Colombia: Another US Backed Regime in Crisis

Mass student protests in Colombia. Students have been joined by workers Labor Unions and Indigenous Groups

 Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444m retired

Workers Internationally are Rising up Against Global Capitalism, I titled a piece I posted to this blog a week ago. I thought for a minute I was being too optimistic, allowing my desire to see global capitalism sent to its grave before humanity follows the path of extinction that this profit mad system of production is sending so many other species on our beautiful planet.

But I do not think so.

Workers and the indigenous populations of Latin America are, to put it mildly, in revolt. US capitalism considers this part of the world its own back yard and has intervened directly or indirectly through its financing and arming of murderous right wing pro-US regimes. From El Salvador and Honduras, to Chile and throughout the continent, US imperial power has wreaked havoc and violence. The IMF and World Bank, US dominated global financial institutions created at the end of World War 11 to defend a global capitalist system with US capitalism dominant, use their power backed by US military might to impose harsh austerity measures on poor but raw material rich former colonial countries in return for access to capital. The rising opposition to this process is what we are seeing at the moment

Another addition to the group of countries facing mass protests is Colombia. Colombian regimes have been among US imperialism’s most trusted flunkies in the region and relatively quiet of late following a cease fire with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) a guerilla group. But another reason is the Colombian regime has been armed to the teeth by the US taxpayer. What we are seeing here is something different as one capitalist risk assessor pits it:
“The government is worried because the people and organizations who have come out in support of the protest are more heterogeneous than they are used to,”. “It’s not only the labour unions, or the students, or indigenous people; it’s all of them.” *

I couldn't help thinking of a famous Hollywood line reading the above quote: "I think we need a bigger boat"

“All of them” means the working class, students and indigenous population that has been fighting against the poisoning of land and their communities by western oil companies. Efforts to form unions have been crushed and  leaders have been murdered by CIA financed gangs, similar to what has happened in Mexico to the North. I read this morning that Colombia has closed its borders the situation is so acute and many business and schools are closed.  This is telling and we should take note. It shows how fearful the capitalist class in these countries at how quickly the anger in society can spread in to a continent wide protest against capitalism. If a leadership with an internationalist outlook was present to any degree the likelihood of such a development would be real. There is clearly a mood for it among the masses.

The workers and rural populations of South America are all too familiar with the destructive role US capitalism has played in the region. Despite the mistakes and failed policies of the Chavez and Maduro regimes, the role of US imperialism in destabilizing Venezuela and support for the right wing coup in Bolivia and ouster of Morales is well understood by the masses of the population in the continent. With both Venezuela and Bolivia the lesson that must be absorbed is that you cannot have half a revolution and you cannot build socialism in one country. The global bourgeois will not allow it. Another example of counterrevolutionary forces in Latin America is the Catholic Church and more recently, the growth of the right wing Evangelical movement which has a huge influence in Brazil as well as Bolivia.

There have been widespread protests against the right wing coup in Bolivia especially in Argentina but these developments in Colombia must be causing considerable concern in Washington..

We are definitely in a new phase though that is for sure. In the US we are coming to the end of an era in which the two parties of capitalism dominate US political life. This era is coming to an end and we could well see splits in both the Republican and Democratic parties, to the right in the former and the left the latter. As we have explained in previous posts, we could also see  a fascist party arising as well as we have seen Europe. We will see this develop more clearly when the economy heads south. But I have learned of late not to be too conditional. Myself and millions of other Americans never thought we’d have a president endorsed by the KKK and the Nazis, not to mention a serial sexual abuser.

What we are witnessing is a crisis of global capitalism and how connected the nations states are and the world has become. We live in a world economy like it or not and the existence of nation states are in conflict, are a contradictory factor in this situation as Marx pointed out 180 years ago.

As these mass protests against the savagery of the market continue global capitalism will respond with increased violence, there is not much wiggle room for them. The existence of nuclear weapons has kept another at the cost of 50 million lives has not been an option but they don’t build all those nuclear weapons never to use them.  The only country to use nuclear weapons on urban populations is the US and the only political party, the Democrats, as representatives of US capitalism. In workers’ struggles to change society it will be necessary to win over some sections of the state that see there is no other way forward but destruction.

The most pressing issue is that the working class does not have a collective global revolutionary leadership that can offer the only real alternative. In conjunction with its allies especially in places like South America and other areas where the indigenous population has been in the forefront of the struggle to defend the land and their culture against global corporations and their hired gangs changing this is paramount. Capitalism cannot solve these crises of its own creation; it is driven to war in its rapacious quest for profits.  It will destroy life on earth as we know it and it is only the working class in all its forms that can stop it.

From the factories of China, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Vietnam to the Amazon Basin, the peoples of the world must win control over our own destiny and our productive lives and we must do that through changing how we produce what we need. This is not utopian; it is an absolute necessity.

A global society of democratic socialist states is the only solution to the madness of the so-called free market. It is uplifting to witness what is happening around the world. But in any struggle there has to be a victor. Stalemates don’t last forever and, as we saw with Venezuela, making deals with sections of the ruling class or trying to contain socialism within the nation state will not work. Global capital will not allow it.

Lessons are always learned in any struggle but what we are seeing globally, while positive will end with considerable violence as retribution is waged against the most advanced forces if permanent national and international organization does not emerge from it. Not one committed to making capitalism human and environmentally friendly, which is not possible, but one committed to ending it and changing the world in a real way opening the door to humanity finally reaching our full potential.

Warren Buffet is right, we are in a class war.

*Sergio Guzmán, the director of Colombia Risk Analysis in the Guardian UK

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