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The International Committee of the Fourth International, meeting on June 19, unanimously approved the application of the Sosyalist Eitlik Grubu (Socialist Equality Group, SEG) to be its section in Turkey.

The comrades of Sosyalist Eitlik have been working closely with the International Committee in the publication of a Turkish language edition of the World Socialist Web Site and in the translation and distribution of its literature. The leading comrades of the SEG have acquired an extensive knowledge and firm grasp of the history, principles and program of the ICFI.

The June 19 decision followed extensive discussions with representatives of the International Committee in Istanbul on the development of the fight for Trotskyism in Turkey and the Aegean and Black Sea regions.

Upon accepting the application of the Sosyalist Eitlik Grubu, the International Committee paid tribute to the memory of Comrade Halil Celik (1961-2018), who, in the years prior to his untimely death, fought tirelessly for Trotskyism and laid the foundations for the establishment of a section of the ICFI in Turkey.

The Sosyalist Eitlik Grubu will now proceed to the organization of its founding congress.

We publish below the resolution unanimously adopted by the leadership of the Sosyalist Eitlik Grubu on June 15, 2022, requesting its acceptance as a section of the ICFI.

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1. The Sosyalist Eitlik Grubu (Socialist Equality Group, SEG) has taken the resolution to apply to join the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), whose political authority it recognizes and with which it works in the closest political cooperation.

2. It is an integral part of the decision to found the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) as the Turkish section of the ICFI. Both decisions are not based on conjunctural or national considerations, but on the SEGs agreement with the ICFI on questions of history, principles and program. The building of a revolutionary party in any country is possible only on the basis of an international perspective, program and party. The only solution to the major problems in Turkey, which is in a critical position in terms of global geopolitics and class struggle, is the international socialist revolution. The founding of the SEP (Turkey) will be an expression of the global expansion of the ICFI, the only political tendency that assumes the task of solving the great historical problems.

3. As Leon Trotsky wrote in his 1928 Critique of the Draft Program of the Communist International:

In our epoch, which is the epoch of imperialism, i.e., of world economy and world politics under the hegemony of finance capital, not a single communist party can establish its program by proceeding solely or mainly from conditions and tendencies of developments in its own country. This also holds entirely for the party that wields state power within the boundaries of the USSR. On August 4, 1914, the death knell sounded for national programs for all time. The revolutionary party of the proletariat can base itself only upon an international program corresponding to the character of the present epoch, the epoch of the highest development and collapse of capitalism. An international communist program is in no case the sum of national programs or an amalgam of their common features. The international program must proceed directly from an analysis of the conditions and tendencies of the world economy and of the world political system taken as a whole in all its connections and contradictions, that is, with the mutually antagonistic interdependence of its separate parts. In the present epoch, to a much larger extent than in the past, the national orientation of the proletariat must and can flow only from a world orientation and not vice versa. Herein lies the basic and primary difference between communist internationalism and all varieties of national socialism.

4. Only the ICFI represents the political continuity of the world Marxist/Trotskyist movement. This continuity goes back to the founding of the Left Opposition under the leadership of Leon Trotsky in 1923 to defend the strategy and program of the world socialist revolution against nationalist Stalinist degeneration. It was this strategy and program that guided the October Revolution in 1917 led by the Bolshevik Party in Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.

5. The founding of the Fourth International in 1938 under the leadership of Trotsky after the collapse of the Communist International paving the way for the Nazis to come to power in Germany in 1933; the founding of the International Committee in 1953 by orthodox Trotskyists led by James P. Cannon of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the US against the revisionist-liquidationist tendency led by Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel; the political struggle by the British Trotskyists led by Gerry Healy against the unprincipled reunification with the Pabloites in 1963; and the struggle of the American Trotskyists led by David North in 1982-86 against the national-opportunist degeneration of the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) in Britain and the regaining the control of the IC by orthodox Trotskyists, constitute critical turning points in this political continuity.

6. In this context, the Socialist Equality Group emphasizes that it fully agrees with the Historical and International Foundations documents of the Socialist Equality Parties affiliated to the ICFI, and it bases itself on these historical and international foundations.

7. Trotsky wrote in 1938:

It is possible to maintain and develop a revolutionary political grouping of serious importance only on the basis of great principles. The Fourth International alone embodies and represents these principles. It is possible for a national group to maintain a constant revolutionary course only if it is firmly connected in one organization with co-thinkers throughout the world and maintains a constant political and theoretical collaboration with them. The Fourth International alone is such an organization. All purely national groupings, all those who reject international organization, control, and discipline are in their essence reactionary.

This is the approach that led to the SEGs decision to join the ICFI.

8. The SEGs resolution to join the ICFI is a very conscious political decision that reflects the step-by-step integration of our group with the International Committee over the past years on the questions of principle and history. Comrade Halil elik, who passed away at the end of 2018, played a decisive role in reaching this point, which has an international political and historical significance.

9. The political orientation of the predecessor group of todays SEG towards the ICFI dates back to the early 2000s. In November 2007, Halils group wrote to the ICFI at that time:

You are aware of the fact that we have been following the ICFI closely for the last two years through the WSWS and discussing some of its documents internally by translating them into Turkish. Through the meetings and discussions we held, we managed to find answers to many of the questions we had in our minds. In a nutshell, the discussions we have conducted in Istanbul have accelerated the process of understanding the basic positions of the ICFI by our comrades and sympathisers.

The year 2007 also marked an important milestone when German comrades from the ICFI visited Istanbul and discussions with our group deepened.

10. By 2014, the IC plenum unanimously passed a resolution that read:

The plenum of the International Committee of the Fourth International formally accepts the application of Comrade H[alil] on behalf of the organisation Toplumsal Esitlik (Social Equality Group) to open discussions with the aim of establishing a section of the International Committee in Turkey. The IC will work closely with the Turkish comrades to assist them in the political and theoretical preparation of a Founding Conference.

11. This resolution and closer political collaboration with the ICFI shaped our groups political activity after 2014. As an important step in our political integration with the ICFI, in 2018 we changed the name of our group to Socialist Equality, stating in the resolution that:

The SE is assuming a name in line with that of all the official sections of the ICFI (Socialist Equality Party, Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei, Parti de lgalit socialiste) and thereby stressing its determination to become the Turkish section of the Fourth International.

12. The founding of Mehring Yaynclk at the end of 2017 and the publication of some of the key works of the ICFI in Turkish represented a major step forward in the building of the Socialist Equality Party (Turkey). Comrade Halils prediction was vindicated:

Publications of the contemporary Marxist literature produced by the world Trotskyist movement in Turkish, we believe, will contribute to the laying of the theoretical and political foundation for the building of the Turkish section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

13. In 2020, the Socialist Equality Groups decision to come under the full control of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) and to continue its publication exclusively on the WSWS was another important step towards establishing a Turkish section of the world party.

14. The last critical meeting in the decision to found the Socialist Equality Party (Turkey) and apply to join the ICFI was the visit of the International Committee delegation to Istanbul in early June 2022.

15. In the historic meetings held during this visit, it was unanimously supported that, on the basis of both the maturity of the objective situation in the world and the SEGs agreement with the ICFI on program, principles and historical issues, the founding of the SEP (Turkey) as an expression of the international expansion of the ICFI could no longer be delayed. The founding of the SEP (Turkey) will inspire the founding of new ICFI sections in the Middle East and around the world.

16. As the COVID-19 pandemic, which intensified the crisis of world capitalism, is entering a new phase, NATOs proxy war against Russia in Ukraine threatens a nuclear World War III. The global food crisis and the cost of living crisis are accompanied by the accelerating collapse of democratic forms of rule in all countries. However, the internal contradictions of capitalism that give rise to these crises are also paving the way for the development of the world socialist revolution. Capitalist globalization and the communication technologies that accompany it have objectively integrated the world economy and the working class to an enormous degree. The class struggle is taking on an international character as never before. The developing movement of the international working class is increasingly intersecting with the conscious political activity of the ICFI. Only the ICFI has a global revolutionary program of solutions to the great historical problems facing the international working class.

17. All global objective developments confirm the ICFIs analysis and prediction at the beginning of 2020: The decade of the socialist revolution begins. However, as the statement explained, the spontaneous struggles of workers and their instinctive striving for socialism are, by themselves, inadequate. The transformation of the class struggle into a conscious movement for socialism is a question of political leadership. The SEGs decision to found the SEP (Turkey) and apply to join the ICFI is part of the fight to resolve this question of political leadership.

18. On this basis, taking a resolution to apply to join the ICFI, the SEG decides to submit its founding documents Statement of Principles and Historical and Political Perspectives for the political approval of the International Committee. The official founding of the party will take place after this process of preparation, discussion and IC approval.

19. At the same time, the SEG enthusiastically supports the proposal to develop the Turkish edition of the WSWS in daily practical cooperation with international comrades. The WSWS is the critical political tool for the building of the ICFI all over the world and thus for the development of the world socialist revolution.

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A historic advance in the fight for Trotskyism: The International Committee of the Fourth International accepts application of the Sosyalist Eitlik...

The savage killing of at least 37 refugees on the border between Morocco and the Spanish exclave of Melilla underscores the brutality and disregard of basic democratic rights that pervades the European Union. As the US-NATO war with Russia rapidly escalates into a global conflagration, and workers across the continent move into struggle against the unbearable cost of living and the ruling elites murderous pandemic policy, the major European powers are resurrecting forms of state-organised violence and political reaction not seen since Europes domination by authoritarian and fascist regimes during the 1930s.

The barbaric massacre was carried out through the combined efforts of the Spanish Civil Guard and Moroccan gendarmerie on Friday. The UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) reported that the migrants came mostly from the impoverished African countries of Chad, Niger, South Sudan and Sudan and would have been considered asylum seekers under international law. In addition to at least 37 fatalities, over 150 people were injured during charges and beatings by the security forces or after falling from the 6- to 10-metre-high fences preventing entry into the Spanish exclave from Morocco.

The massacre was clearly coordinated by both countries, as the Civil Guard allowed Moroccan security forces into Melilla to illegally drive refugees who made it across the border back to Morocco. In the manner of a fascistic demagogue, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, the leader of the Socialist Party, declared his full support for the actions of the border guards, stating that they beat back a violent assault and an attack on the territorial integrity of Spain.

The massacre could hardly have taken place at a more opportune time for the government in Madrid, which is led by the Socialist Party and includes the pseudo-left Podemos. At the NATO summit beginning today in the Spanish capital, the Spanish government will push for refugee border crossings to be designated as a hybrid threat alongside terrorism and food insecurity in the aggressive military alliances new strategic concept, which Madrid hopes will legitimise the expansion of its military operations in Africa.

NATOs strategic roadmap for the next decade will include plans for how war will be fought by US and European imperialism against Russia and China. Leaving no doubt about this fact, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced Monday that NATOs rapid reaction force in the Baltic and Eastern Europe will increase eight-fold from 40,000 to over 300,000 troops.

Such a vast escalation of military violence is incompatible with democratic rights. The bloody massacring of desperate migrants on the European Unions southern border must therefore be taken as a serious warning by working people everywhere. The unconditional defence of the fascistic border guards by the Spanish government demonstrates that as it wages war in the east, Europes ruling elites are deploying the most brutal forms of repression against anyone who gets in the way of their reckless plans of imperialist conquest.

This was underscored by the deafening silence on the massacre at the G7 summit that concludes today in Schloss Elmau in Germany. While the leaders of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan agreed on a sanctimonious statement pledging to strengthen the resilience of our democracies and commitment to the rules-based international order, not a word was wasted on the bloody massacre on Europes doorstep.

Late yesterday evening, a semi-truck trailer filled with dozens of dead undocumented Central American immigrants was discovered in San Antonio, Texas. The truck was carrying refugees fleeing desperate economic conditions in Central America. Given the legacy of over a century of US imperialist exploitation, their peaceful entry into the country was barred by the Biden administrations anti-immigrant restrictions. The official death toll of 46 is expected to rise and likely includes children.

The cold indifference shown by the ruling elites of all the major powers towards the lives of the most oppressed sections of society recalls the contemptuous attitude taken by the imperialist powers on the eve of World War II to the plight of Europes Jews and other persecuted minorities fleeing the Nazi regime. At the infamous 1938 Evian Conference, none of the major powers agreed to accept additional refugees for fear of damaging relations with the Third Reich, which was at the time still viewed by substantial sections of the European ruling class as an ally against the Soviet Union.

It is not merely a matter of historical coincidence that Fridays massacre occurredin Spains North African territory, from where a revolt by fascist officers in July 1936, led by Francisco Franco, served as the basis for the fascist movement that emerged victorious in the Spanish Civil War and ruthlessly oppressed the Spanish working class for four decades. The EUs official sanctioning of Fridays massacre will encourage and strengthen present-day fascist movements across the continent, which are cultivated by the ruling class to crush worker opposition to their unpopular policies.

The European Union and its member states have systematically created the conditions for fascistic violence against workers and the most oppressed layers of society through the promotion of far-right political forces and the militarisation of the entire continent. Far-right and fascistic parties play a prominent role in the official political life of all the major European powers, while their militaries and security forces are rife with far-right networks. In Germany, these groups have drawn up kill lists of political opponents to be executed on Day X, while high-ranking military personnel in France and Spain openly discuss plans to seize power in coups.

The EUs fortress Europe policy has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of refugees, who have drowned in the Mediterranean over the past three decades while trying to flee the social catastrophe produced by uninterrupted imperialist wars and the legacy of the colonial subjugation of Africa and the Middle East. Illegal pushbacks, where Europes fascistic Frontex border guards and their partners in the national security forces forcibly return migrants across the EUs external borders before they have a chance to exercise their legal right to apply for asylum, are part of the EUs standard operating procedure.

European governments from across the official political spectrum have fully embraced the EUs far-right policies towards refugees. When large numbers of migrants fled the imperialist-instigated war in Syria in 2015, Greeces pseudo-left Syriza government established a series of concentration camp-style facilities on islands in the Aegean Sea to detain asylum seekers.

At the initiative of Italys far-right Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, the EU suspended all naval rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea in 2019, leaving thousands of people to drown. Finlands Social Democrat-led government, which was hailed as a progressive breath of fresh air when it came to power in 2019, has followed up its application to join NATO by declaring its intention to begin constructing barriers along its 1,300-kilometre border with Russia to guard against the potential for refugees to be used as hybrid warfare by Moscow. Helsinki is following in the footsteps of Polands right-wing PIS government, which illegally blocked refugees from crossing the border with Belarus last winter, leaving many to freeze to death in the forest.

The same governments who are engaged in abrogating the most basic democratic rights are in the front ranks of the imperialist war against Russia. Britains Tory government, which intends to dispatch asylum seekers to poverty-stricken Rwanda, has led the European powers in providing heavy weaponry to the Ukrainian regime. In Germany, the Social Democrat-led government, which maintains vicious anti-refugee policies adopted from the fascist Alternative for Germany, has tripled the countrys defence budget for this year as part of the largest rearmament programme since Hitler. French President Emmanuel Macron, whose government has brutally attacked migrant camps in Calais and Paris and systematically discriminates against the substantial Muslim minority, recently declared that the population must get used to living in a war economy. The Spanish government, which perpetrated Fridays massacre, has sent 800 troops, Eurofighter jets, and warships to Eastern Europe and plans to use the NATO summit to announce a doubling of Spains military budget to 24 billion.

Together with their US ally, which specialises in detaining child refugees in prison-like conditions and laying waste to entire societies in over 30 years of uninterrupted war, these are the governments that the media propagandists claim are waging a war for democracy and the freedom of Ukraine against Russian aggression and the fascist Putin.

There is in fact nothing democratic about the imperialist redivision of the world that is now well underway. The hundreds of billions of euros that the leading European imperialist powers plan to spend on their war machines in order to subjugate Russia, seize control of its lucrative natural resources, and fend off competition from their imperialist rivals will have to be squeezed out of the working class through stepped up austerity and attacks on wages and working conditions.

Tobias Elwood, a leading member of British Prime Minister Boris Johnsons Conservative Party, denounced 50,000 rail workers on strike last week for job security and wage increases with inflation at over 11 percent as Putins friends. Spains Socialist Party/Podemos government banned a strike by Ryanair pilots and cabin crews over the weekend. In Germany, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier declared in the weeks following the presentation of the massive 100 billion rearmament programme that the population would have to make sacrifices to pay for the war.

The defence of all democratic and social rights, including the right of working people to live in whichever country they please, is inseparable from the struggle of the international working class against imperialist war. In opposition to the threat of savage repression at home and the waging of war abroad, the World Socialist Web Site calls for the building of an international anti-war movement in the working class to uphold democratic rights through the fight for socialism.

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Massacre in Morocco: The ugly face of European imperialism - WSWS

This article is a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the progressivism of the Fourth Transformation, the name given to the political process being led by Mexican president Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador (AMLO). It presents a critical interpretation of AMLOs administration, based on analyses published in La Izquierda Diario Mxico and Ideas de Izquierda, and engages in debate the Mexican socialist organizations that have adapted to the government and its party.

Since AMLO took office, the character of the government of the Fourth Transformation has been the subject of multiple debates that have divided the intelligentsia and the different political and ideological currents on the Left. The true scope and the obvious limits of his self-proclaimed progressivism must be continuously examined in light of the events. This is particularly important considering that different sectors of the self-proclaimed anti-capitalist and socialist Left have effectively renounced one of the cornerstones of Marxist politics: political independence from the governments and parties of the bourgeoisie, whether they be neoliberal or progressive.

From the beginning, Andrs Manuel Lpez Obradors administration has been a late example of what has been called Latin American progressivism. The political period in Latin America during which he came to power was very different from the one that marked the first wave of these governments in the Southern Cone like that of Nestor Kirchner in Argentina or Lula in Brazil which benefited from the global commodities boom that provided them with sufficient resources to implement limited redistribution policies without affecting the essential interests of the bourgeoisie and imperialism.

AMLO came to power at a time of low economic growth, which later worsened with the start of the pandemic and the subsequent global economic crisis, so his government instead obtained resources for its social programs from the so-called fight against corruption and his republican austerity policies the name AMLO gave to laying off a significant number of public employees, affecting many of those working in highly precarious conditions.

In this context, AMLOs administration has from the beginning continually walked the line between the expectations and illusions of broad sectors of the masses and a program that protects essential capitalist interests. Gaining and retaining mass support both in the 2018 election and in the years since depended on its ability to differentiate itself from the legacy of neoliberalism. Hence the importance of maintaining progressive rhetoric and implementing measures that generate support among the population, such as the minimum wage increase (although it only benefited minimum-wage workers) and social programs.

This has been an essential part of AMLOs strategy. Its effectiveness in strengthening his social and electoral base had been proven during his years as head of the Mexico City government. Aspreviously discussed here,these mechanisms are used to achieve a relative expansion of certain state functions to build and strengthen hegemony and control over the masses.

The nature of AMLOs administration and the class interests it represents were not altered by these measures, contrary to the claims of those who label it a left-wing or peoples government and thus conceal its essential agenda. AMLOs popularity has been used to maintain fundamental aspects of the policies of his neoliberal predecessors. Often, only the names of these policies are changed to simulate a break with the past that has not actually occurred. Some examples include the creation of the National Guard and the more important role assigned to the Army, euphemistically referred to by AMLO as the armed people; the massive projects developed against the will of local communities, such as the Mayan Train; and the ongoing job insecurity of workers in the public and private sectors, despite the much-touted regulation of government outsourcing. Some workers in social programs have even begun to struggle against it, such as the workers of Mexico Citys Community Culture Program. AMLOs government has also failed to address other essential demands, such as the right to free, legal, and safe abortion, as femicides and violence against women increase.

AMLOs party, Morena, has thus taken on the role of administrator of the capitalist state, despite the fact that some specific measures have created friction with sectors of the upper bourgeoisie that have a less cozy relationship with the government. In most of these instances, the government decided to revise its measures to meet the demands of the capitalist class, as in the case of the outsourcing processes mentioned above, in which the administration ultimately yielded to business interests, and the plan to bring inflation under control.

It is essential to establish a clear definition of class to understand the essence of AMLOs government, taking into consideration the particular characteristics of its progressivism in its relationship with the mass movement and capital. Otherwise, one could lose ones way in implementing socialist and revolutionary politics that genuinely express the historical interest of the oppressed and exploited.

In Latin America, the attitude of governments, regimes, and political parties toward imperialist domination is decisive in defining their character. While the so-called progressive governments of Latin America have had varying degrees of autonomy (and, in some cases, a tense relationship with the White House), it is important to note that they have always respected the fundamental commitments made by previous governments in the context of national subordination such as the payment of the foreign debt and maintained their economic structures as dependent capitalist countries. This has ultimately defined the political and social character of these governments.

AMLOs government has been no different. His administration completed negotiations on the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Treaty (USMCA), the successor of NAFTA. It is the broadest dependency and semi-colonization agreement ever signed between a Latin American country and the powerful neighbor to the north, done in the framework of Trumps America First policy.

In foreign policy, the government has sought a regional leadership role, adopting a moderate progressivism and distancing itself from Washington and other imperialist governments in certain aspects. For example, it maintains a close relationship with Daz Canels government in Cuba and has experienced some diplomatic tensions with the European Parliament. More recently, it has engaged in a dispute with the U.S. government over the Summit of the Americas. AMLO made his attendance conditional on the participation of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, thus jeopardizing the outcome of a meeting that the White House considered important to its diplomatic relationships with Latin America and the Caribbean.

On crucial issues such as migration, national security, and the fight against drug trafficking, the government has aligned itself with the United States, playing a key role for Washington in relation to the rest of Latin America. On immigration, Mexico acts as a true buffer state, using its National Guard to patrol the border south of the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande) having accepted the implementation of the Stay in Mexico program to keep migrants on the Mexican side of the border. Even with some of its progressive proposals, AMLOs government rather than breaking with the U.S. administration attempts to pressure the White House and create awareness, such as by encouraging U.S. participation in the Central American social program Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life).

So, AMLOs government maintains Mexicos subordination to U.S. imperialism in economic matters and other crucial aspects, such as immigration, while never breaking with the White House on foreign policy even if it sometimes aims for some limits in the region and seeks more room for maneuvering. All this unfolds as it upholds the imperialist order of dependency and plunder of Mexico and the region.

Large sectors of the Latin American Left (particularly populists and reformists) have maintained over the past 20 years that Latin American progressives share an identity and interests with the processes of mass mobilization that preceded them. Those who support the most extreme versions of this theory claim that the mass movements came to power through these governments.

Clearly, the political shift in the region cannot be understood without considering the processes of class struggle that at different levels and to different degrees created profound crises in the regions political regimes and in the relationship between mass movements and the old ruling parties. Far from sharing an identity with them, however, the various progressive groups actually played an important role in demobilizing the masses, effectively neutralizing the regions most advanced class struggles. AMLO was no exception.

As discussed inother articles,the emergence of the movement in response to the disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa in 2014 marked the beginning of a profound organic crisis. This was expressed in the slogan that blamed the Mexican government It was the state! and the repudiation of what had for decades been Mexicos hegemonic political parties: the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), the PAN (National Action Party), and the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution), which had signed the Pact for Mexico under the auspices of former president Enrique Pea Nieto. Four years later, this profound delegitimization of the institutions of the so-called democratic transition and their political representatives led to the electoral defeat of the parties that the masses identified with the legacy of neoliberalism.

Morena was able to capitalize on this crisis. After a meteoric rise, it presented itself as opposed to the parties of the Pact for Mexico, winning the presidential elections and channeling mass social discontent into support for the changes its candidate promised. This aborted the potential for a continuation of the social mobilizations of 2014 and the movement of sectors of workers and teachers who had been the main agents of social protest throughout those years. Sectors of the Mexican bourgeoisie saw in AMLO a way out of the crisis of representation. To a certain extent, they viewed his election given the political and social circumstances as the most acceptable solution.

Since then, AMLOs government has developed Bonapartist characteristics, expressed by its position with respect to both the mass movement as well as the bourgeoisie and imperialism. These characteristics have beendiscussed extensivelyon other occasions:

AMLO benefits from a degree of popularity and institutional strength that is directly proportional to the crisis of the old parties. The new strong man of Mexico, his legitimacy and his party, which practically dominates both legislative chambers, are a guarantee of stability after decades of rule by the discredited PRI and PAN. While enjoying a broad consensus, Lpez Obrador assigned a new role to the armed forces, in keeping with his Bonapartist politics.

This process of demobilization cannot be understood without the actions of the union and social leaders who first supported AMLO as the opposition candidate and then, with greater enthusiasm, as president. From the moment it came to power, Morena has sought to strengthen its position by subordinating and aligning workers and mass organizations, including unions run by the old pro-business bureaucracy (such as the SNTE, the National Union of Education Workers) and former opponents in the Mining Workers Union and the National Union of Workers. The aim was to recreate, under new conditions, a central characteristic of the old PRI regime the subordination of mass organizations under government control while also working toward establishing trade union federations that are linked organically to the ruling party. This explains the current truce between the unions and the government, despite the attacks against some sectors of workers.

This dynamic of political cooptation has led representatives of workers and social organizations to participate in the Morena government and run as candidates on its electoral lists. These include several leaders that had been part of the movements that emerged in the last eight years. We have previously defined this phenomenon as transformism, using the term coined by Antonio Gramsci. The demobilizing role played by AMLOs government and the subordination of union and political leaderships of the mass movement have been essential characteristics of Mexican politics in recent years.

In anearlier article, we debated with some Mexican groups that call themselves socialist, including the Coordinadora Socialista Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Socialist Coordinating Committee), Izquierda Socialista (Socialist Left), and Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Left). These groups have, with different nuances, combined the slogan Not one vote for the Right with the call for a critical vote for candidates from workers and grassroots movements on the Morena lists in effect, calling for a vote for AMLOs party.

Months later, they actively involved themselves in AMLOs consultations regarding the trial of former presidents, which AMLO used to strengthen his image as an anti-neoliberal promoter of participatory democracy. He proved this to be his actual political objective when he opposed the trial and punishment of those responsible for implementing neoliberal policies. Also later, several of these organizations, along with Grupo de Accin Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Action Group), enthusiastically supported AMLOs proposed initiative to reform the electricity sector.

The reform, which was challenged by U.S. officials and attacked by the right-wing opposition (which ultimately prevented it from being approved in Congress), aimed to limit the share of private capital in the sector to 46 percent and strengthen state control, which had been weakened by a 2013 reform. It was nowhere near an attempt to nationalize the electricity sector or expropriate the imperialist multinationals and Mexican capitalists a pretense the government itself maintained from the beginning.

Despite this, the organizations mentioned above have promoted a front to defend the electricity sector reform, together with Morena, which they justified by claiming that the governments proposal was a step forward in the fight for sovereignty in the energy sector. They put forth no meaningful criticism of AMLOs policy.

Their participation in this front is no minor matter. It is not a united front with workers and grassroots organizations to advance the struggle; Morena is not a left-wing political force and does not promote class struggle. It is the opposite: a political agreement with the party that rules the country and manages capitalist interests, with a bourgeois program and politics regardless of its progressive rhetoric and its social base.

It is unsurprising that these populist and reformist forces, which have historically adapted to the progressive sectors of the bourgeoisie (first the PRD and then AMLO), have conveniently ignored this. It is clear that the political proximity of these socialists groups to populism and the pressures of government progressivism have played an important role in their gradual abandonment of a revolutionary perspective. Their participation in a front to defend AMLOs reform, led by Morena itself, constitutes a renunciation of class independence. It confirms the adaptation and subordination of these socialist organizations to the ruling party. Despite the (albeit limited) rhetoric in their publications, where they claim to favor renationalizing the sector, they cannot conceal what has effectively been the basis of their politics their membership in the front and participation in forums and actions organized with Morena to defend the governments reform.

In previous years, when they were opposition parties, some of these organizations had maintained a policy of adaptation and subordination first to the PRD and then to Morena. Since then, their political support for the ruling party has taken a qualitative leap. One predictable, but no less shameful, consequence of this is their participation in the administration of the Fourth Transformation (4T). One of the leaders of the Revolutionary Action Group, serving as general director of Clean Energies of the Federal Secretariat of Energy has become a staunch public defender of AMLOs policy an example of the transformism mentioned above. It is part of a process of political subordination to a bourgeois government and party that has culminated in their participation in it and their defense of its politics from the inside.

This brings us to the discussion of ministerialism within Marxist groups, and inevitably brings to mind the writings of Rosa Luxemburg, where she criticized the self-described socialist who sought to introduce the same social reforms as a member of the government, i.e. at the same time supporting the bourgeois State which in fact reduces his socialism (at the very best) to a bourgeois democratism or to a bourgeois workers policy. In the contemporary case addressed here, this involves defending government policy and becoming 4T socialists.

This adaptation is all the more condemnable considering that the government has been completely hostile in conflicts with workers and the masses, even resorting to repression as in recent attacks against students and teachers. These demonstrations of how the governments progressivism responds to workers struggles have not, unfortunately, altered the politics of these 4T socialists in the least.

The differences between some of AMLOs measures and those of previous PRI or PAN administrations such as the energy reform do not mean his administrations class limitations can be ignored. It is necessary to set forth a clearly independent perspective for the workers and peoples movement like the one wepropose here, and for socialists to maintain political independence.

In his writings on Mexico and Cardenismo, Trotsky maintained that during the struggle for democratic tasks, we oppose the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. The independence of the proletariat, even in the beginning of this movement, is absolutely necessary. He also stated that it was essential to maintain the independence of the organization and its program, precisely to promote that perspective within the working class. He was referring not only to independence in organizational terms, but to the political independence of revolutionary Marxists, which should be expressed in independent politics for the working class, through which we oppose the proletariat to the bourgeoisie.

The groups mentioned above have not adopted a position of political independence and fought for it in the labor movement. Far from it. They have joined a front alongside the ruling party, have become uncritical defenders of its policy and, in some cases, have even joined the transformist movement as government officials.

This adaptation and political capitulation seems to be the result of both the pressure of AMLOs progressivism and a misguided search for shortcuts in the process of growing their organizations. It is impossible, though, to connect with sectors of the masses in a revolutionary manner when you are acting as the Left wing of the 4T government.

What is needed now is to join with sectors such as the teachers, state workers, and cultural workers who have gone through experiences with AMLOs government and are fighting layoffs and government repression as well as those who are adopting critical political positions with regard to the 4T as they begin to learn and disseminate the lessons they have drawn about the limits and the true character of AMLOs progressivism. The purpose is to promote politics that are clearly independent, both from the government and from the Right.

There are no shortcuts that go through subordination to Morena and lead to revolutionary politics and organization. That path can lead only to a repeat as a new farce of the sad experiences of organizations that have previously ended up dissolving into the ranks of the PRD or into Zapatismo itself.

Building a great revolutionary socialist party requires a political orientation to the vanguard of workers and youth, sharing a common experience with them in the class struggle, and organizing it under the banner of Marxism. This means debating the politics of AMLOs progressivism and his national project, which does not challenge imperialist oppression and capitalist exploitation, and counterposing a strategy for achieving a workers and socialist revolution in Mexico and a society without exploiters or exploited. That is the perspective we in the Movement of Socialist Workers promote in the class struggle, in the political and union groups we are building together with independent workers and students, and through the international network La Izquierda Diario.

First published in Spanish on May 22 in Ideas de Izquierda Mexico.

Translation by Marisela Trevin

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AMLO's Dilemna and the Limits of the Pink Tide - Left Voice

Food, beverage and tobacco, capital goods, diversified financials, transportation and consumers services companies in Sri Lanka are enjoying increased profits while millions of workers, poor and children are in a desperate struggle to survive the worsening economic crisis. Many companies have recorded their highest-ever annual profits.

According to the recent figures, the listed companies in the above sectors have secured large increases in their combined earnings in the first quarter of 2022 on a year-to-year basis. This includes 303 percent growth in the food, beverage and tobacco sectors earnings, 210.2 percent in capital goods, 138.8 percent in diversified financials, 682.1 percent in transportation and 173.6 percent increases consumer services, compared to the same quarter of 2021.

The most diversified blue chip, Hayleys PLC, recorded an all-time high profit of 28.1 billion rupees ($US78 million) in the last financial year. It was the highest profit in the companys 144-year group history, chairman Mohan Pandithage said.

LOLC financial service group recorded a profit growth of 443.8 percent year-on-year basis to 39.3 billion rupees in the first quarter. The increase was mainly a result of its global operations.

Hatton National Bank Finance, which is involved in a range of loans and other financial services, recorded a group net profit of 515.6 million rupees for the 202122 financial year, up from a loss the previous last year. The diversified blue-chip Aitken Spence conglomerate reported a profit before tax of 14.2 billion rupees, an increase of 2.8 billion rupees from previous year. Prime Lands Residencies also posted a record before tax profit of 1,848 million rupees for the 20212022 fiscal year.

Softlogic Holdings consolidated annual revenue surged by 35 percent to 111.2 billion rupees and consolidated year-on-year gross profit increased 52 percent to 39 billion rupees. It is involved in healthcare, retail services, insurance and financial services.

The Lanka Hospitals Corporation, one of the largest of the more than 140 private hospitals in Sri Lanka, recorded a 2.8 billion-rupee turn over in the first quarter of this year. Benefiting from COVID-19, which continues to rage across the country, it was a 27 percent increase on the same period last year.

By contrast, Sri Lankas year-on-year inflation rate for May rose to 45.3 percent and food inflation to 58 percentfigures that are continuously climbing as fuel prices increase. High prices are devastating the social conditions of millions of workers, the self-employed, farmers and the poor.

The vast gulf between these huge profits and the social disaster being unleashed against the Sri Lankan masses is yet another dramatic confirmation of Karl Marxs famous observation: Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital (Section 4, Chapter 25 Capital, Volume 1).

According to a recent United Nations report, nearly 5 million Sri Lankans are living hand to mouth, forced to sell their jewellery and to borrow money in order to survive. It noted 22 percent of countrys population needs food aid and 86 percent of households have been compelled to reduce what they eat, including skipping meals. The UN also reported that 56,000 children under five suffer from severe acute malnutrition and urgently need nutrient-rich food.

An indication of the desperate conditions confronting children was revealed by doctors at Colombos Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children (LRH) who reported that 20 percent of children admitted to the facility suffered from malnutrition. These children, LRH Consultant Paediatrician Dr. Deepal Perara said, were not receiving the required quantities of carbohydrates, proteins, lipids and vitamins.

The disaster facing children was further confirmed by UNICEFs representative in Sri Lanka, Christian Skoog. He reported that nearly one in two children in the country required some form of emergency assistance, including nutrition, health care, clean drinking water, education and mental health service. Sri Lanka, he added, has the second-highest rate of acute malnutrition among children under five in South Asia and at least 17 percent of children are suffering from chronic wasting.

While Lanka Hospitals Corporation in Colombo, which is part of the islands expanding private hospital sector, is making high profits, the overall public health system is on the brink of collapse as stocks of vital medicines and medical equipment dry up.

According to the latest UN update, about 200 essential medicines are now out of stock in Sri Lanka, with predicted shortages of another 163 critical drugs over the next two to three months. Over 2,700 essential surgical items and more than 250 regular laboratory items are also out of stock.

This social calamity is a product of the capitalist profit system. From so-called independence from the British colonial rule in 1948, successive Sri Lankan governments have systematically worked to secure the profit interests of local and foreign big business at the expense of all working people and the poor.

Sri Lankas tiny capitalist elite, and the governments that serve it, regard the state-owned sector as their own private assets, demanding and receiving bail outs and concessions paid for by increased exploitation and social attacks on the working class.

There is no solution to burning issues confronting the massesthe shortages and skyrocketing prices of essentials like food, fuel and cooking gaswithin the capitalist system and national borders.

The only way for the working class to secure its essential needs is to take the production and distribution out of the hands of the capitalists. Inventories must be made of these resources and the wealth of the ruling elite seized by the working class and redistributed on the basis of social need.

Sri Lankan workers, who demonstrated their political and industrial strength in powerful general strikes against the Rajapakse government on April 28, May 6, and May 10 should review the political lessons of this struggle and the treacherous role played by the unions.

During the two-month popular anti-government uprising, the trade unions systematically blocked any independent intervention of the working class against Rajapakse government, and its brutal attacks on social and democratic rights. The unions do not represent the working class but defend the profit system, functioning as industrial police force on behalf of the government and employers.

As the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) has explained, the working class must take matters into its own hands. This requires the formation of independent action committees at every factory, workplace, plantations and neighbourhoods in opposition to all parties of the bourgeois political establishment and trade unions.

Rallying all sections of the working class, the rural poor and youths, these action committees need to fight for a government of workers and peasants based on socialist policies as part of broader struggle for socialism in South Asia and internationally.

We urge all WSWS readers to register for the Socialist Equality Partys online public meeting at 4 p.m., on Sunday, July 3 to discuss this perspective.

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Sri Lankan corporations reap large profits as workers and rural toilers face poverty and starvation - WSWS

Socialism, like Christianity, is a faith that lives in waiting. I think of all the enslaved people and abolitionists who lived and worked for a future of liberation, and yet died long before that liberation ever came. Millions of us have dreamed of a bright tomorrow that is yet to come. And when were honest with ourselves, when were not out trying to inspire others, we can admit that tomorrow is still many nights away.

This is the Waiting Place.

for people just waiting.Waiting for a train to goor a bus to come, or a plane to goor the mail to come, or the rain to goor the phone to ring, or the snow to snowor the waiting around for a Yes or Noor waiting for their hair to grow.Everyone is just waiting.Waiting for the fish to biteor waiting for the wind to fly a kiteor waiting around for Friday nightor waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jakeor a pot to boil, or a Better Breakor a string of pearls, or a pair of pantsor a wig with curls, or Another Chance.Everyone is just waiting.

from Oh the Places Youll Go by Dr. Seuss

When I joined the Democratic Socialists of America in 2017, just after Trump entered office, times were dark. But it really did seem like a brighter future was just around the corner. We still had Bernie. And even after Bernie lost, there were the uprisings in the summer of 2020, when we watched the people burn down a police station, and marchedBlack and whitein every state. In the streets, we sometimes felt like we were as powerful as we would need to be. It turns out we werent.

It turns out that the Right will almost certainly ascend in the midterm elections, and the Democrats are once again poised to lose the presidency. DSAs membership has stopped growing for the last several months. Sunrise Movement co-founder William Lawrence writes that the organization was founded on the idea that there would be a window of federal opportunity to combat climate change in 2021; that window has closed for the moment. From the vantage of March 2022, white Christian nationalism looks more viable than multiracial social democracy in this decade.

I think about a sermon my friend Liz Smith gave about Advent and the waiting place in the Christian liturgical tradition. Advent in the dark weeks of winter is a kind of waiting. Waiting for Jesus to be born. And yet by April hell be killed again. And then were set for another year of waiting.

This is a little like the cycles of campaigns. A thing is born. We roar into the world like lions. And maybe we even win something. We celebrate. But then the energy is gone and we get ready to birth something and watch it die all over again.

In these moments, I am grateful for the movement elders, the old socialists who lived through the rise and fall of the New Left, who endured neoliberalization and Reagan, who survived AIDS (but whose comrades did not). And all that time, they kept the flame alive so that a bunch of us, fresh and arrogant, could make the world bloom in roses again for a time.

It is no surprise to me, therefore, that in the Americas, many of the fights for liberation have not taken the form of class-conscious movements, but rather, of religious rebellions (see Cedric Robinsons Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition). From the prophecies of Tecumseh, to the slave conspiracies of Haiti fueled by African spirituality that survived the crossing, to the Black Christianity that undergirded the general strike of the slaves and the Civil Rights Movementthe defining American uprisings were founded on a spiritual logic. At its best, the confidence in theory that inspired the certainty of orthodox Marxism merely emulated the conviction of the faithful in the coming of justice.

It is a measure of this magic which seems, at times, to be missing from the version of the Left typified by DSA. The mainstream orientation of DSA was both a product of Occupy Wall Street, and a critique of it. We saw the birth and death of that movement, and thought that if we had enough structure and rigorousness, that we could build something that could not die.

This is why it is so important for us to study thinkers like adrienne maree brown. Like DSA, browns writing exists as both a product and a critique of Occupy. But where we moved to embrace order, brown took a different approach. She embraced the cycle of life and death of movements, likening the process to the renewals of cycles in nature:

Transformation doesnt happen in a linear way, at least not one we can always track. It happens in cycles, convergences, explosions. If we release the framework of failure, we can realize that we are in iterative cycles, and we can keep asking ourselveshow do I learn from this?

Abandoning the language of failure, a movement that decays is like an organism returning to the soil, leaving a residue in it that can lead to new growth in the spring. browns is a theory that embraces the logic of spirituality, and places sometimes ineffable wisdom at the center of strategy. Viewed from this perspective, perhaps pieces, chapters and formations of the movement are dying, or perhaps it is more accurate to say, they are entering winter and awaiting their next rebirth.

These lessons in resiliency are beginning to spread. Pete Davis book Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing is a meditation on what he calls long-haul heroism. He celebrates, especially in organizing, the feats accomplished by people who simply kept at it. People who put in the spadework of years, of a hundred meetings, and not just the heroic moments of climactic confrontation:

The heroes of the Counterculture of Commitment, long-haul heroesthrough day-in, day-out, year-in, year-out workbecome the dramatic events themselves. The dragons that stand in their way are the everyday boredom and distraction and uncertainty that threaten sustained commitment. And their big moments look a lot less like sword-waving and a lot more like gardening.

Its this kind of work to which we must turn our attention. We must be profoundly gentle with each other, we must be diligent, humble and patient. We must fight with fervor against burnout, and invest in the strategies that will allow people to continue to fight for socialism over the very long term. That might mean prioritizing fewer campaigns over a longer time period, embedding ourselves in community institutions through many years of consistently showing up, and most of all, developing a culture where consistency, kindness and humility are the signs of militancy, rather than urgency, abrasiveness and certainty.

More than once this week, I have had to revive a comrade whose spirit was crushed under the weight of waiting. Ive turned to this poem, born of a spiritual tradition, which was written to commemorate the assassination of the Socialist Salvadoran priest scar Romero in 1980:

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,it is even beyond our vision.We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fractionof the magnificent enterprise that is Gods work.Nothing we do is complete,which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.No statement says all that could be said.No prayer fully expresses our faith.No confession brings perfection.No pastoral visit brings wholeness.No program accomplishes the Churchs mission.No set of goals and objectives includes everything.This is what we are about.We plant the seeds that one day will grow.We water seeds already planted,knowing that they hold future promise.We lay foundations that will need further development.We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.We cannot do everything,and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.This enables us to do something,and to do it very well.It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,We may never see the end results,but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.We are workers, not master builders;ministers, not messiahs.We are prophets of a future that is not our own.

We may have to wait before the time is right to win a revolution, but it will be an active waiting, a time spent making the path ready, training up the next generation, and winning immediate fights to survive until our time comes.

Photo byKlara KulikovaonUnsplash.

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Keeping the Faith: Socialism in the Waiting Place Current Affairs - Current Affairs