This issue again focuses on international issues connected with the major changes that are underway in the world at the moment- the changing relations of US imperialism with the former ‘Communist’ bloc and the oppressed peoples of the Global South. This finds primary expression in both the resurgent genocide in the Gaza Strip and Palestine generally, and with the crisis of NATO as revealed by Trump’s election and the falling out between the US and Europe over Ukraine. The lead article addresses the genocide in Palestine and the genocidal attacks in Syria by Western/Zionist-armed and -funded jihadists against ethnic/religious groups considered to be supportive of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ that defends the Palestinians. We note that with Trump’s presidency, even the credible pretence that US imperialism can be pressured to rein in Israel has come to an end – it is now clear to all that to defeat the genocide it will be necessary for Israel and US imperialism to be defeated by the masses and/or armed anti-imperialist opponents. That is now posed point blank.

At the same time, the Ukraine issue has led to be most overt clash between European and US imperialism in history, with the Trump administration visibly backing away from NATO, and the British, French and German bourgeoisie’s posturing ferociously about how they will supposedly fill the gap and continue the war in Ukraine. Their attempt at rearmament – with conscription mooted – for war with Russia is irrational, preposterous and economically ruinous for the European working class, who are likely to revolt against a new wave to severe austerity which we are already seeing in Britain with numerous benefit cuts that are literally being undertaken to fund Ukrainian Nazis, as well as military aid to Zionism. The lead article addresses all this and more.

The back page article is about the attacks on democratic rights from the Starmer regime that is simply the result of its criminal support for the genocide in Palestine. It cannot reply to the facts about the slaughter of the Palestinian population that are widely known and despised, despite the severe self-censorship of the Zionised British media. So it is persecuting journalists and activists – there is a long list. This article addresses this at length.

We have several other important articles in this issue, including articles translated from our Latin American co-thinkers, on the recent German Elections, which saw the collapse of the ‘Traffic Light’ coalition of the Social-Democrats, Liberals and Greens, mainly the result of Germany’s major economic decline caused by the fervent support of this bourgeois coalition for the imperialist proxy war in Ukraine.

We have also a thoughtful article on Deepseek, the Chinese AI bot, and its advanced nature which was a major shock to US imperialism’s complacent assumption that it was ahead of China in hi-tech development. This has been falsified by events and constitutes yet another major blow to US hegemony.

We have an article from our co-thinkers in Argentina on the attacks on pensioners, and the repression against them, by the reactionary government of Javier Milei, a confrontation that looks like the harbinger of much larger struggles erupting against this far right regime.

And finally, we republish the Open Letter of the Partisan Defence Committee (PDC) in defence of Lucy Letby, the Cheshire nurse who was jailed for many alleged murders of newborn, premature babies at a hospital in Cheshire. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the evidence against her does not stand up, and that she was herself a scapegoat for numerous failings of the underfunded, grossly neglected NHS, which neoliberal governments, Tory and Labour, have been involved in stealth wrecking operations against for decades. We commend the PDC, which is a class-struggle defence organisation initiated by the Spartacist League, for raising this issue and campaigning about it.

Starmer steals from disabled for Nazi Ukraine and Israel!

Trump’s sickening proposal last month for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza to make way for a ‘Riviera’ owned by the United States, set the scene. Then for over a fortnight Netanyahu with Trump’s backing jointly deprived Gaza of food, water and fuel and making no bones about openly embarking on mass starvation, freezing and dehydration of Palestinians. This was obviously setting the scene for the resumption of the mass extermination bombings that wiped out up to a half-a-million Gazans earlier. On 17^th March the mass terror bombings resumed with the bloodiest day of the genocide so far, with over 400 butchered in one night, many burned alive in their tents.

The ceasefire agreed by Israel and touted by Trump was openly blown away by Israel with Trump’s full support. The lesson for Russia over Ukraine is clear – Trump’s word is worthless. This ceasefire never got beyond the first phase of exchanges of batches of 3-6 Israeli hostages for hundreds of Palestinians from Israel’s torture and rape camps. Predictably, it was massively broken by Israel, as 60,000 mobile homes were supposed to be supplied to the demolished, wrecked Gaza strip along with 200,000 tents. The actual implementation of this was negligible except with tents – now being burned.

The total blockade of all aid, food and water with the open support of Trump made a sick joke of any second phase. The crime underway now is identical to that announced by former Israeli ‘defence’ minister Yoav Gallant on 8^th October 2023: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” Trump gave Israel the green light for this latest genocide and has hinted that he intends to do the same with the West Bank. Israeli repression has mushroomed in the West Bank. The stooge Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas has taken it in turns with the Israelis to attack particularly Jenin, a prime target for the Gaza-fication of the West Bank. Hospitals and infrastructure are now under similar attacks in the West Bank as in Gaza.

This was always the objective of the Zionists, of course. And now Trump, an open genocidaire on the Palestinian question, is in the White House, the whole game of seeking to pressure the US to pressure Israel, which persisted when “Genocide Joe” Biden was in White House, has come to an end. Trump has made clear that he considers Palestinians subhuman – he even uses the word “Palestinian” as a racial epithet akin to “n****r” or “n****r-lover” as he did against the Jewish-Zionist Democratic Party politician Chuck Schumer recently for not being prepared to openly support his genocidal agenda.  With Trump in office, both Israel and the US will have to be defeated militarily in some way, by the masses and/or a superior military force to have a hope of stopping the genocide.

Trump says that that US would ‘buy’ Gaza – from who?! – and forcibly deport the Palestinian population that lives there somewhere else! So that they can have a ‘Riviera’ for the wealthy. This plan was mooted by Trump’s Jewish-Zionist son-in-law, Kushner, last year. Trump’s real aim in saying this is transparently to steal, either for the US, or Israel – or both – the oil and gas reserves that have been found off the Gaza coast in the past decade or so.

There’s nothing novel about “hell” in Gaza – all that has happened now is that both Trump and Netanyahu are openly saying that “Genocide is good”, not even bothering to deny it.  The total exposure of US imperialism and Israel will detonate some kind of explosion in the surrounding countries, but it is difficult to be sure what that will be. There is even talk of war against Israel by all surrounding states including Egypt and Jordan, but don’t hold your breath about that – they could be pushed into it by mass rage but there are all kind of variants possible.

So far, the only force confronting Israel and the US once again on the Palestinians’ behalf is Ansarallah in Yemen. In the background is Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraqi radicals such as Kataib Hezbollah, and Iran itself. They are at least steadfast in their defiance of Zionism and imperialism, but they suffered a severe blow, at least in the short-term, with the overthrow of Assad in Syria at the end of 2024. The route of communication between Iran and its allies in Lebanon, as well as the erstwhile if shaky support of the Assad regime itself, have now been replaced by a genocidal regime of Sunni-sectarian killers directing their rage against non-Sunnis and non-sectarian, secular or leftist/working class Arab and Muslim forces, while also groveling to the genocidal Zionists themselves. The US is already hitting Yemen in response to their solidarity with the Palestinians – Iran is also a target for the imperialists as previously. It will take deep-going political and social struggles, mobilizing the masses against the reactionary social forces that are shaken but are digging in very hard, to transform this situation. What is needed is both the emergence of a new communist leadership among the Arab and Muslim masses, and the creation of an anti-imperialist united front of all those in conflict with the Zionists, the US and their agents.

Syria is now under the rule of Western-backed Al Qaeda/ISIS genocidaires, thinly disguised as so called HTS (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham – Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant) who have characteristically, since the Assad regime collapsed before it and its Turkish and Zionist backers in December, launched a massive slaughter of thousands from Syria’s Alawite Shi’a and Christian minorities, also killing Sunnis who refuse to cooperate with the slaughter. Resistance is building up in the West of Syria against the pro-Zionist stooge Jolani/Al Shara’a regime. Israel is protecting the HTS from this insurgency, which appears to be initially based on former Assad forces and others seeking to stop a sectarian genocide. So, there is a potential giant Lebanon-type quagmire building up there for Israel, a much bigger one.

In the mind of Trump, who regarding Middle Eastern questions is basically a political agent of Likud, Israel’s main ruling party, Israel expelling the Gaza population, and the US doing so, are pretty much the same thing. It is piracy, and a motive for genocide. Trump is open about his intentions to steal natural resources of territories he covets and makes no bones about it. During his first term he openly boasted that US troops in Syria, who were sent in by Obama in 2014 supposedly to fight ISIS – were there to steal Syria’s oil for the United States.

His policies in Ukraine appear superficially different, but the underlying motive is similar. His demand that Ukraine sign over ownership of their natural resource of $500 billion worth of rare earth metals as ‘reparation’ for the aid that Biden gave to Ukraine is just naked theft. Except the problem is that most of this resource is apparently in the Donbass, which is part of Russia now. In part, he is upset at Biden’s policy in Ukraine because Biden gave away aid to Ukraine gratis. He says that US aid should have been a loan, as most of the EU’s aid was and is.

NATO in Chaos

The explosion of the Ukraine issue, particularly with Zelensky’s confrontation with Trump and his Vice-President Vance on 28^th February in the Oval Office, has come close to tearing NATO apart. Trump’s changed strategic priorities have caused chaotic and unexpected developments within NATO. It has teetered on the brink of collapse over the past few weeks, as Trump’s changed priorities, his refusal to unconditionally support Zelensky, and his dialogue with Putin and Russia, have sent the West European bourgeoisie, particularly the British and the French, into paroxysms of rage and warmongering.  Trump’s proposed 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine was in part a product of the maneuvering around his coercion of Zelensky to sign away mineral rights.

What Trump and Zelensky came up with was a variant of the previous Minsk agreement deceptions Russia had previously been burned by. It was hardly hidden – the truce being commenced; the US would restore military and economic aid to Ukraine that Trump had suspended in the aftermath of the confrontation in the Oval Office. This in the context where Russia has virtually driven Ukraine out from its diversionary incursion into Kursk, in undisputed Russian territory, and has been rapidly advancing in the Donbass.

Putin made a perfunctory show of welcoming the idea of a ceasefire but made it clear that Russia would expect such a pause to mean a route to a permanent solution, not a revamped Minsk, a pretext for the West to rearm the far-right Maidan regime for more atrocities. Such a solution would mean the recognition of Crimea as Russian, and likewise recognition of the four oblasts that have already voted in referenda to join Russia – Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.  And likely similar proper referenda of the populations of Kharkov and Odessa, where atrocities against the Russian and Russophone populations have also been committed by the Maidan regime and its far- right militias. The eviction from power of the Nazified elements, the acceptance of Ukrainian neutrality and non-NATO status, and a dramatic curtailment of the Ukrainian armed forces, that have been built up by NATO to pose a potent threat to the population of the Russians-speaking oblasts – this appears to be the Russian objective in negotiations. These have a clear democratic content and should be at least critically supported by genuine socialists. Because of that, they are anathema to the West European bourgeoisies, and they are the main reason why there is such a hysterical, barely hidden hostility to Trump’s position on Ukraine from the ruling classes of those countries.

The position that the Trump administration has de-facto adopted over Ukraine is only half-a-break from the policy of the Biden administration. Instead of simply arming Ukraine to wage the proxy war, they now threaten to continue Biden’s policy if Putin does not agree to their proposal for a settlement. But this is not convincing, as they do not have the resources to continue such a proxy war against Russia indefinitely.  Trump regards China, not Russia, as the US’s most strategic adversary, as it is on course to surpass the US in economic power in the immediate future. Much of its economic power derives from capitalism overlaid by economic planning, whose origin was in the Chinese revolution – i.e. beyond capitalism. Unlike in Russia, planning in China has continuity and has never been even temporarily broken – China’s powerful billionaire bourgeois class notwithstanding. That is a crucial difference between China and Russia.

So, while we see a tactical softening of US treatment of Russia from the Trump administration, this is not true of China. Instead, we see open hatred of “Communist China” – using the kind of Cold War rhetoric the Trump administration also uses against its domestic opponents, including the imperialist Democrats who it incredibly refers to as “far left Marxists” and the like.  Much of Trump’s seeming sympathy for Russia, which causes apoplexy to the liberal imperialists, is driven by the aim of setting Russia against China. Though this is an unlikely scenario, as there is also a visceral imperialist hostility to Russia that, though Trump may have set it to one side for tactical reasons, still runs deep among the imperialist bourgeoisie. At the summits of the Russian state, which is bound up with a stunted variation of capitalism that is heavily deformed by many decades of post-capitalist economic development, which Russia’s weak bourgeoisie cannot conjure away, they have had their fingers badly burned by this issue already, via imperialist duplicity concerning NATO expansion. They are aware of the enmity of the West enough to understand Trump’s motives. His enmity to BRICS and threats of tariffs against it have a similar basis.

The strategic/tactical differences in NATO are severe. The European imperialist powers are spitting rage against Trump for ‘betraying’ Ukraine and whipping up hysteria. We have never witnessed such a falling out of Europe with the United States before. The ruling classes of West Europe have become used to being Washington’s clients, over all the decades since World War II. And suddenly Washington has woken up the fact that it is no longer hegemonic. That does not mean that it has lost all its power. But it has lost in Ukraine. Trump’s policy is a response to this – a temporary retreat to reconsolidate US rule in the Western hemisphere in the short term.  With the aim of a later reconquest of that hegemony in the medium term. The European powers are not used to being treated with such contempt. When not publicly raging, they are dealing with it through gritted teeth.

European Imperialist rage and hysteria

This hysteria engulfs both Britain, outside the EU, and France and Germany, and smaller powers like Holland, within the EU. The hostility is resulting in anti-democratic actions that overlap with the Cold War with Russia, but which also encompass bourgeois forces located in former workers states such as Eastern Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia and Romania, which are either annexed components of the imperialist state of Germany,  ex-workers state members of the EU, or clients outside it seeking to join it, such as Serbia. Attempts to organize Maidan-style ‘colour revolutions’ appear to be underway in Hungary and Serbia, and to be in preparation in Slovakia. We don’t have any regard for the pro-Zionist right-wing, anti-migrant government of Victor Orban in Hungary, and even less for the very right-wing popular presidential candidate in Romania, Călin Georgescu, who approves of the pro-Nazi wartime ruler of Romania, General Antonescu. We certainly don’t have any sympathy for the Alternative für Deutschland in (mainly) Eastern Germany, either – it is very right wing, implicitly Nazi, and yet hostile to the Ukraine proxy war. The AfD however also has a left-wing complement/ counterpart in the ASW of Sara Wagenknecht, who also opposes the proxy war from more of a leftist standpoint and appears to have been deprived of a presence in the Bundestag by electoral machinations from the ruling class parties.

What is significant though is that all these are hostile to the imperialist proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.  In Hungary a ‘colour revolution’ is being whipped up by the EU, as is also true in Serbia. An attempt was made, undoubtedly by the same forces, last May, to murder Robert Fico, the leftist Prime Minister of Slovakia, who is also critical of the Ukraine proxy war. The government of Serbia, politically alike to that of Slovakia in some ways, is also threatened with an EU-incited colour revolution. Irrespective of whether these political forces are to the right or left in formal terms, what is happening is that a degree of popular resistance to the NATO proxy war is being expressed through them. These forces are diffuse, some rightist, some leftist, but all express popular unease in former workers states at being drawn into an imperialist war, which could become a European or world-wide nuclear conflict, against Russia. So, we condemn all these attempted coups, assassinations and other atrocities in all these countries which are aimed at dragooning these populations into war with Russia. While some of these forces represent various forms of spontaneous left and right populism, and some have grotesque and unsavoury politics, they are at their very worst not to be equated with the Ukrainian Nazis who under NATO command, are simply continuing what their forebears did on the Eastern front, then under the command of imperialism itself.

Starmer’s British government is threatening to send troops to Ukraine as so-called ‘peacekeepers’, and the French government is bigging-up its status as a power with a nuclear arsenal, the “Force de Frappe” (“strike force”) independent of United States control, unlike the British Trident-based system.  This because Trump has refused to back any West European armed intervention in Ukraine, or consequences of such in terms of blowback against any NATO member involving itself in such armed action, ruling out US assistance under NATO’s Article 5 mutual assistance clause. Without that NATO ceases to be an effective alliance at all. The contradiction is that, for Starmer at least, a British intervention is not feasible without US backing, a so-called ‘backstop’. Though the hysteria in the ruling class over this has led to various bourgeois figures – military officers and politicians of various stripes, to raise the idea of conscripting the population to wage a war against Russia.

Also in this context, French President Macron rushed to promote France’s supposed capacity to take the place of the US in putting Western and Central Europe under its nuclear umbrella for supposed ‘defence’ against Russia. Germany under its new Christian Democratic Chancellor Merz, though, ruled out any German participation in any such Ukraine expedition without Russian consent, probably more out of fear of the AfD than for any other reason. But other virulent NATO imperialist lackey states such as Poland immediately piped up and said that they would like French nuclear weapons hosted on their soil, and Lithuania, whose body politic is even more polluted with Nazi sympathies than Ukraine, expressed the hope that NATO nuclear weapons would be hosted on its soil.

It is very clear that it is not Russia that is remotely threatening to send its troops to menace Britain, France or Germany. It is Britain and France who are, so far verbally, screaming against Russia and openly proposing to send troops to menace Russia in Ukraine, just off its South-Western border. Which opens the vista of an aggressive European war in Eastern Europe waged by Britain and France, overseen by the European Union under the tutelage of the President of the European Commission, the right-wing German politician Ursula von der Leyen, who has been a major driver of anti-Russian hysteria, warmongering and attacks on democratic rights in the EU for several years now.

There is a wave of pathetic military jingoism coming from the decrepit British ruling class, which under Johnson, Truss, Sunak and now Starmer, has been the most virulently militaristic over Ukraine. Which leads straight to a threat of conscription here, to send troops to Ukraine. The renewed austerity is in good measure being driven by the Starmer regime’s commitment to the crusade against Russia for the Nazis in Ukraine. Starmer recently signed a ‘partnership’ to aid Ukraine for 100 years! To finance this, and billions of pounds worth of other promises to Ukraine in terms of military and other expenditure, he has cut ‘foreign aid’ to numerous places. The fiscally driven attack on the disabled through cuts in the Personal Independence Payment that the Starmer government has proposed, is also transparently driven by its military aid to Ukraine against its own Russian-speaking population, as well as its continuing military aid to Israel for its genocide. It is, in terms of what has been projected in the media, more brutal than George Osbourne’s Tory attacks of more than a decade ago. It also looks like it has begun to catalyse the beginning of a revolt at the base of the Labour Party, which has put Starmer in political trouble.

Political fluidity and Opportunities for Left Advance

We are now in a remarkable situation where politics is extremely fluid, and the ruling classes are targeting repression against the potential that palpably exists for political resistance to cohere. The blatant attacks on Palestine protesters in the United States is one facet of that – the Mahmoud Khailil case, of a Green Card holder being detained and threatened with deportation for protesting against a genocide, is the ultimate outrage and obscenity. But it is also sign of weakness and fear from the Zionists, as are the acts of repression in Britain (see our article on page 16).  There is huge political anger over the Zionist genocide, which has been true for the entire period of Israel’s slaughter, beginning in October 2023. Up to now, there has been a division of consciousness between a widespread understanding of the barbarity of Zionism, and a lack of understanding and/or a nervousness of many politicised people concerning the proxy war in Ukraine. But a division of the ruling class, as the Trump-induced crisis in NATO, appears to have broken the log-jam. This is reflected among some activists on the left. A whole layer of bureaucratic forces who were pro-Zelensky liberals in socialist garb, centering around the former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, have with the Trump crisis in NATO, become much more virulent. Some were already known to be hysterical Russophobes and backers of NATO’’s warmongering, but others were much cagier and preferred to stay in the closet.

They have suddenly become much more outspoken and jingoistic, as NATO itself came under threat of a split and disintegration. But they have also met much stronger and numerous opposition to them, many of whom had in previous political debates been reticent in speaking out in defence of Russia, given the demonization and hysteria against Putin, etc. But not so much now! Defence of Russia in this war is a key principled position of authentic communists. When coupled with militant support for the Palestinian struggle against genocide, against oppression, and for national liberation and full equality, these are key elements of the communist programme today. We need for a broader layer of the left to campaign for actions of the working class to combat these manifold wars and genocides, including political strikes and similar mass actions. 

We, who have been outspoken defenders of Russia in this proxy war since the early days of Maidan, have noticed a gradual drift leftwards among the more serious left on this question, and there are grounds for optimism that this process is deepening. We seek the regroupment of subjectively revolutionary aspiring communists and revolutionary socialists in a new international communist movement, a new Communist International, and there are reasons to be optimistic that more opportunities are opening up for such a regroupment to make progress. We need both to create an expanded communist movement, and a force that can intervene both in electoral terms in front of the working class, and give leadership in anti-war actions, strikes and other class struggles, to give our class revolutionary leadership in the struggles to come.

The genocide in Palestine is fuelling a major attack on democratic rights and civil liberties in the Western countries, including Britain. Here, the Starmer government is involved in up to its neck, sending weapons all the way through the 16 months of slaughter in Gaza, and sharing ‘intelligence’ with the genocidal Israeli forces that have undoubtedly killed hundreds of thousands of Gaza people, mainly women and children. Trump himself gave it away when he talked, during his tirade calling for Palestinians to leave Gaza so that it can be turned into a ‘Riviera’, of 1.8 million people supposedly having to leave Gaza. Gaza’s population before the current genocide was 2.3 million. That means that the new US administration considers that Israel has already killed half a million Palestinians over the period since 7^th October 2023. That is the biggest genocidal slaughter since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. And it clearly has not finished yet.

Starmer endorsed that slaughter from the beginning. He defended the speech of Yoav Gallant, then Israeli defence minister, who said on 8^th October 2023 that Israel was fighting ‘human animals” in Gaza, would “act accordingly” and allow them “no electricity, no food, no water, no gas”. Some pointed out that the Nazis, in their death camps, did not generally seek to deprive victims of water since it led to such a rapid death by dehydration. Gallant, along with Netanyahu has as is well known, has been issued with an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity because of these very actions. But as is also well known, when Starmer the genocidaire (a.k.a. “Der Stűrmer”) was interviewed shortly after Gallant’s speech by Nick Ferrari on LBC, he defended Israel’s “right” to carry out these genocidal measures against the Palestinian people. So Starmer, and his cohorts, are deeply complicit in the crimes against humanity that Netanyahu and Gallant have already been indicted for.

Of course, we as Marxists have no confidence in hypocritical bourgeois institutions like the International Criminal Court, and the UN’s judicial arm, the International Court of Justice. We know full well that they are usually used to indict those who the imperialists want to dispose of in the Global South, or the leaders of workers states etc. The latest victim being former president Dutuerte of the Philippines, whose crimes are a small fraction of those of the Zionists – his real crime is not being a Western puppet. But with the genocide in Gaza, the first live-streamed genocide in history, the mass popular reaction worldwide was of such magnitude that it could not be ignored. The indictments of Netanyahu and Gallant were the product of such enormous worldwide mass pressure and all those involved are terrified of the mass movement. That is the overriding reason for the attacks on democratic rights here – the pro-Zionist political class here, reflecting the politics of the ruling class, is terrified of this mass movement and looking for ways to limit it and defeat it.

On top of the usual divide and rule tactics of the ruling class, over whose rights are being promoted over those of others in their hierarchy of bigotry, we get the constant erosion of civil liberties, a great danger to the left, the working-class movement and all victims of capitalism.

“Freedom of speech” is supposed to be an important indicator of any democratic system of government, but laws against “hate speech”, originally sold as protecting the oppressed and victims of racism, are turned into the opposite. Suppressing freedom of expression by modifying ‘permissible’ language and vocabulary – like the BBC hacks who object to ‘genocide’ being used because it is ‘emotive’. The regime of Zionist supporters and lackeys we live under is systematically cracking down, with fraudulent charges, against those who denounce the genocide they are participants in. So, in the name of supposedly defending the rights of Jews to freedom of worship, demonstrations outside the state broadcaster, which actively promotes propaganda that excuses and hides the genocide, are being banned by the state. Thus, we had the arrest of Chris Nineham and Ben Jamal, leading activists of the Stop the War Coalition and Palestine Solidarity Campaign, in an obvious piece of police malfeasance, lying and duplicity on 18^th January in Trafalgar Square. This after the National Palestine Solidarity march had been banned from assembling in Portland Place, near the BBC Headquarters, on the transparent pretext that in a backstreet half-a-kilometre away there is a synagogue that none of the marchers have the slightest interest in and most were unaware of even. Its perfectly obvious that the order for this act of police fraud so blatant that, if it is repeated in court, would amount to flagrant perjury, came from the pro-genocide racist gangsters at the top of the government, Starmer, and his Home Secretary Cooper.

Cowardly Zionists and their Racist Fantasies.

These far-right fraudsters are typical of cowardly Zionists. They don’t dare to openly admit the racist hatred of Palestinians that drives them. They pretend that they are ‘concerned’ because Jewish people are supposedly worried and threatened by large groups of supporters of Palestinian rights assembling in London. But they are simply lying. Jewish left-wingers are being arrested and abused by cops acting on the orders of genocidal criminal politicians, alongside non-Jewish socialists and anti-racists. All kind of activists are being picked up. The Zionist zealots in the government and the police force are equal opportunity thugs and terrorists – they abuse people of any background who oppose their genocide. The list of Palestine supporters who have been abused and arrested on the orders of these racist scum is long and illustrious, and worth spelling out.

Absurdly also, the proscription of the political wings of Hamas and Hezbollah, both of whose radicalism is rooted in different trends within Islam, Sunni and Shia, have resulted in many unlikely people being accused of being supportive of these movements. Of course, you don’t need to be sympathetic to such religious views to understand the issue. You just need to share the understanding of Karl Marx, that in such terrible situations, religion becomes “the sigh of the oppressed creature” and “the heart of a heartless world”, to understand why so many of the world’s most oppressed people, targeted by genocide for three quarters of a century, embrace religious radicalism.

The phoney smears of anti-Semitism are becoming a laughing-stock. How can they not be when an 80-year-old survivor of the Nazi holocaust, Stephen Kapos, is interviewed by the police for a supposed breach of a directive under the Public Order Act that claims to have been motivated by some desire to protect Jewish people at synagogues from non-existent anti-Semitic harassment? The allegations of Islamist ‘terrorism’ are equally surreal. There are the ridiculous allegations that a Jewish leftist, with decades of political activity like Tony Greenstein is supposedly a supporter of Hamas, which he is to face trial for in January 2026. This is about as likely as the Pope converting to Zen Buddhism, or Charles III announcing that he is seeking a sex-change.

It is right to mock the morons responsible for such rubbish, but the attacks on democratic rights that flow from these scams are deadly serious. There is a long list. Aside from those already mentioned, a wide range of leading activists have been preposterously accused of giving support to ‘terrorism’ by these racist degenerates. Or supposedly being a danger to ‘public order’ and a threat to Jews.  The former leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, and his one-time Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, were questioned by the police under caution after the Met Police’s perjurious stunt in Trafalgar Square, which was captured on film several times – the cops waved through marchers who wanted to lay wreaths to murdered Gazan children in Trafalgar Square, only to arrest leaders like Chris Nineham of those who did so.

As well as Tony Greenstein, a whole range of people have been arrested, in some cases charged, had their phones and electronic devices confiscated on the basis of mendacious smears of either anti-Semitism, support for terrorism, or similar outlandish nonsense. These include Asa Winstanley of The Electronic Intifada, whose electronics were stolen by the police last October in a ridiculous 5am fishing expedition that seems to have resulted in no charges. This is transparently because he writes about Palestine and Zionist crimes and hence has the enmity of Zionist gangsters.

The same thing happened to prolific pro-Palestinian writer Sarah Wilkinson a few weeks earlier, when 12 anti-terrorism cops raided her home, stole her electronics, her passport and even her mother’s ashes. They seized her and took her on a frightening journey when at one point she even suspected she had been kidnapped by criminals posing as police – deliberate, sadistic terror tactics. She was bailed to be supposedly ‘investigated’ later, but it’s clear that whatever the cops have in mind, it is thought and opinion that is being persecuted and has nothing to do with any terrorism.

A Lengthening List of the Framed and Abused by Der Stűrmer

 The list of those either detained under so-called ‘anti-terrorism’ laws for activities that have nothing to do with terrorism is getting longer and longer. Other victims include well-known activists such anti-Zionist academic David Miller, detained as he returned from covering Nasrallah’s funeral in Lebanon as a journalist. As months earlier was journalist Richard Medhurst, initially detained at a British airport, and later accused by Austrian police of being a Hamas member, which ought to give rise to suspicion of drug use by the cops, so ridiculous is the supposition. Natalie Strecker, an activist in Jersey, was likewise arrested in Jersey, where the local press gave her sympathetic coverage – almost unknown elsewhere in the UK.

Richard Barnard, a leading figure in the direct-action group Palestine Action, also faces three fanciful charges of supporting Hamas. At least Palestine Action, whose tactics of mobilising direct action against companies, some Israeli, involved in producing weapons for Israel have resulted in defeats for the Zionist killer machine in Britain. The Filton 18 are political prisoners in that cause today. But those politicians responsible are hard put to equate destroying weaponry used to kill children with ‘terrorism’. Juries have on a number of occasions acquitted those accused of such direct actions, which is what has led corrupt politicians on both sides of the Tory-Labour divide to interfere with jury trials, trying to nobble juries with restrictions on what those accused are allowed to say in their defence.

The current obsession, using online AI and metadata tools to pursue vendettas against individuals, groups, professions and even whole nationalities using the weaponisation of spurious ‘hate speech’, resulted in the expulsion of many thousands from the Labour Party, during the Corbyn period and afterwards. But Starmer as PM is seeking to enforce the same scam on society as a whole.

We see independent journalists arrested at airports (thereby losing their individual rights as journalists to refuse to answer questions as well as to protect their sources) to identify their contacts on all their electronic devices. High profile people are targeted by the authorities, and their freedom to associate with causes they freely support threatened to browbeat the masses into complying with the state’s determination to outlaw solidarity itself. The criminalisation of effective protest movements, from climate change to antiwar movements is more and more exposing that the state is there to defend profit.

The increasing use of police powers to hold without charge, to impose onerous bail conditions to amount to a sentence before trial – the right to a speedy trial being denied. Delaying tactics in bringing people to trial, and the substitution of magistrate courts instead of trial by jury by the shutting of courts. Ever-expanding delays of trial dates have meant that people who are summoned for interviews, allowed to go without charge only to be later arrested for crimes which bear little or no resemblance to the circumstances and events that happened, have results in severe health and financial outcomes, even when the victims have been completely exonerated. Like the lawfare carried out against Jeremy Corbyn, only to drop the case at the last minute knowing that it would result in unequal financial costs to the defendant relative to the litigant.

The Zionisation of the police is turning the clock back to the 1970s and 1980s in terms of open police racism. One recalls the days when the cops rampaged through Broadwater Farm beating truncheons on their riot shields chanting “come on n****rs” (though they came up one short).  Zionist thuggery is bringing those days back. The recent charges against Waseem Yusuf in Tower Hamlets on charges of ‘assault’ is a case in point. The cops were filmed repeatedly last year repeatedly punching him in the face for carrying a Palestinian flag. Independent film evidence showed this was clearly unprovoked police brutality, and there was a major public scandal. MP’s demanded explanations; the IOPC was called in. But now the story has fallen out of the media, the victim of assault is turned into an alleged assailant of the police by lying, racist prosecutors and corrupt cops. These are increasingly common actions of the police, the judicial system and the ruling class, a serious attack on basic democratic norms, replacing them with unlawful imprisonment and attempts to nobble the jury system by far-right bigots in high office. Democratic rights are under concerted attack, and Zionism and Zionists should be considered a dangerous threat to our democratic rights. And not just in the United States – Starmer’s government shares all the anti-democratic, racist politics of Donald Trump in its hatred of Palestinian people and anyone who champions them against the monsters who are trying to wipe them out.

No to the repression of popular struggles!

On March 12, the mobilization of the retired enjoyed growing popular support (which extended to solidarity with retired people from supporters of football clubs) and became the focal point of the growing intensity of social resistance to Milei’s austerity policies. Now, the workers’ struggles, which had been gradually growing in scale, are taking a leap forward, forcing the principal administrative body of the class struggle in Argentina (the General Confederation of Labor) to announce a general strike on April 10. The Association of State Workers (ATE) also called for a national strike on March 27, including a mobilization to the Ministry of Deregulation and Transformation of the State.

In Córdoba, the CGT Regional Córdoba, the CGT Histórica, the CTA, and the CTA Autónoma are protesting. The exact date of the strike will be set next Monday, March 17, during a coordination meeting at the same location. They are now calling not only to denounce the repression of March 12 and Milei’s justice policies, but also the complicity of the provincial governments, which, by yielding to Milei’s mafia-like extortion methods through their management of the budget and national treasury funds, have guaranteed Milei’s governability through a significant portion of the governors, through the influence of their provincial deputies and senators in Congress. They have been refusing to vote against the adjustment decrees or advancing the impeachment proceedings, as they did after the cryptogate scam.

The March 12 crackdown left more than 120 people arrested and at least 45 injured, including photojournalist Pablo Grillo, who suffered a skull fracture from the impact of a tear gas canister and underwent emergency surgery.

“In response to this incident, the Association of Photojournalists of the Argentine Republic (ARGRA) and other union, political, and social organizations organized rallies and marches in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, specifically on the corner where Grillo was attacked. There, a press conference was held with the participation of the Buenos Aires Press Union (SiPreBA), which has been supporting the photographer’s family. The general secretary of the Argentine Federation of Press Workers (FATPREN), Carla Gaudensi, was also present.”  https://enfoquesindical.org/articulo/noticias/periodistas-de-todo-el-pais-se-movilizaron-en-apoyo-a-pablo-grillo-y-contra-la

The National University Trade Union Front will hold a strike next Monday and Tuesday demanding salary and budget increases.

Following the repression of the retired people’s march on Wednesday, March 12, there were pot-banging protests in various parts of the federal capital and greater Buenos Aires against the repression itself.

“The protest began with a cacerolazo in different parts of the country, but in the City of Buenos Aires it turned into a spontaneous mobilization, which covered several streets and reached the Government headquarters.”  https://www.iprofesional.com/politica/424259-tras-el-cacerolazo-cientos-de-personas-marcharon-a-plaza-de-mayo

For the next retired people’s march on Wednesday, March 19, they are preparing to show solidarity and march alongside the retired themselves, unions, human rights organizations, etc.

The Milei government is seeking to arrive in the best possible conditions for the mid-term elections in October of this year. It must be said that for Milei (and in general for all the so-called libertarians who presented themselves as outsiders to the political system with a strong component of “virtuality” in “militancy” of the so-called social networks, etc.), being defeated in their first electoral test would mean a hard blow, much greater than what it would represent for a “traditional” type of bourgeois government.

It is in this context that we are facing the end of an economic cycle with growing losses of central bank reserves, flight of speculative capital, falls in the stock market, etc. Where inflation, and especially inflation relative to the basic food basket, is rising again, and Milei’s government is showing its desperation for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund as a survival measure. In a situation where Milei’s economic policy was reduced to exchange rate “stability,” which is now beginning to erode, as a measure to stem rampant inflation, it is in this situation of confusion within the Milei government that, within the ruling party, currently in power, the “La Libertad Avanza” government, the March 12 congressional session between the Libertarian deputies ended in internal clashes, even physical confrontations.

Faced with a context where class struggle is on the rise, Milei’s adjustment government and his party are confused, the economic cycle is tending to run out of steam, and Milei’s own accomplices outside the Libertarians (such as a whole group of provincial governments) are being questioned.

The task of vanguard workers is to take advantage of these growing contradictions within the capitalist class and the deepening of working-class struggles to guide workers themselves beyond the limits that bureaucratic leaderships are trying to impose on them.

[Note: this letter from the ICL Comrades is in reply the Letter from LCFI to ICL(FI) (‘new Spartacists’) which we sent to them on 1st October 2024. Its an interesting response, obviously critical, which we will respond to as soon as possible.

In the interest of furthering this debate, and allowing easy access to the materials, we have added a new Debates and Discussions item to the menu for this site, containing a new page for the debate with the ICL comrades.]

Letter to the LCFI on Key Questions for Revolutionaries

By Vincent David, 7 March 2025

Dear comrades of the LCFI,

Thank you for your lengthy letter. We were quite impressed by how closely you have studied the trajectory of our tendency and its recent reorientation and we appreciate very much the thought and seriousness you have put into it. We too strongly believe in the need for more debates and discussions among tendencies with the aim of either regroupment or clarifying disagreements over key political questions.

We are glad that our change of position regarding Palestine and the anti-imperialist united front has brought us closer. We note that many points quoted in your letter from your draft program regarding the Shachtmanite baggage of our founding cadre is correct. We do, however, disagree with your assessment that Shachtmanism was the “basis for the cultist evolution/degeneration of the Spartacists under Robertson’s leadership from the 1970s onwards.” The Spartacist tendency did face serious political deformation at birth partly because of its Shachtmanite baggage. And the Spartacist tendency did face important political problems in the 1980s, which included, at times, a harsh internal regime and demagogic fights. But to understand why, we must look at the changing world situation at the time of the “New Cold War,” and our difficulty in orienting ourselves in it. And despite all these problems, our tendency threw everything it had into the struggle against capitalist counterrevolution in the DDR and the USSR while almost the entire left capitulated to this. Thus, to merely brand our tendency a “cult” does not explain anything, and is an equally apolitical and superficial explanation as that offered by the BT.

That said, this is not the subject on which we want to focus this letter or future discussions. Rather, we would like to focus on our disagreements over some key questions facing the revolutionary movement today which you raise in your letter. Thus, we will not respond to everything and will seek to center our debate over the role of Trotskyists today. We believe our central disagreement determining all the others is over the role of Marxists in the current period and the need for a revolutionary party. I will first try to lay this out and then respond to some of the specific issues you raise.

The Fundamental Issue

A reading of the LCFI program, your recent articles and your letters to us reveal not only differences in program and positions but also a difference in approach and method toward politics. The essence of our reorientation consisted in reasserting that the fundamental role of Marxists is to guide the working class in its struggles and provide it with a Marxist strategy for victory—from the most minimal struggles in the workplace all the way to the fight for power. In the words of the Communist Manifesto:

“The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.”

The duty of Marxists is to clarify to the workers what needs to be done, what is the “line of march” and, crucially, what stands in the way of it. In all struggles the main obstacle to pushing forward the class is its non-revolutionary leaders—be they social democrats, nationalists, liberals, etc.—whose embrace of various bourgeois ideologies sabotages and leads to defeat the movements of workers and oppressed peoples. Thus, it is only in the struggle against the nonrevolutionary tendencies at the helm of the oppressed that the communists can really be the “most advanced and resolute section” of the proletariat, “which pushes forward all others.” And it is only in counterposing a Marxist strategy based on a clear understanding of the conditions of struggle that the communists can win the leadership of large masses and conduct the struggle against the bourgeoisie to success.

This contrasts with the LCFI, which, in our opinion, views the role of Marxists as defending orthodoxy and abstract formulas divorced from the concrete conditions of struggles. For example, the Draft Programme of the LCFI, aside from the “historical background” section, consists of a long commentary on the application (or non-application) of specific demands of the Transitional Program to today. It does not aim at developing an understanding of the world situation now, of the leaders and forces standing in the way of the working class or what are the tasks of Marxists in the current period. Rather, it compares in a literary fashion certain demands crafted in 1938 and reflects on their potential application 87 years later.

As a result, the LCFI views its role not as building an authentic Marxist wing in the existing movement but rather as pushing other forces considered to be “progressive” at a given juncture. Thus, your critical or military support to various forces—whether they be the Russian army, the Axis of Resistance, Corbyn, etc.—ends up being your “line” rather than being a component partsubordinated to the broader aim of achieving communist leadership in the movement. In other words, it appears to us that the subjective factor—the intervention of the communists fighting for a different strategy than that offered by non-revolutionary forces—plays no decisive role in your politics, which necessarily leads you to adapt and capitulate to existing non-revolutionary forces.

In your letter, you note in passing the following:

“We consider your point about the domination of the post-Soviet world by imperialist liberalism under an enhanced US imperialist world hegemony, and of there being a failure of the international left to oppose this liberalism, looking instead for inter-imperialist rivalry (which did not materialise after the collapse of the USSR) to be a worthwhile insight.”

More than a “worthwhile insight,” this is the key to explaining the current turmoil on the world stage as well as the crisis of the left in the post-Soviet period. The expansion of U.S. capital over virtually the entire globe following the destruction of the USSR proceeded in the name of liberalism, an ideology which penetrated the left and the upper layers of the workers movement. In Britain, this was best expressed with Blairism. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s up until recently, while the working class was being pummeled by the rulers in the name of liberal principles and values, the Marxist left, far from opposing liberalism, positioned itself as its most radical and “consistent” wing. In many ways, the historic crisis of the left, and of the Trotskyist movement more specifically, amounts to a capitulation to U.S. imperialism.

Now, we are entering a new historical era characterized by the decline of U.S. hegemony. Growing layers of the imperialist ruling classes represented by Trump, Farage, Le Pen and Co. are breaking with liberal values and institutions, which they see as a hindrance to shoring up their declining position. Since the radical left has become indistinguishable from the liberal middle and upper class, workers have turned their backs on the left and are looking to right-wing reaction and “anti-woke” demagogy as the alternative to the unbearable status quo. Meanwhile, many on the left continue to cling to these discredited liberal politics and institutions.

And this is precisely the political content of large parts of the LCFI letter to us. A substantial part of it is dedicated to denouncing our opposition to the European Union and to lockdowns during the pandemic—two causes célèbres of all liberals which the working class hates. Another part is essentially a defense of the liquidation of the Marxist left into Corbynism—which played a huge role in pushing masses of workers into the arms of Boris Johnson and Reform UK. What we will demonstrate in more depth is that, in our view, the central problem of the LCFI is that it capitulates to liberal ideology in the West, and capitulates to nationalist and Islamist forces and regimes in countries oppressed by imperialism. While these two things might appear mutually exclusive, in fact their common denominator is the rejection of the subjective factor—the need to build a communist pole in the various movements of the oppressed—in favor of a policy of tailing non-communist forces who are supposedly playing a “progressive” role. But let us flesh this out by going through some of the questions you raise.

Palestine/Israel and 7 October

As already mentioned, we are glad that our change of line has gotten us closer politically over the nature of the Israel/Palestine war and we are happy to leave to the BT and the IG the historic heritage of Spartacism on this question. While our tendency now places itself completely on the side of the liberation of the Palestinian people against the Zionist state, our main axis of intervention in the West has been to fight against the pro-imperialist leaders and trade union bureaucrats who are sabotaging the movement. You are already aware of the slogan we raised in the pro-Palestinian movement in Britain: “Dump Starmer to defend Palestine.” Regarding our perspectives in Palestine itself, our aim is to build a communist pole from within the Palestinian resistance movement in opposition to the nationalist strategy and current leaders. However, the criticism in your letter seems to be directed against this very aim.

You attack our 10 October 2023 leaflet, particularly its opening sentences which say:

“Let’s get two things straight. First, Palestinians face brutal national oppression and indiscriminate murder by the state of Israel—they have every right to defend themselves, including through force. Second, the targeted murder of Israeli civilians by Hamas and its allies is a despicable crime which is totally counterproductive for Palestinian liberation.”

You believe the second point to be “inaccurate, wrong” and “reads like a reactionary attack” on Hamas. Furthermore, you disagree with our explanation that:

“The entire Hamas strategy is to provoke a strong Israeli reaction, effectively strapping a suicide vest on all of Gaza. It is necessary to unequivocally stand in defense of Gaza against the bloody retaliation by Israel while at the same time opposing this disastrous strategy….”

And that:

“…If socialists do not fight for a revolutionary solution to the conflict, the growing desperation of the Palestinian people will be channelled once more into the arms of Islamist reaction while Jews are pushed deeper into the arms of Zionism. This carnival of reaction will not stay within the borders of Israel and Palestine but will spread far and wide over the Middle East and the world. It is the urgent task of socialists to break this cycle.”

You argue that “this is not an accurate rendition of the strategy of Hamas at all and is predicated on the view that their objective on 7 October was a mass slaughter of Israelis,” that we “slipped into demonisation” and that we are equating “oppressor and oppressed.” In counterposition, you quote the BT’s analysis of 7 October, which we found to be conciliatory to Hamas, as their main criticism is that they should have done more to prevent non-combatants from leaving Gaza and committing atrocities. For the LCFI, Hamas’s goal on 7 October “was to seize hostages to be traded for the many Palestinians Israel has been arbitrarily holding, torturing and abusing for many years,” as stated in Communist Fight.

In our view, the above statements in our 10 October leaflet are unobjectionable from the standpoint of Marxists. It is undeniable that the Al-Qassam brigade, while engaging the IDF on 7 October, also carried out indiscriminate murders of civilians in kibbutzim, at the Nova festival and elsewhere. We will not go into detail on what exactly happened on that day. But while it is true that the IDF did murder many civilians with the Hannibal directive, and while it is also true that many Gazans who followed Hamas’s fighters committed murders, there are countless accounts, video footage and analyses which do show that Hamas fighters did carry out large numbers of killings against unarmed civilians, numbering in the hundreds. We have never said that this was the explicit goal of 7 October. Yet, it did happen, and the BT’s analysis, as well as yours, is bending the truth and ends up covering for Hamas’s actions, many of which are indefensible for Marxists. The fact that the BT’s lengthy analysis of 7 October contains only one small mention of the Nova festival (in passing, and in a quote from someone else) says a lot.

It is not true that the goal of 7 October was only the capture of hostages. The operation was carefully planned to shock the entire Israeli society, send a message of strength in counterposition to the Palestinian Authority and shatter the status quo in the region after the Abraham accords. They did aim to take hostages, but this was subordinated to broader goals. Hamas knew full well that the Al-Aqsa Flood was not going to defeat the IDF, and they knew very well that Israel’s response would be brutal against the entire Gaza strip (although they did underestimate the genocidal frenzy which followed). Their strategy consisted in sending a shock wave which they knew would provoke a war, hoping that Israel’s retaliation would force the Arab and Muslim regimes (Iran, notably) and the international community to intervene, and, in this way, place the Palestinian question back on the international agenda. It is quite obvious that this is not a Marxist strategy, but a variation of the classic nationalist strategy pursued before by the PLO, which aims at confronting Israeli society as a whole—army and civilians alike—while placing its hopes on treacherous Muslim regimes and the international community.

Marxists have always denounced the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Not out of some pacifist or humanist stance, but because it undermines the liberation struggle. The indiscriminate killing of civilians hampers the building of unity with workers in the oppressor nation and, whatever military gains might be won through such acts, its results always end up turning against the movement. Indeed, the consequence of 7 October has been to weld the Israeli population together with its fanatic leaders, making it easier for them to present themselves as the defenders of Jews and to whip up the genocidal frenzy which followed.

Of course, the responsibility for this is on the Israeli ruling class and its brutal oppression of the Palestinians. And of course, the onus for building unity with the oppressed falls first and foremost onto workers in the oppressor nation and their duty to unconditionally defend the Palestinians against the Zionist war machine. Yet, the oppressed also have a duty to conduct the struggle in a manner which always seeks to build unity with workers of the oppressor nation— something alien to Hamas’s strategy and which 7 October obviously rendered much more difficult. Not to speak of the fact that the massacres of civilians also hampered the unity among the oppressed themselves, making the mobilization in defense of Palestine more difficult particularly (but not only) among Jews. So, while on 7 October Hamas did break the despicable Gaza fence and did deliver solid blows to the IDF—surely progressive acts—they also carried out actions which were completely indefensible and counterproductive to the Palestinian cause.

I am sure you are familiar with the saying that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” This applies to Hamas, just like any other armed force. Hamas is an Islamic resistance movement allied with the Iranian regime. Its frame of reference is Islam, and its method of struggle is the unity of Muslims against Israel. This is not a mere abstract point. It means that the military strategy of Hamas—that is, how they organize and lead the war against Israel—will necessarily reflect this outlook. While Hamas does claim to oppose the killing of civilians, and does say that their fight is against Zionism, not Judaism, Hamas remains a religious and nationalist movement, which means they will necessarily organize the struggle along religious and national lines, not along revolutionary and class struggle ones. It is impossible to divorce Operation Al-Aqsa Flood from this broader understanding.

“War is the continuation of politics by other means” also applies to the IDF. The main ideological pillar of the Zionists is to present the Israeli state as the only force which will defend Jewish lives and prevent another holocaust. The lesson Zionists drew from WWII is that European Jews let themselves be massacred without a fight and Israel now exists to prevent this from happening again—and if it means wiping out another people in the process, so be it. It is this, together with U.S. imperialism’s support, which gives to the Zionist state such an aggressive and murderous character, as well as a formidable ability to weld its working class to its rulers in the face of external threat. This is why any strategy which seeks to militarily confront Israeli society as a whole will face an entire people in arms, ready to die fighting.

Rather, to defeat the Zionist state, it is necessary to first seek to undermine its key ideological and economic pillars, aiming at breaking the largest possible section of Israelis, particularly Israeli workers, from Zionism. This does not negate the armed struggle. But it means that the armed struggle must be waged as part of an anti-imperialist and class struggle strategy, extending not only to Israel but to the entire region. This is obviously not the program of Hamas and is a path which has always been rejected by the official leadership of the Palestinian forces. Whether it is Hamas today or the PLO yesterday, their strategy always ends up putting their alliance with treacherous Arab and Muslim regimes above the interests of the masses of the region, while their methods of struggle only reinforce the Zionists’ strongest claims.

Therefore, it is ridiculous for the BT to write (and for you to endorse) that the only mistake of Hamas on 7 October was to have failed to properly guard the breached Gaza fence! The entire operation was prepared and carried out along the lines of a nationalist strategy. The role of Marxists is not to make vague and timeless criticisms of Hamas while justifying every single one of their concrete actions. Of course, Marxists must take an unconditional side with the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli state. It would be the worst treachery to refuse to do so because we disagree with Hamas. However, as we wrote, it is necessary to take part in the struggle while at the same time opposing the strategy of the Islamists. We must seek every opportunity to demonstrate to the masses how their strategy hampers the struggle in countless ways and show concretely how a Marxist one is superior. How else are Marxists going to break Palestinian fighters from Hamas, or any other existing forces? How is Marxism supposed to become a force in the Palestinian liberation movement if the Marxists keep lawyering for the strategy of the nationalists? This is essentially what the BT article and the LCFI end up doing.

As for the argument comparing 7 October to Nat Turner’s slave uprising in the U.S., it might be useful against arrogant Zionists who blame Hamas for everything, but it is less useful in a serious discussion over what strategy to free Palestine. Despite the undeniable heroism of Nat Turner and the slave uprising, slavery in the U.S. was abolished as a result of the Civil War, a social revolution led by the (then progressive) Northern bourgeoisie and the Union army—in which 200,000 black soldiers fought—which crushed the slavocracy. The comparison with Nat Turner (or the Jewish uprising in Warsaw in 1943, which is also often raised in a similar way) aims to argue that our sympathies must go to the oppressed. Yes, of course. But the oppressed also need a strategy to actually win their liberation. And those analogies are of little help for this purpose.

We are open to discussing whether our 10 October leaflet made tactical mistakes. However, for us, this is a tactical discussion over how best to put forward our opposition to Hamas’s political strategy from within the liberation movement. But your criticisms are not on this terrain, but rather attack the very idea that Marxists must oppose Hamas’s political and military strategy, which is, for us, simply a liquidation of the communist banner.

We certainly have broader disagreements on the Palestine/Israel question, which would be worth elaborating on. In particular, we must note that we disagree with your analysis that the support of Israel by Western powers is supposedly due to a disproportionate representation of Jews in the ruling classes of the West. Many have accused you of anti-Semitism because of this. While we do not share this conclusion, it is obvious why it would generate such a reaction, particularly among Jewish people who support Palestine. This “theory,” which is nothing new and has been heard countless times before on the left (and the right) draws an equal sign between Zionism and Judaism. Furthermore, while there is some truth that, in the U.S. for example, Jewish people are over-represented in the middle and upper classes (in proportion to their numbers in the general population), to believe that this is the driving factor behind U.S. support to Israel is completely false and disorienting. It downplays the strategic importance of Israel for the U.S. imperialist rulers, who remain overwhelmingly Protestant and, quite often, anti-Semitic. Such theory also offers a “Marxist” cover for anti-Semitic appetites which do exist in the pro-Palestinian movement, and it appears to us that, in the name of drawing a hard line against Zionism, it has led you in certain instances to conciliate such backwardness.

On the European Union and Brexit

Surely, our approach to the European Union (EU) and Brexit is one of our most fundamental disagreements. You believe that our support for Brexit is the result of a capitulation on our part to the right-wing bourgeoisie and reactionary elements (what you label “imperialist separatism”). We believe this is wrong and we found your entire argumentation to be a capitulation to the liberal, pro-EU wing of the ruling class.

It is true that, as you say, “imperialist-nationalist hostility to pan-national imperialist blocs, such as the European Union, is not progressive in the least.” Indeed, the small wing of the British bourgeoisie who wanted out of the EU did so for its own reactionary and predatory interests. However, this is only one aspect of the question. The majority of the British bourgeoisie supported “remain” also for its own reactionary interests.

But if “leave” or “remain” were tied to two wings of the ruling class, why should Marxists support “leave”? Why not abstain? The EU is an imperialist trade bloc whose purpose is to squeeze Eastern and Southern Europe as well as all workers of the continent for the benefit mainly of German, French and British imperialism—and crucially the U.S., who is the main imperialist master behind this cartel. So, in 2016, when the British public was asked “Do you want to remain part of this imperialist cartel or not?”, the only principled position for revolutionaries was to vote “leave,” while at the same time opposing the reactionary interests of the wing of the ruling class backing this option. Voting “remain” meant direct support to the status quo, i.e. to the imperialist EU. Abstaining also meant capitulating to the EU, since what was posed in the referendum was support or opposition to this imperialist cartel. But the LCFI, in the name of opposing UKIP and reactionary pro-Brexit forces, denounces voting “leave,” which only amounts to a capitulation to the majority of the liberal imperialist ruling class in Britain and Europe.

To understand this better, it is important to look at the context. The 2016 Brexit referendum and its aftermath deeply polarized British society on reactionary lines, and a central task of Marxists was to cut through this polarization. On the one hand, support for the EU was associated by the liberal upper and middle class with “anti-racism,” “internationalism,” “social justice” and other so-called progressive values. In this way, the bulk of the left, starting with Jeremy Corbyn, as well as many trade union leaders and large layers of immigrant-derived workers, were dragged into a campaign to support the imperialist EU, together with the majority of the British ruling class and the City of London, the Blairites, the Lib Dems and a wing of the Tories.

On the other hand, the campaign to leave the EU was indeed led by reactionaries, mainly on an anti-immigrant basis. But they were able to tap into and channel the anger and resentment of large layers of the working class, particularly in the North of England and other areas that had been devastated by globalization, deindustrialization and austerity—attacks carried out in the name of lofty liberal principles and “European integration.” For millions of working people, the EU was rightly associated with Blairism, privatization, factory closures and, yes, mass immigration, which was brought in in increasing numbers starting under Blair for the purpose of further depressing living standards. So, for millions, the 2016 referendum became a referendum on the status quo. The surprise victory of “leave” saw the liberals unleash one of the most disgusting campaigns of demonization, slandering working-class communities who had voted “leave” as a bunch of “backward” and “ignorant” idiots for not following the advice of the “enlightened” liberal bourgeoisie. This was the basis for the campaign for a second referendum, i.e. “you did not get it right in the first one.”

Unsurprisingly, none of this is mentioned in your argumentation. Rather, you go so far as to argue that “there is no way to give such a campaign [against the EU] a ‘class axis’, and attempting to do so led the SL/B to confessedly give political support to the Conservative Party and to sound like UKIP.” This is false and demagogic. We did subsequently correct certain formulations around the debate over the exit deals, which tended to imply that our comrades would support a reactionary Tory exit deal. But what you are arguing here is that opposing the EU is against the interests of the working class and that doing so inherently makes you a racist. This is literally the dominant ideology of the European ruling classes, and the very same liberal poison which was thrown at millions of working-class people who voted “leave.”

The task of Marxists around Brexit was surely to combat Farage, Johnson and the “little England” British imperialists. But the only way to do this was to take a strong stance against the EU (i.e. for “leave”) and against the pro-EU liberal wing of the bourgeoisie. While Farage, Johnson and Co. were pursuing their own reactionary interests, the working class in Britain had (and still has) its own interests in opposing the EU, as part of opposing the entire trans-Atlantic imperialist framework. The task was to build a “leave” campaign on an internationalist and antiimperialist basis. Contrary to your claim, this was perfectly possible, and it could have changed the trajectory of this country in a fundamental manner. Rather, it was a complete betrayal for Corbyn to support “remain” and then campaign for a second referendum (despite his lifelong opposition to the EU), something he did only to please the Blairites in the Labour Party. This, more than anything else, contributed to his downfall and pushed millions of working people away from Labour and the left more generally and into the arms of Farage and Johnson, who were given a golden opportunity to present themselves as the only ones opposing the London establishment and the status quo.

Your entire argumentation, at the time and also in your letter to us, amounts to a capitulation to the liberal wing of the ruling class in the name of fighting the right. A 2017 editorial in Socialist Fight goes so far as to argue:

“Brexit essentially won by its appeal to national chauvinism and blaming immigrants. And even though those who wanted a left exit, the Lexiteers, were totally opposed to this outcome the victory of Trump reinforced those reactionary sentiments in sections of the working class. We must fight this reaction before it engulfs the whole class, via parliament or a second referendum or whatever. This may enrage the right wing but we must make our political stance against this by all means.” [our emphasis]

The call for a “second referendum” was precisely that of the Blairites, the liberals and all sorts of reactionaries like Alastair Campbell’s “People’s vote” campaign who wanted to nullify the first referendum and keep Britain in the EU. Far from stopping the right wing, such openly antidemocratic calls gave it even more momentum. It is a complete betrayal on the part of the LCFI to have supported this and an open capitulation to the EU.

Opposition to the EU (or its predecessor, the EEC) used to be a given among Marxists until the 1990s. Yes, Tony Benn and Co. did oppose the EU on a “little England” nationalist basis. But you are wrong to say that this was marginal. There existed a broad understanding in the working class movement of Britain and Europe that the EEC was an anti-Soviet, anti-working-class club of bankers. What changed in the 1990s is precisely that the left and upper echelons of the trade union movement embraced liberal ideology. This can even be precisely dated, with the 1988 speech of French Socialist Party leader and President of the European Commission Jacques Delors at the TUC Congress. In this speech, Delors was able to sell the EU to the trade union bureaucracy by giving it the veneer of a “social Europe” which would defend workers’ rights, a lie which has since been used to co-opt the leadership of the workers movement and the left into supporting a reactionary imperialist trade bloc. Opposition to the EU was ceded to right-wing elements, which were able to attract growing numbers of workers throughout Europe. This explains in large part why in Italy, Germany, France and other countries, historic bastions of support to communist and socialist parties have shifted toward the far right.

Your attempt at using Trotsky’s text on the “United States of Europe” to oppose Brexit is of the same nature as Jacques Delors’s use of “social Europe” to defend the EU, i.e. providing a left cover for imperialism. This text has been used before by other leftists to justify support to the EU. Trotsky wrote it in 1923, a few years after the October Revolution and when the European continent was being torn apart by inter-imperialist rivalries, the Versailles treaty, balkanized by war and tariff barriers and not yet under U.S. domination. At the time, the struggle for the United States of Europe, which Trotsky always coupled with the demand for “workers and peasants governments,” meant a fight against all the imperialist ruling classes of the continent. Since 1923, however, WWII has devastated Europe, and the U.S. has asserted hegemony over its Western part with hundreds of thousands of soldiers. The EEC was set up explicitly under the aegis of the U.S. as a bloc to confront the USSR, i.e. as the economic wing of NATO.

Particularly as regards the Cold War, your assertion that there has never been anything progressive in opposing the EEC is totally reactionary. As is your assertion that Jim Robertson’s opposition to the EEC was driven by some “American chauvinism.” The masters of Western Europe were and remain to this day the American imperialists. Our tendency’s historic opposition to the EEC was always driven first and foremost by our defense of the USSR against imperialism.

In fact, Lenin himself predicted the founding of the EEC/EU in his 1915 text “On the Slogan for a United States of Europe” when he explained:

“Of course, temporary agreements are possible between capitalists and between states. In this sense a United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists…but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe, of jointly protecting colonial booty against Japan and America.”

This is an accurate description of what took place after WWII, with the caveat that the EEC was set up not against the U.S. but under its leadership.

After the destruction of the Soviet Union, the EEC, now rebranded EU, was used to push through privatizations, destroy working-class gains and trade unions and squeeze oppressed countries (Greece being the most famous example) while expanding German, French, British (and U.S.!) capital and influence over the former Soviet republics in the Baltic and Eastern Europe, all the way to the borders of Russia. The EU, together with NATO, have always functioned and still function in tandem and are a crucial pillar of U.S. hegemony in Europe. The entire working class of the continent, in the oppressed countries like Greece, but also in the imperialist centers, has a direct interest in opposing the EU—including by using referendums over the membership of particular countries.

All to say that it is absurd to quote Trotsky in 1923 and his call for a United States of Europe as some sort of argument to oppose Brexit! Your use of Trotsky fraudulently presents the EU as some sort of step toward a Socialist Europe. Today, the slogan for the United States of Europe is progressive only if it is coupled with a clear opposition to the European Union and coupled with a call for social revolutions. Otherwise, it is nothing but a defense of the imperialist status quo.

Your argumentation on this question is quite striking. In the year 2025, many liberals are themselves realizing how their own positions paved the way for the right. Even radical-liberal commentator Ash Sarkar now admits she got it wrong on Brexit. We find the LCFI’s doubling down on this to be a complete capitulation to liberalism and to U.S. imperialism.

Corbyn and the Labour Party

Before moving on to the pandemic, it is worth addressing your criticism of our 2021 SL/B conference document regarding Corbyn and the Labour Party.

To get something off the table, while our 2021 document did not explicitly codify it, we have ever rejected entryism in the Labour Party. At the time, the SL/B did have members in Labour, and it is obvious that entryism inside Labour was absolutely needed during the Corbyn period. But this was not our central problem. Rather, it was our entire political orientation and program. You describe our attitude back then as “sectarian abstentionism.” Our approach was rather a balancing act between a lot of sectarianism, yes, but also opportunism toward Corbyn. Like many others on the left, we started by being quite jubilant over Corbyn, to then turn our back on him, declaring that Labourism could only betray, incapable of drawing any lessons. This is not so different from the RCP, whose recent turn is essentially the same type of flip-flop.

You make a great deal about the fact that most of our internal discussions have centered on combatting adaptations to Corbynism and not what you perceived to be our supposed softness towards Farage and the Tories. The problem of the SL/B was not that our comrades wanted to support racist reactionary politicians. Rather, our problem, like the rest of the left, was rooted in an incapacity to combat Corbynism and expose it in a Marxist manner. This is what was at the root of our initial opportunism, but also our sectarian abstentionism. Capitulating to Corbynism and drawing no lesson from this experience is also what has plagued the whole British Marxist left, all the way to today. So, yes, our conference focused on this crucial question. The fact that you find this odd and surprising tells us much more about the LCFI than about our supposed deviations.

The task of revolutionaries during the Corbyn period was to join and build a united front with Corbyn against the Blairites. But what was crucial—and missed by all so-called Marxists—wasthe need to demonstrate, through the united front, that Corbyn and the politics of left Labourism more generally were the obstacle to the struggle against the Blairites. It was Corbyn’s constant crawling to the right wing which was the central factor paralyzing his millions of supporters. Instead, the far left liquidated into the united front, leaving the fight against the Blairites entirely in the hands of the Corbynistas with the disastrous result we all know. And it is because no one on the left has drawn this lesson that Corbyn is still viewed as the spiritual leader of the left, even though his complete failure is obvious to all. But it appears that it is precisely this conclusion you attack.

This is most clearly seen in your defense of a point which repeatedly appeared in Workers Hammer at the time (and which our conference criticized): “driving the Blairites out [of Labour] would mean a step toward the proletariat no longer being subordinated politically to the bourgeoisie.” We repudiated this formulation because it is simply false from a Marxist standpoint. The Labour Party without the right wing would not be a revolutionary party. This does not mean that revolutionaries do not advocate throwing the Blairites out of Labour (as we did and as our conference document reasserts, contrary to your claim). However, revolutionaries raise such calls in order to expose the left Labourites’ spinelessness. Here is what our conference document actually explains:

“It is inherent in Labour that the left wing conciliates the right, and it is perfectly appropriate to expose the left when it chooses unity over its ‘principles’. The point of revolutionaries raising calls such as ‘Drive the Blairites out’ and ‘Drive out the SDP fifth column’ (Spartacist Britain no 52, September 1983) is to show concretely how the programme of left Labourism necessarily leads to conciliation and capitulation. Our aim is to expose the left Labourites, not pressure them to have better politics (‘make the lefts fight’). In 1982-83 we wanted to ‘put the Benn/Meacher Labour “lefts” in power where they can best be exposed before the workers!’” (Spartacist Britain no 52, our emphasis)

Again, the point here is quite similar to the one we made earlier in this letter regarding the Palestinian question and Hamas. Revolutionaries had to put forward their own strategy to defeat the right wing of Labour in order to demonstrate to all how Corbynism and left Labourism are completely impotent in leading the struggle for the most burning issues of the day. The task of Marxists was not to make abstract and timeless criticisms of Corbyn’s reformism. Everyone can do this. It was to demonstrate how his reformism was an obstacle in the struggle at hand.

Furthermore, you are entirely wrong to equate Brexit with the right-wing shift that followed. What united all the Blairites was support to the EU. While it is true that most Corbyn supporters were Remainers, the central reason for this is that Corbyn himself, despite opposing the EU all his life, campaigned for “remain” in order to avoid a split with the Blairites. Matters would have been different if Corbyn had stood up to the Blairites from the beginning and led a left-wing “leave” campaign. In fact, doing so would have been much more efficient toward kicking the Blairites out. It would have forced a confrontation with them when they were weak, and pushed them to openly side with David Cameron, Tony Blair, the Lib Dems and the rest of the hated and discredited establishment. This would also have contributed to boosting Corbyn’s popularity among large layers of workers, undercut the appeal of UKIP among them and might have convinced many young people at the base of Labour that it was perfectly possible to oppose the EU on a progressive basis. Instead, Corbyn’s support for “remain” was his first act of conciliation toward the Blairites, and the first step in paralyzing the movement behind him.

Indeed, the “chicken coup” was sparked by the Blairite right after the Brexit referendum because Corbyn had not campaigned with enough enthusiasm for the EU, and because he had declared that popular will had to be respected and that Article 50 had to be triggered, i.e. Brexit had to happen. This is what drove the Blairites insane and led to the coup. Campaigning for the EU only compromised Corbyn and made the fight against the Blairites much harder. As the Blairites were lifting their heads in 2018-19, they successfully imposed their position on Corbyn who had nowbecome utterly paralyzed and impotent, standing in the 2019 general election as the candidate for a second referendum. This is what contributed more than anything to the downfall of Corbyn and gave a resounding victory to Boris Johnson, who was able to present himself as the anti establishment candidate to millions of working-class voters. The right-wing shift was not caused by the victory of “leave.” Corbyn’s conciliation of the Blairites, best shown in his support to the EU, is what contributed the most to delivering many working-class voters to Farage and the Tories.

Our 2021 conference document was written early on in our reorientation process, and there is at times a certain rigidity to it. We have had more internal discussions on it, and it has become clear to us that it was necessary to support Corbyn against the “chicken coup” and also during the 2017 general election when Corbyn was still defending the Brexit referendum results (2019 is a different matter). We are open to discussing what was tactically necessary at these various junctures. But the starting point for any discussion has to be the correct tasks for revolutionaries. The task was not merely to side with Corbyn. This is what the far left did and it is essentially the only point you make against us. Rather, the task was to forge a Marxist pole in the Labour Party, which would defend Corbyn against the right when necessary while at the same time fighting for a break with his program (and the man himself). For this, Marxists had to put forward an alternative strategy to that of the Corbynistas to fight the Blairites and the British ruling class. This is the whole point of critical support and the united front: to build communist leadership against the reformists.

But this is obviously not what the LCFI did. You yourself describe your intervention in this period: the expulsion of Gerry Downing from the Labour Party after being accused of defending the 9/11 terrorists, followed by your witchhunt from Labour Against the Witchhunts over accusations of anti-Semitism, then leading Downing to split from your group and denounce you. And you conclude: “this is what principled entry-work looks like.” No, it isn’t. The fact that you “left Labour in good order when Starmer ousted Corbyn” also does not speak in your favor. It shows that our purpose when entering was to promote Corbyn, i.e. when Corbyn left, you did too. The truth is that the entire British far left failed miserably throughout the Corbyn period because everyone refused to build a Marxist pole counterposed to left Labourism. Rather, thousands of so-called communists merged with Corbynism and ended up sinking with it.

On the Pandemic, Lockdowns and Vaccines

We found your polemic against us on the pandemic to be another adaptation to liberalism. Obviously, Covid-19 was a new and dangerous disease which required that the working class defend its health. And of course, Johnson and Co. who wanted to “let the bodies pile high” were utterly reactionary. But, in a similar manner as with the EU, your criticism against us ends up simply siding with the liberal wing of the ruling class in the name of fighting the right.

Your entire argumentation avoids the central question and the task of revolutionaries. A Marxist stance in the pandemic does not consist in repeating how dangerous Covid-19 was. More than just the outbreak of a disease, the pandemic was characterized by a powerful wave of national unity. In the name of “science” and “saving lives,” the bourgeoisie marshalled everyone behind its method of fighting the disease, which consisted in shutting down society and locking up everyone in their homes, while blue-collar and health care workers were squeezed and forced to work in unsafe conditions. Trade union bureaucrats cancelled strikes, disappeared from workplaces (to work remotely) and simply relayed the dictates of the ruling class, abandoning workers to the slaughter.

Lockdowns, more than just a temporary remedy, became the central tool the ruling class was willing to use, refusing to take obvious (but costly) measures like building new health care infrastructure, massively training health care professionals and reorienting production to respond to burning needs. In most capitalist countries, not a single new hospital was built during the pandemic. Furthermore, the lockdowns you hold so dear also proved to be a complete social disaster for millions, with deep repercussions which are still being felt. Millions lost their livelihoods. Domestic violence exploded. A generation of children was cut out of social contact.

It was an utter betrayal for most of the left to support this. Instead, the duty of revolutionaries was to oppose the response of the bourgeoisie to the pandemic and organize the struggle of workers in defense of their health and livelihood. But this required opposing the national unity pushed by the ruling class and relayed by the leaders of the labor movement. This was the central axis of our intervention—not merely “Down with the lockdowns,” and it is the crucial point your letter ignores. It should be obvious for anyone who calls himself a Marxist that any struggle for safer workplaces, for massive investment in health care or to take over existing infrastructure for socially useful needs would run up against the Covid-19 guidelines and lockdown measures, among other things. For months on end, strikes, demonstrations, picket lines and any form of gathering were made illegal by the state. And the liberals, joined by the“Marxist” left, were the staunchest cheerleaders for these measures, labelling as “anti-science” and even “fascist” anyone opposing this.

This is basically the LCFI position. Rather than combatting national unity, the statement you quote in your letter simply echoes it, totally prettifying the policies of the government while only opposing one wing of the ruling class who wanted to lift the lockdowns sooner for their own reactionary reasons. All this is justified in the name of “saving lives”—the watchword of the ruling class. Of course, lives had to be saved. But many more died precisely because there was no struggle from the working class to guarantee decent health care and safer working conditions.

And also because all those who claim to represent the working class supported the government. Here is what most leftists, LCFI included, forgot during the pandemic: the government and the bosses do not defend the health and safety of working people. Safety has to be fought for by the workers. And to do this, revolutionaries had to oppose the lockdowns, and understand that “saving lives,” in the mouth of the bourgeoisie, was moral blackmail paralyzing any sort of fightback. So, our position was not “absurd” or “anti-union.” What is absurd is your declaration saying, “we must seize on the weapon of quarantine [??] to protect ourselves, and fight for the nationalization of health provisions and its supply chain.” How are you going to fight if everyone is in quarantine? The LCFI statement demands many good things, all the way to “world revolution.” But with all due respect, this is totally meaningless. Communists can demand “world revolution” on Zoom meetings and blog posts. But it means nothing when they support the shutting down of society by the bourgeois state. How do you think the ruling class would concede anything if not forced by the struggle of workers? And how do you think such struggles would happen if the communist vanguard locks itself at home, supporting lockdowns and demanding longer and harsher ones?

You take particular issue with our opposition to the teachers’ unions demanding that schools remain shut. Your claim that we sided with the government against the unions is just false. Of course, we unconditionally defend every trade union against government attacks. And we are for trade union control of safety, which also includes the power to shut down unsafe workplaces. However, the position of many teachers’ unions—that is, the position of the union bureaucracy—was totally rotten. Many simply advocated leaving schools shut indefinitely while doing nothing fundamental to make them better and safer.

It was totally possible for the trade union leaders to demand and mobilize for schools to be safer, with improved ventilation and smaller classrooms, and even demanding the building of new schools, using the crisis of the ruling class to demand real change. But in almost every case, they did nothing but oppose the reopening. Furthermore, closing schools for months on end meant that, overwhelmingly, it was millions of women who had to stay home and quit their jobs to care for children. Not even speaking of the effects this had on a whole generation of youth. So, yes, we wanted the reopening of schools, but we wanted this to be on the unions’ terms, which meant a fight against the government and against the trade union bureaucracy. But, for you, this is “anti-scientific, and objectively anti-worker, anti-union nonsense.” What is your alternative? Stay home indefinitely??

Lastly, on vaccines, your position makes no sense. Vaccines, despite their rapid development, reduced the risk of serious symptoms, complications and death from Covid-19. So, yes, we supported mandatory vaccination, i.e. coercion by the state. Is this a contradiction with our opposition to lockdowns? No. Our guide in the pandemic, as any other time, is what advances the class struggle against the bourgeoisie. Months of lockdowns hampered the ability of the working class to fight and defend itself. Mandatory vaccination, i.e. a law demanding that everyone be vaccinated, does not hamper working-class struggles. And with overwhelming proof that vaccinated people had a much reduced chance to end up in intensive care, this is something we support. What we did oppose were vaccine mandates imposed on certain professions (like in the NHS) with the threat of the sack. Marxists oppose the mass sacking of workers, whatever the reason. Such implementation of mandatory vaccination did hamper the class struggle.

The confidence of the LCFI on this question does not strike us as a good sign. Almost the entire far left, together with the official leadership of the workers movement, completely capitulated to the ruling class during the pandemic. As a result, millions whose lives were devastated were driven into the arms of the right wing and conspiracy nutters. Yet, the LCFI seems to be proud of its stance in the pandemic. You “did not collapse” as you proudly say. Yet, in our view, you simply echoed the bourgeoisie, while proclaiming “world revolution” online.

The Ukraine War

We will leave a more thorough response to your points on Solidarność in Poland as well as China for future exchanges. Regarding China or Russia, we find ourselves in disagreement over their class character, but in agreement over the need to defend these countries against imperialism. We would only note in passing that our correction over Solidarność does not imply any sort of support to it but is in fact made from the standpoint of how best to defeat it. Solidarność organized the vast majority of Polish workers. Simply spitting at it, supporting Stalinist crackdowns and labelling as reactionary through and through any expression of Polish nationalism only hampered the struggle for a political revolution against Stalinism and helped in pushing workers further into the arms of counterrevolutionary leaders.

But let’s turn to the last question this letter will deal with in depth: the Ukraine war. While we are in agreement with you that Russia is not an imperialist country, we completely disagree with your conclusion that Marxists must support Russia. For us, this is a reactionary war on both sides, and we have called since the beginning on Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and workers to turn their guns against their own leaders. Recent developments with Trump opening negotiations with Putin have only confirmed this analysis and have showed quite clearly that Russia is not waging a progressive war of defense against imperialism but is waging a reactionary campaign to pull Ukraine back into its sphere of influence.

To start with, you are simply wrong when you say: “your contention that this is a national conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the imperialists are not decisively involved is a complete travesty of the facts.” We have never said this. The headline of our first article, published right after the opening shots of the war was “NATO/EU Aggression Provokes War in Ukraine” (Spartacist supplement, 27 February 2022). Our 2023 international conference document states: “The two decisive actors in the Ukraine war are Russia and the U.S.” It is obvious for anyone who has eyes and ears that this is a proxy war between Russia and the U.S.

You claim that our refusal to side with Russia is thus “incoherent.” This only reveals the formalistic method and scholasticism of the LCFI. All the so-called Marxists who support Russia in the West (e.g. the LCFI, the BT, the LFI and more) have looked at this conflict not with a materialist method guided by advancing the class struggle against imperialism, but rather with a sterile prewritten equation: Russia (a non-imperialist country) + Ukraine receiving backing from the imperialists = side with Russia. Rather than understanding reality with the Marxist method, reality is forced into rigid schemas. The need to actually think, to consider the situation concretely through the dynamics of the class struggle, disappears into a simplistic and frankly stupid equation.

First, one must be willfully blind to think, as you do, that the current war is about “regime change in Russia and its dismemberment.” No. The one country that is being dismembered is Ukraine, not Russia. Russia is conquering Ukrainian land, not defending its national sovereignty. Of course, Russia attacked Ukraine as a reaction to NATO overextending itself to the very borders of Russia. It is entirely correct to say that this war was provoked by NATO. We do maintain that Crimea is Russian, and that majority Russian-speaking regions of the Donbass should have a right to join Russia if they wish to do so. But in the current war, Russia is conquering Ukrainian territory far beyond majority Russian-speaking regions. To say this is not a capitulation to U.S. imperialism. It is just a fact.

Second, it is absurd to believe that the current war is the same thing as a war between NATO and Russia. You yourself recognize that “NATO powers have not dared to openly send their troops as an expeditionary force to fight Russia in Ukraine.” Isn’t this a bizarre war, where one of the two contenders does not send forces to fight? There is a fundamental difference between NATO declaring war on Russia and the ongoing conflict, where Ukraine is at war with Russia and receiving backing from the imperialists.

Third, you argue:

“Your call for workers in Russia and Ukraine to ‘turn the guns around’ and jointly overthrow their capitalist rulers in this context is a capitulation to imperialism. Just as much as it would have been if some pseudo-left tendency in the Iraq wars of 1991 and 2003 had called on Iraqi workers, Kuwaiti workers, American and British workers, to ‘turn the guns around’ and jointly overthrow their ‘capitalist rulers’ (they are all capitalist rulers, right?).”

Again, one has to be completely detached from reality to not see that there is a world of difference between the Iraq and the Ukraine wars. Iraq, a neo-colony, was invaded by the world’s biggest imperialist power. Ukraine, a small, oppressed nation, is fighting Russia while receiving arms and money from the imperialists. How can one argue with a straight face that Ukraine is today playing the same role as the U.S. invading Iraq?? This is absurd. Yet, you double down: “This phrase, ‘capitalist rulers’ hides the fact that one side in this war is imperialist, and one side is not.” Again, this is yet another example of formalism which makes you blind to reality. While the Russian Federation is not an imperialist great power, it is not the same thing as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. And while Ukraine receives arms from NATO, it is not the same thing as the United States of America.

Fourth, you declare “there is no suggestion from Russia that Ukraine will not be allowed to exist as a nation once the Nazi regime is destroyed.” How is this not “blind faith in the Kremlin”? Putin himself declared on the eve of the SMO that Ukraine was an artificial fabrication and a mistake of Lenin. Countless pro-Russian commentators have declared a thousand times that Ukraine is not a nation, and that Ukrainians are simply Russians. You constantly note the Nazis in Ukraine and their oppression of Russian-speaking minorities. Of course, there is truth here and Marxists must staunchly defend Russian-speaking minorities and oppose the many Nazis in the ranks of the Ukrainian forces. But here is what all so-called Marxists who support Russia disappear: the national question in this war does not only concern Russian minorities, but also Ukrainians. You dismiss this as “(irrelevant) bits of verbiage you insert about the terrible oppression of Ukraine by Putin.” Well, large parts of Ukraine are being conquered by Russia, way beyond majority Russian-speaking regions, and many Ukrainians have been forced to flee. And the Russian army is not led by some progressive “anti-fascists,” but Great Russian chauvinists. To note this is not a capitulation to NATO or an expression of “Russophobia.” It is a fact, and one which is far from “irrelevant” for most Ukrainians.

We could go on about the number of obvious mistakes made over the nature of this war. But what is behind such a distorted view of reality is that the LCFI approaches this war with a formalistic equation, not by seeking to advance the unity of the working class against imperialism. It is true that the issue posed with this war is opposition to Western imperialism. They are the ones responsible for the state of things, and this is why those Marxists who support the Ukrainian side are simply capitulating to the greatest enemy of all working people. The pre-condition to unite the working class of Russia and Eastern Europe is opposition to the U.S., to NATO and to the EU (we do note that it is a flagrant contradiction that you support Russia, while at the same time implicitly defending the EU as some sort of step toward socialism). The task of revolutionaries is precisely to build an anti-imperialist united front in Eastern Europe.

But this is impossible to do if revolutionaries support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s SMO, far from advancing the struggle against imperialism, has deepened national divisions in Eastern Europe. It is impossible to unite Ukrainian workers with their Russian counterparts if revolutionaries support the invasion of their country. Revolutionaries cannot fight for the unity of workers in Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, etc. against imperialism if, at the same time, they defend Russia’s so-called “right” to attack small nations and remove their government—even if those are pro-imperialist puppets.

Ukraine being oppressed by Russia is not a “lesser evil” to it being oppressed by the U.S. In both cases, it is national oppression which only creates new obstacles to the fighting unity of the working class. The unity of workers in Eastern Europe can only be based on an unconditional opposition to imperialism, but also on a defense of the right of self-determination for oppressed nations. This is why Russia’s war is reactionary: in the name of fighting Western imperialism, they are attacking another nation, and it is a complete betrayal for Marxists to support this. If one understands that the struggle against U.S. imperialism requires the unity of the working class in the region, then it becomes obvious that support to Russia’s war undermines this aim. Finally, the strongest argument against your support to Russia is the recent developments. At this point, it should be obvious to all that this war was not about the defense of Russia’s national integrity against an imperialist assault. Trump is shifting the U.S. position and seems ready to end the war on Russia’s terms. We will see what the exact content of their agreement is. But it is already obvious that anything which will come out from a Russia-U.S. deal will not be a progressive development nor a step forward in the struggle against imperialism.

Conclusion

We hope that this letter, while often criticizing you quite strongly, will serve political clarity onn both sides. As we have laid out at the beginning, the connecting issue with the LCFI’s positions on Palestine, the EU, Corbyn, the pandemic or the Ukraine war is that your starting point is never the class struggle and how communists can advance it and play a decisive role in the struggles of oday. Rather, on Palestine, Russia or the Labour Party, you lend your support to whatever force appears to be “progressive,” liquidating the independent banner of Trotskyism. While on the issues of the pandemic and Brexit, you openly side with the liberal wing of the ruling class against the right.

But these issues are far from being unique to the LCFI. What we hope we have made clear here is that your approach and method are also shared by most of the Marxist left today—and breaking with those has been at the core of our reorientation. We hope that our points can serve as the basis for a productive discussion between our two tendencies, and in the left more broadly.

Communist greetings,

Vincent David

We republish below the Open Letter from the Partisan Defence Committee, which describes itself as:

“..a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defence organisation which champions cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people. This purpose is in accordance with the political views of the Spartacist League.“

The content, about the terrible case of Lucy Letby, is eminently supportable, as is the concept of non-sectarian class struggle legal and social defence. So in that spirit, we are pleaseed to republish the PDC’s letter, and to echo its call for Lucy Letby’s case to be taken up by the trade union movement.

As an additional source on information on the case, we refer readers to the extensive examination of the case (in 11 parts) by By Dr Phil Hammond (MD) in Private Eye, which is at https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/lucy-letby

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Dear Comrades,

It is becoming clearer every day that Lucy Letby was scapegoated for the failings of the crumbling health services. Her trial was not based on any actual evidence that showed she or anyone else deliberately harmed children. Dr. Shoo Lee’s February press conference blew apart the entire basis for the frame-up and asserted that no murders had taken place. Now, a number of mainstream publications who previously vilified Letby have changed their tune and acknowledged she might be innocent.

Let’s be clear: Letby’s conviction sent a strong message to all workers and especially those in healthcare that this can happen to anyone. Letby was hounded and convicted to make an example of her for the failures of the NHS that is chronically under-staffed and under-funded. That’s why defending her is part of the fight for better healthcare for all, for better working conditions for nurses and all staff. But to build a campaign to demand justice for Lucy Letby requires defying the existing union leadership which time and again has bowed to the bullying NHS bosses.

This innocent nurse should not be languishing in prison one more day for something she simply didn’t do. But as we all know, the British establishment will fight to the bitter end to uphold the honour of its “justice” system rather than admit it locks up innocent people. The freeing of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, innocent Irish people who were framed up by the cops for bombings, took years of tenacious legal battles as well as public campaigns. That is why, in parallel to the efforts of her legal team, it is urgently necessary that the left and trade union movement take up this fight and build a broad campaign to free Lucy Letby. Defending this dedicated nurse against this frame-up is an elementary act in defence of the interests of all workers against the relentless attacks by the bosses on our livelihoods and working conditions.

The silence of the left on this question is ceding the ground to the right wing, some of whom for their own reasons have taken up this cause. But defending Letby is not a left-right issue, it’s a working-class issue: the British state has framed up a worker who was doing her job under horrendous conditions. It is time to take a clear stand against this.

We urge you to endorse and build for the PDC’s protest on 17 March in Liverpool and to take this campaign into the trade union movement.

Kate Klein

For the Partisan Defence Committee

By Humberto Rodriguez
 

China hit the pockets of Trumpist billionaires right from the start by using Marx’s Capital

A military attack on all physical headquarters of Nasdaq or Wall Street, or any building in the US, would not have resulted in as much damage as the launch of the DeepSeek-R1 AI model .

The Chinese launch immediately caused the largest loss ever recorded by a single company in the history of the NYSE. The most valued company on the planet, Nvidia (NVDA), lost $600 billion in market value. The financial shockwave immediately caused losses in almost all Big Tech companies besides Nvidia. All the billionaires who sat in the second row at Trump’s inauguration. Together, the loss reached $1 trillion.

But the biggest, most strategic, most financial, most geopolitical loss was to the morale of the Trump administration, which was born as a front man for the big tech billionaires, who are losing hundreds of billions of dollars in capital. How can we get the Trumpist masses and the entire West to believe that it is possible to make America great again, defeat the de-dollarization of the world market, and put Russia, China, and Iran in their place if we cannot even ensure the dominance of American hegemony in the technology sector, being the government that has the most billionaires linked to this sector of the world bourgeois economy?

It was “cowardice”, deliberate on the economic and political planes. China waited for the best moment to publicize its innovation, when the bourgeois high-tech companies had reached their highest market value, when the AI ​​speculation bubble was most inflated and, lo and behold! it ran over Donald Trump and his protégés right at the start, in the second week of the new administration of the planetary imperialist system.

Four reasons caused the collapse of Big Tech capital. 1. The Chinese model has superior performance and is more efficient; 2. It has open source code, i.e., it is free; 3. It uses much less energy than the AI ​​models of Big Tech multinationals; and, 4. The main reason, Deepseek was developed at an infinitely lower cost, something around 3% to 5% of the value of “Open AI” (whose code is closed, i.e., the only thing that is open is the name), the equivalent of less than US$ 6 billion.

The Chinese announcement hit the hearts and vital organs of the pockets of American billionaires, representatives and members of the Trump administration, in the second week of the government. The plan of Project 2025 of the far-right think tank Heritage Foundation was to regain the part of the world lost to the BRICS and reestablish US global hegemony in all areas by resorting to its supremacy in AI. Until then, the plan had worked and the sanctions imposed by the US, which prevented China from accessing Nvidia chips, established under the Biden administration, would keep the Asian giant behind in the technology race for a long time.

But China, just as it did with semiconductors, made a qualitative leap forward, operating using cheaper and more efficient methods. To reverse this, China invested massively in education and technology to have today approximately nine times more engineers than the US and perhaps 15 times more graduates in science and technology.

Another element is the power of economic planning controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, which has certainly exhaustively studied the critique of Marxist political economy and tried to contain the consequences of the market and capitalism in the Chinese economy. In this way, by making constant capital cheaper, China has taken the lead in the AI ​​technological revolution. Despite any criticism of AI, the powerful Chinese counterattack, using a weapon that was developed in line with the sanctions policy, is an anti-imperialist and anti-monopoly counterattack on technology by imperialism.

As the UFC economics professor, Fábio Sobral, rightly pointed out, who earlier this week gave an interview to the Emancipação do Trabalho channel:

“And this blow will spread to other sectors, there is no doubt. It is likely that the Nasdaq stock exchange, which is a high-tech stock exchange, will plummet, because China works with the following rule of Marx: reduce the costs of constant capital. In other words, reduce the price of machinery. And by reducing the price of machinery, the competition between the US and China is already lost to the US, because, technologically, China has overcome this dispute.” ( Fábio Sobral: What is Donald Trump’s Economic Policy? )

In fact, the blow has hit and will continue to hit, in waves and with bursting bubbles of fictitious capital accumulation, various sectors of the imperialist economy on both sides of the Atlantic. By reducing the costs of constant capital for their companies, China’s technocrats are employing measures learned from studying Marx. In Book III of Capital, Marx lists six causes that counteract the law of the tendency of the rate of interest to fall. One of them, the third, is the cheapening of the elements of constant capital.

The law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is the most important in modern political economy, according to Marx. The rate of profit is measured by dividing the value of labor power by the value of the means of production. In Marx’s words, the “gradual increase of constant capital in proportion to variable capital necessarily results in a gradual fall in the general rate of profit.” (Marx, 2017, p.250).

The conscious implementation of measures that made it possible to reduce constant capital and the fact that Deepseek is so much cheaper than imperialist models, including in terms of energy consumption, are only possible in a government in which the State controls the capitalists, not when a bunch of billionaires, as is the current case of the Trump government, which has 11 billionaires, control the government, even without the knowledge of the entire US bourgeois class, as we will see more in the coming weeks.

It was no coincidence that Trump took advantage of the fact to teach his cronies a lesson. A slightly less imperial Trump than in the early days, he claimed to be experienced in dealing with the Deepseek problem:  “In the last few days, I’ve been reading about Chinese companies. One in particular has come up with a faster and much less expensive method of dealing with AI. That’s good. You don’t have to spend that much money. I’ve done that as a boss.” (https://exame.com/ultimas-noticias/mercados/resposta-de-trump-a-deepseek-relatorio-da-vale-e-primeiro-dia-de-copom-o-que-move-o-mercado/)).  Which points to claiming greater powers for himself in relation to other billionaires, such as the almost unstoppable appetites of Elon Musk.

The right wing is desperately trying to make up for the multiple losses, to contain the global rush to download the free Chinese app and, more than that, to undermine the offensive that would save the hegemony of the imperialist world system over the market and, above all, over the technological revolution. That is why they are now taking down and banning DeepSeek, as the Italian government did, spreading the tired fake news and Sinophobic and anti-communist prejudices, such as that the Beijing dictatorship will steal the data of Chinese AI users, that the AI ​​censors and does not answer questions asked against the CCP government, or, even more laughably, trying to explain that the success of the app is due to Chinese entrepreneurship and the private sector.

The Chinese are developing the capitalist mode of production in their own way, what they call the “1,000-year NEP”. But, under the legacy of the 1949 revolution and thanks to the growing hostility of imperialism, they are putting a muzzle on the private accumulation of capital and their billionaires. They know that if they do not contain the costs of constant capital, they will enter a classic crisis of overaccumulation, motivated by the tendency to fall in the rate of profit. So, they kept the crisis in a tendency stage and imposed a financial tsunami on the US now, when Trump was starting his second term, bursting the big tech bubble.

German youth are moving to the left, because the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens are hated as the parties of the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. The combined vote of Die Linke (the Left Party) and the BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance) was almost 15%, – only 1% less than the SPD and almost twice as much as the Greens. The mass demonstrations that began in defence of Palestine, banned by the pro-Zionist government in Berlin, were then continued in the current mass anti-Nazi demonstrations against the AfD.

In the elections for the German Federal Assembly, the Bundestag, the right-wing coalition composed of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) parties emerged victorious, electing 208 parliamentarians, obtaining 14,158,432 votes (28.52%). The CDU is the oldest party of the traditional German conservative right, it was led by Angela Merkel and is now led by Friedrich Merz.

The neo-Nazi party  Alternative for Germany (AfD) returned 152 parliamentary seats, obtaining 10,327,148 votes (20.8%). It was the largest vote for a Nazi party since the Second World War. The AfD became the second political force in Parliament.

It was also one of the biggest defeats for a governing party ever— the SPD Social Democrats of the current Chancellor (head of government)  Olaf Scholz, returned 120 seats, obtaining a mere 8,148,284 votes (16.41%). 

Die Linke is not a consistent alternative to the SPD

It was not only the neo-Nazis who grew, also a party to the left of the SPD,  Die Linke , also known as Linkspartei, or the Left, a coalition of communists and left-wing social democrats, led by Heidi Reichinnek and Jan van Aken, obtained 64 seats in the Bundestag, winning 4,355,382 votes (8.77%). It was one of the largest votes for this party. Founded in 2007, from the merger of the Party of Democratic Socialism  (PDS) — successor to the  Socialist Unity Party of Germany  (SED), which governed the former East Germany , for the forty years in which it existed — and the Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG), a breakaway from the SPD of 2005, led by Oskar Lafontaine . The Linke also has as its internal tendencies the Anti-Capitalist Left (Antikapitalistische Linke), the Communist Platform (Kommunistische Plattform, KPF), the Forum for Democratic Socialism (Forum demokratischer Sozialismus) , the Socialist Left ( Sozialistische Linke ), and the Linksruck (now known as Marx21 ). Other groups, such as the Communist Party and the Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany, have occasionally formed local alliances with  Die Linke. The strong German political repression, carried out by the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) monitors the left-wing groups of the Linke.

The CDU won in Berlin, but Die Linke also had an extraordinary vote in the capital.

The Linkspartei and its tendencies have driven the pro-Palestinian demonstrations and now the anti-AfD demonstrations, but they have probably failed to capitalize on the German proletariat’s discontent with the SPD’s subservient policies because they capitulate to imperialism in the war in Ukraine, openly supporting the Ukronazi government in Kiev and NATO diplomacy in the name of “a just peace.”

“We support the people of Ukraine, who have the right to self-defence. Russia must withdraw its troops from Ukraine.  We are committed to  further  humanitarian aid, as well as diplomatic initiatives for a ceasefire  and a just peace. Die Linke condemns Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The attack clearly violates international law and means endless suffering for the people of the region. Our solidarity goes to the people in Ukraine whose lives are threatened.” (Ukraine’s War: For a Just Peace in Ukraine, https://www.die-linke.de/themen/frieden/ukraine-krieg/). 

The deep German economic and political crisis

A few months ago, this we anticipated that the economic crisis triggered the insoluble political crisis that has now resulted in the historic defeat of the SPD:

“The main cause of the political and economic crisis in the largest economy in the Eurozone is the German government’s vassalage to the US, which forced the country to buy gas at a much higher price than that supplied by Russia and increase its military spending to 2.5% of GDP, due to the war in Ukraine provoked by NATO.

“Germany has been militarily occupied by the US since the end of World War II (approximately 50,000 military personnel and 17,000 civilian personnel from the US Department of Defence). This makes the country an imperialist power in the economic field, under foreign military occupation. In a way, Germany’s policy is determined by US interests, especially after the unification of Germany. The current Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz is even more obedient than Angela Merkel (from the CDU party) was. Russia used to supply cheap gas to Germany. Families and production depended on Russian gas. Now they depend on much more expensive gas, no longer sent by pipelines, but by ships, supplied by several countries in the imperialist system. To keep the cost of living from becoming too high, the state subsidizes gas for homes and businesses and nationalized  the subsidiaries of the Russian state-owned company Gazprom and the Finnish Uniper. By subsidizing gas, the German state has become deeply indebted. Since 2009, there has been a constitutional limit on this debt, and now there is practically a consensus among German parties to end this limit. This new situation arising from the war provoked by NATO against Russia is beginning to compromise Germany’s status as an economic power.

“By an irony of history, Germany, which through the troika imposed iron monetary and economic austerity on all the oppressed countries of Europe, now announces the end of the debt limit policy for itself and abandons fiscal discipline, until now a fundamental clause of its neoliberal doctrine…

“The debt rule was one of the main reasons Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition collapsed earlier this month. Scholz, the Social Democrat, asked his finance minister, Christian Lindner, leader of the fiscally hawkish FDP party, to lift the debt brake to allow for more aid to Ukraine.  The latter refused and was sent packing.  The FDP then left the government. (Emancipation of Labor:  Crisis-hit Germany government abandons ‘fiscal discipline’ and frees up debt, https://emancipacaodotrabalho.org/Publicacao.aspx?id=551964)

The Afd neo-Nazis, pro-Zionist and supported by the Trump administration

These neo-Nazis, the AfD won in what was once East Germany, as an opposition party to the pro-US policies of the social democracy, to the soaring inflation caused mainly by the increase in fuel prices, the neoliberal policies, and the war in Ukraine. It was a reactionary protest vote that displaced social anger against immigrants. Incidentally, the neo-Nazis of the AfD have a Turkish immigrant as their leader.

Unlike the original Nazism, which was established before Israel was imposed on Palestine and became an imperialist state, today’s neo-Nazis of the Western imperialist system, from Trump to Bolsonaro, from the British EDL to the German AfD , are pro-Israel, Islamophobic and, in general, xenophobic against immigrants from oppressed countries. Fascist parties are bourgeois parties of a special type, charged with certain conjunctural tasks for big international capital (Musk!) and imperialism against the working class, serving to divide it by using the most oppressed sectors and the communists as scapegoats for the social crisis created by capital itself.

It is not enough for them to be politically right-wing or far-right; fascist parties need to have mass influence over their victims in order to be functional to big capital in certain crisis situations, such as the current one. Therefore, it should not be surprising that some distinct parts of the proletariat are recruited and mobilised against the great mass of the proletariat. It should not be surprising, for example, that immigrant workers who have obtained fragile citizenship in the USA or Germany vote for fascist parties against younger immigrants, fearing losing their jobs or resentful of the social programs that the most vulnerable sectors receive. In the German case, there is an additional ingredient of confusion, the war in Ukraine and the bankruptcy of Germany as it has ruined itself by letting fuel and general prices soar under the vassal policy of Olaf Scholz’s social-democratic government:

Born in Turkey, 55-year-old Ismet Var has lived in the country since childhood and acquired German citizenship in 1994. He has supported the AfD since its founding in 2013. The Berlin delivery driver has seen his job directly affected by the rise in fuel prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Var cannot understand why so much money is being “thrown away” on economic and military aid to Ukraine. He wants tax cuts and the deportation of “criminal immigrants” (Who are the immigrants who vote for the German far right?, 17 Feb: https://www.dw.com/pt-br/quem-s%C3%A3o-os-imigrantes-que-votam-na-ultradireita-alem%C3%A3/a-71634539) The article also notes: “AfD makes no secret of its desire for mass deportations, but nevertheless wins over voters among naturalized Germans and children of immigrants”.

But with 20% of the vote, the German neo-Nazis still fall short of the influence of their US and Brazilian counterparts. To some extent, they have been inflated by the mainstream media, social media, big tech in the US government, and AI tricks to create the image that they are bigger than they really are.

Limits and perspectives of the results 

The Russophobic and anti-worker Green Party lost voters to the Left Party, Die Linke. The combined vote of the Linke and the BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance)  was almost 15%, just 1% less than the SPD and almost double the Greens’ vote.

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance is a split from Die Linke that sought to capitalize on the right and left turn of German society against the policies of the SPD/Green coalition. On the right, with policies more xenophobic than those of the German federal government. On the left, opposing German financial and military aid against Russia:

“The BSW is the only party represented in the Bundestag that clearly rejects the deployment of German soldiers to Ukraine. Ukraine needs security guarantees, but NATO soldiers would not be peacekeepers in the event of a fragile ceasefire, but could instead drag Germany into a devastating war with nuclear power Russia if fighting were to resume.” (Wagenknecht:  Ukraine needs security guarantees, but not NATO soldiers, press releases: 18 February, https://bsw-bt.de/wagenknecht-ukraine-braucht-sicherheitsgarantien-aber-keine-nato-soldaten/).

The big loser, and deservedly so, was the SPD. The AfD and left-wing parties won at the expense of the SPD/Green coalition in power. A portion of the immigrants with political rights voted for the left. The youth are moving to the left, because the SPD and the Greens are hated as the parties of the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. The massive demonstrations that began in defence of Palestine, banned by the pro-Zionist government in Berlin, were then continued in the current massive anti-Nazi demonstrations, against the AfD and its sponsor, whose fortune was built in apartheid, Elon Musk, and which is now boosted by his power in the Trump administration.

The future CDU/CSU government has nothing good to offer to alleviate the deep political and economic crisis of the country, which has been destroyed by US imperialism. If it allies itself with Trump, it will continue to be subjugated and vampirized; if it continues the war in Ukraine, it will continue to ruin the country’s economy in a losing war, buying expensive fuel. The political crisis of the Western imperialist system, which has Germany as one of the fundamental points of the tripod on the European continent, generates contradictions that set communist workers and youth in motion, which must be exploited to build a new revolutionary movement in Marx’s homeland.

Zionist genocide: who is calling the tune?

Below is a presentation given by a Consistent Democrats speaker at a Zoom forum on 23rd February. The whole discussion is available as a podcast here.

When this forum was first mooted, the focus was Trump’s outrageous proposal for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza to make way for a ‘Riviera’ owned by the United States. But since then, major events have happened regarding Ukraine, and Trump’s strategic objectives have caused chaotic, and on the face of it, unexpected developments with both. Both issues are of strategic importance for world politics. We as communists must address both questions and get them right. I will therefore deal with both here.

Trump has given Israel the green light for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and has hinted broadly that he intends to do the same with the West Bank.  Trump says that that US would ‘buy’ Gaza – from who?! – and forcibly deport the Palestinian population that lives there somewhere else! So that they can have a ‘Riviera’ for the wealthy. This plan was mooted by Trump’s Jewish-Zionist son-in-law, Kushner, last year. Now it’s US policy. Trump’s real aim in saying this is transparently to steal, either for the US, or Israel – or both – the oil and gas reserves that have been found off the Gaza coast in the past decade or so.

In the mind of Trump, who regarding Middle Eastern questions is basically a political agent of Likud, Israel’s main ruling party – they funded his election in the US – Israel expelling the Gaza population, and the US doing so, are pretty much the same thing. It is piracy, and a motive for genocide. Trump is open about his intentions to steal natural resources of territories he covets and makes no bones about it. During his first term he openly boasted that US troops in Syria, who were sent in by Obama in 2014 supposedly to fight ISIS – were there to steal Syria’s oil for the United States. Although his policies in Ukraine appear superficially different, the underlying motive is similar.

His demand that Ukraine sign over ownership of their natural resource of $500 billion worth of rare earth metals as ‘reparation’ for the aid that Biden gave to Ukraine is again, just naked theft. Except the problem is that this resource is apparently in the Donbass, which is part of Russia now. In part, he is upset at Biden’s policy in Ukraine because Biden gave away aid to Ukraine gratis. He says that US aid should have been a loan, as most of the EU’s aid was and is. His bullying of Denmark over Greenland is the same, as are his threats against Panama, and his on-off tariffs against Mexico and Canada aimed at economic coercion to get them to do what he wants. For all his apparent equanimity towards Russia, his policy towards BRICS is the same – threatening all their members (including Russia) with 150% tariffs levied against them if they attempt to create any sort of alternative to the dollar as a world currency. Which would completely undermine the effects of sanctions as a tool of US domination.

Much of this is driven by hatred of what he and Rubio call “Communist China” – Cold War rhetoric is back in fashion, and they regard China as the US’s most strategic adversary, as it is on course to surpass the US in economic power in the immediate future. And much of its economic power does indeed derive from capitalism regulated by economic planning, whose origin was in the Chinese revolution – i.e. beyond capitalism. Much of Trump’s seeming sympathy for Russia, which causes apoplexy to the liberal imperialists, is driven by an aim of in some way setting Russia against China. Though it’s too late for that.

All these things have the same driving force – Trump is probably the crudest, open imperialist since Cecil Rhodes in the late 19^th Century. Another similarity, and yet difference is that Rhodes was fighting hard to try to maintain Britain’s colonial dominance, which was being challenged by France and Germany, rival imperialist powers. The US is also in decline, but its world dominance or hegemony is not being challenged by rival imperialists, rather by an alliance of non-imperialist powers/semi-colonial countries and workers’ states centred around BRICS, which is almost like a more powerful version of the Non-Aligned Movement.

But Trump’s imperialism is not purely US-centred. The US is joined the at hip to Israel, by the overlapping of their ruling classes, something that also causes huge problems in Europe.  This is historically unique phenomenon, a product of the disproportionate representation of Jews in the imperialist ruling-classes, relative to the proportion of Jews in the general population of those same Imperialist countries – the former exceeds the latter dozens of times over. The racist institution of birthright Israeli citizenship for all Jews around the world, while denying it to native-born Palestinians, creates a material interest of Jewish-born bourgeois in the Israeli bourgeois state. This is particularly significant in the imperialist countries. It is this overlapping of the Western ruling classes that is behind the power of the Israel lobby in the older imperialist countries. These layers constitute a distinct caste within the imperialist bourgeoisie, with a material interest in Israel, which they see as their state. And they have numerous fellow travelers, from Christian Zionists in the US and elsewhere, to Zionised elements nominally in the workers movement in Europe, like Starmer.

Trump and Netanyahu are a partnership, alternating playing hard cop and soft cop against the Palestinians. Thus, Netanyahu did not carry out Trump’s threat that the current ceasefire would be junked if Hamas did not release all their Israeli captives by 15^th Feb. Instead, a ‘normal’ weekend cycle of the release of three hostages for many hundreds of Palestinians took place. And they are still taking place as part of the ‘first phase’ of the ceasefire. But now we see the Israelis on another lying campaign, claiming that some hostages whose bodies have been released, including two children, who were blown to hell by the IDF, were supposedly ‘murdered’ by Hamas instead. This is from the people who lied about ‘beheaded babies’ and babies supposedly being cooked in ovens on October 7^th. And now Israel have ‘suspended’ the corresponding release of more than 600 Palestinian hostages, who should have been released also this weekend. The second phase of the ceasefire deal, which is looming, is still to be negotiated in detail. But that looks very fragile right now.

The real motive for this renewed Zionist hate campaign is shown by the leaflets being dropped in Gaza, seeking to terrorise Palestinians into accepting exile by openly threatening mass extermination if they don’t. These leaflets feature pictures of Netanyahu and Trump. Even the Nazis were not so brazen in openly, in front of the world, boasting of their genocidal intentions. Though Israel’s problem is that they have already been defeated in Gaza.

Regarding Ukraine, things are moving very fast. There was the meeting in Saudi Arabia in the first half of last week. Involving Trump, his secretary of state Rubio, Russia’s foreign minister Lavrov, and others. Trump accused Biden of starting the Ukraine war by greenlighting Ukraine joining NATO, and Ukraine for not making a deal. Lavrov says that both sides will have to make concessions. There will undoubtedly be more negotiations, and likely a full summit between Putin and Trump soon. But such attempts to make a deal are likely to founder because the war, though Russia is winning, is not over yet. Russia still needs to take the remainder of the various four provinces that voted to join Russia in September 2022. And there is Odessa, a major centre of Russian/Russophone population that have been oppressed since 2014. Odessa borders Transnistria – where a long-autonomous Russian population – since 1991 in fact – is under threat from pro-NATO forces in Moldova. 

The European imperialist powers are spitting rage against Trump for ‘betraying’ Ukraine and whipping up hysteria about it. This is all over the British media. The BBC news has been extremely virulent. We have never seen such a falling out with the United States before. The ruling classes of West Europe have become used to being Washington’s clients, over all the decades since World War II. And suddenly Washington has woken up the fact that it is no longer hegemonic. That does not mean that it has lost all its power. But it has lost in Ukraine. Trump’s policy is a response to this – a temporary retreat to reconsolidate US rule in the Western hemisphere in the short term.  With the aim of a later reconquest of that hegemony in the medium term. And from that point of view, the Asia-Pacific region – centrally China – is far more important than Europe. The European powers are not used to being treated with such contempt.

Zelensky claims Trump is under influence of Putin’s ‘disinformation bubble’.  The BBC echoes this narrative – sanctimonious hypocrisy from disinformation mercenaries who are really complaining about elements of truth that they cannot avoid mentioning. Trump responded by noting that Zelensky is a dictator. To complete outrage from the Europeans. The West European imperialists are raging about themselves and Zelensky not being invited to the meeting in Saudi Arabia. So, they called the Starmer-Macron-Scholz emergency summit meeting in Paris last Monday. Out of this grew the threat from Starmer to send troops to Ukraine as supposed ‘peacekeepers’.  Which leads straight to a threat of conscription here, to send troops to Ukraine.

There is a wave of pathetic military jingoism coming from the decrepit British ruling class, which under Johnson, Truss, Sunak and now Starmer, has been the most virulently militaristic over Ukraine. There is talk of conflict over the three Baltic states. Trump’s insistence that NATO must be funded by Europeans is a big spoiler for that.  The US retreat is a threat to NATO’s article 5 – it renders it a dead duck and puts a huge question mark over NATO’s survival. Trump’s change in US policy means any troop deployment in Ukraine by European powers will not have NATO/US backing, so Article 5 Is a non-starter. Starmer is in line to be humiliated by this. So is Macron, who has no working French government. Scholz will be out of power shortly, likely replaced by Merz in Germany. The AfD, the pro-Zionist far right party which has Nazi overtones but is hostile to the Ukraine war, is likely to be in a strong position after the elections. Possibly also the leftist, but social chauvinist pro-Russian social democratic Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) which is riding the tide of popular hostility to the Ukraine War. Her trend somewhat resembles that of George Galloway in Britain. Terribly flawed but possibly at times critically supportable.

Ukraine will not be in NATO, according to Trump. That at least is a good thing if true. But this has ignited a furious antagonism between the bulk of the EU, and non-EU fellow travelers like Starmer, with the Trump administration. The Europeans are looking for new provocations against Russia. One such provocation is the talk of closing the Baltic Sea to Russian ships.

Since St Petersburg is a Russian port, as is Kaliningrad, this is a casus bello if it happens. The Baltic states, which may become the focus of future anti-Russian warmongering, are just as demented in their dominant pro-Nazi politics as Ukrainian nationalists. They also have Russian populations which they persecute. Latvia in particular has a very large Russian minority. You can see what could happen. Europe is unstable. But Trump’s ascendancy has strengthened the hand of Orban, and the rightful Romanian President, Georgescu, whose election on a ticket opposing the Ukraine proxy war was cancelled by the Constitutional Court in Romania. Fico is a leftist anomaly among that crowd, as is Sahra Wagenknecht.

We have to acknowledge that Trump’s policy on Ukraine is an improvement, but that this faction in bourgeois politics, despite this, is very dangerous and far right – as shown over Zionism. Today’s degenerate liberal bourgeois factions are just as reactionary as Trump. The decay of capitalism and US hegemony has extinguished liberalism – leading to major strategic and tactical differences among them, indeed, but about how to achieve many similar foul objectives. Neither side is better. Orban is a diehard supporter of Israel. Georgescu reflets the values of extreme reaction in Romania, praising Antonescu and other far right and Nazi collaborator elements in Romanian history. The liberals’ Ukraine war is unpopular in some nationalist circles in Europe. Even though those liberals were prepared to back overtly Nazi forces in Ukraine, and likely in the Baltics also. The nationalist right sees it as war for ‘globalism’ not nationalist causes, at odds with a strategy of retrenchment behind national borders and tariff walls. Rubio, in his recent article in the State Department’s in-house journal Foreign Policy basically admits that US hegemony is over, and the US has no choice but to operate in an increasingly multipolar world.

Trump is the most virulent Zionist and even worse than Biden. Trump and his supporters and imitators are predators with different tactics. In the Middle East, they are the most virulent examples of the bourgeoisie’s Zionist cult. They propose to expel the population of Gaza to Egypt?! Sisi’s regime has made it clear that such an attempt will lead to war with Israel. This is not an example of any courage from Sisi and co. They fear the masses. This war threat is remarkable given the origins of Sisi’s regime, and the history of Egypt since the death of Nasser in 1970. Jordan has likewise refused to discuss this. This is the conundrum of the outcome of the Gaza War. Trump’s policy, where he was acting as a shill for Netanyahu, has run aground. He can find no one to implement it except Netanyahu.

The real ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, allowed an opinion poll to be conducted, which showed there is 98% opposition to Trump’s threat against Gaza in that country, and basically if the regime tried to co-operate with Trump, it would be simply doomed. So, it isn’t going well for them. But Smotrich in Israel is putting forward a draft law to implement Trump’s proposal. And the whole Israeli government says yes. The ceasefire is intact for now, but only just. Broken with impunity in Gaza and Lebanon by Israel, but not fully broken down. Israel is still banning mobile homes and heavy building equipment from the strip in violation of the agreement. It is supposed to have evacuated Lebanon but is still staying in 5 strategic places. Syria meanwhile is descending towards another civil war, as resistance is taking hold. Jolani’s regime is attacking Lebanon. The US wants to exclude Hizballah from the Lebanese government, but it is the biggest party in Lebanon, so this makes little sense. These all portend a likely regional Middle Eastern war. There is the ever-present threat of an Israeli or US attack on Iran to add to the mix. Though if the Zionists provoke a regional war involving Egypt and/or Jordan, Iran will be the least of their problems. They could lose. Though Israel has nuclear arms of its own, plenty of them. The opponents of imperialism and Zionism ought to have been clear all along that Israeli extermination of the peoples of the region will result in Israel being wiped out. At the moment, they think they can get away with it and are moving to bring about Greater Israel. Their occupation of parts of Syria since Assad’s fall indicates this clearly. Overall, major changes are underway in the world, but not for the better so far. Without the emergence of a new, communist pole, they threaten only new chaos and more genocidal wars. We are out of the Biden Missile Crisis at least, which may even have been more dangerous than the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, but in a new period.

And then there is the Trump administration’s domestic project, which is already inspiring resistance, but it is very dangerous to the US working class, and that of the whole of the Americas. The US ‘Deep state’ being purged, but not for the benefit of working-class people. For the benefit of the billionaire class, even more than under past regimes. The response to all this has to be a regroupment of the genuine left around the world, the formation of a new, coherent international communist movement. It must be one that has the political courage to take the side of those demonized by imperialism, from the Russian/Russophone people of the Donbass to the Palestinian people, to defend Russia and China, and the surviving workers states, against imperialism. And to do all these things with a perspective of revolutionary internationalism, with the perspective that the only road to real peace is international socialist revolution

The notes for this presentation (9th February) are now available to read, and the presentation and discussion are also available to listen to as a podcast.