most Chinese, especially the non-elite majority, knew about his prescribed path for China, they would turn away from him as from someone with ignoble things on offer.’  By this they mean that Liu’s pro-US and pro-market position is not something beneficial to the Chinese people.

In a certain sense it is true. We do not entirely share the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s statement on its decision to award the prize to Liu. The Committee praises China for having ‘achieved economic advances to which history can hardly show any equal’, but regrets that .it is in breach of several international agreements on human rights and also its own constitution concerning these rights. We must say that anyone who praises China’s economic achievement without at the same time qualifying this with the fact that labor’s share of national income has dropped 15 percent in the last 20 years for the benefit of profit, a necessary outcome being political repression concerning workers’ right to association and to strike, cannot be said to be a real friend of the Chinese working people who constitute the majority of the population.

Further down the statement praises Liu as having been ‘a strong spokesman for the application of fundamental human rights also in China. He took part in the Tiananmen protests in 1989; he was a leading author behind Charter 08, the manifesto of such rights in China’. We have written some time ago that Charter 08, while supportable whenever it advocates basic civil liberties, is severely limited by its call for the privatization of farm land and further privatization of state owned enterprises.  This, along with the obvious negligence of labor rights, leads us to believe that the Charter is far from being one for the working people.

Sautman and Yan pointed out the same limitation regarding Liu, but they lost sense of proportion in their accusation. If Liu’s advocacy for privatization should be criticized, then by logic the CCP must be treated more harshly for actually pushing through two gigantic waves of privatization — first most state and collectively owned enterprises, resulting in more than 50 million workers being dismissed, then a second wave of privatization which targets urban lands, resulting in price hikes in the property market which most people cannot afford. While Liu boldly calls for privatization, but without the power and money to implement it, it has been the CCP which has acted boldly but silently (privatization is still a banned word in China). Curiously Sautman and Yan do not criticize the CCP. If they do it is just to remark that ‘there was no need to imprison Liu’; in other words the CCP’s only error was having taken a slightly superfluous step. One may wonder if there is more miserable misjudgment than this.

The same goes for their criticism of Liu’s support of the US war in Iraq. In their second article published in the Guardian, they accused Liu’s ‘stand for war not peace’.  We do not share Liu’s position on the Iraq war, but again our criticism must be fair. While his support of the war carries no weight at all both in China and the international community, the Chinese government, with its power to veto, abstained from the vote in the UN Security Council in 1991, which thus practically credited the US and its allies with UN legitimacy to go to war against Iraq. It was done in the sacred name of expelling the invader from Kuwait, but only resulted in allowing another invader — the US – to enjoy an even more dominant role in the region, which led to the second Gulf war in 2003. If Liu should be indicted for his views supporting the US war effort, should not the Chinese government also be criticized for its action?

‘Democracy is Bad for You’
What is more troubling is that Sautman and Yan went even further when they condemned Liu ‘who has long been financed by the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy, proposes an instant shift to electoral democracy as the solution to China’s problems.’ We do not share Liu’s pro-American government position, but it has no bearing on the question of whether ‘electoral democracy’ is desirable or not. Sautman and Yan see electoral democracy as bad for China because ‘states that have made the transition to electoral democracy at low levels of wealth (and China is still very much a developing country) have low levels of development and considerable instability… In many cases the transition to electoral democracy in developing countries worsens rights.’ In arguing this they are taking the side of the CCP’s continual denial to the Chinese people of basic democratic rights. We believe free elections are a basic right of the Chinese people and the CCP has owed this to the people for too long. Apart from this moral imperative behind the demand for democracy, there is also an issue of political necessity. It is necessary, now more than ever, to put the CCP under democratic control before one can seriously talk about controlling the plundering of public wealth by the bureaucracy. Any attempt in minimizing the importance of advocating democratic rights, including free elections, is objectively justifying the absolutism of the one party state. Sautman and Yan went even further than the CCP indeed; whereas the latter justified its despotic rule by saying that Chinese people do enjoy all rights enshrined in the constitution — an absolutely stupid defense, Sautman and Yan provided the CCP a more sophisticated argument by telling Chinese people that fighting for electoral democracy now jeopardizes their own interests. This is especially harmful in a China context where awareness of popular sovereignty and democratic rights is at its all time low since the 1911 revolution.

Re-Colonization a Real Threat?
A common trait which runs through those who are associated with the Utopia is the ever stronger statist and nationalist arguments. They are statist because they fall into the false dichotomy of state versus market, hence in opposing, rightly, the privatization of public assets they come to embrace the state as the only viable vehicle to fight privatization — not only the state in general but first and foremost the one party state, despite the fact that it is this very state which pushes forward privatization in the first place. They are nationalist, not only because they allege that the supposed value of national interest overrides all other values, be it working class interest or human rights in general, but also because they wrongly judge the present situation. They often argue, in the light of the 150 years of contemporary Chinese history when China was invaded and humiliated by imperialism, that the greatest danger at all times for China now is the danger of re-colonization by Western or Japanese influence, not only in an economic sense but also a political sense — hence they echo the CCP’s repeated alarm regarding ‘color revolution’. There is a grain of truth in this argument, but only a grain. There has been features of dependent accumulation in China’s economy since the 1990’s, in relation to Western and Japanese economy, and correspondingly there has been growing sections of the bureaucracy and the new rich who have acquired features of a comprador mentality. However, since 2003, the bureaucracy finally settled on a decision for a more independent economic growth, with special emphasis on ‘autonomous innovation’. Features of dependent accumulation in the economy still exist, but are not dominant. For instance, the 2 trillion US dollar exchange reserves which China accumulates are both a sign of dependent accumulation and a factor in the rise of China. It is a sign of dependent accumulation because it is a result of over-reliance on exports, made possible only by surrendering China’s resources and surplus value to the West and Japan. However it also enables the CCP to import ambitiously modern foreign techniques and to enjoy a strong bargaining position in relation to global competition. Henceforth there is even less chance that China will be re-colonized economically in the strict sense.

If China had not been colonized, as India was, between 1840 and 1949 when it was much weaker, it would be equally difficult for Western countries and Japan to dominate China economically now, in face of a China which is much stronger. The party state draws its strength from China’s contemporary glorious history of anti-imperialist struggle, including fighting the US in Korea. It also benefited from the achievement of Mao’s enormous industrialization drive in a vast country, which has given the party state exceptional power to bargain with the developed countries since the reform period. The first factor determines the party state’s deep seated distrust against foreign influence, especially when it targets Chinese people, while the second gives the CCP enough power to fend off foreign competition, politically and economically. Hence the CCPs opening up of the market to foreign capital is always restrained by the need for the maintenance of its grip over the society. Although attacked by the nationalists for abandoning Mao’s self reliance strategy, the top leaders really never went that far; on the contrary, despite internal squabbles and vacillation, they have been keen for China to develop its own domestic players in all key industries. The CCP has promoted a second wave of even more rapid industrialization, outstanding if not exceptional among the so called transitional economies, and put itself as the ultimate ruler of the most strategic industries. In order to gain a more autonomous position for its industries, the party state often go one step further by developing its own industry standards, often in defiance of foreign capital and its governments, from a VCD, mobile phone, Wifi to a credit card standard,.

The self interest of the bureaucracy also determines its decision for a relatively autonomous path of development. Increasing sections of the bureaucracy clenched its teeth at the scenario where huge profit were garnered by foreign capital; they vow to seize back at least a part of this profit for themselves. With the help of the alignment of exceptional advantages peculiar to China (which we have discussed in earlier articles ), they succeeded, even if within limit.

China is deeply integrated within a global economy; hence its autonomous path of development must be highly qualified by this. There is also no doubt that China is now encountering a bottle neck for its growth model in the midst of global crisis, but how much it will hamper China’s rise still remains to be seen.  Even with a slower rate of growth China is already a great power. As an economy ranking second in the world, any talk to suggest that China is under threat from economic re-colonization makes no sense.

The major threat for Chinese working people today is less re-colonization than the plundering of the wealth by the ruling party and a break- down of social fibers resulting from this. To argue the otherwise is simply providing support to the party in its attempt to divert attention from domestic corruption to an alleged re-colonization threat.

As to the threat of a color revolution, again it is grossly exaggerated. There are no signs at all that the US has enough support in China so as to put a color revolution in China on the agenda, nor is it true that the party state is so weak that even the smallest political liberalization will end up in the CCP losing power. Despite economic decentralization since the market reform, politically the CCP’s grip over society only grows stronger. There was and is no real civil society, no real social movement, no organized opposition. If China ever has a color revolution like those in Kyrgyzstan in a distant future, it is not because of people like Liu Xiaobo or because of free elections, but because the party state is hated so much by the people that they think any other party taking power will be better than the CCP, hence they are either indifferent to its downfall or act to make it happens. So it leads us back to the basic question which the nationalists try to avoid: the chief threat today in China is not foreign aggression, politically or economically, but the CCP dictatorship, a dictatorship which is corrupt to the core but armed to the teeth. It must be noted that it is also a dictatorship which also benefits the US ruling class, without it, it would not have been possible to hold back both wages and the Chinese workers movement for so long.

The debate between the liberals who support Liu Xiaobo and the nationalists is essentially a debate of either Washington or the Chinese party state. For us working people this is a false choice.

Au Loong Yu, December 7, 2010.

Further reading

1. Liu Xiaobo huojiang shi xinzhiminzhuyi zai zhongguo zouxiang zhibian de biaozhi (Liu Xiaobo being Awarded with the Peace Prize Signifies Neo-Colonialism in China Now Reaches Qualitative Changes) , http://www.wyzxsx.com/Article/Class4/201010/190345.htm
2. Liu Xiaobo Deserves an Ig Nobel Peace Prize?South China Morning Post, Oct. 12, 2010
3. A Human Right Charter that Excludes the Working People, http://www.worldlabour.org/eng/node/36
   http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-10-25-liu-xiaobo-stands-for-war-not-peace
4. China: End of a Model or the Birth of a New One?http://newpolitics.mayfirst.org/node/88
5. See also Post MFA era and the Rise of China, http://www.asienhaus.de/public/archiv/post-mfa-era-china.pdf

Socialist Resistance joins with our comrades in the Fourth International in greeting the second congress of the Revolutionary Socialist Party. Over the past year and a half, we have seen an incredible acceleration of the pace of politics, which we see reflected around the world. Britain’s workers are not alone in increasingly protesting against corrupt politicians, choosing abstention and protest votes in elections and searching for new ways to struggle together.

In a series of challenging mobilisations against the English Defence League, anti-racists are learning how to countermobilise against Islamophobia. In Unite, our largest union, a revolutionary Marxist candidate came second in the election for general secretary. This month, in a significant common mobilisation, a huge demonstration called jointly by the students and education workers broke through the wall of media silence concealing the growing struggles against our new Coalition government. As a class, we are in movement after decades of defeat; the most organised now have a taste of their power.

The parties opposed to neoliberalism, like the Scottish Socialist Party, Respect, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru, have started to loosen the working class’s ties to labour. While the English left has been unable to build a nation-wide, grassroots party, the different forces of the left were still able to stand socialist candidates in over 100 constituencies.

Those campaigns laid foundations, good and bad, for the immense wave of mobilisations against the coalition government’s cuts. Positive and dynamic resistance is being organised by the Coalition of Resistance, the Peoples’ Charter, the National Shop Stewards Movement and the Right to Work Campaign, but the challenge remains to coordinate that work at the base.

Small socialist groups like ours must accept the challenge of the new period, and bring all our efforts to bear to meet our fundamental goals: building our ability to offer leadership in the movement, and using our energy and experience to help the movement build its self-confidence and power.

These greetings were sent on behalf of the Socialist Resistance executive committee to the second congress of the Revolutionary Socialist Party in Australia.

Socialist Resistance has taken delivery of its latest title: “The Long March of the Trotskyists”. In this book published jointly with the IIRE, Pierre Frank and Daniel Bensaid explain how the Fourth International, founded in 1938 by Revolutionary Marxist militants, nuclei, currents and organizations, answered the problem of the construction of anti-capitalist, revolutionary political formations.

The core of the volume is Frank’s 1979 book on the Fourth International, long out of print in English, which has been brought up to date in a new and greatly expanded expanded edition.

As Ernest Mandel’s biographical essay explains, Frank was secretary to Leon Trotsky in 1932-1933. This book draws on Frank’s experience as a central leader of the Fourth International through to 1979. Daniel Bensaïd’s appendix explains the following 30 years of the Fourth International life. Two contributions develop its perspective of establishing a new independent political representation of the working class that takes into account the diversity of the working class in defending a resolutely class-based programme: a statement by founders of the French LCR explaining its decision to dissolve into the NPA; and the key resolution adopted by the Fourth International’s 2009 world congress.

We live in an age where everything has been internationalised. Imperialism brought in its wake world politics and world economics. This book explains many of the lessons needed for the new generation of activists who are looking for way to make the struggle against austerity more international.

This 204 page book is available for £5 plus postage and packing (Britain £2, Rest of Europe £3, Rest of world £4) through paypal.com. Vist that website and click on ‘Send money’. Forward the right amount, along with your address, to us at resistance@sent.com

Heinz workers at its Wigan factory have voted 9 to 1 to strike over pay. Messages of support and suggestions of solidarity can be sent to the workforce by phoning the UNITE office at the factory (01942 624984) or via email to UNITE union activist ian.wright@heinz.co.uk.

A mass meeting on Saturday will show management, and working in other Heinz factories, the real level of militancy there is on the issue. Needless to say, we encourage readers in the North West to make a supporting turn to this struggle when the workers decide what action they are going to take. In particular, UNITE branches should prepare to pledging 100% support for what the workers might be proposing in terms of action later this week.

The Coalition of Resistance adopted the declaration below at its founding conference in November 2010. It explains that “CoR will encourage all anti-cuts organisations to work together with the aim of establishing a single, broad, and united anti-cuts organisation in each area.” The coalition’s structure also states that “There will be a policy-making conference for the Coalition of Resistance by July 2011.”

1. Conference Declaration

The phoney war is over. The Coalition of Resistance’s aim is to force the ConDem government to abandon its cuts programme. The recent anti-cuts demonstrations and the Milbank occupation by students mark a turning point in people’s willingness to go beyond token protests.

As the reality of the cuts becomes clearer, local campaigns are now also organising against the government’s programme of demolishing welfare and state provision. The Coalition of Resistance (CoR) therefore calls on all anti-cuts groups, trade unionists, students and campaigning organisations to participate in a week of protest from Monday 14 February involving local events all over the country and a demonstration in London.

CoR supports the 2010 TUC Congress resolution for united and co-ordinated industrial action against the cuts, and will organise solidarity with those taking action in the front line across the public sector. We support militant and audacious actions against the cuts, including strikes, occupations and civil disobedience. We will seek to connect community with trade union campaigns, and support co-ordinated industrial action to the highest level necessary.

CoR will work to make the national demonstration called by the TUC for 26th March 2011 the biggest demonstration in Britain since the anti-war marches of 2003.

CoR will encourage all anti-cuts organisations to work together with the aim of establishing a single, broad, and united anti-cuts organisation in each area. Where no local campaign exists, we will encourage CoR supporters to initiate one; where such a campaign does exist we will encourage it to affiliate to CoR.

In schools, colleges and universities, CoR will encourage the formation of united anti-cuts and anti-fees groups, and will help in the calling of a ‘No cuts, No Fees’ conference in 2011 to establish a united national campaign.

In recognition of the international nature of the crisis, the Coalition of Resistance will seek to deepen links with similar movements throughout Europe, support the call for mobilisations against the G8 and G20 in France next year, and to initiate an international solidarity Conference Against Austerity.

CoR is committed to opposing all cuts and privatisation; exposing their effects on the most poor and vulnerable, opposing the government’s plan to dismantle the welfare state; and rejecting all proposals to “solve” the crisis through racism and other forms of scape-goating.

CoR will encourage debate on a programme for sustainable economic and social recovery which meets the needs of people and the planet, not profit.

The Coalition of Resistance will collaborate with other national campaigns, and supports the creation of a national united anti-cuts movement which is able to mobilize millions of people against the ConDem government.

2. Structure of the Coalition of Resistance

This founding conference of the Coalition of Resistance agrees to elect a National Council to co-ordinate the national campaigning work of the organisation.
This conference will aim for the composition of the National Council to be representative of the breadth of the anti-cuts movement across the country. We will also aim for it to have good representation of women, the LGBT community, people with disabilities, and black and ethnic communities. Members of the National Council will be signatories to the Founding Statement of the Coalition of Resistance.
This conference agrees that the National Council will meet no less than four times a year. At its first meeting, it will elect a Steering Committee, which will meet frequently to organise the day-to-day work of the Coalition, and which will be open to all members of the National Council.
There will be a policy-making conference for the Coalition of Resistance by July 2011.

“It isn’t a good sign for a British political movement when its early signatories include a Norman Traub of Socialist Resistance”. Thus David “Bomber” Aaronovitch opened his article in the Times, Friday 19th November, “Mad Hatters revel at the Tea Party of the Left”. In this open letter, submitted to The Times, Norman replies to the pro-war gutter journalist.

What is striking about David Aaronovitch’s article on the student occupation of Millbank is his failure to deal with the reasons for the occupation. Not a word about the rise in tuition fees to £,9000 a year, about the cuts to the Education Maintenance Allowance(EMA) and the swingeing cuts in courses and lecturers and teachers jobs. What irked this fervent supporter of the war in Iraq was that following the demonstration by 50,000 students and lecturers in Central London, some 5,000 angry students then had the temerity to occupy the Tory headquarters building, where a few windows were broken!
David Aaronovitch benefited from free higher education. He does not express the slightest concern that higher education will in the future become the preserve of the rich. With the cut in the EMA and probable student debt after a 3 year course of £38,000, how many working class children will be able to afford to go to university? The student protests belong to a rich tradition of struggle for universal free education at all levels.

Aaronovitch is particularly concerned at a new mood developing in the “Centre Left” , asking questions about whether the student protests are just the beginning and not being bothered about those few broken windows at Millbank. He echoes Mrs Thatcher when he declares there is no alternative to cuts and that alternatives put forward such as taxing the rich and cancelling Trident are “fantasies”. He is not bothered that those who caused the financial and economic crisis, the bankers, who were bailed out by the billions of pounds of taxpayers money handed to them by the government, pay themselves huge bonuses, while the ordinary taxpayer and poor have to pick up the bill in the big cuts and rises in taxes.
The government have made a political choice. Whereas debt as a percentage of GDP was much higher in the past, the government by adopting a policy of cuts is choosing to rid the rich of the burden of the welfare state. Aaronowich appeals to the Centre Left not to get involved in resisting the cuts but to accept plans for “mutualisation” in public services, which the trade unions reject. What he dreads is a repetition of the demonstrations against the poll tax, which played such a big part in bringing down Mrs Thatcher. He hopes that the New Labour leader will be able to rein in his supporters , who are participating in the anti-cuts campaigns.
These Labour supporters affected by the cuts and rise in taxes as the rest of the population, are joining anti-cuts committees, because they realise this is the only alternative to fighting this attack by the capitalists on their living standards and the welfare state. Socialist Resistance does believe it has a role to play in the process of politicisation of the working class. Aaronovitch may rant against Socialist Resistance, but workers in struggle soon learn to distinguish their class ally from their class enemy.