How can the Oaxaca Commune Win? October 27, 2006
Posted by raved in Commune, Oaxaca.1 comment so far
The problem the Oaxaca teachers have faced over several decades is that of US imperialism driving back the Mexican revolution of 1910-1917. The Constitution of 1917 contained protections of communal land and public education. Both came under direct attack with NAFTA in 1994. The Zapatistas defence of communal land and the teachers defence of public education are, then, the driving forces of these social movements from below.
On October 22 in Texcoco, just outside Mexico City, the Zapatistas, the APPO and the the Atenco People’s Front for the Defence of Land, FPDT, came together for the first time to declare their common solidarity. We should not overlook the student organisations that were also present.
What is their common cause? According to Greg Berger in Narconews:
“On Friday, the three organizations pledged mutual support to fight for the liberation of political prisoners and to create a united front against municipal, state and federal authorities.”
If we consider the more concrete demands that unite these movements they are anti-imperialist, and anti-Mexican ruling class that serves imperialism. Their defence of land rights, public education, human rights etc bring them up against the whole apparatus of local, state and federal state institutions as well as the parastate, paramilitary institutions of the PRI, PAN and PRD.
But campesinos, flower sellers, fishers, and even the unionised rural teachers, do not have the social power to expropriate the imperialists and their Mexican bourgeois agents. The campesinos can defend their land, but cannot defeat the army. The Zapatistas soon discovered that fact. The poor teachers cannot defend their rural schools when the state wants to close them anyway, except to keep them open without the resources they need. And so on. The marginalised poor in Mexico cannot threaten the private property of imperialism and Mexican capitalists without being massacred. To that extent, while they are isolated from those who produce the great mass of surplus-value that creates the profits of the capitalits, they do not have the capacity to form an alternative power to the ruling power of capital.
What these social movements have is a nation-wide popular base organised in all manner of democratic assemblies that can form the embryo of a new society. The indigenous organisations have the capacity to create a popular base that resists hierarchy and corruption. The teachers have proven that they can democratise their union, and resist the attempts by treacherous leaders to do deals with the class enemy behind their backs.
But unless these popular movements can make common cause with the organised labor movement they cannot win the alternative power that it necessary to destroy the capitalist state and create new administrative organisations.
The Oaxaca teachers are the class link between the campesinos and organised labor. They have shown how to take control of their union in the hands of the base (rank and file). They have defended their struggle by building the APPO around their union to defend it. Their embryonic commune must become the organising centre for many more APPOs based on the rank and file of the major unions, breaking from their corrupt leaders, and building political alliances with all the popular movements.
So while the Oaxaca teachers strike cannot expropriate the private property of the imperialists and the ruling class, APPOS based on the miners, steel, electricity, oil, malquiladora etc. workers, can bring the profits of the capitalists to a halt. The teachers strike needs to become generalised and coordinated with many other strikes in these key areas of NAFTA superprofits, into a general strike that brings down the ‘regime of alternates’ the PRI, PAN and PRD all of which are committed to adminstering US imperialism’s plundering of Mexico.
But stopping the flow of profits is in itself incapble of smashing the state. Just as the Oaxaca APPO has formed ‘guard corps’ to defend its barricades, each striking steel plant, mine, mill and factory, must form its own defence guard. But these alone cannot stand up against the organised military forces of the state. The third force that is necessary to win is splitting the rank and file of the army from its officers.
These defence guards of the APPOs must call on the armed forces of the state to refuse to shoot at the strikers and for the ranks of the military to support the strikers and open their arsenals to the defence guards.
By splitting the army and creating rank and file soldiers committees that join the APPOS, the officers trained in the US and the paramilitaries will be unable to defeat the combined armed forces of the popular masses. Solidarity strikes inside the US can serve to limit the power of US imperialism to invade or otherwise defeat the Mexican revolution.
Only if these three forces come together and build APPOs everywhere will an alternative power based on the workers and campesinos be capable of smashing the state and imposing its own workers and campesino state. In this way the Mexican revolution that began in 1910 will be completed as a socialist revolution, and a force for many other revolutions in the Americas.
Oaxaca and the critical lessons of the Paris Commune October 23, 2006
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A number of references to the Paris Commune have been made by left groups writing about the APPO. One of them is the Socialist Workers League (LTS). Below is a comment that first appeared on the Yahoo Group, Argentina Solidarity, in response to an article by the LTS.
The LTS allusion to the Paris Commune needs to go beyond a general historical analogy and apply some of the critical lessons.
The main problem of the Paris Commune was not the lack of numbers or lack of arms and will to fight, nor the formation of democrat insitutions, but the lack of a revolutionary party as a centralised command that could apply Marxism to the situation and concentrate the armed forces of the commune to hit the enemy where he was weakest at the critical time.
The regrouping of revolutionary Trotskyists today is the necessary condition for the survival of the Oaxaca commune and the Mexican revolution.
To follow the advice of Trotsky in relation to the Paris Commune a revolutionary vanguard party today would clearly fight for the leadership of the commune against all the ‘petty bourgeois’ who vacillate, lack confidence in the masses and seek to do deals with the bourgeois parties etc. A revolutionary vanguard leadership would centralise the actions of the commune.
Those revolutionary Trotskyists who are involved in this struggle have the heaviest responsibility, but those who arnt directly also have a clear responsibility to inform themselvse and raise their program.
Oaxaca is a test of what remains of revolutionary Marxism.
The vanguard would also certainly fight to join forces with the rank and file of the CND which has mobilised a large section of the masses in defence of the Obrador. I disagree with David about the march to Mexico City. As the national centre this is where the struggle will ultimately be decided. The succession to the presidency is clearly the critical date for the bourgeoisie to assert its class rule. The march
should aim to split the masses from the reformist project of the CND and extend the occupation by building barricades there, and also in Atenco etc.
But Oaxaca and and CND movements will not develop unless the big battalions of the unions come out in strike action building for a national general strike to close down the strategic sectors of the economy. In Mexico today this is where the bourgeoisie that serves US imperialism is weakest and where the commune should be making its strongest campaign. Necessarily this will mean the exposure and
replacing of the union bureaucracies that serve the bosses state.
Without the support of the big industrial battalions, the reaction will build, isolate and try to smash the communes.
The main demands must be for a general strike to make ‘many Oaxacas’ i.e. communes or soviets everywhere, armed and organised in popular militias, calling on the ranks of the military to break with their officers, with the perspective of a workers and peasants government.
Failing that, the demand for an anti-imperialist sovereign CA to reform the 1917 constitution is necessary as a fall back position. I would expect however, that if the defence of the Oaxaca commune develops national-wide backing, the level of repression will be such as to rapidly push the struggle towards direct workers, peasants, indigenous, womens, students etc democracy. In this context a CA will
be a trap set by the bourgeoise to contain and defeat the revolution.
Can the Oaxaca Commune survive! October 7, 2006
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The Oaxaca Commune is rapidly becoming the focal point of the world class struggle. It has pushed the Zapatistas ‘other campaign’ off the map, even thought Chiapas is right next door to Oaxaca. The Zapatisas model of revolution from below in which indigneous peasants would lead the backward workers has backfired.
The Fox government repression of Atenco, just outside of Mexico City back in May showed that small traders, gutsy and determined as they were, cannot stop the state machine without the help of the organised working class. It was not the flower sellers of Atenco who lost this argument, but Delegate Zero (subcombatant Marcos) who came out Zero by refusing to unite the traders with striking steel and mine workers.
What the struggle in Oaxaca shows is that the trendy Western pacifism of power-shifting without taking power is exploded by the Oaxaca Commune. This Commune did not arise from an indigenous or peasant rebellion (and Oaxaca has around half of the indigenous people in Mexico). It arose out of a long strike by the poor teachers of Oaxaca fighting for better pay and conditions. The Teachers Union is Mexico wide and cripplingly bureaucratic – like most unions in Mexico that have been part of the PRI state machine that lives off the prestige of the ‘frozen’ Mexican revolution and the 1917 Constitution.
But in Oaxaca a minority inside the teachers’ union won support for their strike and this has built into a hugely popular insurrection involving mass marches of over 1,000,000 and the ongoing occcupation of the city of Oaxaca and several radio and TV stations.
This shows that in Mexico as in the rest of Latin America, it is the organised working class like the radical teachers union, that can and must form the leadership of the mass movement which can met the demands of the peasantry, indigenous movements, and unemployed workers. It proves, against all those who say that that the working class is dead, and that social movements have taken over the anti-capitalist fight, that the working class lives!
It proves yet again, that it is the working class that will lead the fight for democracy and against imperialism, and carry through the national revolution to go all the way to defeat NAFTA and imperialism, and defeat the national bourgeois, completing the national revolution as a socialist revolution.
The original demand of the strike to get rid of the state governor, Ulises Ruiz who is part of the PRI party machine and responsible for numerous killings of militants, has issued a direct challenge to Fox’s successor Calderon, the ‘winner’ of the rigged Presidential election. That election of course has been challenged by the loser Obrador, or AMLO as he is called after all of his initials. Massive demonstrations and occupations of the center of Mexico City by AMLOs supporters led to the calling of a national ‘democratic’ congress of the parliamentary left in September, the CND, which declared AMLO as the ‘alternative President’. But, apart from offering his body as a sympbolic shield against the repression of the Commune, AMLO’s CND does not propose to rally the Mexican masses in the real defence of the Commune. That would lift the lid of Pandora’s Box and along with the rest of the capitalist system AMLO would be history.
Meanwhile, Fox has sworn to remove the Oaxaca Commune before he hands over to Calderon on December 1. Troops are massing in Oaxaca, thousands of PRI paramilitaries are preparing to smash the Commune, and what to do becomes the order of the day. Most of the ‘left’ is hoping that some deal can be made, so that the Governor goes, some extra spending on education gives the teachers something to go home with, and everything goes back to almost normal. They cannot envisage an all out struggle winning, and the price of more deaths at this stage cannot be justified.
For revolutionaries the answer is like ABC. Already the Commune has built Barricades, and formed rudimentary Armed self-defence committees. They are not going to go home with any compromise deal. But this is minimal stuff. A few small arms from police stations, clubs and molotov cocktails are no match for the might of the paramilitaries armed with AK 47s let alone the Mexican army.
The Commune needs to be armed inside to resist military assault, but more even more important, armed outside, to undermine the state’s ability to deploy its armed forces. The masses who occupied the centre of Mexico city to protest AMLO’s ‘defeat’ by electoral fraud, have to say that the PRD needs more than a symbolic few bodies on the barricades in Oaxaca.
These workers need to flood to Oaxaca to boost the barricades. They need to call on all workers in unions to strike, independently of the PRI and union bureaucracy, to generalise their strikes into a general strike, and to set up barricades and road blocks. The long history of militant struggle in the mines and heavy industry shows that the rank and file of Mexico’s huge working class can respond in crises with great solidarity.
This strike action must be generalised so that the solidarity actions are not isolated and open to repression. Self-defence committees need to be coordinated nationally as the basis of a people’s army. This would put pressure on the ranks of the armed forces to disobey orders and to support the strike rather than kill the insurgents. By means of a general strike that brings the country to a halt, uniting the organisations of the working class, forming armed ‘communes everywhere’, the workers will create an alternative, or ‘dual power’ structure. By winning over the ranks of the military and defeating the paramiltary thugs, the question of state power is posed and the possibility of a revolutionary seizure of power put at the top of the agenda.
The Oaxaca commune can become the first revolutionary commune to follow in the footsteps of the Russian soviets and prove that the working class can ’storm heaven’ as did the workers of Paris in 1871, but more than that, take the power at the head of the oppressed and exploited masses to build a new society as the members of the soviets did in 1917. But for this to happen, the vital ingredient that Paris lacked but Petrograd had, is the revolutionary party of the workers.
As Trotsky explains in his analysis of the Paris commune, comparing it to the Russian revolution, the mass movement has strong points and weak points. Its strength is it militancy and heroism. But its weakness is its absence of revolutionary leadership. Leadership cannot be simply responding to events willy nilly, but must condense the lessons of the history of workers struggles to know in advance what to do and what not to do. Without this leadership the strengths of the workers movements are dissipated by their weaknesses and lost.
In Paris 1871, the lack of a revolutionary leadership with the knowledge and will to unite and organise the struggle led to petty bourgeois leaders vacillating and opting for compromises with the enemy. The Commune did not seize power when they could have, but rather let it slip away in defeat. In Russia, by contrast, the Bolsheviks had decades of experience to draw on, and could guide the masses through the months in preparation for insurrection, without making fatel mistakes, until they were ready to seize power.
In Oaxaca the militancy and heroism of the masses are evident, but insufficient for victory. The majority of teachers are not yet revolutionary and are exposed to various competing political currents vying for leadership. Those who think that Obrador and the PRD can form the leadership will find that they are wrong, but at what cost? It is necessary to break the masses who have illusions in Obrador from the PRD. The revolutionary left is small, but does have a critical role to play. Some like the Militant tendency which is inside the PRD, puts its hopes in creating a split in the party. Others like the FT tendency reject working inside the PRD when its politicians are openly siding with Fox to defeat the Oaxaca commune. The main demand of the FT is to call for a ‘revolutionary Constituent Assembly’ outside the existing political constitutional structure.
Yet, working inside the existing constitution, or calling for a new even ‘revolutionary’ constitution, are both confining workers to the existing bourgeois power structures where individual electors vote for political representatives in the bourgeois/capitalist state. That is, all individuals or all classes get the right to vote. But the Oaxaca Commune is already creating an alternative power based on mass solidarity in which political representation is of the working class and other oppressed classes. The bosses and their petty bourgeois lackeys and goons are not represented, nor will they ever be. The military defence of the commune is therefore the start of any revolutionary program.
The revolutionary party in Oaxaca and Mexico must start from the lessons of the past communes – their successes and failures. The alternative power of the working class is the only basis on which the interests of the workers and oppressed peoples can be resolved. The program must be for a general strike to defend the Oaxaca commune; to create ‘communes everywhere’, armed and coordinated across the whole country, with workers and peasants militias to smash the paramilitaries and defend themselves against the state forces; to break from the state apparatus and the statised bureaucracy and their political parties; appealing to the ranks of the armed forces to refuse orders to suppress the Commune; and ultimately for a government of the workers and peasants that can expropriate the imperialists and the national bourgeosie and implement a planned socialist economy, as part of a federation of workers republics of the Americas.
Trotsky compares Paris 1871, Russia 1917 October 7, 2006
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The party does not create the revolution at will, it does not choose the moment for seizing power as it likes, but it intervenes actively in the events, penetrates at every moment the state of mind of the revolutionary masses and evaluates the power of resistance of the enemy, and thus determines the most favourable moment for decisive action. This is the most difficult side of the task. The party has no decision that is valid for every case. Needed are a correct theory, an intimate contact with the masses, the comprehension of the situation, a revolutionary perception, a great resoluteness. The more profoundly a revolutionary party penetrates into all the domains of the proletarian struggle, the more unified it is by the unity of goal and discipline, the speedier and better will it arrive at resolving its task.
. . .The comparison of March 18, 1971 with November 7, 1918 is very instructive from this point of view. In Paris, there is an absolute lack of initiative for action on the part of the leading revolutionary circles. The proletariat, armed by the bourgeois government, is in reality master of the town, has all the material means of power – cannon and rifles – at its disposal, but it is not aware of it. The bourgeoisie makes an attempt to retake the weapon of the giant: it wants to steal the cannon of the proletariat. The attempt fails. The government flees in panic from Paris to Versailles. The field is clear. But it is only on the morrow that the proletariat understands that it is the master of Paris. The “leaders” are in the wake of events, they record them when the latter are already accomplished, and they do everything in their power to blunt the revolutionary edge.
In Petrograd, the events developed differently. The party moved firmly, resolutely, to the seizure of power, having its men everywhere, consolidating each position, extending every fissure between the workers and the garrison on the one side and the government on the other.
The armed demonstration of the July days is a vast reconnoitering conducted by the party to sound the degree of close contact between the masses and the power of resistance of the enemy. The reconnoitering is transformed into a struggle of outposts. We are thrown back, but at the same time the action establishes a connection between the party and the depths of the masses. The months of August, September and October see a powerful revolutionary flux. The party profits by it and augments considerably its points of support in the working class and the garrison. Later the harmony between the conspirative preparations and the mass actions takes place almost automatically. The Second Congress of the Soviets is fixed for Novemr. All of our preceding agitation was to lead to the seizure of power by the Congress. . .
Trotsky:Paris Commune lacked a Party October 7, 2006
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Each time that we study the history of the Commune we see if from a new aspect, thanks to the experience acquired by the later revolutionary struggles and above all by the latest revolutions, not only the Russian but the German and Hungarian revolutions. The Franco-German war was a bloody explosion, harbinger of an immense world slaughter, the Commune of Paris a lightning harbinger of a world proletarian revolution.
The Commune shows us the heroism of the working masses, their capacity to unite into a single bloc, their talent to sacrifice themselves in the name of the future, but at the same time it shows us the incapacity of the masses to choose their path, their indecision in the leadership of the movement, their fatal penchant to come to a halt after the first successes, thus permitting the enemy to regain its breath, to reestablish its position.
The Commune came to late. It had all the possbilities of taking power on September 4 and that would have permitted the proletariat of Paris to place itself at a single stroke at the head of the workers of the country in their struggle against all the forces of the past, against Bismark as well as against Thiers. The Parisian proletariat had neither a party, nor leaders to whom it would have been closely gound by previous struggles. The petty bourgeois patriots who thought themselves socialists and sought the support of the workers did not really have any confidence in themselves. They shook the proletariat’s faith in itself, they were continually in quest of celebrated lawyers, of journalists, of deputies, whose baggage consisted only of a dozen vaguely revolutionary phrases, in order to entrust them with the leadership of the movement.
. . .When the revolutionary babblers of the salons and of parliament find themselves face to face, in real life, with the revolution, they never recognise it.
The workers’ party -the real one- is not a machine for parliamentary manvoeuvres, it is the accumulated and organized experience of the proletariat. It is only with the aid of the party, which rests upon the whole history of its past, which foresees theoretically the paths of development, all its stages, and which extracts from it the necessary formula of action, that the proletariat frees itself from the need of always recommencing its history: its hesitations, its lack of decision, its mistakes.
The proletariat of Paris did not have such a party. The bourgeois socialists with whom the Commune swarmed, raised their eyes to heaven, waited for a miricle or else a prophetic word, hesitated, and during that time the masses groped about and lost their heads because of the indecision of some and the fantasy of others. The result was that the revolution broke out in their very midst, too late, and Paris was encircled. Six months elapsed before the proletariat had reestablished in its memory the lessons of past revolutions, of battles or yore, of the reiterated betrayals of democracy – and it seized power.
These six months proved to be an irraparable loss. If the centralized party of revolutionary action had been found at the head of the proletariat in France in September 1870, the whole history of France and with it the whole history of humanity would have taken another direction.
If the power was found in the hands of the proletariat on March 18, it was not because it had been deliberately seized, but because its enemies had quitted Paris. These latter were losing ground continuously, the workers despised and detested them, the petty bourgeoisie no longer had confidence in them and the big bourgeoisie feared that they were no longer capable of defending it. The soldiers were hostile to the officers. The government fled Paris in order to concentrate its forces elsewhere. And it was then that the proletariat became masters of the situation.
But it understood this fact only on the morrow. The revolution fell upon it unexpectedly.
This first success was a new source of passivity. The enemy had fled to Versailles. Wasn’t that a victory? At that moment the governmental band could nave been crushed almost without the spilling of blood. In Paris, all the ministers, with Thiers at their head, could have been taken prisoner. Nobody would have raised a hand to defend them. It was not done. There was no organisation of a centralized party. having a rounded view of things and special organs for realizing its decisions.
The debris of the infantry did not want to fall back to Versailles. The thread which tied the officers and soldiers was pretty tenuous. And had there been a directing party center at Paris, it would have incorporated into the retreating armies – since there was the possibility of retreating – a few hundred or even a few dozen devoted workers, and given them the following instructions: enhance the discontent of the soldiers against the officers, profit by the first favorable psychological moment to free the soldiers from their officers and bring them back to Paris to unite with the people. This could easily have been realized, according to the admissions of Thiers’ supporters themselves. Nobody even thought of it. Nor was there anybody to think of it. In the midst of great events, moreover, such decisions can be adopted only by a revolutionary party which looks forward to a revolution, prepares for it, does not lose its head, by a party whyich is accustomed to having a rounded view and is not afraid to act.
And a party of action is just what the French proletariat did not have.
The Central Committee of the National Guard is in effect a Council of Deputies of the armed workers and the petty bourgeosie. Such a Council, elected directly by the masses who have taken the revolutionary road, represents an excellent apparatus of action. But at the same time, and just because of its immediate and elementary connection with the masses who are in the state which the revolution has found them, if reflects not only all the strong sides but also the weak sides of the masses, and it reflects at first the weak sides still more than it does the strong: it manifests the spirit of indecision, of waiting, the tendency to be inactive after the first successes.
The Central Committee of the National Guard needed to be led. It was indispensable to have an organization incarnating the political experience of the proletariat and always – not only on the Central Committee, but in the legions, in the battalion, in the deepest sectors of the French proletariat. By means of the Councils of Deputies – in this case they were organs of the National Guard – the party could have been in continual contact with the masses, known their state of mind; its leading center could each day put forward a slogan which, through the medium of the party’s militants, would have penetrated into the masses, uniting their thought and their will.
Hardly had the government fallen back to Versailles than the National Guard hastened to unload its responsibility, at the very moment which this responsibility was enormous. The Central Committee imagined “legal” elections to the Commune. It entered into negotiations with the mayors of Paris in order to cover itself, from the Right, with “legality”.
Had a violent attack been prepared against Versailles at the same time, the negotiations with the mayors would have been a ruse fully justified from the military standpoint and in conformity with the goal. But in reality, these negotiations were being conducted only in order to avert the struggle by some miracle or other. The petty bourgeois radicals and their socialistic ideals, respecting “legality” and the men who embodied a portion of the “legal” state -the deputies, the mayors etc – hoped at the bottom of their souls that Thiers would halt respectfully before revolutionary Paris the minute the latter covered itself with the “legal” Commune.
Passivity and indecision were supported in this case by the sacred principle of federation and autonomy. Paris, you see, is only one commune among many other communes. Paris wants to impose nothing upon anyone; it does not struggle for the dictatorship, unless it be for the ‘dictatorship of example’.
In sum, it was nothing but an attempt to replace the proletarian revolution, which was developing, by a petty bourgeois reform: communal autonomy. The real revolutionary task consisted of assuring the proletariat the power over the country. Paris has to serve as its base, its support, its stonghold. And to attain this goal, it was necessary to vanquish Versailles without the loss of time and to send agitators, organizers, and armed forces throughout France. It was necessary to enter into contact with sympathizers, to strengthen the hesitators adn to shatter the opposition of the adversary. Instead of this policy of offensive and aggression which was the only thing that could save the situation, the leaders of Paris attempted to seclude themselves in their communal autonomy: they will not attack the others if the others do not attack them; each town has its sacred right to self-government
. . .The hostility to capitalist organization – a heritage of petty bourgeois localism and autonomism – is without doubt the weak side of a certain section of the French proletariat. Autonomy for the districts, for the wards, for the batallions, for the towns, is the supreme guarantee of real activity and individual independence for certain revolutionists. But it is a great mistake which cost the French proletariat dearly.
Under the form of the “struggle against despotic centralism” and against “stifling” discipline, a fight takes place for the self preservation of various groups and sub-groupings of the working class, for their petty interests, with the petty ward leaders and their local oracles. The entire working class, while preserving its cultural originality and its political nuances, can act methodically and firmly, without remaining in the tow of events, and directing each time its mortal blows agaisnt the weak sectors of its enemies, on the condition that at its head, above the wards, the districts, the groups, there is an apparatus which is centralized and bound together by an iron discipline. The tendency towards particularism, whatever the form it may assume, is a heritage of the dead past. The sooner French communist-socialist communism and syndicalist-communism emancipates itself from it, the better it will be for the proletarian revolution.
To be continued . . .
From Lessons of the Paris Commune, February 4 1921
Communique: Encampment for Dignity and Against Repression in Oaxaca October 4, 2006
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Donate Seventy-Two Hours for Peace
By Civil Society Organizations of Oaxaca
October 3, 2006
Since the beginning of Oaxaca’s conflict, despite the arbitrary outrages to which the population has been subjected, there had not been such fear that the conflict would be resolved through the use of senseless, indiscriminate force.
The government’s discourse in recent days shows that there is a repositioning on its part going on in order to obtain control of the conflict and contain it, so that the people begin to accept that there will be no destitution of or resignation by Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, and that will be under the current government structure that what is being called a “New Reform” will be developed for the state.
The government has already begun the first fase of this operation, which is based on the intimidation of the population, in order to persuade it not to continue fighting for justice.
Since last week there have been aerial operations on the part of the armed forces, mobilization of troops from the Federal Preventive Police, the Army and the Navy as part of preparations for an intervention in Oaxaca.
The undersigned social organizations and Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) members make an urgent call to the people of Oaxaca, of Mexico, and of the world to come and form an “Encampment for Dignity and Against Repression in Oaxaca”; to come out and defend the Oaxacan people and avoid bloodshed due to the lack of vision on the part of our politicians.
All of us who want to see a political solution to the conflict, which will only happen once Ulises is gone, must form peace and solidarity brigades in order to secure and safeguard the welfare of the Oaxacan people, in such a way that we persuade those who think crudely that bloodshed will push this conflict in a new direction.
We cannot allow repression to be the solution. Let us all participate in the encampment for dignity and against repression dressed in white, as a clear signal that we are in favor of a peaceful movement and of a political and dignified resolution. Let us also go out into the streets with bandanas of different colors, to send the signal that we are a movement of many diverse actors that are willing to protect our compañeras and compañeros.
The encampments will be a form of cultural expression, unlike the crude and sterile political and military activity. Oaxaca is a state of immense cultural diversity, stemming from tremendous ancestral struggles, which has always been characterized by the dignity of its people. Let us demonstrate that Oaxaca’s dignity is humanity’s dignity.
The encampments will be installed beginning Wednesday, October 4 at 12:00 noon, in the Santo Domingo Esplanade, and will be renewed every 72 hours. Participants should bring blankets, tents, napsacks, sleeping bags, nylon, umbrellas and food.
For more information you can check the website www.oaxacalibre.org (Spanish). Confirm your participation or send messages of support to comunicacion@….
Please, help us to distribute this communiqué and participate with your presence.
SHOUT NO TO REPRESSION!!!
PROTECT THE OAXACAN PEOPLE!!!
Civil Society Organizations of Oaxaca
Alternativas para la Equidad y la Diversidad AC, Centro de Apoyo al Movimiento Popular Oaxaqueño CAMPO AC, Centro para los Derechos de la Mujer Ñääxuiin AC, Centro de Desarrollo Comunitario Centéotl AC, Centro de Encuentros y Diálogos Interculturales AC, Centro Regional de Derechos Humanos Bartolomé Carrasco AC, Centro de Derechos Indígenas Flor y Canto AC, Centro de Derechos Humanos Ñu’uji Kandí AC, Centro de Estudios de la Mujer y la Familia AC, Centrarte AC, Coalición de Maestros y Promotores Indígenas de Oaxaca CMPIO AC, Consorcio para el Diálogo Parlamentario y la Equidad AC (Oaxaca), Colectivo Nueva Babel AC, CODICE AC Comité de Vigilancia Ciudadana, Comité Cerezo Oaxaca, CHAMIXEZACUI AC, Enlace Comunicación y Capacitación Oaxaca AC, ECCOS AC, Foro Oaxaqueño de la Niñez, Grupo de Apoyo a la Educación de la Mujer GAEM, Grupo Mesófilo AC, Ixquixochitl AC, Grupo de Mujeres 8 de Marzo AC, Iniciativas para el Desarrollo de la Mujer Oaxaqueña IDEMO AC, Liga Mexicana por la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos LIMEDDH AC, La Ventana AC, Organización de Agricultores Biológicos ORAB AC, Ojo de Agua Comunicación SC, Observatorio por los Derechos Humanos y la Democracia, PAIR A.C. Promotora de Servicios para el Desarrollo PRODER SC, PROCAO AC, Pueblo Jaguar AC, Red Oaxaqueña de Derechos Humanos AC, Servicios para una Educación Alternativa EDUCA AC, Sinergia para el Desarrollo Integral Sustentable AC, Tequio Jurídico AC, Universidad de la Tierra en Oaxaca AC, Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de la Zona Norte del Istmo UCIZONI AC, Unión de Organizaciones de la Sierra Juárez de Oaxaca UNOSJO SC, Yeni Navan.
Lessons of the Paris Commune October 2, 2006
Posted by raved in Commune.add a comment
(1) “The Proletarians of Paris,” said the Central Committee in its manifesto of March 18, “amidst the failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction of public affairs . . . They have understood that it is their imperious duty, and their absolute right, to render themselves masters of their own destinies, by seizing upon the governmental power.”
But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purpose.
(2) Paris, the central seat of the old government power, and, at the same time, the social stronghold of the French working class, had risen in arms against the attempt of Thiers and the Rurals to restore and perpetuate the old governmental power bequethed to them by the empire. Paris could resist only because, in consequence of the siege, it had got rid of the army, and replaced it by a National Guard, the bulk of which consisted of working men. This fact was now to be transformed into an institution. The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.
(3) The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.
(4) Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administation. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at a workman’s wage.
(5) Having got rid of the standing army and the police – the physical force elements of the old government – the Commune was anxious to break the spiritual force of repression, the “parson-power”, by the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies.
(6) The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of church and state. Not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself was freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it.
(7) Like the rest of the public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible and revocable.
(8) The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great industrial centres of France. The communal regime once established in Paris and the secondary centres, the old centralised government in the provinces, too, have to give way to the self-government of the producers. .
(9) The Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet. The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandate imperiatif (formal instructions) of his constituents.
(10) It was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing class against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labor. . .The political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery. The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundation upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rule. With labor emancipated, every man becomes a working man, and productive labor ceases to be a class attribute.
(11) Yes gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the labour of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation of the expropriators. It wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land, and capital, now chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labor, into mere instruments of free and associated labor. But this is communism, “impossible” communism!
(12) When the Paris Commune took the management of the revolution into its own hands; when plain working men for the first time dared to infringe upon the governmental privilege of their “natural superiors”. . . the old world writhed in convulsions of rage at the sight of the Red Flag, the symbol of the Republic of Labor, floating over the Hotel deVille.
(13) And yet, this was the first revolution in which the working class was openly acknowledged as the only class capable of social initiative, even by the great bulk of the Paris middle class, shopkeepers, tradesmen, merchants. . . In fact . . the true middle class Party of Order came out in the shape of the ‘Union Republicaine”, enrolling themselves under the colors of the Commune and defending it. . .
(14) The Commune was perfectly right in telling the peasants that “its victory was their only hope” . . . The Commune . . . in one of its first proclamations, declared that the true originators of the war would be made to pay its cost. The Commune would have freed the peasant of the war tax – would have given him cheap government – transformed his present blood-suckers, the notary, advocate, executor, and other judicial vampires, into salaried communal agents.
(15) If the Commune was thus the true representative of all the healthy elements of French society, and therefore a truly national government, it was, at the same time, as a working men’s government, as the bold champion of the emancipation of labor, emphatically international. Within sight of that Prussian army, that had annexed to Germany two French provinces, the Commune annexed to France the working people all over the world. . . The Commune admitted all foreigners to the honor of dying for an immortal cause. . . The Commune made a German working man [Leo Frankel] its Minister of Labor. . .The Commune honored the heroic sons of Poland [Dabrowski and Wroblewski] by placing them at the head of the defenders of Paris.
(16) The great social measure of the Commune was its own working existence. Its special measures could be betoken the tendency of a government of the people by the people. Such were the abolition of nightwork of journeymen bakers; the prohibition, under penalty, of the employers’ practice to reduce wages by levying their workpeople fines under manifold pretexts. Another measure was to surrender the associations of workmen, under reserve of compensation, of all closed workshops and factories, no matter whether the respective capitalists had absconded or preferred to strike work.
(17) . . . the Commune did not pretend to infallibility, the invariable attribute of all governments of the old stamp. It published its doings and sayings, it initiated the public into all its shortcomings.
(18) . . .the real women of Paris showed again at the surface – heroic, noble, and devoted, like the women of antiquity. Working, thinking, fighting, bleeding Paris – almost forgetful, in its incubation of a new society, of the Cannibals at its gates – radiant in the enthusiasm of its historic initiative!
From K Marx, The Civil War in France, the Third Address, May, 1871, Chapter 5 The Paris Commune.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm
Let us Defend the Oaxaca Commune! October 2, 2006
Posted by raved in Oaxaca.add a comment
by Andreas Aullet (Oaxaca) and Martan Jua¡rez (Mexico City)
LVO No. 206 9/28/2006
unofficial translation by Yosef M. and Fred Bergen
The people and the workers in Oaxaca are on a war footing.
The radio stations in the power of the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) received calls from parents exhorting the teachers not to call off the work stoppage. The barricades and the sit-in are supported by workers, inhabitants and parents who are helping the teachers not to call off the sit-in.
Day by day, more workers give their support, like those of the Comision Federal de Electricidad, who “without their union having voted on it “refused to withhold electrical service from the APPO and radio stations. Or like the Coca Cola truck drivers, who pull up their trucks to use them in the barricades.
The fact that the mass communications media are coordinating the struggle, spreading solidarity and expressing the discontent of the oppressed, shows that dual power exists in Oaxaca. This is a key fact, since for the first time, the voice of the workers and the people in struggle is reaching the ears of those who are equally oppressed and exploited.
The role of the Comision de Mujeres de Oaxaca [Oaxaca Women's Commission] (COMO) in this struggle is of much importance, while it reflects the fact that the emancipation of their sex passes through taking their own destiny into their hands and becoming part of the struggle and taking it to the end: who better than working women and women of the people knows how to defend what has been won?
In their imagination, the people of Oaxaca are beginning to see the APPO as a real government, built on popular bases, and support has become massive for that reason.
Equally, the rank and file teachers’ Caravan-March to the DF [Mexico City] continues its journey. In every place support and solidarity are rising, at the same time that the communities are setting up their local assemblies and greeting the march as it progresses, offering water and food with the cry, Fuera Ulises! [Ulises, get out!]. This shows that a real popular uprising against the government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO) is gestating in the state, an uprising that can awaken the sympathy of workers, indigenous people and popular sectors not only in Oaxaca, but in Puebla, Estado de Mexico and in Mexico City, and can stimulate discontent with the government and regime throughout the country.
The government’s traps against the movement
The reactionary institutions, the bosses, and the communications media are clamoring for an ‘energetic’ solution that could bring back order and tranquility to the governing class (see LVO no. 205). While these provocations are increasing, repression is still a difficult decision for the
government and the institutions, not because they would have any hesitation in repressing this heroic struggle, but because they know they would face its resistance, and that the ‘legitimacy’ of the regime would fall still further, strengthening the anti-fraud movement against the illegitimate government of Calderon and the PAN.
The discussion in the APPO
The government’s trap with its proposals for “cooling-offâ€, opened a big discussion in the APPO, as was seen in its assembly on September 19 (see LVO No. 205). In the same way, the attempt to prevent the departure of the Caravan-March, and the consultation to return to classes, promoted by the leadership of Section 22 of CNTE (teachers’ union), was rejected by the [rank and file] bases in struggle.
And it is a fact that yielding to the government’s pressure and blackmail (as a sector of the leadership is doing, unfortunately) can led to the defeat and frustration of the movement and its demands. Faced with these threats of repression, it is essential to promote the extension of the guards, by generalizing the formation of self-defense committees that can constitute a real armed guard of workers and the poor, to guarantee the physical integrity of the members of the movement, and defeat the provocations set up by the government and reaction. The best way to strengthen the struggle and prevent police-military attack, is for the APPO and Section 22 to call for the broadest solidarity of the workers and people of all of Oaxaca and Mexico.
The big discontent that exists shows that there are conditions for a big national mobilization, as was seen in the millions who demonstrated against fraud in Mexico City. In the same way, union organizations, like the SME [electrical workers], the UNT (Union Nacional de Trabajadores) and the CNTE, as well as the forces that form “La Otra Campana,” have the unavoidable responsibility of calling urgently for a big national solidarity strike and national coordination in support of Oaxaca, by multiplying initiatives like the Asamblea de Solidaridad in Mexico City. One such victory would strengthen the struggle against the illegitimate government of Calderon.
We of the LTS support the demand “Ulises Ruiz, Get Out,” while we warn against any solution that imposes another regime politician (whether of the PRI, the PAN, or the PRD) with the goal of preserving the reactionary state institutions. The search for a “profound reform of the institutions,” would preserve the essence of the current regime without meeting the demands of the people of Oaxaca and, in reality, would be a diversion for the struggle that would guarantee continued exploitation, oppression, and misery for the great majority of the masses who are now mobilizing.
And so it is that this heroic struggle puts on the agenda the seizure of state power, and how to completely resolve the demands of the great majority of the people. For this we must fight for the fall of URO and for the formation of a provisional government of the APPO and the other worker, peasant, and poor people’s organizations of the state of Oaxaca. This government must convoke a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly over the ruins of the current regime, to discuss and carry out the demands of the people of the state, as part of a nationwide struggle against the regime of alternating parties. To advance on this path, it is fundamentally important to to broaden and coordinate the struggle across the entire state, to the towns and villages, along with
incorporating all of the workers, as has been the case withe the refinery and electrical workers, preparing a huge general strike of indefinite duration, until Ulises Ruiz is gone.
In order to do this, the APPO can take up the demands of the exploited and oppressed, such as a radical agrarian reform that expropriates the landlords and gives the land to the poor peasants, the right of the indigenous communities to autonomy, the demands for better wages and working conditions for all the workers in the state, promoting moreover the struggle for workers
control at the workplaces.
Likewise, the APPO would be greatly strengthened if it called for the incorporation of elected delegates from the workplaces, communities across the state, and displaced workers involved in the informal economy, who should be sent with a mandate from those that they represent. In the areas where the PRI has more control, we can call for the formation of committees to promote the APPO.
To promote this perspective, it is fundamentally important to raise up a revolutionary workers party, composed of the most militant sectors that demand that the APPO and the workers and poor people’s organizations hold their territory and extend it to cover the whole state, advancing toward a workers’, peasants’, and indigenous people’s government of the state of Oaxaca, as the most realistic and effective solution for their demands. A party which, before the eyes of the millions of workers, oppressed and exploited people of the whole country, could be a great example of the struggle for a revolutionary defeat of this alternating-party regime that for them, only means more hunger, misery, and repression.
Long live the Oaxaca commune!
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Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!
Labor Action discussion group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/labor_action/
Working Class Emancipation e-newsletter:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/emancipation_news/
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