June 5th, 2022
The assassins of NATO set up their Summit on June 29 and 30 in Madrid...
No to NATO, out with the Bases! No to imperialism and its agents!
Out with the pact between the NATO and its gendarme Putin to carve up Ukraine!
Out with Putin, guardian of the business of imperialism in Eurasia, Ukraine and Syria!
Down with the PSOE-Unidas Podemos government, agent of NATO, which, together with PP, Vox and the King, support it!
Down with the Monarchy, business manager of the arms industry!
- Expropriation without payment and under workers' control of the entire war industry!
- Confiscation of war profit and expropriation of war industry dealers!
- No to the state weapons program!
- Arming of the workers under workers' control!- Replacement of the regular army by a workers' militia!
European General Strike against the war machine!
For the Socialist United States of Europe!
On June 29 and 30, the NATO Summit will take place in Madrid, at the request of the “progressive” government of PSOE-Unidas Podemos to be its hosts. It is a paradox that the previous weekend there will be a demonstration against the NATO Summit, which will be attended by different political groups, including Podemos, United Left (IU) and the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), who are in the sponsoring and hosting government of the Summit.
The left of the monarchical regime of 78 represented by the PCE, IU and Podemos is proving not only to be an essential leg of the Spanish monarchical regime but also agents of imperialism and its armed wing, NATO. Under the King's discipline, social democracy and Stalinism are saving the system while vilely deceiving the working class: IU says "No to NATO" but does not break up with the PSOE government, which together with PP and Vox, supports the NATO. The "No to NATO" policy of Unidas Podemos is not anti-imperialist because it supports the bourgeois forces that support NATO. It is governing with NATO, it is in a NATO government. This government, whose vice-president is Yolanda Díaz, from the PCE, also wants to increase its military budget to 2% of GDP, as the US demands. As if that were not enough, this government, which is an inseparable part of the monarchical regime of 1978, hides that the Royal House is not only involved in the sale of international arms, but is also the business manager of the interstate arms industry, such as those with the satrap government of Saudi Arabia. The Bourbons and their regime is, therefore, the essential support of NATO, as the armed wing of the transnationals and imperialism.
The "No to NATO" of this left of the regime has nothing to do with the anti-imperialist sentiment of the workers. The "No to NATO" policy of Podemos and the PCE-IU is that of a "Yes to a multipolar world", based on imperialism as the world police in alliance with Putin's troops and with the Beijing regime, as the main counterrevolutionary poles. The anti-imperialism of this New Left, which has Stalinism within it, is false. His multipolar world is that Putin massacres Eurasia, Syria and Ukraine on behalf of imperialism, who takes care of their business.
In the regions of the world where the US cannot intervene directly because its working class would take to the streets, as happened when Vietnam and Iraq wars took place, it uses gendarmes, like Putin, in order to deploy to defeat revolutionary processes. This multipolar world to which social democracy and Stalinism aspire also includes China playing a more important role in the Pacific, sharing business with imperialism. And, likewise, in this multipolar world, Ukraine's cake is on the negotiating table to be divided among the various North American and European imperialist gangs after Putin massacred it.
For the workers, the slogan of "No to NATO" is to fight against imperialism. The PCE-IU and Podemos, subordinate to a PSOE that introduced us to NATO 40 years ago, are agents of imperialism. That is why in order to fight against NATO it is necessary to defeat Stalinism and this New Left, which are in a government with the NATO politicians. And not only in the government, in the leadership of Podemos in Madrid is Julio Rodríguez, former NATO general and chief of the Defense Staff (JEMAD).
In addition, the "neutrality" that Podemos and the PCE-IU advocate is false. It is not possible to advocate that the Spanish state get out of NATO and that there is Spanish imperialism that plunders the world. Franco was also neutral and the Spanish State continued, as it does now, plundering colonies and the Latin American market. We, Trotskyist revolutionaries, closely link the slogan “No to NATO” with that of “Get Spanish imperialism out of the colonies and businesses in Latin America and out of the oppressed peoples it subjugates!” The "No to NATO" slogan must be a starting point against imperialism, not a pantomime slogan as used by the left of the monarchical regime that ultimately supports NATO.
The meaning of "No to NATO" for Trotskyist revolutionaries
None of the groups that will demonstrate against the NATO Summit will fill this slogan with content. At this moment saying "No to NATO" must go hand in hand with saying "Out with Putin's invasion of Ukraine!", because we know that with NATO or with Putin Ukraine will be a monitored colony. Many pro-Putin branches of Stalinism are legitimizing the role of Putin's gendarme and his counterrevolutionary invasion of Ukraine, concealing the fact that there is a pacto between NATO and Putin to divide up Ukraine through which Putin massacres it.
Denouncing the NATO and not denouncing its pacts with Turkey and Russia to slaughter Eurasia, Ukraine and Syria is a pantomime. NATO disciplines the peoples of the world, including the European Union, and to discipline Eurasia it uses its gendarme Putin. Out with NATO and all the watchdogs of imperialism's business in Eurasia!
The only way to fight for a "No to NATO" is advocating the expropriation without payment and under workers' control of the entire war industry of the Spanish state of the monarchical regime (weapons factories, warships, etc). War is a gigantic commercial enterprise, it is an industry of profit for the big bourgeoisie, who are the main suppliers of the war. This is why we must advocate for workers' control as the first step in the fight against the war makers. The expropriation without payment and under workers' control of the entire war industry is the only thing to guarantee the "No to NATO".
The Stalinist and socialdemocratic Left presents its reformist slogan of taxes on war profits. Trotskyist revolutionaries oppose this useless slogan with that of fighting for the confiscation of war profits and expropriation of war industry dealers. To oppose the state's armament program, we must advocate the arming of workers under workers' control, replacing the regular army with a workers' militia. That is the meaning of "No to NATO" for the Trotskyist revolutionaries.
Those who say "No to NATO" in Ukraine remained silent and said “Yes to IMF” when an aggressive plan for Ukraine was imposed against which the working class from Kyiv to Donbass rose up. Our “No to NATO!” is an “No to IMF” and a “No to the imperialist Maastricht” and a “For the Socialist United States of Europe”. Assuming that there can be a Spanish state or a European Union outside of NATO with European and Spanish imperialism existing is to believe that imperialist Maastricht could be reformed, as Varufakis and Melenchon said at the beginning of the crisis in their famous Plan B for the EU, with Podemos, IU-PCE and the former the ex-Trotskyists of Anticapitalistas with their MEP Miguel Urbán inside. All these reformists wanted to democratize the imperialist Europe of Maastricht, just as they are now fighting, as agents of imperialism, to make us swallow NATO. These traitors want us to believe that you can vote to kick NATO out and the only thing they do when this NATO Summit lands in Madrid is call a simple demonstration. The reformists want a referendum on NATO so that the “No” wins, but not so that imperialism is defeated but so that there is that new multipolar world, at the service of imperialism.
In the demonstration against the Summit some groups of ex-Trotskyists such as Anticapitalistas (the sister group of the French NPA) and the CRT (the branch of the Argentine PTS in the Spanish state) will go in a supposedly "anti-imperialist" and "anti-government" bloc against the NATO. We, Trotskyists, must unmask them by saying that one cannot be against imperialist militarism by deliberately ignoring and hiding the resistance and the Ukrainian working class that is fighting against the invader Putin, NATO's gendarme. With this policy these ex-Trotskyists place themselves with Stalinism and play the game of both Putin and NATO. And they end up carrying out the same policy as the Stalinists of the “communist” Parties, supporting the counterrevolutionary Putin. In this war you cannot have an abstentionist, neutral policy, saying that it is a war of two reactionary camps as these ex-Trotskyists say, equating the Russian invaders and the invaded Ukrainian people, that is playing the game of Putin and imperialism . For these reformists the working class and the Ukrainian nation do not exist, when they are the ones that really die and are destroyed in this war of occupation. These currents agree with Putin and NATO that Ukraine should not even be an independent nation and thus they liquidate any anti-imperialist demand and prevent the Ukrainian and Russian working classes from taking the political and military leadership of the war into their hands.
Other ex-Trotskyists, the Morenoites of the Corriente Roja (from the LIT-IWL) and Lucha Internacionalista (from the UIT-IWU), the "pro-Ukrainian" currents of the reformist Left, demand that NATO and the imperialist governments send weapons to win the war. We,Trotskyists, must unmask them by saying that this is leading the resistance and the national struggle to a dead end. It is the European workers, with the method of struggle of the general strike, the only ones, together with the Ukrainian workers' resistance and the Russian workers fighting against Putin, who will be able to put the Ukrainian working class back at the center of the current war, crushing Putin's “great” Russian invasion, conquering its national independence and being the combat vanguard against NATO and the imperialist powers throughout Europe.
For this, the workers' leadership of the war must be won by fighting against the bourgeois leadership of the war. Only a workers' leadership of the war can defeat Putin and end the plundering of Ukraine by imperialism and the IMF. We can not have any confidence in Zelensky and his bourgeois and pro-imperialist leadership of the war. We know that Zelensky is already negotiating the partition of Ukraine with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.
For a Welcome to Hell for NATO in Madrid!
We, Trotskyist revolutionaries, say that only with a general strike in the Spanish state and throughout Europe can NATO and its entire war machine be stopped. On May 20, the workers of Italy carried out a General and Social Strike, which was the first action of internationalist solidarity of the European workers with their brothers, the workers of Ukraine, confronting Putin and NATO.
We must demand to the trade union centrals a general strike in the Spanish State taking advantage of the NATO visit in Madrid. A simple demonstration sounds like a joke. Let the factories and study centers stop, let the buses and trains stop, let the machines and tools not work, let everything stop, as they deserve, let's take to the streets. Revolutionary General Strike! Out with NATO, their servants and partners who support them! NATO has to find a Spanish State risen up with the workers on their feet, it would be the second step to the European general strike to stop the war, after the action of Italy. The broadest unity of action of the struggling workers is necessary. We especially call on all those who call themselves Trotskyists to support combative class unionism to defeat the regime's unions, CCOO and UGT, which together with the regime's Left (Podemos, IU-PCE, etc.) do not want to stop the country no matter how much they maintain their “No to NATO” slogan. NATO in Madrid in this 2022 must be told “Welcome to Hell” as what happened in 2017 in Hamburg when the G-20 Summit took place there.
To those who lead the working class, who say they are fighting against NATO, we tell them to open the fronts and call for a Strike, and that we have to follow the example of the Italian workers. A committee for the general strike is urgent now!
But we know that reformism claims to be against NATO just in word, not in deed, but refuses to take action to defeat it because they are social-imperialist parties that do not care if they massacre the world working class.
As usual, they make the wars and we provide the dead. To stop NATO and its gendarme Putin and act in support of the Ukrainian masses, the ports would have to be closed so that neither NATO nor Putin ship disembarks. Only then will the workers be able to take the leadership of the war in Ukraine to kick out Putin, NATO and Zelensky, and recover the dictatorship of the proletariat that the Stalinists gave up. We call on the European working class to stop this war that is only to divide Ukraine! Putin's butcher generals and NATO assassins must be stopped!
The Russian workers who are under arms must fraternize with the Ukrainians at the front and turn guns and not kill their class brothers. At the same time, the workers and the Ukrainian resistance must form Committees of workers and Rank-and-file soldiers and win a proletarian leadership of the war that fights for the unity of the Ukrainian working class from Kyiv to the Donbass against both oligarchies, the pro-Russian and the pro-Western. And we, European workers, must give the broadest internationalist solidarity, sending food supplies and international workers' militias, as in the 1930s during the Spanish Civil War.
War to war!
NATO must be disarmed!
Revolutionary General Strike throughout Europe!
Let's stop Putin's occupation in Ukraine
Under the boot of Putin or NATO, Ukraine will remain a monitored colony!
For a workers’, Soviet and independent Ukraine!
No to NATO, out with the bases!
Out with NATO, their servants and partners who support them!
No to the Summit in Madrid, neither here nor anywhere!
Out with the bases of the Spanish state and anywhere!
Out with the pact between NATO and its gendarme Putin to carve up Ukraine! Out with Putin, guardian of the business of imperialism in Eurasia, Ukraine and Syria!
Out with the NATO government of PSOE, Podemos and the PCE-IU, which will be together with the PP, Vox and the King at the Summit! Down with the Monarchy, business manager of the arms industry!
The alternative to NATO is not a multipolar world, of agents of imperialism!
No to NATO and out with the imperialisms, including the Spanish, that plunder the world!
NATO, the IMF and the imperialist Maastricht cannot be reformed!
Expropriation without payment and under workers' control of the entire war industry!
Confiscation of war profit and expropriation of war industry dealers!
No to the state weapons program!
Arming of the workers under workers' control!
Replacement of the regular army with a workers' militia!
European general strike against the war machine!
For the Socialist United States of Europe!
DEMOCRACIA OBRERA - Spanish State
(member of the FLTI - Collective for the Refoundation of the Fourth International)
and AVANZATA PROLETARIA - Italy |