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On the occasion of the strike today, on the 27th of April 2016, of ground crews, check-in staff, repair workers and the fire department at airports in Germany, the World Federation of Trade Unions and its 92 million members around the world extend our solidarity to your struggle.
We raise our voices in fraternity and join you in the demand of your fair rights and demand the attainment of your needs for salary increase according to the modern day needs.
THE SECRETARIAT
The World Federation of Trade Unions salutes the people in Britain who participated in the massive national demonstration which took place on Saturday in London against the cuts implemented by the Government and against the Government itself on the eve of the “Panama Papers” leak.
The WFTU supports their demands for the withdrawal of the anti-labor law recently voted, for salary increases, elimination of the zero-hour contracts, public healthcare and education without fees.
Representing 92 million members around the world, the WFTU expresses its solidarity to the people in Britain fighting for their labour and social rights and an economic policy in favor of the people and not the profits.
THE SECRETARIAT
(A response to Sue Webb opinion in People’s World on January 4, 2016)
Dear Editor:
In Sue Webb’s opinion piece which appeared in the January 4, 2016 edition she implies that all that is needed in the USA is for us to change the word “capitalism” to “socialism” and everything will fall into place. Of course, this is pure fantasy, the words of a person who is satisfied with the capitalist system of greed and corporate control, what we used to refer to as the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.” Ms. Webb is, indeed, bourgeois and her oversimplifications show that.
Her slanders of the USSR and socialism are particularly disturbing. She writes “[socialism] – has been tainted by much of what happened in the Soviet Union and some other countries. But there’s nothing in socialism that equates to dictatorship, political repression, bureaucracy, over-centralization and commandism, and so on. Those features of Soviet society arose out of particular circumstances and personalities. But they were not “socialist.”
Ms. Webb never objected the to the USSR when, in an act of great proletarian internationalism, the Soviet Union and the socialist community of nations led an international movement to save the life of Angela Y. Davis. Now that there is no more USSR thanks to the counter-revolutionary activities of Mikhail Gorbachev and those around him that promoted the concept of socialist “markets” and private enterprise, Ms. Webb all of a sudden finds fault with the socialism of the 20th Century, calling it dictatorial, politically repressive, bureaucratic, and over-centralized, with a command style structure. And what dare I ask, was the USSR when they supported the CPUSA and its fight against racism and its political anti-monopoly program? So soon she forgets! Ms. Webb never objected when the Soviet Union supported the Cuban economy and the development of Cuba. She never objected when the USSR supported the national liberation movements in Angola, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and the Congo. All during the existence of the Soviet Union, the world witnessed the greatest fighter for world peace and socialism. Real socialism. To deny that is the worst kind of right opportunism.
As her alternative to scientifically planned economic socialism, Ms. Webb describes how we in the USA have many publicly owned electric utilities. That’s nice. We also have private utilities Sempra Energy, Pacific Gas, and Electric (PG&E), and Edison International for example, that endanger our environment and public health, cause great disasters like the natural gas explosion in San Bruno, California, the natural gas leak in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles, and the financial manipulation of energy prices by companies like Enron. What is the plan of the social-democrats to deal with these privately owned conglomerates in a socialist economy?
Ms. Webb says that Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist because he rejects the idea of a planned economy. Great! So we should continue living with the chaos we live in now, where material goods are produced not for the benefit of the people, but to continue the system of private profits and exploitation at any cost? She speaks like a typical believer in American exceptionalism. As long as we have markets for goods everything will be OK. She even says it would be OK to operate private businesses that continue to exploit workers, a kind of touchy, feeley, nice capitalism!
Gus Hall, the great American Communist leader, said many times that there is no “socialist model but that there are general concepts and economic laws of socialism that cannot be ignored. When they are cast aside as Sue Webb suggests we should, the result is counter-revolution and an increase in anti-worker activity. As long as there is a bourgeois class and that class holds the levers of power, it makes no difference who is President of the United States. We have two Americas. A capitalist America, and a working class America. The class war intensifies more every day. We will never have socialism unless and until the workers themselves take power and own the means of production and write their own ticket. They don’t need a Democratic Party messiah to do that. They need a real trade union federation like the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), another contribution to humanity from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.
So what is socialism? In any country, in any language, socialism is the intermediary step toward a communist society. Socialism is defined as follows: “The social order which, through revolutionary action by the working class and its allies, replaces capitalism. It is “the first phase of Communist society, as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society” (Marx). It is the social order in which the exploitation of man by man has ended because the toiling masses own the means of production. In contrast with the higher phase of Communist society, where “each gives according to his need,” in Socialist society “each gives according to his ability, and receives according to the amount of work performed”.
Contrast this with Democratic Socialism, *which is the general term for reformist and opportunist parties in their “theory” and practice in the Labor Movement [in sharp contrast with class conscious, anti-imperialist trade unionism of the WFTU]. Social-Democracy’s history is marked by timidity, legalism, “respectability,” capitulation to the influence of the capitalists, and consistent betrayal, of the working class.
Time to ask yourselves, which side are you on?
*Marxist Glossary, L. Harry Gould, Sydney. Australia 1948
Joe Hancock
PCUSA, Los Angeles
The world class oriented trade union movement, WFTU, the 92 million workers in 126 Countries of the world which represents have devoted all their actions in the eradication of poverty, not only this day.
Poverty, unemployment, wretchedness are elements inherent in the capitalist system. Billions of people all around the world live under the official poverty line. The capitalists’ crisis forces to the side more and more parts of the population, increasing the numbers of the poverty stricken, and on the other hand the antilabor governments around the world adopt measures to increase the capitalists’ profitability. The only way to fight against poverty is fighting the exploitation of man by man, is the class-oriented fight against capitalism.
We call all WFTU affiliates and friends to strengthen their fight, to stick their necks against the capitalist class. We are confident that the working class can and must organize in its trade unions, fight and build another society and economy that will plan production based on the modern needs of the workers and not of the capitalists. A society without poverty and unemployment, a society with equality and social rights.
The World Federation of Trade Unions condemns the neo-fascist acts of the ultra right, lead by such organized groups as the Ku Klux Klan and other militia neo Nazi movements.
Working class and progressive allies have fought for the full length of the history of the United States against legal Slavery for over 350 years; only ending in 1865. The technical end of Slavery did not end the Corporate use their militias to continue slavery conditions in industrial areas. The brutal corporate violence at the Haymarket Square and Ludlow massacres took place at the same time Black workers were and still are subjected to murders and lynching.
The recent KKK inspired killings in South Carolina are totally connected to the police killings also in South Carolina, Ferguson [Missouri], Staten Island New York, and elsewhere. The KKK is the open face of the thousands of militia groups across the U.S.
This is the 20th anniversary of the ultra right domestic violence in the US which took place in Oklahoma City where 168 people were killed by a neo fascist bomber.
The US Justice Department has rarely addressed all of these acts of domestic terror conducted by police departments and connected to anti-trade union/racist corporations.
The WFTU calls on all pro working class/trade union and progressive forces to demand a full inquiry and justice with new government laws against these militias and corporate sponsored domestic terrorists.
The people and the working class should, with their action and struggle, isolate such phenomena, expose and weaken them in daily life, in the workplaces, in the social organizations of any kind.
THE SECRETARIAT
The World Federation of Teachers’ Unions (FISE) addresses a call to all of the teachers’ organizations-members of the FISE to participate more actively in the exchange of information and to transfer their experience to the other organizations as well.
The Secretary of the FISE invites you to send e-mails about your actions and the news of the sector of Education in your country. Moreover, you can send the links of your unions’ websites, if there are any.
Your participation, not only will help the promotion of the action of the FISE, but also will contribute to the transmission of the experience of each and everyone of the organizations and the contact among the organizations.
The update and the promotion of our struggles, via the website of the FISE is a matter that concerns us all.
Contact FISE at: fise@wftufise.org
The World Federation of Trade Unions -WFTU-, international organization representing 90 million unionized workers in 126 countries worldwide and represented to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations (UN), UNESCO and FAO, closely committed to the advancement of the peoplses in search of the society they deserve, since the very beginning has been in solidarity with the people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela against imperialist interference.
Throughout the 70 years of its existence, the WFTU has expressed solidarity with the struggles of the Venezuelan people and the peoples of Latin America against political and military interference of imperialism. We repeat our rejection to the Executive Order issued by the President of the United States against the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in which aggressive and absurd way, this country qualifies as a “threat to US national security.â€
Today, we reaffirm our solidarity and support for the Venezuelan people and their democratically elected government. The WFTU supports the initiative of Venezuelan and international mass organizations for an International Day of World Solidarity with Venezuela on 19 April 2015. The international solidarity will launch a clear, forceful and immediate message that Venezuela is not alone in defending its sovereignty, peace and democratic gains, but is accompanied by all the class oriented , anti-imperialist, democratic, popular and revolutionary forces of the world.
In the context of practical solidarity with the people of Venezuela and the world’s peoples against imperialist maneuvers, the FSM has already called International Trade Union Conference in Brussels – Belgium this June 1-2, 2015, themed “The embargoes, blockades and sanctions of the US, NATO and the EU are a blow to the rights of workers†who will discuss the response of the workers of the world to the maneuvers of imperialism.
The FSM, consistent with one of its principles; full respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of all peoples to decide for themselves about their present and future demands to end now the imperialist interference against Venezuela.
MLToday
CPUSA National People’s World Political Affairs