Protesters in southern

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zero wounded during this transition.

The March vote totals contrast sharply with the 90 percent Ukrainian vote in 1991 to secede from the disintegrating Soviet Union. The vote in Crimea was 95 percent to leave the USSR. Perhaps the past 23 years convinced the people of Crimea that the pur­ ported wonders of western capitalism were more myth than reality, that their new Ukrainian capitalist oligarchs were the same as the old bureaucrats except that they were no longer formally part of the USSR. Not even a change of names!

Or maybe the orders they received from a number of regional neo-fascist groups that their homes were to be commandeered by Ukrainian troops that might be called on to engage in a war against the Russians in the Crimea convinced them that the coup government could not act in their interests.

It is even possible, if not likely, that many got a stiff whiff of the Association Agreement’s austerity terms, which included an end to government gas subsidies and other social subsidies in order to pay their new “benefactors” for the EU-IMF Greek-like bailout. This included major cuts in pensions, massive layoffs of public workers, and more (see below).

A March 25 decision of the rump Ukrainian parlia­ ment appointed General Mykhaylo Koval as the new defense minister, after approving the resignation of his immediate and post-coup predecessor, the neofascist and Svoboda party leader, Ihor Tenyukh.

Tenyukh tendered his resignation supposedly fol­ lowing growing criticism of his response to the Rus­ sian troop occupation of the Crimea. It was he who told the Associated Press that he had received some 6400 requests from soldiers in Crimea to return home. (Since then other sources have put the num­ ber at 1400.) His response was deemed “indecisive” by the even more fanatic coup deputies, implying that perhaps the Svoboda Party Defense Minister should have ordered reluctant Ukrainian troops to militarily engage with the Russians.

While no one doubted that such a confrontation would have been a disaster for the massively out­ gunned Ukrainian troops in Crimea, the adrenalinhyped coup-makers perhaps had other thoughts in mind, including using a Russian response as a pretext to call on the U.S. and/or NATO to respond in kind. Such actions, even those that might lead to a world conflagration, are never ruled out by the U.S. ruling class.

On March 12, for example, Bloomberg News report­ ed: “Earlier today, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, stated that in the case

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(continued from page 6: “Crimea secedes from Ukraine”) the export of fossil fuels to the tune of almost half its GDP, and suffering from a slowed growth rate of just above one percent, it nevertheless provides some 30 percent of Germany’s gas, and perhaps even more to nations in Central and Eastern Europe.

At the same time, given the massively intensified use of shale fracking, the U.S. has just this year emerged as the world’s largest gas exporter. On March 5, House Majority Speaker John Boehner called on President Obama to “dramatically expedite the approval of U.S. exports of natural gas” to Ukraine. ExxonMobil was listed as among the supporters of his proposal.

Moreover, U.S. ruling-class tops see control of Ukraine’s vast shale-gas reserves, the fourth largest in the world, as a medium-term weapon to replace Russia as Europe’s chief supplier. The world’s market­ place in the modern era is almost always subject to the rule of the power with the greatest competitive edge. Both before and after the Ukraine coup, Chrevon and Shell signed major fracking agreements to exploit that nation’s massive shale resources.

For the present, however, both the Ukraine and Europe remain heavily dependent on Russia’s fossilfuel resources. Roger Annis, a leading Canadian ecosocialist and long-term political activist, aptly noted on the System Change, Not Climate Change listserve, “I find it hard to imagine that the capitalist rulers of Ukraine would turn their backs on acquiring relatively cheap natural gas from Russia in favor of LNG [Lique­ fied Natural Gas] imported from the other side of the world. For their part, Russia’s rulers have every inter­ est in continuing their sales of gas and other commer­ cial relations with Ukraine.”

The world’s capitalist elite are quite capable of tem­ porizing their moves rather than resorting to imme­ diate military confrontation, and especially so when their contemplated medium-term gains—the U.S. and EU right to frack Ukrainian shale reserves—outweigh any possible immediate advantages. For now, Russian gas will continue to flow to Europe through Ukrainian pipelines. No doubt in the months and years ahead, Russia’s dominance in this sphere will be diminished by its U.S. and EU rivals.

We need only note here that the environmental con­ sequences for all humanity have been inadvertently exposed once again by the future imperialist pro­ jections to frack the earth to the point of no return, wherein capitalist-induced global warming murders tens of millions of people and countless other species critical for the earth’s fundamental ecological balance.

One does not usually “cut off the hand that feeds it,” as the saying goes. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian crisis warns us once again that capitalist economic compe­ tition in pursuit of profits and the monopolization of markets, on the increase today the world over, can and will give rise to capitalist wars. It is unmistakable that the U.S. has its calculating eyes on its chief competi­ tors in the EU and China today. Militarily encircling Russia and limiting its future economic potential as a regional rival is similarly never far from the calcula­ tions of the world’s leading imperialist plunderer.

This is not to underestimate the capacity of Russian or Chinese multi-billionaires to engage in heinous acts of plunder against their own people and others who fall under their control. Both emerged from the old Stalinist bureaucracies after looting the nation’s wealth by plundering nationalized property and ter­ minating the vast benefits that accrued to their peo­ ples following the unprecedented social gains of the 1917 and 1949 revolutions that ended capitalist rule. U.S. and European bankers were more than eager to help finance this plunder, and in return gain substan­ tial access to exploit China’s and Russia’s resources and labor force.

Today, U.S. capitalists own or control half of China’s multi-national corporations. China obligingly pro­ vides U.S. and EU corporations with the largest cheap labor force in the world. Russia’s economy is simi­ larly and increasingly dependent on deals between its oligarchs and their American counterparts at the expense of the Russian people.

In both instances, however, it is critical to under­ stand that U.S. imperialism remains the most powerful actor on the world stage—dominant as never before in history in the military arena, and using this power and its far-flung military bases to its economic advan­ tage wherever possible. U.S. accusations that Russia violated “international law” with regard to Crimea are not taken seriously by anyone who understands that U.S. wars around the world—whether accomplished by outright intervention or by funding other reaction­ ary forces, by drone assassinations or by privatized squads—are the norm with regard to U.S. policy. The U.S. “cop of the world” has no standing when it comes to so-called international law. It operates by the defin­ ing law of imperialism only—plunder the earth and its people first and invent a “legal” justification” later.

In an earlier article on the Ukraine crisis, published in the March issue of Socialist Action, we included ma­ terial researched by Marilyn Vogt Downey, whose ar­ ticle entitled, “An Imperialist Invasion Without An Im­ perialist Army: Whither Ukraine,” provided in-depth information as to the terms of the Association Agree­ ment that the beleaguered Yanukovych government signed with the EU on the virtual eve of Yanukovych’s demise. Vogt-Downey described in detail how the EUIMF Ukraine bailout, with the assistance of the U.S., was and remains aimed at imposing an austerity regi­ men on the Ukrainian masses that parallels the eco­ nomic rape of Greece imposed by similar European forces.

Further substantiation of Downey’s central thesis is provided in a March 17 article by radical economist Jack Rasmus entitled, “Who Benefits, Who Pays for the Ukraine’s Economic Crisis.” The article ap­ pears on Rasmus’ website: http://www.kyklos­ productions.com/articles.html.

After reviewing in detail the massive negative im­ pact of the previous IMF loans of 2005 and 2010 to Ukraine, Rasmus’ conclusions regarding the present negotiated bailout are to the point: “To briefly sum­ marize in terms of just the net impacts of the EU/IMF deal, ‘Who Benefits’ include: western European banks who will continue to receive principal and interest payments from the IMF that would have defaulted; global currency speculators who will be able to sell Ukrainian currency to the Ukrainian central bank at a subsidized price, Ukrainian companies that will be given export credits to continue selling to western Eu­ rope and the western Europe companies that import the Ukrainian exports at a more attractive price.

“Those ‘Who Pay’ and who lose include: majority of Ukrainian households that will have their real income reduced as they pay higher prices for gas, Ukrainian elderly who will have their pensions cut, Ukrainian government workers who will lose their jobs, and all Ukrainian households who will lose other govern­ ment services.”

In a follow-up article on the post-coup re-negotiated terms of the updated March 21 EU Association Agree­ (Left and above) Fascist groups led Maidan confrontations in Kiev in February.

ment, Rasmus reports that the bailout sum was in­ creased to $27 billion, as opposed to the $15 billion that had originally been offered. Rasmus concludes with two projections that are not unexpected but catastrophic. After the world’s imperial bankers and financial speculators get their hands on this money, the 2014 IMF “bailout” will result in a net Ukraine GDP loss of $30 billion. In Rasmus’ words: This “net reduction in Ukraine’s GDP of $30 billion in the next two years, or about $15 billion a year, represents a cu­ mulative decline in GDP of at least 18%. And that’s a Greece-like Depression.”

Rasmus continues: “By absorbing the Ukrainian economy into the Eurozone, the latter is in effect tak­ ing under its economic wing yet another ‘Greece’ and ‘Spain.’ And as in the case of those latter economies, those who will pay will not be the bankers and multi­ national businessmen, but the Ukrainian people. But that is the essential and repeated history and legacy of IMF deals globally for the last three decades.”

Viewed from this vantage point, the Ukraine events of the past several months reveal that the central play­ er was and remains U.S. imperialism, whose economic and now political penetration of the Ukraine has been all but finalized.

The U.S. is the leading player in the IMF and was far from playing second fiddle to the EU in the events that led to Yanukovych’s fleeing the country. It was central to the coup regime’s decision to appoint Arseniy Yat­ senuk as prime minister as opposed to the EU’s choice. Indeed, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland disclosed at a Washington D.C. conference that the U.S. had spent $5 billion in funding the “democratic oppo­ sition” in Ukraine, according to a Dec. 16, 2013, report issued three days later by the Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor, an agency linked to the CIA.

The $5 billion was funneled to some 40,000 Ukrai­ nian NGOs that undoubtedly played a role in the largely middle-class Maidan mobilizations that came to be militarily dominated by organized and armed neo-fascist militias, several of whose leaders now hold top government posts and head ministries in the new Ukraine. It was Nuland’s never denied “Fuck the EU” remark, secretly taped by Russian authorities and broadcast around the world, that made it clear that the U.S. had no intention of ceding the right to be top dog in Ukraine to the EU or anyone else.

The dispute over Crimea has now been settled by a referendum vote that few dispute represents the will of the majority. But the Crimean people, now part of Russia, are far from free from capitalist exploitation and oppression. In this vital sense their future, and that of the people of the Ukraine more generally, will be determined by events to come—by events that will eventually include the formation of revolutionary so­ cialist parties deeply integrated into all the organiza­ tions of the working masses and prepared for a break with capitalism in all its manifestations worldwide.

In recent years the world has witnessed magnificent mobilizations against tyranny and repression time and again. The masses come into the streets looking for real alternatives to the destructive social and eco­ nomic order that in the context of an unprecedented worldwide capitalist economic crisis has wrought un­ speakable horrors to the working masses everywhere. In many, if not all, of these repeated mobilizations, the absence of revolutionary socialist leadership has al­ lowed reactionary forces to come to the fore, some­ times with the direct assistance of U.S. imperialist intervention and war, and other times through polit­ ical-economic alliances with whatever pro-capitalist (continued on page 9, in “U.S. secret Twitter plan aimed to create ‘flash mobs’ in Cuba”)

SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 2014 7

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Fourth International debates revolutionary strategy Counter-resolution by Socialist Action (U.S.) on the question of ‘broad anti-capitalist parties’

A critical discussion and debate over revolutionary strategy has been taking place for several years in the world socialist current known as the Fourth Interna­ tional (FI), founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his cothinkers. The debate centers on the role and func­ tion of “broad anti-capitalist parties.”

As a contribution to that discussion, we here reprint the counter-resolution to the FI leadership document titled “To continue the debate on broad parties,” pre­ sented to the March 2013 meeting of the Internation­ al Committee of the Fourth International.

The text below was approved by the National Com­ mittee of Socialist Action (U.S.) on Jan. 23, 2013. So­ cialist Action stands in fraternal solidarity with the FI. Reactionary U.S. legislation, however, prohibits formal affiliation. S discussion] that the construction of mass revolu­ ocialist Action has repeatedly asserted [in this tionary socialist parties in every country of the world based on the program of the Fourth International is the indispensable and prime reason for the existence of the FI itself—to advance the cause of world socialist revolution. Mass Leninist parties are the prerequisite instruments for the conquest of power, the abolition of capitalism, and the establishment of workers and farmers governments to establish the future socialist order. This is a foundational principle of revolution­ ary socialist politics. Today it appears to be in serious dispute in our world movement.

The issue of whether revolutionaries should enter or construct broad anti-capitalist parties, labor par­ ties based on the trade unions, or any other political formation based on the working class is a tactical question to be decided based on the situation in every country. In different circumstances, these working-class formations can be either an asset or an obsta­ cle to the education and mobilization of the work­ ing class. The major criterion determining whether revolutionary socialists should participate in, build or construct such parties is whether or not it advances the construction of the mass revolutionary socialist party of the Leninist type.

The new Bureau text today seeks to distinguish between two kinds of parties, one overtly reformist, the other vaguely defined as broad anti-capitalist—a party that, according to the Bureau, “places itself from the outset in the perspective of the overthrow of the capitalist system, with an acknowledged revolution­ ary horizon, even if they do not develop a completed revolutionary strategy and if within them they could bring together political currents of different history and traditions…”

With this distinction the Bureau reminds us that 8 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 2014 “everyone understands that there is no impermeable boundary between the two projects.” Indeed, the FI’s history over the past decades, as well as the decisions of the past several World Congresses, promotes par­ ticipation in and building of “the two,” kinds of par­ ties. Today, the Bureau’s focus is on just one.

Socialist Action has never indicated any opposition to FI sections participating in or building either of “the two”—qualified only by us with a clear answer to the question, “Does our participation serve to ad­ vance or retard the cause of building the revolution­ ary socialist party of the FI?”

It should be noted that the Bureau’s “revolutionary horizon” party has too often become the overtly re­ formist party. Thus, Communist Refoundation (RC), initiated by a “left” split from the Italian Communist Party [in 1991], became part of a coalition capitalist government; the Brazilian Workers Party (PT) came to power in an electoral alliance with a Catholic party of capitalist reaction. Our FI comrades originally and for years described the PT and RC as “their parties” and were emphatic in their theory and practice that the building of FI parties was subordinate to the building of these now discredited reformist or dis­ solved parties.

What is at stake in this debate is not whether our sections are encouraged to enter and build this or that party, anti-capitalist (however defined) or reform­ ist (however defined). What is under discussion is whether these new formations are a substitute for the revolutionary party—whether something new in the world has appeared following “the fall of the Berlin Wall,” as the text states, which today fundamentally changes our historic perspective of building what we have fought for and advocated for three-quarters of a century, “the world party of socialist revolution.”

The report at the last Fourth International World Congress, “Role and Tasks of the FI,” centered on the proposition that the task of the FI was to build a new International based on parties of the French New An­ ti-capitalist Party (NPA) type. We are and remain in staunch opposition to this perspective. If it becomes the norm for all or most FI sections, we are heading toward the demise of the FI.

When this clearly stated orientation was challenged by a significant number of sections during the World Congress debate, the reporter for the Bureau, in his summary remarks, felt compelled to modify this cat­ egorical assertion by stating that the NPA was for the French, and other sections could do as they pleased based on the conditions in their own countries. This summary marked an important, but still inadequate retreat that has since proved to be ephemeral.

But the proverbial cat was out of the bag, and espe­ (Left) Close to 2 million people from all over the Spanish state took part in the “March for Dignity” in Madrid, March 22, to protest government austerity measures and joblessness. The rate of unemployment is 37% and over 50% for people under 25.

cially so when the French League Communiste Revo­ lutionnaire (LCR) dissolved itself [to form the New Anti-capitalist Party in 2009]—effectively liquidat­ ing our strongest party. Today, we are proceeding to evaluate the wisdom of this dissolution.

If the question were to be stated more clearly, we must ask, why did the comrades believe that the for­ mation of the NPA made necessary the complete liq­ uidation of the LCR, along with its publications and party institutions? It’s clear that what was involved was not a tactical decision but rather a strategic de­ cision that was based on the fundamentally flawed proposition that world politics had been fundamen­ tally transformed with the demise of the USSR and the other Stalinist states, along with the “social liberal” transformation of the social democracy. From this, it has been all but concluded that the need for the FI and its Leninist sections was now in question. An FI con­ sisting of NPAs was to be the new project—an orien­ tation whose negative consequences are now rapidly unfolding across the board.

Most egregious was the fact that the FI’s objective in these new parties was not to advance the “pro­ gramme of the FI” and win supporters to it. Had this been the case, our comrades would have organized se­ rious formations—whether they had been called cur­ rents, tendencies, platforms, or whatever—for that purpose. But in general, this was not done, much less seen as a priority. In France there is no FI section and no FI current inside the NPA. What remains of the NPA appears to be an ever-growing number of “platforms,” each putting forward its own and counter-posed per­ spective, and each mostly led by FI comrades.

The Bureau is on unstable grounds to speak of the perspective of a “revolutionary break from capital­ ism” when the very parties it characterized as being of that nature have embraced capitalist austerity bail­ outs (as in Portugal) or coalition capitalist budgets (as with the Danish Red Green Alliance). (See Interna­ tional Viewpoint: SAP national conference statement, “Budget 2013: A major mistake by the Red-Green Al­ liance.”)

Today the Bureau seems to be proposing yet an­ other shift. “Taking stock of the Brazilian and Ital­ ian experiences,” the Bureau repeats, we now have something else in mind—not broad parties, but broad anti-capitalist parties, “seeking to consolidate all cur­ rents rejecting the logic of management of the capital­ ist system and acting explicitly for a socialist break, a revolutionary rupture based on the activity of social movements.”

Here we note that the “language” of revolution has been added to the mix of what these new anti-capi­ talist parities are to be, if they come into existence, that is, explicitly “socialist” and for a “revolutionary rupture” with the capitalist state. Our estimation is that, given the class-collaborationist politics of past and present “anti-capitalist” parties, the Bureau feels the need to take some distance from the parties that it previously praised.

Let us assume that such “currents” could come to­ gether to form what the Bureau calls “useful parties,” parties that can “organize the class struggle” instead of what the Bureau describes as “small propaganda groups,” namely the sections of the FI. Were this the case we would certainly be the first to participate, wholeheartedly, BUT NEVER as a substitute for build­ ing and transforming the small, largely propaganda groups that FI sections are today into mass revolu­ tionary socialist parties capable organizing the revo­ lutionary transformation of society. Vaguely defined anti-capitalism and socialism, including a vague ref­ erence to a future break with the state power, are no substitute for disciplined revolutionary socialist par­ ties armed with a program for socialist revolution.

FI sections are not small propaganda groups by choice. History has dealt us a hand that we cannot reverse by magical formulas, as the Bureau propos­ es. Our admitted difficulties stem not from inherent programmatic deficiencies and Leninist democratic centralist norms but from the long, perhaps longest (continued on page 11, in “Rallies demand: ‘Not one more deportation!’”)

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raised similar demands for affiliation with Russia.

The Ukraine events of the past several months reveal that the central player has been U.S. imperialism.