trotskyists

"In the immediate period, millions in the , in leisure and tourism, in retail and services, and in aviation are being laid off without pay or fired outright. But the entire edifice of global finance is crumbling and we could easily see a generalised across the entire system. Talk of the irrationality of capitalism is being posted everywhere. Extensive industrial collapse could create millions of unemployed. A banking collapse would impoverish millions more at a stroke. This is what the government's authoritarian new bill is preparing for — a repetition in Britain and on a global scale of the kind of economic and that happened in Argentina in 2001–2, when most working-class and middle-class people lost all their savings and millions lost their jobs. Mass social and political anger could shake the system to its foundations, and those in power are preparing for emergency measures against radical "" — left-wing activists, trade unionists, social activists — liable to lead mass resistance. This, it seems, could take the form of mass detention without trial."

"But this has still left a gaping hole in government virus strategy. First, the World Health Organization (WHO) advice — "test, test, test" — is not being implemented. Health workers who were being organised to take on this role were almost immediately stood down. Everything is being done in secrecy: there is no openness, no transparency, no grown-up debate, no democratic scrutiny, no public accountability. We can only guess at the reason. Perhaps they realised it was hopeless because they didn’t have the testing kits. Perhaps it dawned on them that mass testing would reveal the vast numbers already infected and thus expose the scale of their negligence. What is certain is that willful blindness is central to Tory policy. There is virtually no testing anywhere. The WHO policy that you test, you trace, you isolate, you contain is being TOTALLY ignored by the Johnson/Cummings regime. They are not even testing health workers."

"In any case, there is no evidence that the Tories have any intention of doing any of the things they say they will do. The "do everything necessary" rhetoric is bullshit. It’s just a mantra to hide the absence of concrete action and any enforcement mechanism. This can only get much worse, as the entire world economy nosedives, millions more are laid off, and we enter a period of catastrophic comparable with the Great Depression. The Tories know this is coming. They are preparing for it."

"The Tories and have created a casualised, insecure, low-wage economy in which the bosses rule and workers are forced to take what they can get. Millions will find themselves with no income. When they try to claim benefits, they will find in place a ruthless regime of cuts, sanctions and suicidal despair — another achievement of Tory austerity. The most that Johnson has said about this so far is that claimants will not need to attend job-centre interviews any more. And what of expenditure? There is vague talk of a "mortgage holiday" and even vaguer talk of renters not being evicted during the crisis. But no talk of all the other payments that should be suspended, including, of course, utilities bills and other fixed household charges. Meanwhile, the profiteers are marking up the prices on goods in short supply — hand sanitiser, paracetemol, toilet roll, etc — and, needless to say, the Tories have done absolutely nothing to control prices."

"This is putting thousands of health workers at risk, and essentially abandoning hundreds of them to catch the virus, to spread the virus, and in many cases to die. The experts in a health emergency are, of course, the health workers. But they are silenced by the Tories and the NHS bosses — threatened with dismissal if caught telling the truth to the public they serve — as if we were living in Stalinist China."

"The Tories have proposed a huge economic package to help companies, but their support for working people sacked, laid off, or forced to self-isolate is pitiful. [...] Nothing is being offered to workers who are simply sacked or forced to take unpaid leave. This includes around 5 million "gig economy" workers, many of them subject to phoney "self-employed" scams, many with "zero hours" contracts. And there are firms like delivery company DPD, which is insisting that employees who self-isolate will still have to pay the costs of renting their vans and equipment. This is the bitter fruit for working people of 40 years of neoliberal attacks on their unions, their employment rights, their terms and conditions of service."

"We need to be absolutely clear. We will not be dictated to by the rich, the Tories, and the police. We will not have our health workers put at risk. We will not have our loved ones killed to protect big business. We will not tolerate their lies, cover-ups and negligence. We will not let them use this crisis to smash democracy so they can continue to siphon wealth to the top. The time has come to put an end to neoliberalism. This crisis is a radical opportunity. Another system is possible. Another system is a necessity."

"The Boris Johnson government's initial response to COVID-19 was the now discredited policy of "herd immunity" — the strategy of letting the virus rip through the population, infecting up to 40 million people, most of whom would recover and then supposedly be immune to the virus. The only problem was that this would have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths — a prospect the Tories had to abandon in the face of expert denunciation and widespread public outrage. Johnson's change of tack was to move finally towards lockdown, advising against mass gatherings and urging people to avoid clubs, pubs, and restaurants — and most travel — as well as advising older people to self isolate. (And of course, it was only 'advisory' – so that finance capital does not have to foot the bill for hundreds of thousands of insurance claims from small businesses.)"

"The new measures involve a lockdown on borders and wide powers to arrest people in the streets who are deemed a virus threat. It also includes new powers against "terrorism" and "subversion", giving it the right to detain people without trial for an unlimited period. The government is going to propose that their new law lasts for a two-year period. The closest parallels are powers in the United States in the and the 1967 Terrorism Act in apartheid South Africa. Section 6 of that Act allowed someone suspected of involvement in "terrorism" — defined as any opposition to the system which might "endanger the maintenance of " — to be detained for a 60-day period (which could be renewed) without trial on the authority of a senior police officer. Since there was no requirement to release information on who was being held, people subject to the act tended to disappear, and of course many of them were tortured and murdered. Why would they want such a draconian law at this time? Until now, the government has come under repeated and sustained attack because of its herd immunity strategy, its staggering incompetence and negligence and its kowtowing to big business at the expense of working people and public health. But things are set to get much worse on several fronts. As the world financial system comes tumbling down and bankruptcies and redundancies begin to sweep the world, we are almost certainly heading for mass unemployment on the scale of the 1930s."

"Those in power are afraid the crisis will expose the reality of NHS under-resourcing and creeping privatisation. Because of Tory underfunding there are not enough testing kits, not enough protective suits, not enough ventilators, not enough staff, not enough, not enough — even though they have known for a quarter of a century that a major pandemic was a clear and present danger. Even now, if they chose, a government invoking near-wartime powers could fix these shortages rapidly by requiring companies to shift production to the needs of fighting the virus. [...] But it involves massive resources, a society-wide strategy to defeat the virus, and that is something the government is not prepared to envisage. The Tories are terrified by any kind of from below — because it would marginalise elites and empower ordinary people."

"Without mass testing, tracing, and isolating, you cannot contain. So everything else — the ban on mass gatherings, the school closures, the lockdown measures — all of it, of course, too late — amount to only half a strategy. In fact, all the signs are that they haven't really let go of their callous notion that people with "underlying" health conditions should be treated as expendable. But that is not just a few old people. About 43% of adults are reckoned to have at least one long-term health condition — disproportionately, of course, poorer people."

"Callousness, incompetence, and cynicism — the 's response to the coronavirus has demonstrated all three. Despite the public outcry against the inhuman "herd immunity" strategy and the resulting changes in government policy, major threats to public health, , and s remain. We have a continuing refusal to institute mass testing; an economic package that prioritises profits over workers' ; insane policies that deny proper protection to health workers; and a new law to restrict democratic rights. All this reveals a government and economic system incapable of defending ordinary people and forever prioritising profit. As well, the Tories are absolutely mendacious in their empty and meaningless promises to "do everything necessary"."

"The utterly shambolic response of ruling elites to the coronavirus crisis in both Britain and the US is symptomatic of neoliberalism — of 40 years of profiteering, of grotesque greed, of privatisation of public services, of contempt for ordinary people and their needs. The Tories, presiding over this travesty, will not only try to ride out the storm; they will seek to use the crisis to strengthen the wealth and power of the very people who are responsible for it. This is what happened in 2008. It must not happen again."

"Most of the time we’re told that “the economy” can’t afford a decent for workers – higher minimum wages, liveable Newstart allowances, a massively expanded program to get people out of the private rental market, free university education. Budgets have to balance. Businesses have to be competitive. Taxes have to be kept low. And now, all of a sudden, we’re finding that the economy can, apparently, afford things that we have long demanded. Governments around the world are now laying out money on things that just weeks ago they would have attacked as unaffordable."

"It turns out that these things, too, can be done. So, in an economic emergency, few of the usual rules apply. Governments can marshal the resources and can threaten the narrow interests of private businesses. Hardcore libertarians despise these measures as rampant socialism. From their perspective, they’re right: the very existence of such programs is condemnation of the free market capitalist model that they promote. But they are best seen only as another approach to the management of the capitalist economy. The fact that governments across the are now prepared to spend trillions of dollar to save the from collapse only confirms that the world economy cannot be left safely in the hands of “the market”. And, the situation clearly confirms that when the capitalist class and governments deem it necessary to save their system, lots of measures they once denounced as “unaffordable”, not permitted by the condition of “the economy”, are actually affordable and permitted. Governments can act when required. The ideological justifications of yesterday are revealed as threadbare. But nor are government interventions of this nature geared towards the interests of the working class, only the interests of the bosses."

"is urging the federal government to provide wage subsidies to workers, equivalent in value to Newstart to all businesses experiencing a sharp downturn. It is also asking the government to provide concessional loans of up to half a million dollars, with 80 percent of the debt guaranteed by government, as well as wage subsidies to cover sick leave entitlements. Nothing but corporate welfare of a kind that they have long decried when applied to workers themselves. In the short term, working class households will get some benefits from this cash splash. In Australia welfare beneficiaries will be getting $750 in their bank accounts. in In the United States it is likely that Americans will receiving close to $1,000. But this is just short term relief to get the economy moving. The long term benefits will go to the capitalist class in the form of and other financial concessions. The current crisis demonstrates not only that all the ideological nonsense about the virtues of the free market is quickly thrown overboard when capitalist interests are threatened, but also that the idea that governments are essentially powerless in the face of the markets is rubbish. Governments are not helpless victims who cannot do anything in the face of “economic reality”. In the normal course of events, when we demand things like better welfare, health care or education, governments tell us that it isn’t possible."

"In pretty much every spending package, subsidies to business, government loans and tax concessions account for two-thirds or more of the funds outlaid. Things that directly benefit workers – the big majority of the population – account for only one-third of the money."

"Every student with the misfortune to have studied economics at school or university will know that “the market” is the god before which we must all kneel. Markets bring s and producers together to ensure an equilibrium of , the textbooks tell us. We may all be individuals each pursuing our own private interests, but this selfish endeavour miraculously results in an optimum outcome for all. You don’t even have to step inside a classroom to have received this lesson. It’s rammed home in normal times in every newspaper, in every news bulletin on the TV, in every politician’s speech. Just listen to them. Governments can’t expand spending on Newstart because “the markets” won’t allow it. Governments shouldn’t ramp up public housing because that will throw property markets into a spin. Competition should be opened between universities because a market in education will sift out the bad providers from the good. The champions of the market, if challenged to explain how it is that markets consistently result in supplies of goods lurching from shortages to gluts, point to the economic dysfunction of the old Soviet Union as proof that if “planning” replaces the market, a much bigger disaster ensues. It doesn’t take an Einstein to see what rubbish this is. The last thing any capitalist wants is “free competition”, because that might squeeze their profits. Just look at how the supermarkets have destroyed small shops or how any new industry that emerges is soon dominated by three or four companies globally."

"One of the most prevalent ideological mantras of Western capitalism is that the market should rule. But as the latest health and economic crises demonstrate, capitalists soon forget their worship of the market when times get tough. They scream for government money, and plenty of it. It turns out that “the market” is fine when it comes to whipping workers to accept lower wages, but when it comes to lower profits, the market can go hang."

"It’s not that governments have suddenly discovered a big pot of gold in the basement of the . They say that they are taking these measures to both protect and to save the economy. But it’s obvious which takes priority. The new measures constitute the largest bailout bonanza in world history, carried out through state-administered transfers of public wealth and current and future debt to billionaires and big business: socialisation of losses, privatisation of profits. The outcome will be to further transfer, consolidate and concentrate wealth, just as has occurred since the GFC. While there is discussion about small handouts, nothing serious is being proposed to halt the mass layoffs now gathering steam."

"Here in Mexico…I find that very simple intuitive persons, in common with a highly sophisticated and prepared type, accept my way of painting. But the bourgeois mind (here as elsewhere called “cultured,” I believe does not. This bourgeois mind of Mexico is that of a special virulence, for being mixed in race for only a few generations, it is also lamentably mixed in its ‘culture.’ It is, in a word, saturated with European bad taste, the finer European influences having been almost wholly rejected by the Creole of Mexico…"

"Your engineers are your great artists and these highways are the most beautiful things I have seen in your beautiful country…Out of them and the machine will issue the style of tomorrow."

"Later on, I learned about the Mexican muralists that painted beautiful images on the walls of public buildings. Diego Rivera, Orozco, Tamayo, and others."

"Here it is—the might, the power, the energy, the sadness, the glory, the youthfulness of our lands."

"When we began, we had no opportunities; we prepared in silence and created our own opportunity."

"Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, and almost immediately the Left press in the United States began to publish cartoons hostile to his regime. But throughout the decade barely a handful of artists, whatever their political preferences, addressed the increasingly virulent outbreaks of anti-Semitism in Germany. The few who did include the Mexican Diego Rivera (1886-1957), and the Jewish Americans Ben Shahn (1898-1969) and Max Weber (1881-1961). Rivera, one of the first to respond, included an anti-Semitic episode in a mural panel painted toward the end of 1933 in the didactic manner he used at that time. It was the "Hitler" panel, one of twenty-one that comprised his Portrait of America, made for the New Workers' School in New York City. Rivera supported himself while completing the panels with funds he had received for his ill-fated mural for the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center, Man at the Crossroads Looking with Uncertainty but with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a Course Leading to a New and Better Future, which was destroyed in 1933 because it included, among other scenes, a portrait of Lenin."

"History has prepared our party for various tasks. However defective our state machinery or our economic activity may be, still the whole past of the party has psychologically prepared it for the work of creating a new order of economy and a new state apparatus. History has even prepared us for diplomacy. It is scarcely necessary to mention that world politics have always occupied the minds of Marxists. But it was the endless negotiations with the Mensheviki that perfected our diplomatic technique; and it was during these old struggles that Comrade Chicherin learned to draw up diplomatic notes. We are just beginning to learn the miracle of economics. Our state machinery creaks and groans. In one thing, however, we have been eminently successful – in our Red Army. Its creator, its central will, is Comrade L.D. Trotsky."

"The articulation of universalism with the sense of Jewish identity took varying forms depending on the different revolutionary currents: for internationalists such as Leon Trotsky, Aleksandr Zinoviev, Karl Radek and Rosa Luxemburg, the assimilation of a Jewish revolutionary into the concrete universal party, the dissolution of the 'little difference' into the status of equality of the militant, anticipated the society for which they fought; they did not consider the little difference' as called on to crystallize one day in terms of national identity. Were they blind? Blinkered, certainly, in the sense that they underestimated the national dimension of the Jewish problem in Eastern Europe."

"You have expelled us from the Party and sent us away as counter-revolutionaries without reckoning that the older ones among us fought for Communism for a quarter of a century and that the younger ones were in the ranks of the October revolution from the first moment of their conscious life. This fact does not give me the right to appeal to your sentiments, but since the time when you decided on the incredible step of expelling us from the Party, with an accusation which dishonors not us but those who have made it, and exiling us – from that moment it is time that you draw the balance and render an accounting on the whole matter."

"The great October Revolution, which marked the beginning of the world proletarian revolution, was the decisive factor in the birth of the Communist International. The October Revolution utilised and extended the great experience of the Paris Commune, the revolution of 1905, and the revolution of February, 1917, began to put, into effect Marx’s slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and created a new type of state, the Soviet type of state."

"Lenin’s greatness lies in his aiming at goals arising out of realities. In this reality he sees a powerful steed which will carry him to his goal, and he trusts himself to it. But he never abandons himself to his dreams. This is not all. His genius contains another trait: After he has set himself a certain goal, he seeks for the means leading to this goal through reality; he is not content with having fixed his aim, he thinks out concretely and completely everything necessary for the attainment of that aim. He does not merely work out a plan of campaign, but the whole organisation of the campaign at the same time."

""we are comrades, aren't we, even if you are not a member of my party?" "But how do you know who I am?" "News travels quickly in Russia," he replied. "You're an anarchist, you are Emma Goldman, and you were driven out of plutocratic America. That's three good reasons to entitle you to my comradeship and assistance"...He was most cordial, assuring me that I could call on him in any emergency."

"Naturally our party must defend the working classes against the Fascisti. Naturally we must defend them by force of arms, for if the Fascisti gain power they will rivet the chains of Capitalism upon us. They will try to recover their own prosperity at the cost of the manual workers. But it does not follow that we must fight Fascism with arms alone; we must employ political measures likewise. The proletariat must take the initiative in reconstructing the world on a new foundation. This will convince the petty bourgeoisie that a new era is dawning which may save them from their misery. Therefore if we are to conquer Fascism we must win over the petty bourgeoisie. We must convince them that the capitalists and landlords and reactionary army-men are merely using them as tools. Fascism is middle-class Socialism, and we cannot persuade the middle classes to abandon it until we can prove to them that it only makes their condition worse."

"During the French revolution and parallel with its development, the Socialist current gained strength in the depths of society; it was then represented by the party of the “Jacques Roux”, whose history has not yet been written, but which played a very important part in the events of 1793 (the literature on this party is very poor). Robespierre was an avowed and convinced opponent of this movement. In the pamphlets of the Girondist, Brissot, the representative of the commercial bourgeoisie of Southern France, we find not only all the arguments with which the bourgeoisie later fought Socialism, but we also find the mad, raging hatred which is due to the recognition of the power of the Communists in the French revolution. These were backed by a considerable part of those who saved France in 1793."

"Comrades, the question of the relationship between the Communist International and the trades unions is the most serious, most important question facing our movement. The trades unions are the biggest mass organisations of the working class; they play a decisive role in the economic struggles, the chief elements in the disintegration of capital, and after the victory of the revolution the trades unions will be in the forefront of those organisations called on to work at the economic construction of socialism."

"FASCISM is no longer a fruit peculiar to Italian soil, but an international phenomenon. Italy is merely the first country where the Fascisti have seized the government, just as Russia is the first country where the proletariat has seized power. But the Fascisti flood is rising in Germany, in Czechoslovakia, and is beginning to stir in the United States, and France, and Austria. Fascism, as we shall show, is a pettybourgeois reaction against post-war conditions – a petty-bourgeois reaction that Big Capital is using to fortify itself wherever its rule is threatened. The difference in the condition of the petty bourgeoisie in different countries is much greater than the difference in the condition of the working classes; and the policies of the former therefore vary more than the policies of Labor."

"Ready for peace, ready for concessions, Russia waits; ready for peaceful cohabitation with capitalist countries even, as long as Labour in the West suffers the burden of the capitalist system. But Soviet Russia is not a carcase upon which the vultures of Imperialism will sharpen their beaks and claws. Soviet is a power, a power that is firm and growing, and it will compel its enemies to treat it as such and allow it to live in peace."

"Interestingly, neither our Stalin nor your Pilsudski actually hold any positions that would give them the formal right to rule. They simply rule because both the entire ruling class and the majority of society consider them the best, the smartest and the most brilliant. This is their strength."

"It is impossible to be a leader of the working class without knowing the whole history of the class. The leaders of the labour movement must know the history of the labour movement; without this knowledge there can be no leader, just as nowadays there can he no great general who could be victorious with the least expenditure of force unless he knew the history of strategy. The history of strategy is not a collection of recipes as to how to win a war, for a situation once described never repeats itself. But the mind of the general becomes practised in strategy by its express study; this study renders him elastic in war, permits him to observe the dangers and possibilities which the empirically trained general cannot see. The history of the labour movement does not tell us what to do, but it makes it possible to compare our position with situations which have already been experienced by our class, so that in various decisive moments we are enabled to see our path clearly, and to recognise approaching danger."

"LIKE everything else in nature, Lenin was born, has developed, has grown. When Vladimir Ilyitch once observed me glancing through a collection of his articles, written in the year 1903, which had just been published, a sly smile crossed his face, and he remarked with a laugh: “It is very interesting to read what stupid fellows we were!""

"The musical note is the language of intelligence. Intelligence speaks wherever there is poetry, music and song. Colour is part of it. We love colours because we come from colour. Colour and sound."

"Atomic war is inevitable. It will destroy half of humanity: it is going to destroy immense human riches. It is very possible. The atomic war is going to provoke a true inferno on Earth. But it will not impede Communism."

"Destruction always comes before creation."

"The forms under which human love ends up being expressed are not governed by sex relations. They are governed by the objective love for humanity; that is to say love for humankind as an integral part of nature and of the universe."

"Life can exist on other planets, in other solar systems, in other galaxies and universes."

"This new generation of networked people understand they are living through a third industrial revolution, but they are coming to realize why it has stalled: with the credit system broken, capitalism cannot sustain the scale of automation that is possible, and the destruction of jobs implied by the new technologies."

"An economy based on information, with its tendency to zero-cost products and weak property rights, cannot be a capitalist economy."

"The economy is already producing and reproducing a networked lifestyle and consciousness, at odds with the hierarchies of capitalism. The appetite for radical economic change is clear."

"A basic income paid for out of taxes on the market economy gives people the chance to build positions in the non-market economy. It allows them to volunteer, set up co-ops, edit Wikipedia, learn how to use 3D design software, or just exist. It allows them to space out periods of work; make a late entry or early exit from working life; switch more easily into and out of high-intensity, stressful jobs. Its fiscal cost would be high: that’s why all attempts to enact the measure separately from an overall transition project are likely to fail, despite the growing number of academic papers and global congresses dedicated to it."

"Globalisation was an unstoppable natural process; free-market economics simply the natural state of things. But when the country that designed globalisation, imposed it and benefited from it most votes against it, you have to consider the possibility that it is going to end, and suddenly. If so, you also have to consider a possibility that – if you are a liberal, humanist democrat – may be even more shocking: that oligarchic nationalism is the default form of failing economies."