The following is a selection of postings from the IBT Facebook page published since the last edition of 1917.
The Republic of Artsakh, an Armenian breakaway state within the official borders of Azerbaijan, has all but disintegrated. With Azeri forces in complete control of the ethnically Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, separatist leaders are reportedly in “dialogue” with the government to reincorporate the former territory into the state of Azerbaijan. Despite assurances from Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev that the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh will receive the “patronage of the Azerbaijani state," reports of war crimes are already surfacing and the citizens of the former republic have largely opted to become refugees instead. A mass exodus into the neighbouring Republic of Armenia is effectively complete, with reports of over 100,000 people fleeing over the border—an overwhelming majority of Artsakh’s population of roughly 120,000.
International responses to this unfolding crisis have been decidedly muted, especially compared to the Western media’s continual hue and cry over Ukraine. Like Ukraine, the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh is conditioned by the wider inter-imperialist conflict unfolding across Eurasia. Though it has recently signalled more openness to Western powers, Armenia is a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation and a key link in projecting Russian power into West Asia. Likewise NATO, via Turkey, is a long-time backer of Azerbaijan, with Turkish troops propping the Azeri state up in the 1992 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azeri takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh will only exacerbate the long-standing ethno-national hostilities, competing territorial claims, and great power rivalry in the strategically important Caucasus.
So long as the world system of capitalism and imperialism continues to exist, small nations like the Armenians and the Azeris will continue to be pawns in imperialist power games. The interpenetration of national and sub-national groups in regions like the Caucasus, and the corresponding rivalries of their national bourgeoisies, are routinely inflamed by imperialist powers to further their own interests, at terrible human cost. As we wrote in “Nationalism & Nagorno-Karabakh” (1917 No. 43):
“Ensuring the right to self-determination of the various intermingled ethno-national groups is the job of the Caucasian working class, not the imperialists or national bourgeoisies, and can only be carried out via class struggle across national lines. The Caucasian working class requires its own political party committed to fighting for a revolutionary proletarian seizure of power. Key to this is the understanding that one’s own ruling class is the main enemy, not the working people of other nations. To avoid yet another bloody internecine conflict, a Bolshevik organization would seek to build multi-communal/ethnic workers’ self-defense guards rooted in all sections of the Caucasian working class to defend any communities and workers’ organizations targeted by pogromist and state violence. In the heat of the current conflict, this may seem a distant prospect, but it is the only way forward.”
On 11 November, the IBT joined close to one million others in an historic Gaza march in London that the establishment wanted banned. Home Secretary Suella Braverman and the press fanned the racist fires and accused demonstrators of interfering with the commemorations for Armistice Day occurring at least an hour earlier in an entirely different location. Predictably, fascists and far-right mobs heeded the call to “defend the cenotaph” and stop the march. Equally predictably, they failed in the latter and mainly engaged in scraps with the police.
The youthful, racially mixed crowd included Jewish participants with slogans dissociating themselves from the actions of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). There were frequent jeers for Labour party leader Keir Starmer, who backs the British government in supporting the Israeli assault and has threatened his MPs not to vote for a “ceasefire now” motion in parliament on Wednesday.
Calls for a ceasefire have become dominant in these demonstrations, but a ceasefire brokered by the British and other imperialists is no solution for the Palestinians and could only be a temporary reprieve allowing the Israeli state to rearm. We call to stop the genocide through the military defeat of the IDF and the mobilisation of the working class—Palestinian, Jewish Israeli and internationally.
The largest demo ever in Britain for the Palestinians took five hours to travel three miles to the shuttered US Embassy, overflowing London’s streets and bridges. These weekly Saturday marches are growing as anger spreads with every new IDF war crime, but revolutionaries look for action which will really hit where it counts—the international arms flow to Israel.
We point to moves towards effective action from Melbourne to Oakland to Rochester in England, where trade unionists and activists have blockaded a factory making components for the IDF twice in recent weeks. To achieve effective strikes and blockades will involve fighting the compliant trade-union leaders who, at best, are content with passive calls on Rishi Sunak to hold back his Israeli allies.
Last Thursday, small activist groups outraged at Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Gaza attempted to blockade the Israeli-owned Contship Dax at the port of Auckland. In response the New Zealand police, emboldened by the election of the country’s new conservative government, engaged in outrageous acts of brutality, including dangerous tackles, choking and pepper spray. The event demonstrates that state power in even the smallest imperialist countries will go to great lengths to defend their favoured gendarme in the Middle East.
In the leadup, the Maritime Union of NZ had issued a statement supporting “the right of the community to take part in peaceful protests at ports,” but stopped short of calling on its members to carry out any actions, let alone blockades or strikes. In response to the police brutality, Palestinian Youth Aotearoa and other Pro-Palestinian activist groups issued a statement implicitly putting blame on the protesters by calling for a return to “peaceful marches” and that they “abide also by the laws of the land”.
In the face of a global crackdown on criticism of Zionism, neither endless marches nor actions by small direct-action groups are sufficient. Many see that mass institutions of the working class must be brought to bear, to engage in hard pickets of Israeli war materiel, but wait upon the word of union bureaucracies or de-politicised union rank and files. Mass activity of the class will not come about without a leadership willing to engage in the deep politicisation of the unions around an effective programme of blockades and political strikes against genocide—a potential starting point for building a mass revolutionary workers’ movement.
A US and British led military coalition has struck targets in Yemen, one of the most unstable and impoverished countries on Earth. Ostensibly aimed at protecting international trade and traffic through the Red Sea, this action is intended to defend not only the profits of shipping companies such as Maersk but also the international arms trade supplying Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, as well as to assert imperialist dominance in the region.
For the last decade, Yemen’s Ansar Allah or “Houthi” movement, a Zaydi Islamist and Yemeni nationalist group, has been engaged in resistance against attacks and war crimes carried out by a Saudi-led coalition and their local agents, backed by US imperialism. A part of Iran’s network of regional allies, the Houthis have recently boarded or fired upon ships in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Marxists defend efforts to strangle Israel’s war machine by targeting Israeli war materiel or its imperialist escort vessels, and we support retaliatory acts against imperialist aggression in the region.
The attack on Yemen represents a significant escalation in US/British warmongering, and suggests a shift towards a more active role in support of the criminal wars of both Israel and the Gulf States. The international working class must mobilize to cut off the Zionist state from its suppliers and expedite the imperialists’ defeat in the Red Sea.
American imperialism has carried out airstrikes in Syria and Iraq against Iran’s Quds Force and Iranian-affiliated militia groups in response to alleged drone attacks against US and coalition forces in Jordan late last month. The retaliatory strikes take place as the powder keg that is the Middle East is set to explode. Washington, which has over 2,000 troops in Iraq and another 900 in Syria, has already targeted Iranian “proxies” with airstrikes in Iraq earlier this year, and the US and its allies are conducting ongoing military strikes against Houthis in Yemen. Meanwhile, apartheid Israel’s campaign of mass ethnic cleansing and genocide against Palestinians in Gaza continues apace, destabilizing the entire region.
Marxists oppose Western imperialism’s drive to an all-out regional, and possibly global, conflagration, call for all imperialist troops out of the Middle East, and defend Iran—and all neocolonies—against imperialist aggression.
The British police have recently stepped up harassment and intimidation of pro-Palestinian protesters, emboldened by the hostile media climate and a suite of new laws increasing police powers. Supporters of left groups FRFI and the CPGB-ML have been arrested at previous demonstrations and photographs of leftists, including Socialist Appeal (IMT), have been circulated by the Met Police. Yesterday on the 250,000 strong march in London, IBT comrades witnessed some IMT supporters being detained by a line of cops, and stopped to offer any assistance we could. One, Rahul, was arrested and eventually taken to Walworth Police Station. His crime? Holding a placard saying “Intifada until Victory”. We do not agree with this slogan, but we absolutely defend his right to say it. IBT comrades remained, with a small number of IMT supporters, until Rahul was taken away. Unfortunately, the demonstration simply passed on by.
Later that afternoon we attended a protest organised by the IMT at the police station, where one of our supporters spoke, calling for the release of the IMT comrade and all those arrested on pro-Palestine demonstrations and for all charges to be dropped. As she pointed out:
“Palestine is a class question, it’s about international working-class solidarity—the working class in Palestine, the working class in Israel (who also have an interest in overthrowing the Israeli state) and the working class here in the West. While our government is bombing Syria and Iraq … while our government is supporting the genocide of the Palestinians … the working class here needs to mobilise to stop weapons manufacture, to stop weapons transports.”
Class solidarity also applies here at home. We informed several other organisations on the demonstration about the IMT arrest, but unfortunately we were the only non-IMT group present at the police station. Rahul was released later that evening. But he and comrades from other organisations still face bail conditions and the prospect of charges being laid. The different left groups that have been targeted by the police have been organising separately, but it is absolutely clear that this is the same fight and we need to organise together against police repression. Representatives from the groups involved and any others willing to get involved should meet in person to co-ordinate united defence action—we are certainly willing to support such an initiative.
Earlier this month, Alexei Navalny died in a Russian penal colony. Officially anointed by the West as leader of the Russian pro-democracy movement, a champion of human rights, and Putin’s main opponent, Navalny began his political career on the far right and his politics were long defined by overt racism and xenophobia. His sainthood in the international press came from his standing as the political representative of a wing of Russian capital that seeks closer ties with the West, and there is no reason for workers in Russia or abroad to mourn him.
Western leaders have been swift to declare Navalny’s death an assassination. This is plausible, but no evidence has been presented and much remains uncertain. But, deliberate or accidental, his death in the harsh conditions of an Arctic prison colony paints a grim picture of Russia’s increasing intolerance of dissent as the war in Ukraine drags on—and the Russian state is responsible for his demise either way.
Observe the contrast, however, between Western critics’ breathless moralizing about Putin’s treatment of a political opponent and their silence as Julian Assange nears extradition to the United States. Assange has been a political prisoner since 2012 for exposing atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq and the machinations of the Western ruling class, at great cost to his physical and mental health. Extradition would place him in even greater danger. His persecution, alongside whistleblower Chelsea Manning, starkly outlines the dangers of meaningful political opposition in the West—and the hypocrisy of Western outcry over Russian authoritarianism.
Navalny and Assange are not much alike—one was a far-right pawn in the West’s struggle to throttle its Russian rival, while the other is being persecuted for exposing Western imperialism’s atrocities. But there is a real risk that Assange will die as Navalny did: a political prisoner either murdered outright or left to die an incremental death behind bars. Though we do not endorse Assange’s personal politics, socialists must defend those who expose imperialism’s crimes. Free Assange now!
See “WikiLeaks & Whistleblowers in the Age of Imperialism” (1917 No.42).
Earlier this month the AUKUS powers (Australia, UK and US) announced willingness to involve Japan in the tech-sharing “pillar 2” of their anti-China military alliance. Meanwhile, New Zealand continues to drift closer to AUKUS, with a similar peripheral involvement looking likely in the near future. In both countries, liberal opposition currents to the pact are taking shape based on a mixture of anti-nuclear petty-bourgeois mores, elements of genuine anti-imperialism, and (centrally) calculations on the part of factions of Japanese and NZ imperialism that a more independent foreign policy still serves their interests best. Naturally, sections of the workers’ movement are attracted to these opposition currents—in part out of a healthy antipathy to both US imperialism and the preferred policy of much of their own bourgeoisie. But opposing one policy of imperialism in favor of another offers no way forward.
The hope that without US influence, Japan and New Zealand—which have plundered their own corners of the Pacific for the last century—would pursue a kinder and gentler foreign policy is utopian nationalism, and nothing more. These imperialist powers need no prompting to engage in the merciless exploitation of their own neocolonies: to their ruling classes this is simple economic necessity. And in fact, whether or not they ultimately opt for involvement with AUKUS, they will remain close allies of American imperialism. The precise degree, mode and timing of their cooperation with the US is a matter of tactics.
The growth of the AUKUS alliance represents an escalation in the ongoing encirclement of China, as the US-led imperialist bloc seeks to overturn the vestiges of the 1949 revolution. The working class globally has good reason to defend China’s collectivized economy as a historic gain against the capitalist system, despite its ongoing erosion at the hands of the ruling CCP bureaucratic clique. No faction of Japanese or New Zealand imperialism, however “independent” or “pacifist”, can be trusted to this task: in the end, when the war drum sounds, they will fall into line. The working class must oppose the war-drive with its own methods of class struggle.
Down with AUKUS! Smash Imperialism in the Pacific!
Defend China from Encirclement!
For Workers’ Strikes against Imperialist Aggression!
World Revolution, not World War!
Austrian socialist Michael Pröbsting of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) has been given a six-month suspended sentence on charges of “incitement to commit terrorist offenses and approval of terrorist offenses” for calling for “the destruction of the Zionist state and the right to return for all Palestinian refugees.” After the verdict, a defiant Pröbsting said: “I support the resistance struggle of the Palestinian people. I will continue to do so. My trial was an attempt to criminalize support for Palestine.”
Earlier this week, IBT comrades organized a demonstration outside the Austrian Embassy in Wellington, New Zealand calling to drop the charges against Pröbsting. In London, we participated in a similar united-front demonstration initiated by the Spartacist League, where one of our comrades spoke:
“All the imperialist states that are supporting, funding and arming Israel’s attack on Gaza, in all of those states we are seeing repression of all those that speak up against this genocide. In Britain, comrades from Palestine Action, the IMT, the CPGB/ML, Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism and others have been arrested. In Germany, the police are attacking pro-Palestine demonstrations and conferences. In the United States, we’ve seen the wave of campus occupations brutally attacked by the state.
“And in Austria, comrade Pröbsting is charged with terrorist offenses. His supposed crime is the distribution of a leaflet calling for ‘the destruction of the Zionist state.’
“Absolutely right. The Zionist state, the Israeli state, must be destroyed if the oppression of the Palestinians is ever going to end. The only way this can be done is through joint action between the Palestinian and Israeli working class (who also have an interest, like workers everywhere, in opposing their own state). We say: not Palestinian against Jew, but class against class! The Israeli state must be replaced with a bi-national workers’ state within a socialist federation of the region.
“But also required is the support of the working class here in Britain and in Israel’s other imperialist patrons. We must stand in solidarity with the Palestinians and with Pröbsting and anyone else who has been criminalized for supporting them. We must organize against our own ruling class that is facilitating this war through the manufacture and transportation of weapons to Israel. We applaud those who have taken action against this, but to really succeed requires a political fight within the trade unions against the existing leaders of the workers’ movement, in my case Sharon Graham in UNITE, who issue platitudes but will not call on or support their members taking action for Palestine.
“So we say: Austria, drop the charges against Michael Pröbsting! For international workers’ solidarity against Israeli genocide!”
The Cass Review, the supposedly impartial report on gender identity services for children and young people in Britain released last month, is an attack on trans youthThe Review is based on the assumption that avoiding transition is the ideal outcome for a young person questioning their gender identity. It aims to justify accusations by anti-trans groups that children are being coerced into transitioning, which is damaging their physical and mental health. Exactly the opposite is true—there are long waiting lists for gender-affirming health care and puberty blockers are prescribed for a small minority of children referred to these services. Multiple studies ignored by the Cass Review (including the research commissioned on HRT as part of the Review itself, which the final report bizarrely ignores) show that being able to live as your self-identified gender and access appropriate medical care has a positive impact on mental health—it is a right that should be available to all!
This comes on the heels of a move by England’s public health bosses (and welcomed by the Tory government) to stop prescribing puberty blockers to under-18s due to concerns that not enough research has been done on them. Again, these “concerns” stem from transphobia and have nothing to do with the welfare of trans youth.
This transphobia is the consensus position of Britain’s political and media establishment. Although multiple professional bodies and independent researchers have already picked Cass’s final report apart, both the Tories and Labour have welcomed the review. Trans people are already a highly stigmatised minority in Britain and it appears even a Labour victory in the election will not change this.
Where then can British trans youth turn? There are encouraging signs in the workers’ movement, which has thus far resisted the general swing towards transphobia in British society and even, in limited ways, fought back against it. Scottish unions at the Scottish Labour Party conference in February voted down a transphobic motion to recognise “women’s sex-based rights” (a sexist and transphobic canard), against most of the party delegates. This willingness to oppose the Labour leadership as it capitulates to reactionary prejudice is positive, but a far more militant struggle is needed to secure trans rights and existence against the rising tide. As we noted in “Full, Free & Fast Trans Healthcare Now!” (1917 No.47):
“Improving the condition of trans people will take more than just healthcare, it will take a protracted struggle against discrimination, homelessness, poverty and violence, and the establishment of a system of social support that will allow trans people independence from the family and control over their own lives.. We call for militant trade-union struggle against trans discrimination in the workplace, the health system and broader society, and for the involvement and leadership of trans workers in working-class struggle.”
The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), which represents one million members across the province, called a rally on 27 May that drew some 1,500 people at the University of Toronto (UofT) in defense of the pro-Palestine encampment on campus. The worker-student rally took place amidst the university administration’s threats to break up the encampment and call in the cops on protesters for “trespassing.” The OFL action early Monday morning, which coincided with a university deadline for students to clear out, essentially staved off police disbursement of the encampment.
In calling the rally, the OFL issued an open letter to the president of UofT affirming support for the students’ right to protest, denouncing the threats of police violence to clear the encampments by the Monday deadline, and stating: “If, by then, you decide to move against the students, you’ll have to go through the workers first.”
Despite this bold statement, the union leadership have been cautious not to appear too combative. Instead, they are seeking to pressure the university administration into negotiating with students in what the OFL open letter claims is “good-faith bargaining” as the way forward, pointing to the “recent successful conclusions to the encampments” at other Ontario universities which “shows what’s possible.” In fact, those encampments simply concluded with empty promises by university administrators to develop “frameworks” for policy, review school “investment strategies,” invite Palestinian activists on campus to meet with the board of governors, etc. The union statement, which encapsulates perfectly the contradictions of the union bureaucracy and their approach to the class struggle, even brags that previous labour disputes between the university and the OFL, which represents thousands of workers on campus, have ended “without resorting to strikes or lockouts.”
All of this is presumably designed to appear militant to the OFL’s rank-and-file base while simultaneously signaling to the university administration et al that the union leaders are prepared, much like with contract talks, to channel the students’ demands into dead-end negotiations in an effort to wrap up the protests. UofT administration, which has already rejected the protesters’ key demands to disclose investments and divest from companies profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza, is refusing to budge and instead is pushing forward with a court injunction to dismantle the encampment, set to be heard later this month. It remains to be seen if the OFL bureaucrats will be prepared to defy the courts/cops—risking legal action and possible jail time—to defend the students if and when the injunction against the encampment is granted.
The OFL leadership has been prompted to take action as tens of millions world-wide are outraged by the ongoing genocide taking place in Gaza, aided and abetted by the West, including Canadian imperialism. More far-sighted elements among the labour bureaucracy are no doubt interested in “getting in front” of the potentially explosive Gaza solidarity movement to keep it within the bounds of acceptable “good-faith negotiations.” They also understand that university/cop attacks on peaceful protest by students backed by court injunctions sidestep the discussion process entirely, and ultimately pose a serious threat to the bureaucracy’s social function as “partners” at the negotiating table.
While extremely encouraging that over a thousand union activists rallied in support of the students, more must be done. The OFL has thousands of active members that work on campus at UofT whom the union leaders have so far not instructed to walk off the job in solidarity with the students. A political strike by all workers on campus at the university, in defiance of the looming court injunction and threat of cop action to break up the encampment, would be a significant act of labour solidarity with the students and Gazans and an important step towards truly ending Israeli apartheid’s genocidal war on the Palestinians.
The ICFI reports that Bogdan Syrotiuk, leader of their Eastern European youth affiliate Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL), is being held by the Zelensky government in a Nikolaev prison on the basis of alleged propagandistic support to Putin and the Russian war effort in Ukraine. This "support" appears to consist solely of the YBGL and ICFI’s (correct) denunciation of the Ukrainian war effort as subordinated to US and West European imperialism—while they likewise denounce in no uncertain terms both the Putin government and Russia’s side in the war. Although the ICFI’s material on Ukraine is confused by their characterization of Russia as non-imperialist, it is completely clear in opposing both sides in the war. But to the Zelensky police regime, no opponent is unsullied by secret Putinism—just as no future for Ukraine can be thought of but its own continued enforcement of Western imperialist requirements. On the information available to us, the IBT calls for the release of Bogdan Syrotiuk alongside all anti-imperialist and anti-war activists held prisoner by the Zelensky regime.
Julian Assange, the founder-editor of WikiLeaks, has finally been freed from Belmarsh Prison where he had been held captive and tortured by British authorities for over five years. His release is the result of a plea deal worked out with American authorities in which Assange will plead guilty to one count of “conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information” under the draconian US Espionage Act. That deal allows Assange to be freed with time served, and he is now expected to return to his native Australia to be reunited with friends and family.
The twelve-year vilification and persecution of Assange and WikiLeaks by American imperialism, fully aided and abetted by its British and Australian allies, was entirely based on ruling-class hypocrisy, imperialist machinations and outright lies. While Julian should never have spent a single day in captivity, his release is an extremely important victory for all those who tirelessly fought for his freedom. It is also a significant precedent for journalists, press freedom and all those who seek to expose the crimes and lies of the imperialists and ruling class worldwide.
Today, we celebrate the release of Julian Assange!
With President Joe Biden’s announcement that he will not seek re-election in November’s presidential election, the Democratic Party machine and corporate media are now being mobilized to rubber stamp Vice President Kamala Harris’ nomination at the DNC in August. Governors, senators, House representatives, the Congressional Black Caucus, Hispanic Caucus and Progressive Caucus, and, of course, Biden himself have all anointed Harris. Biden’s presidential campaign has formally renamed itself “Harris for President,” and Harris is assuming control of the funds that filled Biden’s campaign coffers (an estimated $95 million). Added to this is over $200 million raised from major Democratic donors to her official campaign and super PACs. Wide layers of the existing leadership of the American labor movement are also rallying behind Harris, including the Service Employees International Union, American Federation of Teachers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and AFL-CIO. While feted as the first woman of color on a major party ticket by those for whom race and gender trump class-struggle politics, Harris is nothing but a pseudo-progressive liberal in the service of American imperialism. Much like Biden, she will continue to fund the NATO/US-led war in Ukraine, fully back and arm the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and hawkishly target the Chinese deformed workers’ state.
Marxists fight to break the political stranglehold of the Democrats and Republicans by seeking to build a revolutionary workers’ party beholden to the American working class, not the financial parasites running Wall Street.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, successor to Hugo Chávez’s “Bolivarian Revolution,” narrowly held off the prospect of a neoliberal pro-capitalist government backed by American imperialism in this weekend’s elections. In power since 2013 and seeking a third term in office, polls had shown Maduro trailing pro-US and big business opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, but early results have Maduro with 51% of votes compared with 44% for his opponent.
After 25 years of building supposed “socialism for the twenty-first century,” Venezuela is deeply divided, with much of its population having simply lost confidence in Chávismo, which claims to act in the interests of the working class but is firmly linked to Venezuelan capitalism. The country is suffering from severe economic dislocation, rampant inflation and imperialist-backed sanctions, which have led more than 7 million Venezuelans to flee abroad over the last two decades and left the country the most indebted in the world. While no small part has been played by the combined efforts of American imperialism and Venezuelan capitalists, political responsibility lies in Chávez/Maduro’s bankrupt left-wing bourgeois populism. The only road forward for Venezuela’s working people is to organize independently as a class. Ultimately, it is only through workers’ revolution and the creation of a socialist federation of Latin America that the continent’s laboring masses can finally break the chains of imperialist domination.
See “‘Pink Tides’ & Popular Fronts: Revolutionary strategy in Latin America” (1917 No.47) for a fuller analysis of Venezuela’s failed Bolivarian experiment.