Workers Vanguard No. 849	27 May 2005

Spartacists Intervene at Chicago Social Forum

Ford Foundation, CIA and the Social Forums

What do the International Socialist Organization (ISO), the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), French premier Jacques Chirac and the Ford Foundation, front men for the CIA, have in common? They are all snuggled up together in the Social Forum movement...and it's not a pretty sight. On May 1, the ISO, RCP and a smorgasbord of liberals, community groups and leftists hosted the second annual Chicago Social Forum (CSF) under the theme "Another Chicago is Possible." Our comrades from the Chicago Spartacist League and the Spartacus Youth Club attended and aggressively intervened to oppose and expose the social forums as nothing more than an expression of class collaboration, putting forward our program of revolutionary struggle against capitalism. We sold 50 copies of Workers Vanguard to the 300 CSF participants, particularly to youth interested in revolutionary Marxism.

The social forums have a pretense of fighting against poverty and oppression. But far from offering any solution to the enormous miseries of world capitalism, the World Social Forum (WSF) was set up in the aftermath of the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle, and subsequent mass protests against the WTO and IMF internationally, in order to ensure that those who oppose the depredations of capitalism do not challenge the capitalist system itself. An article titled "Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum" in Aspects of India's Economy (September 2003) described this process:

"Attempts by the ruling circles of those countries to suppress this movement met with no success; indeed, the movement grew. It was in this context that the WSF was initiated by ATTAC, a French NGO (non-governmental organisation) platform devoted to lobbying international financial institutions to reform and humanise themselves, and by the Brazilian Workers Party, whose leftist image and 'participatory' techniques of government have not prevented it from scrupulously implementing the stipulations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)."

This insightful article details a calculated strategy to prevent struggle that might challenge the framework of capitalism by creating a modern day popular front: a class-collaborationist political bloc of working-class parties with capitalist parties in which the politics of the working-class component of the bloc are subordinated to the politics of the bourgeoisie, to the defense of the bourgeois state and capitalism. As then-Trotskyist leader James Burnham pointed out in his 1937 pamphlet, "The People's Front, the New Betrayal":

"For the proletariat, through its parties, to give up its own independent program means to give up its independent functioning as a class. And this is precisely the meaning of the People's Front. In the People's Front the proletariat renounces its class independence, gives up its class aims—the only aims, as Marxism teaches, which can serve its interests. By accepting the program of the People's Front, it thereby accepts the aims of another section of society; it accepts the aim of the defense of capitalism when all history demonstrates that the interests of the proletariat can be served only by the overthrow of capitalism."

The Aspects article further details:

"While several political forces fighting for a change of the system have been excluded from the WSF meets, droves of political leaders of the imperialist countries have been attending. Not only does the WSF as a body receive funds from agencies which are tied to imperialist interests and operations, but innumerable bodies participating in the WSF too are dependent on such agencies. The implications of this can be seen from the history of one such agency, Ford Foundation, which has closely collaborated with the US Central Intelligence Agency internationally, and in India has helped to shape the government's policies in favour of American interests."

As the article notes: "One indeed does not have to be a Marxist to understand that 'he who pays the piper calls the tune'." Thus, ATTAC leader Susan George opposes calls to replace or abolish the IMF, while ATTAC affirms that "the right to capitalist property includes the right to hire and fire. The question is knowing up to what point." And these are the forces with which avowed socialists like the ISO have joined in an attempt to rope young people into dead-end attempts to reform capitalism rather than fighting to destroy it.

For the Political Independence of the Working Class!

Popular fronts have historically issued out of mass working-class and social upheavals and have been called on specifically to crush with muscle and deception any potential for workers revolution. A classic, tragic example is that of Chile in 1973, where Salvador Allende and his fellow reformists led the revolutionary-minded working class into a coalition government with their class enemies, the capitalists. Allende vowed not to challenge the capitalist order or the state; he put an end to peasants seizing land, workers seizing factories. Aided by U.S. imperialism, the Chilean bourgeoisie then turned to General Augusto Pinochet to attack the working class and its leaders (including Allende) at the cost of at least 30,000 lives, imposing a savage military dictatorship.

Today, popular fronts are called upon by the rulers to sell austerity to the workers more effectively than the discredited bourgeois parties can. The Brazilian government is the quintessential example of this today, where, as head of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT), Luis Inácio Lula da Silva now sits as President. His "fiscal orthodoxy" imposed upon the impoverished Brazilian working class has earned Lula the praise of the IMF and the World Bank. At the last WSF earlier this year, Lula was roundly booed by many of the attendees. Many may oppose Lula's open pandering to and collaboration with the IMF and World Bank. But the truth is that Lula represents the politics and program of the WSF on the level of state power.

The fundamental dividing line in capitalist society is between the capitalist class and the working class. The capitalists own the means of production—the factories, mines, means of transport, etc.—and derive their profit through the exploitation of the workers. The potential social power of the working class is derived from the fact that it has its hands directly on these means of production. The interests of the workers and the capitalists are irreconcilable. Only the working class has the social power and objective interest to sweep away the capitalist order and its state, seize the means of production and establish a planned, collectivized economy, which, on a world scale, lays the basis for the elimination of scarcity, social classes and all forms of oppression.

In "The People's Front, the New Betrayal," Burnham explained:

"Marxism always approaches every social, political, and historical question from the point of view of the class struggle. The basic conflict in modern society—capitalist society—is, according to Marxism, the conflict and struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This conflict must continue, and progressively deepen, until capitalism, on a world scale, is overthrown, and the bourgeoisie defeated, and liquidated as a class. Only the two basic classes of modern society—the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—are capable of independent historical action, and thus of formulating independent social and political programs. Reduced to simplest terms, the program of the bourgeoisie is the defense of the capitalist order; the program of the proletariat, its overthrow. The intermediary classes, however they may try to escape it, always in actuality support one side or another in the basic conflict."

Sellout Pays Tribute to Spartacists

The backdrop to the WSF is the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union and the subsequent proclamation by world capitalist rulers that "communism is dead." While never really standing for the program of socialist revolution, our opponents on the left used to give occasional lip service to the goal of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Today, however, imbued with "death of communism" ideology, they've largely dropped talk of socialism as a "pipe dream" and are latching onto forces increasingly distant from the working class. An RCPer at the Chicago Social Forum told us that they changed their paper's name from Revolutionary Worker to Revolution because there are "many other revolutionary forces." Another prominent RCP member proclaimed outright, "The proletariat can't save us."

As the Aspects article points out, while ensuring representation and attendance from capitalist governments, the WSF charter has a clause intended to "block certain 'undesirable' radical parties and their fighting forces." The Mexican Zapatistas, for example, were excluded from several WSF meetings presumably because they are an "armed force." After her group was excluded, Hebe Bonafini of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, an organization of the mothers of those "disappeared" by the Argentine military dictatorship of 1976-83, captured it well: "The organizers have staged the event so that all we were supposed to be talking about was 'putting a human face' on globalization."

The politics of the CSF were expressly based on "the principles of the World Social Forum." Thus, like the WSF, groups claiming to be revolutionary were not allowed on the speaker's platform. At one session, for example, the speaker, a member of the RCP, said he could not speak in the name of the RCP because parties are not allowed.

At one of the largest CSF workshops, "Alternatives to Neoliberal Globalization," ex-Maoist Carl Davidson and labor reformist Dan Swinney stressed the need for a broad alliance with "progressive" capitalists; otherwise, Davidson said, you're just a "small group with red flags." The workshop pushed a "coalition of all forces that move together," which would include, "with criticisms," the capitalist governments of Venezuela, Brazil, and South Africa. Our comrades intervened at this workshop, pointing out how the core political program of the social forums—shamelessly yet clearly articulated by Davidson, the ISO, the RCP and a host of others at the CSF—is that of class collaboration and the popular front. Davidson aptly responded that "the difference between us and the Spartacist League is that they still believe in the old class versus class conception," to which our comrade proudly shouted back, "You're right!"

In another workshop on the religious right, Davidson dusted off the writings of Bulgarian Stalinist Georgi Dimitrov—Stalin's pre-eminent spokesman as General Secretary of the Comintern from 1935 onward, best remembered as the spokesman for the Stalinists' treacherous policy of the "People's Front." Davidson quoted Dimitrov's assertions that fascism is the dictatorship of the most reactionary section of the capitalist class—the argument being that one should ally with the "progressive" wing of the bourgeoisie. The truth is that fascism is a form of capitalist rule, one to which the bourgeoisie turns in times of social crisis in order to safeguard the capitalist system against the workers. And the only way to effectively fight the fascist threat is to fight to overthrow the capitalist system itself. Davidson pushed the claim, heavily promoted by the RCP, that Bush represents the rise of "Christian Fascism" in the U.S. Bush is plenty reactionary; he is not, however, leading a fascist regime, but a right-wing regime within the framework of bourgeois democracy. All this stuff about "Christian Fascism" is merely a pretext to promote support to the Democrats as a "lesser evil" to the Republicans.

The utter political bankruptcy of the counterfeit leftists leading the CSF was evidenced by Davidson's call to appropriate the "moral values" rhetoric of the religious right. Davidson argued that religion isn't all bad; after all, he said, Marx called it sigh of the oppressed." These supposed leftists' revolting capitulation to the rightward drift was articulated by an RCP member who spoke of the many common values supposedly shared by religious people and radicals. An SYC comrade intervened against this attempt to reconcile Marxism with religion, including by disappearing Marx's unequivocal opposition to religion. Another Spartacist comrade noted that the presenters were arguing on the terrain of the right wing, that the social basis for religious reaction in this country is black oppression, and that one good strike would go a long way toward dispelling all this talk about "moral values"—showing working people that they can fight to better their condition in this world rather than waiting for justice in a mythical afterlife.

At an abortion rights workshop led by the ISO, the discussion again emphasized the need to reclaim "moral values" terminology. ISO members decried the attacks on abortion rights and talked about the need to rebuild the movement, while bemoaning the much lower level of political consciousness today compared to the 1970s. A comrade from the SL sharply pointed out that the backdrop for this qualitative regression of political consciousness was set over a decade ago with the destruction of the Soviet degenerated workers state in 1991-92, which the ISO hailed. The ISO supported the forces of counterrevolution arrayed against the Soviet Union, including the woman-hating mujahedin cutthroats who fought against the Red Army in Afghanistan and Solidarność in Poland, a company "union" promoted by the CIA and the recently deceased Pope. He also exposed them for claiming to stand for women's rights, yet putting those rights on the back burner when they get the opportunity to support a capitalist politician, citing their stumping for bourgeois presidential candidate Ralph Nader who dismissed the fight for abortion rights as "gonadal politics." An SYC member spoke to the necessity to fight for free abortion on demand and for women's liberation through socialist revolution. In response to our comrades, the speaker from the ISO scoffed that reforms cannot be won through "some magical socialist transformation of the whole system."

Fight for Socialist Revolution!

The strategy of class collaboration was fully displayed in the recent Iraq antiwar protests, in which the very same organizers of the CSF built a "movement" around slogans expressly designed not to "alienate" the liberal Democrats. Our comrades addressed this question in various workshops, explaining that slogans such as "No to War" were consciously designed not to take a clear stand against U.S. imperialism, precisely because it is the U.S. ruling class to whom they appeal in hopes of pressuring imperialism to behave more "humanely."

We raised the call "Defend Iraq"—and today call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops—taking a clear side with the victims of U.S. imperialism. Imperialism is a system, not a policy that can be shifted and molded depending on which capitalist party inhabits the White House. It is the highest stage of capitalism. As Spartacist comrades said in several individual discussions: the only way to end imperialist war is to end the capitalist system that breeds it, and only the working class has the social power to bring down the bourgeois state. We repeated a point we made throughout the antiwar demonstrations, that the only successful antiwar movement was in 1917—the Bolshevik Revolution that overthrew capitalism and took Russia out of the carnage of World War I.

Militant youth and workers fighting against the depredations of capitalism and imperialism must break with the social forums and all forms of class collaboration. The only way to fight increasing repression, brutal exploitation and war is to eliminate the capitalist system that breeds such horrors. The working class needs to break with the Democrats and build its own party, a multiracial workers party that will fight for power. We stand on the tradition of the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky and the October Revolution of 1917—and we fight for new October Revolutions throughout the world. Join us!