A new revolutionary upsurge touches the world
Alejandro Bodart, reference of the MST and coordinator International Socialist League. There has been a change of enormous magnitude. In different regions of the planet and excluded workers was an insurrection against their governments and political regimes that support them. At the forefront of rebellions and revolutions that are taking place is youth, that the capitalist system in its decline is leaving future. It is much more than a new situation: we are witnessing a change in the world situation.
In October there have been rebellions of magnitude in Ecuador, Haiti and an extraordinary revolution in Chile. Thousands of kilometers, rebellions in Iraq and Lebanon herald the dawn of a new Arab Spring. Europe returns to Catalonia Street heroic and rebellious Asia Hong Kong will not bow to the brutality of the Chinese bureaucracy. On the first anniversary of the emergence of the "yellow jackets" French, precursors of the changes that are now widespread, the streets of Paris have gotten to know the warmth of the forgotten of the system and 5 December an indefinite general strike is prepared in the powerful French working class. In numerous countries, strikes and demonstrations are the order of the day. Together with the global economic crisis, which continues to deepen, in many countries where mobilization has not yet taken the magnitude of other latitudes deep political crises emerge. Political and social polarization that traverses the world for years begins to have clearly in the mass movement and their struggles on offense.
In this new edition of Permanent Revolution socialize conclusions on some of the most dynamic processes, in most of which the national sections of the International Socialist League are actively participating. Global rebellion, New May '68, Latin American spring, the world on fire, are some of journalistic expressions from the mass media are trying to plot the new moment we are going through. There are manifestations of the change that is occurring on all continents, but there are two regions of the world have become the epicenters of this new revolutionary upsurge: Latin America and the Middle East. In both places a pre-revolutionary or directly revolutionary situation exists, take as reference the definition of Trotsky or Lenin and so any spark, as rising gasoline, of the meter or even a tax using the WhatsApp can unleash a revolution.
Middle East and North Africa have changed forever. The revolutionary upsurge known as Arab Spring governments managed to fall and regimes that for decades you subjected their people with an iron hand and permanent adjustments. Qualitative changes occurred, even in those countries where rebellions were defeated. The engine and all semiinsurrecciones bursts that have taken place is a combination of social and democratic demands. The revolutionary wave of the 2010-2013, that began with the immolation of Mohamed Bouaziz the street vendor in Tunisia, quickly spread to Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, Syria and gave a boost to the struggle of self-determination of the Kurdish people. Another chapter took place in late 2018 and earlier this year with rebellions in Tunisia, Sudan and Algeria. Right now we are witnessing deep rebellions in Iraq, Lebanon and now it was his turn to Iran, where social unrest throughout the country and width is shaking the regime of the mullahs.
In Latin America, since the beginning of the century no processes were given the magnitude we are witnessing these days. Last year the youth and the Nicaraguan people rose against the dictatorship adjustment applied Ortega-Murillo and was brutally repressed. In the middle of this year it was the turn of Puerto Rico. But the qualitative change in the region came from the hand of the rebellion of peasants and indigenous Ecuadorians. They followed Haiti and now Chile, where a revolution is crumbling regime reactionary bourgeoisie stood from the genocidal dictatorship of Pinochet. evidently, the continent has entered a dynamic that at any time can infect workers and young people from other countries. Colombia, for example, It has joined the rebellion with millions in the streets and a historic general strike; in Central tensions are red alive and in other countries struggles and political crises develop in the heights. Why even the great bourgeois media warn of what visualized as a new moment of unpredictable consequences.
Chile, a stunning revolution
"Are not 30 pesos, son 30 years". This slogan sums up the depth of the revolutionary process that began in Chile with the increase in the price of the meter, but it questioned the government of Piñera, a legacy of the Pinochet regime and objectively to the semicolonial capitalist system of the Andean country itself. From one day to another, the role model proudly flying the most concentrated sectors of capital and formations right across the continent blew up. If the electoral defeat of Macri had bloodied left Lima Group, Trump spearhead in the region, Chilean revolution ended to push into the dustbin of history.
With youth at the forefront, dragging behind most of the population and forcing the bureaucratic leaderships of the labor movement to call two general strikes historical, with mobilizations of millions of workers, young people from one end to the other of its geography, self-organizing popular assemblies and councils, with roadblocks and pickets, bravely facing repression of an army armed to the teeth, dual power in the streets has been defeating each of the maneuvers with the government and regime forces have attempted to derail the process towards an institutional solution controlled from above.
At present, the spurious pact to try to save what they can Piñera and old Pinochet Constitution between the right rules and the parliamentary opposition, including the FA, who it was running as the renovation of the old left political caste, opens a new political moment. The rejection of this new and obvious betrayal is causing the accelerated breakdown of important segments of the population with all the institutional left formations, which will promote the emergence of new leaders in the labor movement and youth and expand the space to build a revolutionary organization like ours.
Bolivia is part of the revolutionary wave
The imperialism, Latin American right and scribes tried to take advantage of the fall of Evo Morales to counter the revolutionary wave that shook Latin America. Nevertheless, the situation quickly evolved into a confrontation of the mass movement against self-government coup that emparenta with rebellions Reeling several governments in the world.
Beyond the debate interested among the most reactionary sectors, who they refuse to be defined as a coup what happened in Bolivia because they support the interim government of racist Jeanine Áñez, and the false progressivism, that strives to show a fascist advance everywhere it is not just to try to scare the mass movement and passing their posibilista policy and left leg of bourgeois democratic regimes in countries that govern or influence, there is a real debate on the left. Some groups refused to define as a coup what happened and claim that Evo Morales fell by a popular uprising. Others see the action of the right putschist and tend to have an uncritical view of Morales to raise the point as a strategy for reinstatement in power.
We do not agree with any of these visions. In Bolivia three moments that were combined followed until reaching the current situation. perception, right or wrong, the government of Evo Morales conducted a fraud to avoid a runoff that would very likely lose at first produced an uprising of middle class, the students and various social movements that broke with the government for its pro-capitalist and hostile to all popular sectors conversion opposed his policies and pro-market adjustment. This also explains the passivity throughout the first moment of the rest of the labor movement, peasant and indigenous or statements of the leadership of the COB and other movements Evo Morales asking him to step to the side.
Just after a couple of weeks, when Evo was weakened and cornered by rising to the point that first accepts the audit of the OAS and after the report call new elections, something that could have channeled the situation, the most recalcitrant right seizes the opportunity and decided to give the coup stoking the cantonment police first and then convincing the army. Even in this second moment, the COB and other social organizations, except a minority led by MAS, It kept at the margin or supports output Morales. Isolated and unsupported, Evo resigns and goes to exile. the blow is consumed and after several days of power vacuum self-proclaimed government of the extreme right. This generates the third time, we are seeing now and the end result is still disputed: the mass movement erupts again, requiring all directions of the labor movement and indigenous to rule against the new coup government and "rich". This new uprising, completely different from the first, in a united front to sectors influenced by the MAS of Morales and another space, controlling, which it is critical of Morales but understands that he must defeat the coup because if consolidated will be a very dangerous enemy against the workers and the indigenous movement.
Without seeing the different moments and complexity of the situation it is not possible to have a correct policy to intervene in Bolivia. Today revolutionaries have to be with the people mobilized to shoot down the self-proclaimed government, that is counterrevolutionary. That is the crux ordering our program. But alongside this we must not give any support for Morales and the MAS, ultimately responsible that marginal sectors of the extreme right have come to the government and now, when to help isolate and defeat those putschists is driving a negotiation with them, a new betrayal. Our orientation must include the call to deepen the struggle to throw down the dictatorship and to continue until a government of workers and peasant organizations, the only one capable of applying the anti-capitalist measures that are essential to meet the needs of the whole of the Bolivian population.
The reasons behind the change
There is a multiplicity of elements that explain why we reached this point again. In almost every process it has had weight rejection of authoritarianism and violations of democratic rights. But the determining factor has been the deepening global economic crisis and the aftermath caused by the brutal austerity plans to pay debts and guarantee profits of the corporations that have applied the various governments. Stagnation and decline of economies, obscene inequality, growing unemployment, extreme precariousness labor, deteriorating health and education, párdida inaccessible housing and any prospect of future experienced by millions of young people around the world are explosive cocktail that starts to explode and spread from one country to another.
A 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the illusions created from the imperialist campaign that capitalism would bring "prosperity and progress" have disappeared. Deteriorating living standards, loss of conquests, the destruction of nature, exacerbation of machismo and xenophobia make millions begin to identify the capitalist system as the source of their misfortunes. In unusual places, as the US. or Britain, youth massively turn left and socialism.
The fall of Stalinism involved the collapse of the world order created in World War IIª. Without that counterrevolutionary partner, He is playing a key role to contain the workers and peoples of the world, US imperialism far from being strengthened, as thought they saw from different sectors of the left, He began to concentrate in their hands all the contradictions of world reality and to weaken. The debacle 2008 It was a leap of quality deterioration and forced them to deepen their policy of economic counter-revolution against the mass movement to save the banks and corporations. Currently we are moving towards a new crisis, reflection of the decline of US imperialism and the capitalist system as a whole. Rebellions we are witnessing are the response of working people to barbarism which are leading humanity to save the 1% which represent.
Unconscious socialist revolution[1]
What we are witnessing in Latin America and the Middle East are deeply anticapitalist rebellions and revolutions. Part of its objectives is why democratic governments also face the regimes and their institutions, deeply undemocratic and repressive. But it is not essentially democratic processes: mobilization pursues primarily economic and social changes, incompatible within the framework of capitalism in its current phase of decline. In that sense they are anti-capitalist revolutions, socialists, but unconscious, because the level of consciousness of the masses but still rapidly advancing is a stadium behind their actions and no directions to the head revolutionary mobilization.
It is popular revolts or revolutions. The working class and participates in each process is taking a more active role, but at first it does individually, unorganized, dissolved in the popular movement. The dynamics of events manages to overwhelm and push the bureaucratic leaderships and so they end up producing extremely powerful general strikes, like the two that have just been made in Chile, of Colombia, those of some Arab countries or those prepared in France and elsewhere, but still no process working class has turned sharply in the direction of the same.
The masses turn to direct action because they have learned that through institutional channels is not achieved anything. The semi-insurrections that occur end up producing situations of dual power but still, a failure to take the leadership of the working class processes, have not emerged organisms that institutionalize. It is actually a dual power, on the streets, by force and radicalness that acquires mobilization; Yes asamblearios develop processes, town meetings and some traditional agencies take new forms, without being able bodies.
In almost all processes is an emerging youth activism, that not having nothing to lose and everything to gain radicalized, achieved surpass conciliators apparatus and leave evidence. This sector is clearly ahead in all processes and that will not only not afraid of repression but has broken with the petty-bourgeois prejudice earlier waves, who advocated non-violence and refused to defend themselves from the repressive forces. Youth gives it an extraordinary dynamism to all processes and generate sympathy among workers and other sectors mobilized.
Revolutionary policy
In this new global situation we are facing, the slogan of Constituent Assembly free and sovereign to reorganize all in favor of the workers and the people have become important in many countries. It is the most democratic body that can provide bourgeois democracy and serves to deepen the processes and unmask the treacherous leaderships, whether they refuse your call for fear of not being able to control it as if they are forced to do so and it is evident refusal to take substantive action in favor of popular majorities.
The AC is beginning to be raised when the political crisis opens the possibility of the fall of the government or the questioning begins reactionary regimes like Chile, Spanish or several Arab countries. When mobilization becomes semi-uprising and there are dual power organizations still very useful, I gained strength but now the call to the mass movement from below to impose.
It can not be used as our watchword of government, as do some organizations mistakenly left, because even the AC convened in the revolutionary period will consist of a large number of representatives of the bourgeoisie and the reformist parties, it will most likely be most.
In times of political crisis and more revolutionary outbursts occur when, our locker system should start asking the government Down. This slogan is combined with Constituent Assembly and the positive output and class to the problem of power: governing workers.
Our proposal to be abstract to the extent arising no dual power organizations. We must boost its emergence, support all forms of self-organization by which they are embryonic -asambleas, cabildos, strike committees, etc.-, coordinate and centralize call. It may happen that the old organizations such as councils or unions to the heat of the ascent are transformed into agencies new type.
We must be attentive to all, as our politics must be concrete as possible our proposal calling for democratic governing the workers and the people through agencies and more genuinely reflect the mood of the masses and its vanguard.
If the revolutionary left has representatives in Congress at a time when the fall occurs from a government, There are agencies and call a Legislative Assembly to discuss the presidential succession, we can raise propagandistic provisionally govern the deputies left, to compete with representatives of the bourgeoisie and postulate an alternative classist and left before the masses.
Only the emergence of democratic institutions and centralized workers, as were the workers' councils (soviets), the coordinators, industrial belts or similar, They may allow in a revolutionary situation possible counterpose the institutions of the bourgeoisie and call them to be the ones who take power. Regrettably, in the process we are seeing one of the most important weaknesses is the lack of such a body.
Another direction that we give is about self-defense. Since the emergence of the "yellow jackets" and what we are seeing in the current rebellions, a decided edge emerges to face repression. We enthusiastically support the right of the masses to defend and promote the formation of self-defense committees. In times of acute crisis if there is an organized self-defense and have a correct policy, the creativity of the mass movement can be divided, disrupt and defeat any army or police for more armada that is.
The semi-insurrections that are taking place in different parts of the planet develop from mass demonstrations, most of the time self-summoned and are growing daily, with barricades and fighting for hours with repression. Along with actively participate we must raise the need for a general strike and continuity to defeat the government and the regime and impose the agenda of the movement, demanding and denouncing the union bureaucracy that constantly try to contain and prevent the labor movement between hard and finished directing and defining the situation in their favor.
Party and LIS
Unlike what happened in the world between World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall, cuendo several revolutionary outbreaks that occurred expropriating the bourgeoisie ended without a revolutionary socialist party to the front[2] and some without the working class the vanguard, at this stage of the class struggle, the scandalous turn for the unconditional defense of capitalism and bourgeois democracy of all petty bourgeois leaderships, reformers and edge-Stalinists, from the point of view of subjects needed to achieve progress to socialism as we are in the early decades of the past are century. Specifically, without the working class as the vanguard of the movement without a revolutionary socialist party with mass influence to the front they can be achieved partial victories, but it is impossible to succeed a new socialist revolution.
Both, so that the working class is over becoming the subject of revolution, besides mobilization, that advances in their consciousness, it is imperative that there is a revolutionary party that achieves displace bureaucracy and end the influence of those who preach class conciliation and consciously work to prevent workers from taking power.
For all this, autonomist or anarchist currents that militate against the construction of the revolutionary party play a reactionary role and we must face them resolutely. The counter action that are taking currents Stalinists, Social Democrats, neo reformists, nationalist and populist in the current rebellions, agreeing with the bourgeoisie to curb the revolutionary rise or applying adjustments and repressing where govern, are highlighting the eyes of millions around the world the need for new policy tools.
The new situation poses more favorable conditions every day to grow and strengthen revolutionary organizations. Young people without fear, women who rise up for their rights, workers who organize general strikes are the raw material to build them.
Even skeptics left, which until just yesterday proclaimed that it was the bourgeoisie that had strategic control of the situation and the world turned right, now reluctantly they have to accept that there has been a favorable change.
Who make up the International Socialist League were convinced that the tensions were building up for years would have an outcome as we are witnessing. All our national sections are in the first row of events. We invite you to join our organization. We need to be more and more for a new society, without exploitation and oppression of any kind, solidarity, egalitarian, truly democratic, socialist, is every day closer to reality.
[1] See Updating the Transitional Program, thesis XV, Nahuel Moreno.
[2] These revolutions were made with national or petty opportunists addresses Stalinists front and because of that degenerated into bureaucratic workers' states.
