A mass, direct action movement has broken out in Austria against planned attacks on the university education system.

It all started when The Fine Art Academy was occupied by a small number of students who were protesting at plans by the Austrian education ministry to introduce a three-tier degree system. Students were furious that many of them would be unable to access the higher ‘masters’ qualification and that their choice over what subjects to focus on would be dictated from above.

John from London asked Roman from REVOLUTION Austria to report from inside the occupation. Read more…

Outnumbered at least three to one, anti-fascist fighters, including members from REVOLUTION, blockaded the statute to prevent the fascists from laying their wreath.  We all held our ground despite their repeated taunts and provocations.  While we lacked the forces necessary to physically disperse their rally, we did achieve our intended goal: we prevented them from laying the wreath.  In that sense and, in that sense alone, we were victorious; however, so much more work is desperately necessary in the coming months to combat the rise of fascist organizations – particularly as the crisis of capitalism continues to manifest itself with greater than anticipated month on month increases in unemployment.

Being outnumbered three to one against a fledgling, socially despised organization (currently anyway) is not only embarrassing, it is a disgrace.  If the fascists took anything from this past demonstration, the at least now know the weakness of the Left in Philadelphia.  They will undoubtedly increase their presence and scope of actions throughout the city and Pennsylvania more generally if working-class men and women, youth, ethnic and religious minorities, trade unionists, gay men and women, do not break up their rallies and dismantle their organizational structures.

Contrary to what some might argue, fascists have no right to appear in public anywhere or at any time to spout their messages of intolerance and hatred with the intention of fragmenting the working class, to keep it from uniting against its true enemy: the capitalists of all nations, races, creeds, etc.

At the same time, we cannot rely on or demand that the capitalist police break up fascist mobilizations or their infrastructure.  We need to do it ourselves.  A call on the government to ban fascist groups demonstrating or holding rallies, would be turned, inevitably, against organizations on the Left if, and when, they began to pose a significant threat to the interests of capital.  Our democratic rights are in just as much jeopardy with the capitalist State as they would be under a fascist dictatorship.

We need to start building anti-fascist self-defense organizations throughout our communities and neighborhoods before the fascists get any stronger.   Such organizations must be made up of armed contingents of workers (both male and female), young people, the progressive petit-bourgeoisie, and all those targeted directly by the fascists in the course of their daily lives; such organizations must be answerable to the working class and youth in general through democratic deliberation and reporting.  Fascists working within the established organizations of the working class (i.e., the trade unions) must be driven out and banned from returning.  No individual whose ultimate goal is the destruction of the working-class movement should be allowed to actively participate within the unions with the purpose of undermining their collective strength.

The task now is to break any hope of the fascists of increasing their presence to spread the poisonous fumes of racist, sexist, and homophobic propaganda.  A workers’ anti-fascist united front is, thus, on the order of the day.  Unite your communities against the fascists!  Confront them by any means necessary when they appear in public, harass and intimidate women and young people, racial and ethnic minorities, and gays and lesbians.  Trade unionists: join the struggle!  Fight back against the forces seeking the destruction of your organizations.

As the capitalist crisis continues its devastating course afflicting the working class, the youth, women, the urban poor, etc, the fascists will continue to attempt to swell their ranks so long as the “traditional” Left remains in disarray.  A mass revolutionary working-class political party would actively work to combat the fascists on a day-to-day basis. Only such a party would be able to link up the local and sectional fights against fascism into one nationally coordinated body capable of guiding both offensive and defensive actions against the paid hirelings of capital.  Such a party can and must be built to repel not only attacks by the bosses to make workers and young people pay the cost of the economic crisis through layoffs, short-time work, reduced benefits, etc, it must combat the reactionary rise of the fascists who seek to atomize any resistance to the rule of the capitalists and their State.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was supposed to be proof that socialism cannot work. The tiny minority of multi-millionaires that run the world have been trying to drive home a “lesson” to young people and workers ever since – that there is no alternative to the inequality, poverty, and chaos of the market; that global capitalism is the only system that can work. They want us to believe that any attempt to get rid of capitalism would end in dictatorship, bread queues, and eventual collapse; just like what happened in Russia.

The system, however, that collapsed in Russia in 1991 was not socialist. Despite all the red flags, the red stars, and all the statues of Lenin, it was a million miles from socialism. By 1991, the rulers of the Soviet Union had trampled on every one of the principles of the socialist revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky in 1917.

The Soviet Union was not socialist; it was Stalinist.

What’s the difference? It’s hard to know where to start…

In 1917, the privileges of the rich were abolished, and their money was taken away to try to abolish the division between rich and poor. Nevertheless, under Stalinism the rulers of Russia siphoned away huge sums for themselves and lived in luxury compared to the rest of the people.

In 1917, housing was shared out and the second homes of the rich were confiscated and handed over to the homeless and the poor. By 1991, the rulers of Russia had the most magnificent apartments in Moscow and villas by the Black Sea.

In 1917, women were given full legal equality. Abortion, contraception, and divorce were legalized. By 1991, the rulers of Russia held to the line that a woman’s duty was motherhood, and abortion was illegal once more.

In 1917, homosexuality was legalized. By 1991, it was illegal once again.

In 1917, other nations ruled by Russia were given the right to determine their own future and to separate from Russia if the people wished. By 1991, whole nations were held inside the Soviet Union against their will, and where Russians had privileges over other nationalities.

Workers’ Control

Above all in 1917 the working class had control of society through delegate-based councils of workers’, peasants’, and soldiers’ representatives (the “Soviets”). In the Bolshevik Party, members had full rights to debate out their different views and have a free vote over political decisions. By 1991, however, there was no democracy at all for the working class. Members of the Party (now called Communist Party of the Soviet Union) had no right at all to speak out against the line argued by the leaders at the top.

These were steps backwards, steps away from socialism. To build a socialist society, the working class will need to take power through workers’ councils or soviets, and then set about abolishing class distinctions. For this, the maximum working-class democracy is essential. The workers themselves will need to plan the economy. All divisions in the working class over race, sex, or nationality must be overcome.

This process of transforming society in a socialist direction was underway after the 1917 revolution; but, in the 1920s and 1930s, Stalinism threw the whole process into reverse.

What the capitalists never tell us about the history of the Soviet Union is that many of the leading Bolsheviks fought against this reversal and betrayal of the revolution. They never tell us that there was an alternative to both capitalism and Stalinism.

That is why today REVOLUTION still thinks the history of Russia is important. It was a workers’ revolution – which means it is part of our history. In addition, the struggle between Trotskyism and Stalinism is of burning relevance today, because it is filled with lessons for our future and the revolution that the workers and youth of the world are going to make in the 21st Century.

The rise of Stalinism

Russia had been a backward country before the revolution. The working class and the Bolshevik Party knew they had a huge job on their hands to modernize the country, build power lines and heavy industry, and to educate the millions of illiterate peasants. They were, however, never left in peace.

Fourteen capitalist countries invaded Russia and lined up with “White Armies” loyal to the landlords and the former royal family in an attempt to destroy the workers’ republic. By 1921, under Trotsky’s military leadership, the Red Army of workers and peasants had won the Civil war.

Nevertheless, the Russian Revolution was to be defeated, not by enemies from the outside, but by a deadly enemy from within.

Josef Stalin was not single-handedly responsible for destroying the Russian Revolution. No revolution backed by millions of workers could be overthrown by the actions of one man. Stalin came to power because he represented a growing force inside the Soviet State: the bureaucracy.

Lenin, Trotsky, and the Bolsheviks had always realized that socialism could not be built in one country, let alone one as backward as Russia. Capitalism is a world system. Socialism can become a reality only when it can deliver a higher standard of living and a stronger economy than world capitalism.

The Russian Revolution blew into the fire of working-class struggles all over the world. In Europe, great revolutions broke out. Soviet-type councils were formed in Hungary and Germany. Italian workers seized their factories in two years of mighty struggles. Nevertheless, one by one these opportunities went down to defeat because no strong workers’ party – like the Bolsheviks – was primed and ready to take power.

The Soviet Union was isolated. Compromises had to be made with rich peasants so that food could be supplied to the cities. A layer of middlemen and officials began to emerge who drew a relatively comfortable life from the situation. They owed their position to the Soviet State, so they did not want capitalism back. At the same time, however, the whole need for these people only existed because Russia was isolated. They came to fear the possibility of revolution abroad, which would break Russia’s isolation. In particular, they came to fear the working class itself. They began to suppress discussion, debate, and democracy, both inside the soviets and inside the Communist Party.

Stalin was General Secretary of the Party. He expressed the interests of this bureaucratic caste ever more clearly. In his Testament, published after his death, Lenin said Stalin had too much power and should be removed from his post.

After Lenin died, Stalin then came forward with a “theory” that was an attack on everything the Bolsheviks had stood for. He claimed that Russia could build socialism on its own. “Socialism in One Country” meant that the world revolution was no longer necessary as far as the bureaucracy was concerned. Instead of world revolution, the Stalinists argued for peaceful co-existence with capitalism abroad.

Every time the Stalinists did a deal with one of the capitalist powers, Stalin put pressure on Communists abroad not to do anything to upset their newfound allies. By the 1930’s, this meant that the Stalinists were arguing against the working class taking power in countries like France and Spain. Instead, revolutions were to be limited to the goal of democracy, not socialism.

Trotsky fights back

In 1923, Trotsky opened a political war against Stalin and everything he represented. He demanded a return to real working-class democracy in the party and in every walk of life. He called for a democratic plan to run the economy in the interests of the workers, not the bureaucrats, and, above all, he rejected the theory of socialism in one country and upheld the fight for world revolution.

The Trotskyists were defeated by a campaign of bullying and terror. They were banned, imprisoned in labor camps, exiled, and murdered. In a series of purges and stitched up “Show Trials,” the Trotskyists were accused of being everything from agents of Hitler to saboteurs of industry. Every problem in Russia, every failure of the regime, was blamed on the Trotskyists. Stalin even whipped up disgraceful anti-Jewish propaganda, because Trotsky and several other leading oppositionists were from Jewish backgrounds. Thousands died in Siberia or with a bullet in the back of the head.

Trotsky’s son Serge – a Soviet engineer with no interest in politics – was blamed for deliberately causing an accident at work and disappeared without a trace. His son Leon Sedov – a revolutionary active in France – was murdered by a Stalinist agent.

Trotsky himself was thrown out of Russia and was then forced to move from country to country by capitalist governments who were just as scared of him as Stalin was. One by one, Trotsky’s secretaries were assassinated by Stalin’s secret police. Eventually they cut down Trotsky himself in Mexico in 1940.

At first, Trotsky thought that the Stalinist sickness could be cured by reforming the Soviet Union. By the mid-1930s he came to realize that armed revolution was the only way to overthrow a vicious anti-working class dictatorship like Stalin’s. At the same time, Trotsky insisted that capitalism had not yet been restored in Russia. After overthrowing the Stalinists the workers would need to preserve the state plan and state-owned industries, but they should put them under working-class control in order to get back on the road to socialism.

For Trotsky, the Soviet Union was neither capitalist nor socialist: it was a degenerated workers’ state run by bureaucrats. He explained that the Soviet Union could be called a workers’ state “in approximately the same sense…in which a trade union, led and betrayed by opportunists, that is by agents of capital, can be called a workers’ organization.” The Soviet Union should still be defended if attacked by capitalist states, as it was when Nazi Germany invaded Russia in 1941. Nevertheless, there should be no support for Stalin or his gang. Unless the working class overthrew the Stalinist bureaucrats and put democratic workers’ councils back in power, Trotsky believed that eventually the bureaucrats themselves would lead Russia back to capitalism.

How right he was! After 1991, it was former Stalinist officials who were at the front of the rush to become capitalist multi-millionaires as the market and the profit system was steadily re-introduced across Russia and Eastern Europe, bringing mass unemployment, crime, inflation, and corruption with them.

In the battle with Stalin, most would say that Trotsky lost. Some even believe that Trotsky must have been wrong, because if he had been right he would have won. These people should think carefully. If anyone who loses a struggle is automatically in the wrong, then justice is on the side of some of the worst dictators and tyrants in history.

Trotsky’s critics, however, are wrong in another, even more important sense. It was not socialism that collapsed in 1991; it was Stalinism. Therefore, when millions of young people see through the capitalist system over the years to come, they will turn not to the ideas that have failed, but the genuine ideas of Bolshevism, to the ideas that Leon Trotsky fought and died for: working-class democracy, equality, and world revolution.

Across University of California (UC) campuses, thousands came out in protest against proposed furloughs for teachers, job reductions for campus workers, and a staggering 30% increase in tuition costs for students.  School administration and government officials blamed budget shortfalls; however, that did not stop the protests from expanding not only across all the UC campuses but to other California-based universities as well.

State officials were reportedly stunned by the whole situation.  What began as “mild” protests last summer between university faculty and their management over cuts in salaries has proliferated into statewide walkout.  The breaking point came two weeks prior, “when university authorities warned of savage budget cuts to deal with a $750 million shortfall and mooted huge increases in the cost of tuition. ‘UC regents vote next week to raise student fees, already up 250% over the last decade, by an additional 30%,’” was how one group of protesters summed up the situation today.”

The State of California is broke ($15 billion in the “red”), and there are no signs of abatement arising in the near future.  Officials are desperately trying to dismantle the state’s public university system at the expense of working-class youth in the hopes that private donors will pick up the tab.

The one-day staff strike and student walkouts will not be enough to reverse the plans of the state and school administration to decimate the system of public education working people depend so heavily upon to provide them with a first-rate, quality education.

It will take greater organization on all fronts: students, teachers, and campus workers must permanently link arms to fight this battle as long as it takes.  Students across UC and other universities must campaign to create an independently based student union that draws in representatives from all campuses to coordinate the fight back against tuition raises and budget cuts.  If a student union already exists, then pressure should be applied on its leaders to initiative and popularize militant action, up to and including, campus occupations until all tuition pay is scrapped and all student debts rescinded.  Politically, the protests must expand their demands for the state of California to institute a progressive tax on all national and multi-national corporations and financial institutions that headquarter in the state to fund the deficits threatening the public university system.  Make the rich pay!

Students must continue to champion the rights of faculty and staff to resist furloughs and layoffs by actively participating in their pickets, marches, and demonstrations.  Link up the struggles!  Stand together and fight to stop the agents of the capitalists from tearing down the public education system; education is a right, not a privilege for the children of the rich.  It must be free for all who wish to partake in it.

The ultimate goal of such education struggles now and in the future must be the complete democratization of colleges, universities, and all other schools across the United States.  Kick out the bureaucrats!  There is no need for them whatsoever.  Students, teachers, campus workers, parents – these are the only people you need to plan curriculum, ensure the smooth functioning of a campus, and provide quality instruction for all.

The United States, for example, cut interest rates to an abysmally low level in order to give American manufacturers a boost on international markets.  This makes it more difficult for the leading manufactures of the European Union – France and Germany – to compete.  Thus, they themselves must try to cheapen the cost of their currency to make their products more competitive on the market regardless of whether this leads to inflation or a reduction in consumer sales due to the fall in value of money.  Even China, which holds millions of dollars worth of U.S. Treasury Bonds, is vexed over the current policy of the Federal Reserve in which it repeatedly slashed interest rates.  Every drop in the value of the U.S. dollar means bad news for Chinese investors who are stuck holding such an asset; hence, they are pushing for an arrangement whereby the International Monetary Fund could establish its own currency, one who’s value will not be subject to volatile fluctuations resulting from national financial policies.  Thus, the G-20 is by no means a harmonious convention contrived to “iron out” the deficiencies and shortcomings associated with the world market in order to make it function more smoothly.  In reality, as we can observe above, it is the realm of economic warfare.

While the great capitalist powers and their respective trading-bloc nations debate and fight over market share for their respective financial institutions and multi-national manufactures and exporters, there is one aspect, however, in which they can all agree: the international working class must pay the price of the crisis.

Since the crisis began in earnest, millions of working-class people across both the United States and the world witnessed massive job losses across both the financial and “real” sectors of global economy.  People who were only yesterday working a full-time job, which included a pension and health benefits, now find themselves struggling to make ends meet working simultaneous, low-paying part-time jobs – if they can even find them.

All these developments had a crushing impact on young workers and new graduates looking for a fresh start after years of preparation and study.  Some statistical collections site evidence suggesting 78% of teenagers aged 16-19 in the United States are unemployed.  Since record keeping began, never has there been a time – possibly even greater than during the Great Depression – when there were fewer young people employed.

Meanwhile,  the “pillars” of American finance capital, i.e., Citigroup, American International Group (AIG), Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and others, got bailed out to the tune of $12.6 trillion (!) dollars in loans, handouts, and guarantees.  If one were to take the total sum of $12.6 trillion and divide it by the number of individuals currently living within the United States, we get a staggering figure of $ 42,105 for every adult and child in this country.

How much has the Obama administration promised us (workers and unemployed youth) under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009?  A mere $8.2 billion, one-thousandth of the sum provided to the banks, the insurance giants, and the stock brokerages.

Across the United States, 30 million people are currently out of work, or they are working involuntary part-time jobs.  Wall St. even admits that relatively higher levels of unemployment will be the norm in the coming months and years, even though the labor market had an influx of some 12 million individuals since 2001.  Nevertheless, job losses, pension freezes, slashed health benefits, longer working hours, short-time work, and money devaluation, are not the only way the capitalists seek to make us pick up the tab for their crisis.

The vast sums of money the Obama administration pumped into the economy must eventually come from somewhere.  The Congressional Budget Office predicts that by 2019, the U.S. will run a fiscal deficit of some $9 Trillion dollars.  Where is the money going to come from to pay off those State debts?  One hint, it will not be the multi-nationals or banks.  Undoubtedly, working-class people who will end up flipping the bill through a combination of higher taxes and a reduction in funds directed towards public services.  This is all something the cabal of G-20 representative will try to hammer out during their conference in Pittsburgh.

The fight back to ensure we do not end up paying the price of their crisis begins with a committed defense of all jobs and the preservation of public services.  The occupation of all workplaces declaring layoffs, cuts in pay, pension freezes, soliciting un-paid work, etc, is necessary in the coming period.  The working class must fight for the nationalization of all banking institutions under workers’ control without a cent given to the former capitalist owners or investors.  The merging of all banks into one State Bank will allow the working class to direct investment to meet the needs of the millions, not the greed of the finance parasites.

When the bosses try to claim they lack money to pay their workers, the workers must seize the account books for themselves to see where all the money went; this will allow them to witness firsthand the incompetency of a capitalist-run enterprise.

To put people back to work providing meaningful social labor, we fight for a massive Public Works program building new bridges, highways, schools, hospitals, all under control of workers’ organization and financed by taxing those responsible for putting people out of work – the rich, the capitalists.

Most importantly, the unions simply must do more to unite the resistance against the relentless attacks by the bosses.  The union leaders must drop any pretense of collaboration with a capitalist class and take the road of militant struggle against the capitalists.  Rank-and-file union members must pressure their leaders to take up such a fight.  If they refuse, then they should take up the struggle on their own by electing strike committees made up of proven class fighters, who come from and answer directly to, the rank and file.  The battles that lie ahead will inevitably involve intense situations that warrant the creation of workers’ defense organizations to protect strikes, pickets, and from the introduction by the bosses of scab labor.

The resistance to the capitalist crisis on the part of the international working class does not end following the G-20 summit starting this week; in fact, it is only the beginning of such a resistance.  If we continually raise these slogans out in the struggle, we can stop the bosses dead in their tracks, and, in so doing, lay the foundations for a higher level of working-class struggle immediately down the road.

Tomorrow is set to be one of the largest demonstrations against the army’s pilot program to gain new recruits – particularly young people –to join the military by utilizing a wide variety of first-person shooter video games and real-life scenarios to demonstrate the “enjoyment” that can be had fighting in wars.  Unlike video games, however, life does not come with a restart button nor is it structured around a system of re-spawning.

This despicable program aims to transform war itself, and everything that encompasses it, into just another click of the mouse for the youth already conditioned for it by years of personal video game experience.  The army desires above all else to harness and exploit that conditioning by pursuing individuals well versed in the stunningly realistic, military-esc video games on the market.  The army is desperately seeking to appropriate the numbness and desensitization towards violence resulting from playing such games for its own imperialist purposes.

Would-be recruits or just curious individuals wandering into one of these “experience” centers might think twice about going off the fight in Afghanistan or Iraq if they were not blindsided by flashy gimmicks, loud music, and safe-and-sound simulations.  The army chooses not to distinguish between the façade of “fun” erected by such centers and the real horrors of engagement experienced by hundreds of thousands of Americans, Iraqis, and Afghanis.

The prospects for the future are even more frightening if such centers continue operating and increase their influence over young people.  Is it so far-fetched to consider that over the coming years due to rapidly increased technological advancement, when military service – particularly infantry service – consists of sitting behind a desk in a chair in front of a monitor, that individuals will be unable to tell the difference between what is happening onscreen and what is happening in real life?  Will these individuals even care after years of conditioning? The imperialist army of the United States, thus, acquires its most deadly weapon: a force of soldiers who will kill at a moment’s notice without thinking twice about what they are doing.  To them, it is just characters on a screen, not living, human beings.

The insatiable appetite of the American imperial capitalists demands more and more “boots on the ground” – so to speak – to realize their quest for even greater control of resources, territories, and of markets.  They would like nothing better than to have such a fighting force at their disposal. That is why the shutting down of these “experience” enters is indispensible in the struggle to destroy the war aims of the rampaging imperialists who seek the enslaving of the entire world in the interests of their multi-national corporations.

Join the demonstration this Saturday in protest against the manipulation of young people by the U.S. Army for the purposes of numerically increasing its plunderous forces throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.  Let us use this opportunity to shut down this recruiting center of death and destruction for good!

The administration recently spent large sums of money to hire high-priced lawyers in order to bust the unions.  Those unions that represent the health workers at the university complained that the administration is threatening layoffs, a reduction in staffing, and the slashing of long-standing benefits.  This, however, has not stopped the officials from increasing their own salaries at the expense of the well-being of faculty and other employees – not to mention the reduced overall quality of education affecting the student population.

This is a battle that the rank-and-file workers and educators at Temple University should not be forced to fight on their own.  It is imperative that all those forces that are currently struggling for workers’ rights, for quality education, etc, come out to support this initiative.  The student body at large must come out in support of the demands of the faculty and staff, linking their demands with the demands of the teachers, health, and other workers(i.e., the cancellation of all student debt and for free fully-funded higher education paid for by taxing the super rich and the multi-national corporations.)

It is in the interests of all these forces that they unite in common struggle against cutbacks, layoffs, increased tuition rates, etc, in order to secure a better existence and education for teachers, university employees, and students.  Their struggle and the fight for the democratization of education throughout the university system and every school level more generally, is the fight of all those who desire a better life for each one of us.

The removal of all bureaucratic school administrators along with the demand an creation of democratic organizations of students, teachers, and staff workers to decide effectively how education should be conducted throughout every school in the United States, is what must result from this and similar future struggles.  This method is the only potential way to ensure all the component parts that make up the education system can prosper, and, thus, facilitate the expansion of developing young minds to their greatest potential.