- LALIT (Mauritius)
- Российская Коммунистическая
Рабочая Партия (Russia)
- News and Letters Committees
(USA)
- The International Secretariat of the Fourth International
- Organization of Communists Internationalists of Greece (OKDE)
- Fracción Leninista Trotskista Internacional
- Organising Committee for the Reconstitution of the Fourth International (OCRFI)
- The Union Pacifiste de France
- DIP (Revolutionary Workers Party) (Turkey)
- Workers Revolutionary Party (EEK) (Greece)
◆ Revolutionary Marxists in Britain
We, Revolutionary Marxists in Britain, express our solidarity with the 58th
Antiwar Assembly.
In Britain the policies pursued by successive governments of selling parts
of the publicly-owned National Health Service (NHS) to private capitalist
companies, and reducing the capacity of hospitals, have resulted in over 60,000
deaths from COVID-19. Yet the government of Boris Johnson is using the COVID-19
pandemic as an opportunity to increase the role of private capital in health
care. Testing and tracing carried out by private companies for profit has led
to chaos, delays, test results being lost and other problems.
The Labour Party is now controlled by right-wingers led by Sir Keir
Starmer. Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn have been removed from all influential
positions and in many cases expelled from the Labour Party. Starmer is totally
ineffectual against the Johnson government’s reactionary measures.
The government is
pushing on with Brexit (leaving the EU) and is seeking a trade agreement with
the USA, which is likely to include measures to allow US companies to take over
parts of the NHS. The Johnson government is closely allied to Donald Trump, and
acting in alliance with him against China, as for example in banning 5G telecoms
equipment supplied by the Chinese company Huawei.
The British government is now ending financial support for workers who
stayed away from work because of the virus, and is insisting that workers must
return to their workplaces. This presents particular problems for workers with
school age children, as school holidays have started and there are few
childcare facilities, as over the last five years thousands of childcare
providers have closed because of cuts in funding.
Under pressure, the government has granted a small pay increase to a
number of health care workers, and to teachers. The fact that the police and
armed forces have also received a pay rise suggests that the government expects
to use repressive measures against working class resistance to the mass
unemployment that the COVID-19 crisis will bring about.
Meanwhile workers throughout the world have taken inspiration from the
Black Lives Matter movement that has developed in the USA. This movement
represents the most oppressed section of the American working class and its
fight against racist police attacks. The mass “Strike for Black Lives” that
took place in the USA on 20 July shows how workers understand racist oppression
to be a class issue.
Your “Overseas Appeal” rightly draws attention to the move by capitalist
governments in many parts of the world to crush working class resistance to
cuts in pay and pensions, and to growing unemployment. We fully agree with you
that: “It is only the internationally united struggle of the working class now
exploited and ruled that is capable of overturning the dark 21st
century world covered by the crisis of war and poverty.” We do indeed need “the
unity of the working class across borders”.
22 July 2020
◆
LALIT
Dear Comrades,
LALIT in Mauritius expresses solidarity on the occasion of the 58th
International Antiwar Assemblies to be held in Japan on 2nd August 2020.
This year, the Antiwar assemblies are being held in the exceptional
circumtances of a pandemic of Covid-19 affecting the lives of workers and poor
people across the world in a disproportionately hard way.
This major health crisis has been, and still is, followed everywhere by
the long-term, existing capitalist crisis now diving into more severe depths
with the halt of many parts of the economy world-wide. The consequences of the
combined health-and-economic crises on working class lives are drastic: there
are jobs lost, wages cut, and a marked deterrioration of work conditions,
including having to work from home, besides having to pay for rises in the
prices of basic needs.
In Mauritius, the Government brought major changes in legislation, with
more repression on working people including even new work sectors where strikes
are now completely illegal, not just during the lockdown period but without any
end-date. There are harsher labour laws. The working class and poor people are
being made to carry the burden of the economic crisis, while government is
heavily subsidizing the bosses to saveguard their profits.
At the international level, imperialist states are not spared the virus
and its effects either. Many, like the USA, have a galloping epidemic inside
their territory, and also at the level of their military bases, even those
abroad, where the virus has flared up, as well as on war-ships, which become
like prisons, while the virus rages. For instance, we learnt that some of the
US military bases on Okinawa are now under lockdown following cases of
Covid-19, while in Okinawa, we understand, local new cases were down to zero.
Military bases, thus represent threats not only against peace in the world, but
also of spreading the deadly virus. It shows how “bases” are bits of the
imperialist country, in this case, the USA, that are outside their borders, in
this case part of Japan. Warships are, similarly, bits of imperialist countries
that roam the seas.
Our struggle for closing down of the US military base in the Indian Ocean
has moved a step forward last year, with the U.N. Resolution compelling UK to
end its illegal occupation of the Chagos Islands, stolen from Mauritius in
1960’s and then one of the Chagos Islands was leased by the UK to the US
imperialists to set-up the Diego Garcia Military base. This UN Resolution
followed the judgment of the International Court of Justice against Britain the
previous year.
The Diego Garcia military base, over which we need to gain proper
democratic control, was used as a trampoline for the USA to wage wars against
Iraq and Afganisthan. The military base was where B-52 bombers took off from,
while nuclear submarines are repaired there. It was also used by CIA agents for
interrogations and illegal torturing of international prisoners, what was known
as “rendering”.
In Mauritius, LALIT together with workers’ organisations and women’s
associations, is involved in an ongoing campaign to build international support
for the dismantling of the military base on Diego Garcia, for the rights of
return for the Chagossians, those Mauritians who were forcibly removed from
Chagos Islands, and for the complete decolonisation of the African continent.
We have noted with great excitement how the struggle in the USA and elsewhere
against violence of police towards working people, has moved a step forward to
denounce colonialism and all its left-overs.
Our struggle cannot be separated from other international struggles to
close military bases in the world, to end wars and to send the troops back
home.
LALIT supports the International Antiwar Assemblies intitiative in Japan.
We admire your persistence in the fight against imperialist wars and against
capitalist exploitation of the working class.
At the time when a world-wide wave of an epidemic, provoking a world-wide
wave of new capitalist crises, causes so much suffering, it is also a time when
we must challenge the “old order” that existed before the pandemic. The old
normal, we find, was just not good enough.
Long live workers’ international solidarity! Towards a revolutionary
change!
Long Live the struggle for socialism!
Rada Kistnasamy
for LALIT
19 July 2020
◆
Российская
Коммунистическая Рабочая Партия
Уважаемые товарищи!
Центральный комитет Российской коммунистической рабочей партии (РКРП)
горячо приветствует участников 58-й международной антивоенной ассамблеи и
желает всем успешной работы!
В этом году российские коммунисты, рабочий класс России, как и все
советские люди, с особой ясностью осознают возрастающую опасность нового
наступления фашизма и его неизбежного следствия – разрушительных войн. Ведь в
этом году мы отметили 75-летнюю годовщину великой победы Советского народа над
гитлеровским фашизмом и его союзниками по антикоминтерновскому пакту. Это была
классовая война – война между капитализмом в его наиболее отвратительной форме
фашизма, несущим народам нищету и смерть, и строящимся коммунизмом, несущим
трудящимся освобождение от эксплуатации, всестороннее развитие и мирную
счастливую жизнь. Никакие ошибки, допущенные в строительстве социализма в СССР
в сталинский период и после него, не могут зачеркнуть достижений реального
социализма и поставить под сомнение правильность самого социалистического пути.
Ошибки борьбы не являются предательством или изменой. Именно Советский Союз
внес решающий вклад в Победу над фашизмом в 1945 г., прорвал цепь капитализма и
вывел социализм на международный уровень, создав лагерь социализма. Мы жили в
условиях социализма и можем судить о том, что было лучше тогда. Лучше были
отношения между людьми! Они были более честными, более справедливыми, более
человечными. За это стоит бороться!
Мы отметили юбилей Победы в условиях временного поражения социализма на
нашей земле, в условиях всё более наглого наступления капиталистической
диктатуры и нарастающей фашизации правящего режима в России. Мы с болью
воспринимаем возрождение фашизма на Украине и оказываем помощь борьбе народа
Донбасса. В этих условиях ещё больше возрастает значение международной
солидарности рабочих, коммунистов всех стран, антивоенных сил всего мира. Мы
внимательно следим за обостряющейся ситуацией в мире, нам близки переживания и
борьба японских революционных коммунистов, хотя мы не разделяем некоторые ваши
оценки истории и сегодняшней ситуации в мире. Считаем, что в условиях
империализма чрезвычайно важно уметь использовать трещины и противоречия в
лагере империализма для развития борьбы пролетариата и прогрессивных сил.
Мы считаем весьма полезным установившиеся товарищеские отношения между
нашими партиями и движениями и выражаем надежду на дальнейшее укрепление этих
отношений, в т.ч. на развитие плодотворных теоретических дискуссий. Мы хотели
бы, чтобы эти отношения перешли на новый уровень сотрудничества и установления
постоянных рабочих связей. Надеемся, что этому даст новый импульс юбилей вождя
мирового пролетариата – 150 лет со дня рождения В.И. Ленина, который мы
намерены широко отметить проведением ряда мероприятий, в том числе, и в
международном коммунистическом движении.
Ещё раз выражаем пожелание успеха в работе вашей ассамблеи.
Фашизм не пройдёт!
Пролетарии всех стран – соединяйтесь!
От Центрального комитета РКРП:
Первый секретарь ЦК
С. Маленцов.
Секретари ЦК
В. Тюлькин, И. Ферберов.
◆ Lotta comunista
July 25th 2020, Italy
Comrades,
our internationalist solidarity to the 58th International Antiwar Assembly
in Japan! This year a combination of health, economic and social crises, as
well as crises in power relations, have massively affected the world
proletariat.
If the development of productive forces has given humanity the tools to
intervene in the outcome of catastrophic events, to prevent or mitigate their
consequences, the contradiction between capitalist relations of production
prevents this from happening in the potential of truly human development. The
bourgeoisie developed science, but it found its contradiction in the blind
forces of capital. Industry has revolutionized the world but has also dragged
it into anarchy; science has been caught in the chaos of capitalist competition
and even been prostituted to the atrocities of genocide and atomic
extermination.
According to a recent ILO report 1.6 billion workers worldwide operating
in the “informal economy" have been severely affected by the confinement
measures adopted to contain the spread of the epidemic. These workers, mostly
women, have no possibility of working remotely, nor do they have social protection,
and have limited access to health services. The ILO assesses a 60% loss of
income for these sectors of the proletariat on a global scale, a figure which
could rise in those continents where the “informal economy” weighs more
heavily, Africa and Latin America.
Historically, as is well documented not only by Marxist analysis but also
by bourgeois reformist analysis, the effects of epidemics differ according to
class conditions. The pandemic has clearly confirmed this is the case not only
for developing countries but also for the imperialist metropolises, where the
proletariat has been deployed on the frontlines to guarantee the operation of
"essential services", both sanitary and productive. It is evident in
the United States where racial protests are a reflection of the class
conditions not only of the African-American proletariat but also of the Latin
and Caucasian proletariat, with almost 50 million US workers without sufficient
health and welfare coverage, such as sick leave.
We knew very well that Engels' masterful pages on the condition of the
working class in England were not outdated, but the pandemic has shown its
current relevance on a global scale. This has occurred on a large scale in
India, where the quarantine measures adopted by the national-conservative
government of Narendra Modi led to an exodus of biblical dimensions of migrant
workers from urban areas back to their rural areas of origin; the greatest
internal migration since the "partition" between India and Pakistan
in 1947. According to various Indian estimates, it might have affected
approximately 50 million people, equal to 35% of Indian migrant workers.
Furthermore, the approximately 400 million Indian "informal workers"
are said to be at risk of absolute and very serious poverty, despite the
support measures provided by the New Delhi government, considered by many to be
insufficient.
It is evident in Brazil, in second place in the world for deaths after the
USA, with about 40 million informal workers, with images of mass graves hurriedly
dug in São Paulo, the country's economic and financial capital. It is evident
among the immigrant workforce in the Persian Gulf countries, largely from the
Indian subcontinent and Asia, with mass expulsions and the creation of
quarantine ghettos in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, whose economic
existence is based on an overwhelming majority of immigrant workers.
But it is also evident in wealthy Europe, in the orange groves of southern
Italy and in the French vineyards, or in horticulture and in the elderly care
sector in Germany. In Italy, our organisation denounced the rhetoric of the
"union sacrée", in which social distancing measures, in the name of
the general interest, still left large sectors of the proletariat exposed to
the risk of the epidemic, and we supported strikes in factories for both health
and income security, and mobilized voluntary networks to provide assistance in
workers' quarters, based on a deep-rooted tradition that has its origins in the
development of the workers' movement itself.
The pandemic comes at a time of, and in many ways acts as an accelerator
to, a renewed cycle of world tensions. In the context of the imperialist
confrontation, there is an increase in tensions between powers with an increase
in military expenditure, both conventional and nuclear. In October 2019,
Chinese imperialism exhibited the fruits of its growing military modernization,
deploying a panoply of new missile carriers on parade, which show the greater
weight of China’s own nuclear deterrent.
Today there is the explicit possibility of an accelerated rearmament
cycle, and not only among the major nuclear powers, with China endowed with the
capacity to rise to the third protagonist after the USA and Russia. The
regional powers, from Japan to Australia, also debate their positions of
"autonomous deterrence" with respect to both the nuclear and
conventional American umbrella. In updating its "Defense White
Paper", the Canberra government has indicated its intention to increase
its military budget by 40% in 10 years; an expense of about 180 billion
dollars, which involves the acquisition of "long-range missiles".
Japanese imperialism, since 2017, has begun to acquire cruise missiles and
is now debating the possibility of acquiring hypersonic weapons and intermediate
range missiles, while cancelling the anti-missile defence system "Aegis
Ashore", also moving in the direction of greater strategic autonomy
towards the American ally. Military tensions occurred on the Sino-Indian border
this spring. New Delhi has replied seeking the support of other maritime
powers, participating in naval manoeuvres conducted by the USA with three air
and naval groups in the South China Sea and around the Strait of Malacca.
Chinese imperialism, in turn, replied with its own military manoeuvres and
evoked economic agreements, with a possible military dimension, with Iran, in a
Persian Gulf marked by growing military confrontation.
In the Mediterranean, in addition to the continuation of the Syrian
conflict, the growing interventionism of both Turkey and the old Russian
imperialism is making itself felt around Libya and the natural gas fields of
the eastern Mediterranean. This is a game played with European imperialism,
both on energy flows and on migratory flows, where our migrant brothers are
used as exchange pawns.
The enormous economic stimulus measures adopted by all powers, colossal in
size, on average around 10% of GDP, and the massive return of the state's role
in the economy, on the one hand has calmed mass unemployment, especially in
advanced countries; but on the other, as the historical experience of the
Keynesian measures of the "New Deal" of the 1930s demonstrates, they
will be crucial for the massive rearmament cycle, both in the centralization of
executive powers and in industrial production capacity for war purposes. The
various imperialist and regional powers are moving towards facing this new
strategic phase defined by the rise of China and the relative concomitant
decline of the western and Russian metropolises.
The Covid pandemic, in its crude reality, shows the indispensable need for
a truly unified humanity in a classless society. It is in the spirit of the
world revolution and communism that we send you our internationalist wishes for
your Assembly!
Lotta Comunista.
◆ News
and Letters Committees
To the 58th International Antiwar Assembly:
We extend our solidarity to your assembly, and your calls for proletarian
internationalism and antiwar struggle based on that.
Despite Donald Trump’s worshipful words toward his fellow capitalist
authoritarian Xi Jinping, the rising tensions between the U.S. and China are
due as much to one country as the other, as both manifest the disintegrating
tendencies of global capitalism in deep crisis, which includes rising
nationalism and fascism in many countries.
Most importantly, the ruling classes of both countries, like others across
the world, are haunted by the revolutionary potential and stirrings of revolt
at home. Working classes in both countries are resisting the capitalists’ determination
to keep exploiting them and to force workers to risk their lives and the lives
and health of their families by toiling in dangerous conditions during the
pandemic. National minorities are especially oppressed and superexploited,
forging Subjects of revolution that are not reducible to the working class,
along with other Subjects that include women and youth.
While for now China has the Uyghurs under such draconian repression that
many of them are forced into slave labor, the Black-led multiracial revolt in
the U.S. reveals the revolutionary potential that has always been at the heart
of U.S. history. This revolt is not only aimed at specific incidents of police
brutality and racism, nor only at police brutality and racism in general, but
has aired demands to abolish the police, abolish prisons, even to abolish
capitalism. That is one way this revolt shows that the thought of the Subjects
of revolt is as crucial as any other activities, and needs to be met by the
movement from theory rooted in the thought of the movement from practice.
As we put it in “Shattered by pandemic, world needs new beginnings in
revolutionary activity and thought,” our Draft Perspectives Thesis for
2020-2021:
“Trumpism [is] the expression of the system’s senescence that could
actually lead to the destruction of civilization. The absolute opposite to this
is not just socialism as a generality. The questions of what kind of socialism
and what kind of revolution are needed reveal the crying need for a philosophy
of liberation. What can make a difference after the revolution between allowing
a return to the old, dying system, or making revolution in permanence real?
What should be clear, but is too often evaded in the fight to oppose the powers
that be, is that to avoid the failure of revolution and thereby the success of
the counter-revolution that drives us onward to barbarism and climate chaos,
what is needed above all is the unity of philosophy with revolution….
“In the future, we will be living on a planet damaged by capitalism, but
the possible kinds of life we can have are poles apart, depending on whether we
succeed in fundamentally transforming society. In the absolute opposite of
today’s society, one based on freely associated labor instead of slavery to
capital’s production for production’s sake, we can leave behind pervasive
misery, precarity and antagonism, and self-development and cooperation can
flourish, as can a rational relationship to nature.”
Comrades, let us struggle together to establish revolutionary solidarity
in both thought and activity, to oppose and prevent war, to promote proletarian
internationalism, to abolish capitalism, racism, sexism, militarism, and
imperialism, and to open a revolutionary path to a new, free, human society!
For freedom,
Franklin Dmitryev, National Organizer, for
The Resident Editorial Board of News and Letters
Committees, July 26, 2020
◆ The
International Secretariat of the Fourth International
We have received the
Antiwar’s Call for the 58th Assembly Against War, on August 2nd in Tokyo and
six other cities in Japan
Yes, the coronavirus pandemic has taken on unprecedented proportions
But the crisis of the world
economy was already present before the public health and research systems,
considerably weakened by years of capitalist counter-reforms, were confronted
with Covid 19 in 2020, and before the policies of blind confinement (in France,
for example) or laissez-faire (as in the United States) led to the partial or
total unemployment of millions of workers.
Two years ago, in July
2018, the American Trump administration, in the name of “America First”,
launched the trade war with Beijing in order to eliminate the trade deficit
with China and to impose the free penetration of American capital and
merchandise.
For the Chinese
bureaucracy, it is a question of preserving its privileges of the monopoly of
the management of the current state capitalism in China, a product of capital
coming from multinationals, notably American, Japanese and European, which have
come in search of cheap labor.
At the same time, the Trump
administration intended to impose its trade conditions on the European Union, Germany,
Japan, South Korea... thus provoking a slowdown of the world economy.
And all the governments sought to pass the consequences on to the workers,
the youth and the populations in general, i.e. the aggregation of measures of
privatization of public services, dismantling of hospitals and reduction of
health care rights, the calling into question of the workers’ collective
guaranties and the multiplication of precarious jobs, the submission of
research and universities to private interests, the continuation of
deinstitutionalization and delocalization to countries with low labor costs....
In this situation, wars and threats of war are everywhere. In Africa, the
French army needs to withdraw from the regions (Sahel) it occupies under the
pretext of maintaining order.
The American navy present in the South China Sea, in reality to support
the trade war against Beijing, has no business there because these are simply
not American territorial waters.
And it is clear that Article 9 of the Japanese
Constitution, which prohibits Japan from waging war, should not be changed,
because it is a valuable point of support for fighting against war in that part
of the world.
And it is right to oppose the construction of a new U.S. Navy base in
Okinawa.
But against imperialism's measures, at the same time, in 2019, at the
center of the world situation there arose the revolutionary developments in
Algeria, the uprising in Chile, in Lebanon, in Iraq.
In Hong Kong, millions demonstrated in 2019 and 2020 against police
violence and for the election of the city's leaders by full universal suffrage,
initially forcing Beijing to withdraw the extradition law. But, terrified that
Chinese workers and youth will not take up the same demands as the people of
Hong Kong, the Chinese bureaucracy, with the national security law, is seeking
to stifle Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.
In 2020, there are strikes and demonstrations in France for the withdrawal
of the retirement reform, but, above all, provoked by the murder of George
Floyd by a policeman, the anger in the United States has triggered
demonstrations throughout the country against racial violence and state
repression.
And these demonstrations have had an international echo.
This is the movement by which the peoples, workers and youth intend to
resist the decomposition of the capitalist system “carrying war as the cloud
carries the storm” (Jean Jaures).
Have a good anti-war assembly
June 27, 2020
The IS of the Fourth International
◆ Tavini Huiraatira no te Ao Maohi
Dear comrades and friends, ia ora na !
First of all, warmest greetings from Maohi
Nui to Japanese People and to our friends from Zengakuren.
As years go by, the situation of the world
is becoming more and more critical and volatile as appropriately described in
the “Overseas
Appeal for the 58th International Antiwar Assembly”. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the
eternal greed of imperialist countries for power and dominance by imposing
their political viewpoints and management rules on countries which want a free
world. Today, opponents to imperialism undergo serious threats leading to
economic blockade, annexation or war. A weapon free and nuke free world will
never come into sight since the big powers, for so called “security’s sake”,
will never come to an agreement for a weapon free world. Non belligerent
countries or peaceful people struggling for a free world could only appeal to a
better solidarity to fight against war and impoverishment.
It is important to remind the world that
the Pacific Ocean has been the testing area of nuclear weapon for imperialist
countries. The uses of nuclear weapons to intentionally kill human being
unfortunately occurred in Japan. It is sad to see that the big powers could not
understand (or are they simply indifferent?) the harm of such weapon on the
population. Even in areas where nuclear tests have been carried out,
consequences for the people and for the testing ground are serious like the
case of Maohi Nui.
Maohi Nui underwent 193 french nuclear
tests (atmospheric and underground) leaving our country with the following
results:
·
people lost their land since two islands,
Moruroa and Fangataufa, was annexed by France
·
lot of our people have cancer due to
atmospheric tests
·
the two low islands used for underground
tests are near collapsing with a great chance to produce a regional tsunami.
For all the people who died of cancer and
the future generation of cancer patients, the pro-independence party Tavini
Huiraatira and the society Moruroa e Tatou sued France for crime against
humanity at the Human Rights Commission of the UNO and at the International
Court of Justice. This last action has not been without consequences for Mr
Oscar Temaru, president of the Tavini Huiraatira has been sued by the french
government as well as Radio Tefana, the only voice of the Maohi Nui people. The
objective of France is to eliminate the Tavini Huiraatira independent party.
Countries (including countries to be
decolonized as listed by the United Nation) under the control of imperialist
countries are in even worse conditions because their rules are subject to
perpetual changes to comfort imperialism. Hong Kong and Taiwan are here to
remain us what is happening on a bigger scale. In small island countries seeking
for self governance, action by imperialist countries are insidious in order to
dominate the vast Pacific Ocean. Changes of rules and gerrymandering are common
practices of the french government in Maohi Nui. Seeking and telling the truth
peacefully is a crime in France. Imperialist countries do not like to be
reminded about their past because History has to be conformed to their view.
Reminding everyone about the past and History is fundamental for the future
generation like you are doing every year for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki events.
We express great solidarity with the 58th
International Antiwar Assemblies. Our solidarity with the Japanese people is
guided by our common goal to reach a nuclear free World and to remind humanity
about the devastating power of the nuclear bomb.
With Solidarity !
Keitapu Maamaatuaiahutapu, Heinui Lecaill
& Guillaume Colombani
Board Menbers of Radio Tefana and members
of the Tavini Huiraatira
◆ Workers International League (WIL)
Solidarity to the 58th
International Antiwar Assemblies
From Southern Africa, we are
sending to all you asking for partnership (collaborations) with you and Workers
International League of Zimbabwe.
We have the same enemy in
every corner of the world. Capitalism and state attacks to our lives everyday,
stealing everything from us. They steal our freedom and our creativity, by
obligating us to be the gears in its murderous social machine. They destroy our
planet and all creatures living on it.
Workers International League
fraction of the FLTI internationalist socialists are part of the fight of the
Marikana workers and their widows and their demand for justice. We intervene in
this call because from black Africa, from Zimbabwe, we fight alongside the
teachers, the railroads, the health workers, Hwange miners, Vendors, calling
for the Marikana program of R12,500 and the fight against the union
bureaucracies to be a combat of the entire working class of the region, who are
punished, suffering and a thousand times enslaved by the white imperialist
masters. We fight internationally in Argentina, Palestine, Syria, Brazil,
Tunisia, Egypt to mention few.
The Government of Zimbabwe
declared a 21-day nationwide lockdown starting on 30 March 2020 ensuring the
continuity of essential services. Following an initial extension of two weeks
until 3 May, the Government announced the easing of lockdown regulations on 1
May allowing formal industry and commerce to resume operations, with specified
measures in effect until 17 May, including mandatory testing and screening of
employees whose companies were re-opening or those employees returning back to
work for the first time since the initial lockdown. The informal sector as well
as other sectors, including education, however remained closed. The lockdown
was now been extended indefinitely with a review every two weeks.
Health workers have downed tools on several occasions in the past few
months calling for authorities to meet their demands. The strikes are exposing
already vulnerable citizens who are struggling under the indefinite lockdown
intended to contain the spread of Covid-19. Zimbabwe has 2,512 confirmed
coronavirus (COVID-19) cases and 34 deaths as of Tuesday the 28th 2020.
In Zimbabwe today there is no
more immediate task than to finish organizing a real revolutionary offensive,
this time expelling and expropriating not only imperialism but also the black
bourgeoisie, which for decades fought the anti-colonialist struggle of the
masses of Africa and Zimbabwe. Workers in Zimbabwe are fighting sector by
sector without uniting and have a big fight against the black bosses. Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade Union and all unions can and should call a Congress of
workers and poor peasants without delay, calling for committees of the
unemployed, consumers, street vendors and students to conquer workers' and
peasants' alliance and impose a general strike to expel imperialism and the IMF
out of Zimbabwe.
The liberation of the workers
will be the task of workers themselves! Zimbabwe will be socialist or will be a
Wall Street colony.
Preparing, organizing and
advancing towards the socialist revolution, together with the working class of
all Africa and international is the task of the moment. There is no other way
out. Otherwise, the exit will be given by imperialism with a double looting of
Zimbabwe in all the nations of Southern Africa.
This is our strength, unity
and international struggle! We do not forget; we do not forgive!
We wish you a revolutionary solidarity
in your 58th International Antiwar Assembly.
Jussa K and James S
For the Workers International
League (WIL - Zimbabwe ) member of the FLTI
◆ Organization of Communists
Internationalists of Greece (OKDE)
Comrades,
OKDE (Organization of Communists Internationalists, Greece) greets the
58th Antiwar Assembly in Japan.
The present situation of deep capitalist crisis, has made steps forward
to a scale of global depression unprecedented in the history of capitalism.
There were signs and results for a next episode of depression since late 2018,
but as all capitalist economic tools ware failing to prevent a new eruption of
the crisis at the beginning of 2020, the coronavirus pandemic exploded all the
contradiction of the imperialist / capitalist system. There is not even a
single economy that is not affected and nearly all of the imperialist and
capitalist elites respond similarity, both in panic but also stepping up
repression against the masses and building up the authoritative, emergency
state. Side by side with a huge amount of “money drooping” capital, aimed to
prevent the collapse of the production, there is an escalation of state
repression, limitation of democratic rights, nationalism and militarism. The
health crisis is magnifying also the crisis of the political system and the
ruling elites, their inability to show up us protecting the society. The
rivalries between the old imperialist powers and the emergent capitalistic
economies become more and more furious. In many open conflicts, regional powers
intervene not only for their regional interest, but also as “representatives”
of one or another global imperialist power. The danger of an expanded or even
generalized imperialist war, even of nuclear wars, approaches.
The USA, which declines economically and technologically without stop in
comparison with the emerging economies (of whom the great protagonist is
China), is trying and will try everything to halt this decline and to regain
its dominant position as the world leading capitalist economy. The pandemic is
used just as another opportunity for the Trump administration, to extend its
aggressive offensive against China. Despite the US military supremacy
(challenged regionally in many cases in the last decade, but still undoubtedly
existing globally), the political leadership of the imperialist system and the
dominance of the US Dollar on the global economy, are not any more a de facto
situation that nobody expects to change. Already, the US economy has lost its
leadership in technological advancements and is falling behind in new
technologies’ introduction (including robots and other automation). USA has
openly declared an imperialist war against its competitors (both their old
western allies, EU, UK, Japan and the emerging new imperialist powers like
China, Russia or the regional ‘big players’ or even sub-imperialist powers like
Turkey or Iran). It’s still an economic and technology war (including also the
r&d, patents and the production of vaccines or treatments for the
coronavirus). But as reserves of gold, currency reserves, even the purschaing
power is being amassed in China, the former dominant capitalistic economies are
left with nothing but deficits, debts, de-industrialization, unemployment and
the parasitic vultures of the stock exchange system.
The world is being threatened by
a generalization of this war, a new world war, between alliances, whose the
central axes will be the USA on one side and on the other China, along with (as
it seems) Russia. The war in Middle East, the tragedy of the people of Syria,
Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Libya etc. show what may follow for the whole world.
Despite the health crisis and the pandemic, imperialist intervention is not
reducing pace, on the contrary, it’s accelerating, with troops, ships, planes
and ‘specialists’ openly acting in many theaters of war. Alongside, all
regional powers of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East are not just
choosing sides. Greece, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Iran are actively competing or
allying, threatening or supporting each other, not only on existing conflicts
but also on many fields including the control off the sea, sea borders, gas
reserves etc. Despite the economic depression and the bankruptcy of their
economies, the regional elites are investing on nationalism and state
oppression against their internal enemy (the working class), militarism and new
weapon orders for their troops, racism and religious fundamentalism.
The escalation of tension at many other key points for imperialist
domination and expansion is happening daily. From Crimea to the Sea of China
and the North Pole passages, warships and nuclear submarines are ‘acting’ more
aggressively. At the Persian Gulf and its important passages (Hormuz etc.), USA
and its regional allies (mainly Israel and Saudi Arabia) are opening a new
chapter on the aggression against Iran, that they pursue to climax to an open
conflict.
USA and Russia, by far the biggest nuclear powers, are threatening each
other with a nuclear apocalypse, on the shoulders of the global population, the
planet, the human civilization. All the treaties to control nuclear arm
expansion have been abandoned by both these 2 main nuclear powers (USA and Russia),
on top of the renewed global arms race (in which the US spends by far the most
huge amounts and remains the no 1 lethal imperialist power). The workers, the
young and the old, the oppressed, the humanity is in a great danger.
In our country, Greece, which is a member of NATO (with one of the
biggest percentage of military spending globally with regards to the GDP,
despite the chronic economic crisis and ‘internal devaluation’ against the
workers and the poor!), the Greek capitalist class has formed a reactionary
alliance in the East Mediterranean Sea, with the reactionary, bloody–shed
states and governments of Israel and Egypt. It participates actively in the
spreading of nationalism and war, for the shake of profits of the big
imperialist monopolies and some of their Greek capitalist collaborators. With
the new aggressively right government of ND (New Democracy) elected last year,
we have even more steps in the pro-imperialist policies of the previous
government (of SYRIZA), in full coordination and ‘strategic dialogue’ –as they
name it– with the aims of the US, NATO and European Union imperialist policy in
the area.
The people of the whole region of the Balkans and the South East
Mediterranean Sea are severely threatened by the growing capitalist/imperialist
competition over the newly located energy resources. Both Greek and Turkish
elites are acting more aggressive to expand claims on natural resources based
on the force of arms power and their international alliances. It’s the same in
the Balkans, which the USA is trying to convert to a huge military base and
buffer against Russia.
We are trying to develop an antiwar movement, which will withdraw Greece
from NATO and the warmongering European Union, which will call back all the
Greek soldiers from mission abroad, which will reduce the spending for war
armaments – and of course that will shut down the many and dangerous military
bases. Finally, we are trying to develop the consciousness that these wars to
come are not our wars, they are not working class wars, that the ‘defense of
the homeland’ is a bourgeois trap – and to develop concrete links and actions
of workers’ and people’s internationalism, antiwar and anti–imperialist
struggle in our region.
The global rise of mobilizations against state oppression, racism and
police brutality, the international solidarity and coordination of the global
social movements gives us hope that the working clash can not be ‘broken down’
as easily as the global capitalist and imperialist elites hope. We will wage this
fight with full consciousness of the difficulties ahead, of the need for a
broad and deep reconstruction–recomposition of the workers’ movement, of the
building up of rooted, effective new revolutionary leadeships, that will help
surpass the dead–end of amassed wrong and opportunist choices internationally,
that have led to a certain crisis in the ranks of the workers’ movement and the
revolutionary left themselves. We will not be once again meat for the cannons
of the capitalists and imperialists. The way to build a really massive and
effective antiwar movement is based on class independence and proletarian
internationalism. For Greek revolutionary marxists, our ‘closest’ enemy is our
local bourgeoisie elite and their imperialist allies (that is, the western old
imperialist powers, who, as they decline, become more and more aggressive and
opportunistic, irrational and catastrophically dangerous). We are not choosing
sides on the imperialist competition, there is no progressive, or ‘good’
imperialism or emerging power.
For us, the way out of the horror of war stands in the international
cooperation of the working class movements, the development of common
international struggles, in the development of an anti–war and anti-imperialist
movement and finally in the socialist revolution.
We hope for every success of the 58th Antiwar Assembly!
With antiwar and antiimperialist, internationalist and revolutionary
greetings!
OKDE, 28.7.2020
◆ Fracción
Leninista Trotskista Internacional
07/27/2020
Comrades, Months ago, towards the end of 2019, a new crash and breakdown of the
rotting world capitalist system began. The same thing had happened in 2008. The
financial oligarchy and the big capitalists seize parasitically on benefits
that human labor has not yet produced. Capital goes out of production and goes
to speculation and the withdrawal of fictitious profits without backing in
goods. Thus they had fled the bursting of the housing bubbles of 2008 and the
widespread bankruptcy of the banks. They threw, as they are trying to do now,
their entire crisis at the oppressed peoples and workers of the world.
The bourgeoisie came out of
the crash of 2008 making new bubbles such as “zero rate” loans, with which
profits and super-profits were distributed and fictitiously raised the values
of the shares. Meanwhile, they deepened the massive indebtedness of companies
and states. In this new round of the crash, the debts of states and companies
already amount to 230% of world GDP.
The US, the epicenter of
the crash, has been throwing its entire crisis on the world. Its deficit is
already $ 18 trillion. US imperialism captures the reserves of most of the
countries that go to buy its bonds, while with the monetary emission of the
Federal Reserve of already several trillion dollars it saves its financial
oligarchy that is permanently on the brink of precipice and finances its
military machine on the planet.
It is clear that if
capitalism survives in such a marasmus and world crisis, it is because of the
treacherous leaderships, the union bureaucracies, the Stalinists and the
renegades of Marxism, who support it. There has been no country or continent in
which the working class did not present a battle in recent years in the face of
the attack and the crisis that this putrefying system threw at them. It was
these leaderships that played their full role in betraying the mass uprisings,
while with counter-revolutionary pacts the revolutionary processes of Syria and
Ukraine were closed in and crushed and Cuba was handed over to imperialism.
Thus, the capitalist system
was able to crawl out of the 2008 crisis, to find its way back to this new blow
of the crash, but not before that 1% of imperialist parasites monopolized 50%
of the planet's wealth.
The global division of
labor has been broken. The world market is only shrinking. The United States,
with Trump in its lead, in a fierce competition with imperialist Europe, had
come out to defend its control of the world market with a tough trade war. With
an aggressive policy, it advanced on China and the European Union itself, at
the same time disciplining the Moscow oligarchy, seizing all its assets and
accounts abroad. This shows that no dominant imperialism withdraws nor will it
withdraw peacefully from the control of the world economy. And this is the case
of the United States, as if it does not want to begin an open process of
decline, it must advance its strategy of colonizing or semi-colonizing China
and Russia to keep their very profitable markets. This has to be done against
the stiff competition already imposed by the Franco-German axis, which, at the
head of Maastricht, is advancing steadfastly, contesting the various high-tech
industries in the world economy.
Despite this, production in
Europe and in Germany in particular, fell by 6.8%, while China remained
stagnant with a growth rate of 2%. This has opened a phase of depression of
the world capitalist economy, capital devaluation and a huge crisis of
overproduction. The collapse at USD 20 of the price of a barrel of oil
was only the thermometer of this new capitalist catastrophe... Millions of
workers lost their jobs. The most valuable commodity, the labor force, was
wasted by millions in the world economy. Proof of this is that 200 million
inhabitants of the planet were already migrating in the 5 continents
looking for a place to live and eat. Today we see how 55 million jobs have been
lost in the United States alone, exacerbated by the crisis of the Coronavirus
pandemic.
Comrades: Covid-19 and the spread of the pandemic acted on an already sick and
bankrupt capitalist system. This caused the suffering of the masses to worsen
to extreme degrees.
Coronavirus came to deepen
this crisis and this breakdown of the world economy. It sharpened the effects of the trade war between the
imperialist powers to extreme degrees, as it imposed even more restrictions on
world trade and produced a new leap in the closing of customs barriers.
World-economy is
semi-paralyzed. Companies' inventories are saturated. The paradox of this
bankrupt system is summarized in that in this crisis there are plenty of
minerals, oil, food, factories, etc., while millions and millions of hungry and
unemployed people do not find a place to live in this dirty prison in which
this perfidious way of production has transformed the planet.
As you correctly put in
your appeal, "the world economy has instantly frozen over." We
have entered a phase of depression and general impoverishment. Again the
catastrophe is already here.
Comrades: The year 2019
ended and as more and more the capitalist economy collapsed, new detachments of
the world working class entered the battle in Hong Kong, Chile, Ecuador, or in
Bolivia, where they faced a bloody military coup. Indomitable French working
class endlessly resisted the onslaught of the capitalists, and the masses of
the Middle East returned to the fight, as huge revolutionary processes began
again, such as in Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan and Algeria.
The start of the
Coronavirus pandemic undoubtedly served the bourgeoisie to stop the masses'
offensive, to throw their crisis at them and to throw the worst of the
hardships on their shoulders. Millions of workers were sent into the production
process for the capitalists to keep their profits, bringing hundreds of
thousands to die. In New York, thousands of black and Latino workers were
buried in mass graves. In Italy and in the Spanish State, workers went on
strike, as in automobile and steel mills, to prevent death caused by the
pandemic. In China, the lives of thousands and thousands of workers were lost,
which has been hidden by the sinister and semi-fascist government of the
Communist Party. In Latin America, where the pandemic is hitting hard today,
the exploited masses are left with the alternative of dying when producing in
the factories or starving to death at home, and they again begin to take to the
streets.
Imperialism announces that
a post-pandemic "new normal" is coming. But the recipe they are
preparing is not a new one. Absolutely not!
Ahead is simply the worst attack on the exploited, the looting of oppressed
peoples and the fierce scramble for markets in the world economy to a greater
degree than that we have seen so far.
The Franco-German axis has
decided to maintain its living space in Europe by giving "aid" and
loans to the states that will seek to pay them back with their workers' blood, sweat and tears, as happened yesterday in Greece, Portugal,
Spain, etc., and also in France and Germany itself.
In the United States, the
Trump government orders workers to produce in factories under deadly
conditions, while threatening the world with its gunboats if other imperialist
powers or strong national bourgeoisies threaten its markets. The embargo on
Iran and the dispatch of its fleet to the China Sea are an example of the
latter.
For its part, China once
again offers its internal market to transnational corporations, eager for
business, in order to try to revive their economy.
Meanwhile, entire regions
of the planet are sinking into a well that appears to be bottomless.
Oil-producing countries are bankrupt, including Russia, which has already seen
its gas and oil exports drop by 50%. This has further accelerated the armoring
of the fully Bonapartist regime in Putin's Russia.
Then, the "new
normal" will be marked by the gross agonizing crisis of the world
capitalist system and the deepening of the character of this time of crisis,
wars and revolutions.
With hindsight from today's
crisis, it is clear that in 1989 it were the traitors of the Stalinist
bureaucracy who, handing over the conquests of former workers' states such as
the USSR, China, etc. to the capitalist system, they gave it an abject survival
in the last decades. The fresh blood injected into the sclerotic veins of
capitalism is no longer enough for the body to live. Now they are going all the
way.
"Greater China"
and "Greater Russia" no longer have a place in the world market as
they are today. The city of London, Frankfurt and Wall Street are fighting each
other for taking them and they will be disputed nails and teeth. Moreover, the
USA would not be able to continue maintaining its hegemony in the world
market and risks entering into an open
decline, unless it does conquer China and Russia, breaks them economically and
financially or puts them under its military boot. This is the "new normal"
that the imperialist pirates are preparing to be able to emerge from the
catastrophe and crash. Here and there governments and regimes are armoring and
Bonapartizing themselves.
But in order for
imperialism to advance to new superior offensives, it must defeat its own
working class, something it is far from having achieved.
And the working
class wages battle
Comrades: In this dark world, as you say, imperialism does not have an open road for
its counterrevolutionary deeds and offensives. The workers and exploited still
keep their huge energies, despite cruel and heavy defeats as in Syria, Ukraine,
the final sell-out of Cuba to the US by Castroism or in Bolivia, where a
semi-fascist coup d’état was imposed with iron and blood, which massacred the
exploited in Senkata. The world working class is far from giving up.
As the 8 minutes 46 seconds
that took the executioner’s knee to choke George Floyd passed, the black
people, the workers, millions of unemployed and rebel youth in the US broke out
in huge struggles and independent mass political actions. These actions
were a left blow on the infamous regime and the trap it had set on the
exploited with Sanders, backed by the entire American left, who returned to
the Democratic Party to support Biden. This happened just in moments when the
masses were turning left and, pushed by huge sufferings, they rose against the
US regime, Trump’s government and his repressive forces.
The old and weakened
AFL-CIO bureaucracy couldn’t do anything to prevent a volcano eruption of the
anger of millions of exploited. In more than 50 cities, centuries of hatred for
the slavery of the black people burst out. Also, for the desperate situation,
without a way out, of the more than 55 million unemployed, of the homeless and
for the miserable wages that doesn’t
even reach 6 dollars an hour of
millions of exploited treated in
America as the US bourgeoisie treats the
workers and subjugated people of the colonies and semi-colonies that plunders.
“Dissolve the police!” is the cry and the struggle of the masses. This is a
direct clash to the heart of the bourgeois state, with its armed men gang.
Police stations were raided. Some of them were burnt. A huge mass independent
action has struck the ruling imperialist power inside of it.
In their struggle against
Trump’s government and the police, the exploited concentrate all their demands.
The masses are convinced that they have to deal a heavy blow and defeat the
government on the streets to advance in recovering their gains and put an end
to their unbearable living standards. The oppressed don’t enter the
revolutionary processes with a book under their arms. The unprecedented
sufferings push them to the revolutionary struggle.
In the spontaneous mass
actions there’s the embryo of consciousness, as Lenin said. The exploited
distinguish their enemy. It’s been more than 60 days of struggle and the
reformist left cannot subject the working class to the Democratic Party again,
the same party that has attacked all the workers’ gains with 24 governors today
as yesterday with Obama. The masses don’t let the reformist left subject the
working class to the Democrats. “Dissolve the police!” They insist. Besides the
uprisings in the cities, the 29 ports in the US west coast were paralyzed. As
black lives matter and the lives of the entire working class deserve to be
lived, the exploited took over the central police station in Seattle. In
Detroit, tens of thousands of workers refuse to enter to produce in the
factories as they don’t want to die of Coronavirus. More than 50 cities in USA
are today revolted. With the cry “our streets”, they kicked out the white
supremacists and defend the streets from the repressive forces with barricade
fighting.
A gathering of old union
leaders and Stalinism tried to place itself once again in this mass uprising to
control it again. This is what the symbolic July 20th day of action
they called was about. The union bureaucracies weakened their own call as they
reduced those actions to symbolic demonstrations and tried to add bourgeois,
representatives and senators of the Democratic Party to convince the workers
movement that their way out was to trust again in the Parliament and in the
imperialist democracy of Wall Street pirates.
The response of the
revolted masses did not take long. In Portland, where Trump sent the Federal
Forces, the clashes have not stopped. The wall of mothers, then wall of fathers
and now wall of war veterans are clashing every day with Trump’s forces. As we
are writing this message to your Assembly, in 45 cities there were actions
taking place at the war cry “We are all Portland!” “Out with Trump!” “Feds
Out!” and “Dissolve the police!”
Comrades: From the Collective for the Re-foundation of the Fourth International /
FLTI, we take as our own what your appeal says: It is time for a mass
counter-attack. Indeed, it is time to prepare a strategic offensive
for the fight of the international proletariat. But for this to happen, it is
not enough with the spontaneity and heroism of the exploited. This is an
indispensable condition for victory. But without a revolutionary leadership,
these attempts will be sought to be taken to new traps, diversions and class
collaboration policies, promoted by all kinds of trade union bureaucrats and by
Stalinism that put down the mass struggle and prepare hard blows of fascism.
There is no time to waste.
In Middle East, France, USA, the South Cone of Latin America, the world working
class stands strong. There are conditions to prepare a strategic offensive.
The US working class is the
iron fist of the workers of the world. In its offensive, it is in condition of stopping the imperialist war
machine, as yesterday in Vietnam and later Iraq.
The black workers of Africa
are taken as slaves to the imperialist Europe with shackles (as they were taken
to the plantations of the white in southern USA centuries ago), see that this
struggle of the black people inside the imperialist beast is their own
struggle. The immigrant and undocumented workers, the Black Vests of Paris,
rose to the cry “Fear has changed sides!”
The bourgeoisie sent its
agents to the workers movement in USA, as we saw on July 20 and in every
decisive struggle of the working class. They go to prevent the masses from
setting up self-determination direct democracy armed organizations in their
struggle, that is to say, their own power. Against them, the
revolutionaries must fight in the heart of the masses to set up a supporting
point for them to break and overcome the leaderships that at each step seek to
disorganize their struggles and revolutionary assaults, dissolve their dual
power organs and prevent the exploited from arming themselves.
It is indispensable to
provide the working class and the rising oppressed the leadership they deserve
to win.
So in USA the main task is
no other than fighting to coordinate, expand, generalize, arm and centralize at
national level all the self-determination organs that the exploited set up in
their struggle in each city and state.
The disarming of the police
puts the mass arming at the order of the day. The ones on the top don’t
represent us. The fighting in the streets is not to be delegated. Trump out!
Out with the bourgeoisie and its parties from the workers organizations! The
decisive strength of the American workers will come from their support to the
struggle of the workers and subjugated people of the world.
To stop the offensive of
the capitalists, to recover the houses, to get bread, free health and
education, work and a decent life, the socialist revolution must win in USA. Fighting for the Socialist United
States of North, Central and South America is a task of the entire world
working class.
The working class
must “go back to normal”, recovering militant internationalism
Comrades: The Black Vests in France claimed “Fear has changed sides!” in moments
when the workers in England knocked down the statues of the enslavers in
Bristol. The world working class is already fighting with their class brothers
and sisters in the streets of New York, Detroit, Portland and Washington, where
the shameless Trump had to hide in a bunker under the White House facing the
rising of the black people and the workers. Meanwhile the masses wage huge
revolutionary processes in Iraq, Lebanon and tough struggles against the
Iranian theocracy, while the heroic resistance in Syria and Palestine is alive.
In Chile, the exploited seek to enter once again to the first line of the fight
of the workers of the world. It is time to coordinate the struggles of the
international working class to strike as a single fist to the imperialist
parasites.
Our fight for the
re-foundation of the Fourth International is inseparable of our fight to
rebuild the militant internationalism in the world workers movement, fighting
to defeat the treacherous leaderships, agents of capital.
The workers must return to
their “historic normal”, re-taking the militant internationalism that the
traitors of Stalinism, Social-democracy and the renegades of Trotskyism
destroyed, subordinating the working class to its executioners.
The “new normal” should be
the masses re-taking the path to the international socialist revolution. This
is what preparing a strategic offensive of the working class is about. The
objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution are not only “ripe”, but
started to rot at extreme degree. There is no time to waste. It is needed to
coordinate the struggles against dismissals and labour flexibility of the
workers of Detroit with the workers of the Mexican maquilas. We have to unite
the workers of Renault in Brazil with their siblings the dismissed workers in
Nissan, Barcelona and Renault in France into a single fight against the
transnational companies. Also, the unified struggle to get free health, defend
the pensions and get decent work for all is a struggle of life or death for the
world working class.
A new internationalist
regrouping of the revolutionary Marxism is an imperious need to help the masses
overcome the limits imposed by the treacherous leaderships to conquer the road
to victory. This is the immediate task and the obligation of all the currents
that claim to be of revolutionary Marxism.
Comrades: The best fighters of the working class are in the jails of the
exploitation regimes. In Greece, the rebel youth has been in jail for many
years. The prisons of Zionism and those of the fascist Al Assad are full with
heroic revolutionaries. Thousands of them were brutally murdered. The Iranian
clerics attacked the fighters of the working class, youth and working women,
putting thousands of them in jail. The Chilean masses seek to release the best
fighters of their first line from jail. In Bolivia, the relatives of the
exploited massacred in Senkata demand justice and the release of the political
prisoners. In Argentina, the former leader of GM workers, Sebastian Romero, is in
prison, while the “Damocles Sword” still hangs over the workers of Las Heras
and thousands of imprisoned. In Colombia or in the tormented China, thousands
of workers and youth get kidnapped. The fight for the freedom of all the
political prisoners of the world is a task and obligation that we raise
together in a single cry against the exploiters and the repressors around the
world.
This “dark century” of the
rotten capitalist system must end! Imperialism must die!
Let’s not allow that the
historical alternative be war and barbarism but the victory of the
international socialist revolution!
We salute your 58th Antiwar
Assembly
Paula Medrano, Carlos
Munzer, Villacorta, Jussa K., James S. and Lourdes Fernández
For the International
Coordination Secretariat of the Collective for the Refoundation of the Fourth
International / International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (FLTI)
Integrated by:
Internationalist Workers Party – Fourth International (POI-CI), Chile / Workers
International League (WIL), Zimbabwe / Paper “The Truth of the Oppressed”,
voice of the socialists of Syria and Middle East / Workers Democracy, Spanish
State / Socialist League of the Internationalist Workers (LSTI), Bolivia /
Internationalist Workers Nucleus (NOI), Colombia / Communards Group, Colombia /
Internationalist Workers League – Fourth International (LOI-CI) - Workers
Democracy, Argentina / Workers’ Advance “Black List” of Rio Santiago Shipyard,
Argentina / Workers And Youth Revolutionary Committee for Self-Organization
(CROJA), Brazil / Socialist League of the Internationalist Workers (LSTI), Peru
◆ Prospettiva
Marxista
Dear comrades,
The world pandemic, which this new decade has opened
with, is yet another revealing mirror of the contradictions and class nature of
our society. In defiance of the bourgeois fable of a united humanity fighting
against a common enemy, the virus, the harsh capitalist reality emerges. Within
States, a rational management of the emergency remains a mirage, destined to
succumb to the dictates of profit; beyond national borders, imperialist wars
and conflicts continue to rage.
Although the comparison between war crises and health
emergencies – widespread in the recent bourgeois press and functional to
ideological misreadings – is largely inaccurate, there are still some
similarities in the political and ideological responses that these two
otherwise different events have triggered.
On the one hand, the pandemic has brought the role of the
State fully back into the spotlight. At the height of the emergency, national
States have proved to be still effective and crucial instruments for the
defence of bourgeois interests. But just as the State clearly revealed its
class nature – as it happens during wars – ideologies of national unity, of
sacred union against the “common enemy”, spread. Just as the State subordinated
every public measure to the need to preserve profits, it was celebrated as the
defender of the whole community, of common interests.
In spite of any claim of union against the virus, the
weight and risks of the pandemic were loaded on the shoulders of one class
only. Sent to the production “front” during the lockdown, the proletariat is
now economically assaulted, and summoned to pay for the lost profits of the
bourgeoisie. As always during crises and wars, our class is bound to pay the
highest price.
In capitalist societies, there is no impartial State, no
common interest or common enemy. The present pandemic, along with all the
current crises and wars, clearly demonstrates this, showing us once again that
the only possible struggle is the revolutionary one.
◆ Organising
Committee for the Reconstitution of the Fourth International
(OCRFI)
July 29, 2020
To
all those taking part in the 58th International anti-war assembly, we send our
internationalist and revolutionary greetings in the name of the OCRFI.
For
the 58th year, you are holding in Japan the International Anti War Assembly in
commemoration of the dreadful tragedy which reduced to ashes the Japanese town
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6 and 9 of August 1945, killing people by
hundreds of thousands, and leaving behind it a long chain of other victims.
You
are right no one should forget what happened in August 1945. That month,
American imperialism showed its true face, the face of war and barbarism, the
face of imperialist exploitation.
What
happened then has to be remembered because it is a warning that the capitalist
system, imperialism, is ready to commit any dreadful act which it feels
necessary to defend and extend its rule.
This
year 2020, your anti-war assembly takes time at a moment when the world
imperialist system —and the most powerful imperialist State — is engulfed in a
critical crisis. The pandemics, COVID 19, are mot the cause of that crisis. It
is spreading the world over as it only accelerated and exposed the fact that
the capitalist exploitative system based on the private property of the means
of production was unable to overcome the consequences of the 2008 crisis and
was heading towards a new disaster.
The
last months have exposed the murderous character of the capitalist system. By
hundreds of thousands, people have died mostly because of the lack of adequate
health protection. Because the whole sanitary system worldwide was dominated by
the need of profits. The pandemic is now used to justify the biggest wave ever
of lay offs, adding new millions of unemployed to the existing mass of workers
already deprived of labour. In that context, everywhere, governments take
measures to destroy all the benefits the working class worldwide had gained by
their past struggles.
Everywhere
also, the working class and the people which were already engaged in tremendous
struggles to defend their rights and their standards of living, are fighting
back.
In
such a situation, imperialism is ready to take any move that can defend its
system, including preparations and acts that could lead to new major conflicts.
American imperialism, which, because of its power, occupies a leading position
in the imperialist system, has the means to do so. Its military budget in 2020
goes beyond 750 billions of dollars, as much as the cumulated budgets of the 16
most important countries in the world. Once again, American imperialism is
reaching a point where it may choose a war as an answer. Your assembly is
taking place at a time when the most dangerous threats are present in the
international situation.
The
present crisis is destroying the basis on which rested the previous
international relations and the accommodation between American imperialism and
the ruling bureaucracy in China, which provided low cost labour to the
imperialist world system.
Imperialism
is more and more engaged in an attempt to ensure its total and direct
domination over Asia as over the whole world. That is what is at the root of
the increasing military, diplomatic and commercial pressures on China.
The
Chinese leading bureaucracy, which, in Stalinist manner, opposes any open
expression of the Chinese working class, has been linked to imperialism for
years and wishes today a new “peaceful coexistence” on the basis of the
oppression of the Chinese working class. The struggle against the threat of war
can only be waged in relation with the struggle against the imperialist system
itself, against its States and against its allies.
In
that sense, the huge struggle which is today increasing all over the United
States against institutional racism, in defence of the oppressed Black
population, is a struggle in defence of all workers rights and a blow directed
against the warmonger which seats in Washington.
The
struggle of the Chinese workers for their right to organise, for their
democratic control of the means of production, is also part of that same
struggle which is the struggle of the workers of the world on each and every
continent.
Let’s
regroup our forces to move forward in the building of an International
Organisation that will unify those struggles.
The
International shall be the Human Race.
The Organising
Committee for the Reconstitution of the Fourth International (OCRFI)
◆ The Union Pacifiste de France
Dear Friends,
The Union Pacifiste de France wish you a
successful international antiwar assemblies.
After the world crisis, we can work for a better
world, without capitalism and war.
Friendly,
Maurice Montet
◆ War Resisters League
Dear friends,
Please accept our warm greetings and our wish for a
successful International Antiwar Assembly.
From here in the U.S., the War Resisters League - in the
face of the pandemic - continues our work for a more just and peaceful world.
We promote and take nonviolent action to end war and remove the causes of war.
Globally, we call for the removal of all foreign military
bases including from Okinawa and in Japan. We are working to end U.S.
weapons sales and for the elimination of repressive policing at home and
abroad.
In solidarity.
John M. Miller
member, International Task Force, War Resisters League.
NYC
◆ Left Radical of Afghanistan (LRA)
To International Anti War
Assembly- Japan
Dear comrades,
We are honored to extend
our revolutionary salute to all of you for your brave struggle against
imperialism and its war monger policies and destructive practices. We stand
shoulder to shoulder with you in the battle for building a world based on
peace, justice and humanity.
Today, more than anytime
the imperialist countries endanger the whole planet with devastation through
wild war, mass destruction weapons, nuclear weapon production competition,
environment and eco system degradation.
It is the one percent capitalists that determine the
fate of 99 percent of the entire world population. A small parasitic minority
in order to meet its dirty benefits and accumulate the capital, keep continuing
a brutal exploitation, violence and war, rasim and other kind of discrimination
and oppression.
So, it is a priority and
urgent task of all workers, youth and peace loving people around the world to
moblize their forces and resist togather against inhuman capitlalist system,
privatization, exploitation, war and eviroment degradation.
The workers of the world
deserve to live in peace and enjoy a prosperous life. The only alternative
which guarantees digntiy, freedom, justice and development for 99% deprived
people, is socialism and demolation of the private onwership of the means of
productions.
In solidarity
Left Radical of Afghanistan
(LRA)
Afghanistan
◆DIP
(Revolutionary Workers Party)
i come and stand at every door
but no one hears my silent tread
i knock and yet remain unseen
for i am dead, for i am dead.
i'm only seven although i died
in hiroshima long ago
i'm seven now as i was then
when children die they do not grow.
I’m knocking on your door...
Aunt, uncle, give a signature...
Children shalln’t get killed
So that they may live and grow and laugh and play.
Nazım Hikmet
Dear
Comrades,
Three
quarters of a century after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world faces the
possibility of a new world war. The most central issue of this war is the
encirclement, isolation, and containment of China and Russia. These two
countries have become powerful states thanks to the socialist revolutions and
construction processes they experienced in the 20th century. The main aim of
imperialist forces of USA, EU, Japan and their allies is to bring down these
two countries to their knees, in order to keep them away from posing any
danger.
From
the tug-of-war over the South China Sea and the delicate balancing act
regarding North Korea, the discordances expanded to a spectrum of areas that
include the trade war between the US and China and the subsequent move of the
Taiwanese bourgeoisie towards a national particularism. The US launched
sanctions on the pretext of Chinese policies in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Hong
Kong is, first and foremost, a colonial question. The sovereignty of China over
Hong Kong cannot be questioned on the basis of the political regime of this
island that rightfully belongs to China. Furthermore, US imperialism took new
measures to cut Chinese technology companies off from American engineering
skills. The crusade against the 5G development of Huawei is unprecedented in
the annals of technology. India’s Modi, who brought down his mask to reveal his
Hindutva fascism increases aggression on the border with China due to the
encouraging of imperialism. Within this context, the coronavirus pandemic that
broke out in Wuhan is used by another affiliate of fascism, Trump, to slander
China.
A
renewed bout of tension with Russia is also not to be excluded. Despite the
ambiguities of Trump’s policy regarding Russia, it should not be ignored that
NATO is still a war machine that targets first and foremost this country of great
military capability, in particular in the field of nuclear power.
However,
the dynamics of this war are not limited to the areas of conflicts with Russia
or China. The imperialist and Zionist ambitions and sectarian wars in the
Middle East, as well as contradictions and conflicts in Africa, can trigger the
outbreak or spread of a world war. In the Middle East, the impasse created in
Idlib puts Turkey, a member of NATO, and Russia on opposite trenches. Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and other reactionary Sunni Islamic
states are brought together in an alliance that includes Israel against Shia
Iran and its allies in the region. The objective of the imperialist camp is to
put an end to the threat that Iran poses
for Israel and to bring down the foremost ally
of Russia and China in the Middle East.
In
the Eastern Mediterranean, the alliance between Israel, Egypt, Greece, the
Republic of Cyprus, and others based on newly discovered sources of natural
gas, has fallen out with Turkey, which claims that it should have a say over
these resources because of its own rights and those of North Cyprus. Behind
General Haftar of Libya, is a large counter-revolutionary imperialist-Zionist
array of forces including France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates. Sarraj’s GNA and supporters as Turkey and Qatar,
too, is not meant to defeat imperialism but to seize Libyan oil. The United
States takes one or the other side depending on the concrete situation, with
Britain standing silently behind Turkey. Here again Turkey and Russia are at
odds.
The
Zionists having been emboldened by Trump’s “deal of the century” and the US provocation concerning the status of Al
Quds/Jerusalem, now prepare to announce annexing some parts of the Jordan River
Valley and of the West Bank that they had failed to usurp in 1948 and 1967.
Behind
these escalations lies the capitalist world economy prone to deepening
contradictions under the influence of the Third Great Depression since the
great financial collapse in 2008. The
Coronavirus pandemic has, moreover, ignited the explosion of all the unresolved
contradictions of the global capitalist crisis. In its essence, the pandemic
has shown that capitalism has now proved to be incompatible with the most
urgent needs of the life process, a historical obstacle that only the world
socialist revolution can and should overcome.
As
should be expected, this capitalist crisis also gave rise not only to a
possibility of a new world war and fascism that can bring about greater
disasters than the past, but to what we call the third wave of world
revolution. This was started with the Arab Revolution in 2010-11. And today, it
can be traced from the numerous mass movements emerged all over the world in
the form of rebellions and revolutions in the last two years. Those include but
are not limited to Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Chile, Haiti, Puerto
Rico, Ecuador, Catalonia, France and lately USA.
Struggling
in a country surrounded by wars and revolutions, under the squeezing grasps of despotism
and imperialism, Revolutionary Workers Party, the DIP, expresses its solidarity
with the organizers and attendees of the 58th International Antiwar
Assemblies in Japan.
Our
fight is to bring down the despotic regime in Turkey, the enemy of the workers
and the oppressed, by uniting the struggle for bread and freedom. Our fight is
to pull Turkey out of NATO, close all imperialist bases in the country, to cut
all economic, military, diplomatic, cultural and academic ties with Zionist
Israel and to kick imperialism out of the Middle East, for a Socialist
Federation of the Middle East and North Africa!
We
have to act together for the sake of the world revolution by organizing the
working class in the revolutionary parties at the national level and at the
international scale in a revolutionary international, both to resolve the
global economic crisis in favor of workers, toiling masses, the poor and the
oppressed, and to protect humanity against the danger of destruction by fascism
and in a new world war.
Internationalist
communist greetings.
DIP (Revolutionary Workers Party)
31/07/2020
◆ Российская партия
коммунистов
Уважаемые
товарищи, руководители JRCL-Японского союза революционных коммунистов,
Дзэнгакурэн и Комитета антивоенной молодёжи!
Восхищаясь вашей верностью
традиции ежегодно, в первое воскресенье августа, в очередную годовщину варварской
американской атомной бомбардировки Хиросимы (а через 3 дня – Нагасаки),
проводить международные антивоенные ассамблеи, мы особенно поражены созыву
такой ассамблеи даже в столь трудных условиях пандемии COVID-19. Мы также
огорчены, что пандемия помешала нам вовремя получить сообщение о 58 Ассамблее и
ваше Обращение к её участникам. Так что с приветствием исполкома РПК участники
Ассамблеи смогут ознакомиться только после её завершения.
Исполком РПК, в основном,
согласен с классовым подходом JRCL в анализе новых угроз миру. Холодная война
между США и Китаем и военно-морские манёвры двух ядерных держав у берегов
Тайваня и в Южно-Китайском море, действительно усиливают общую напряжённость в
мире, и бдительность терять нельзя. Однако при этом мы полагаем, что холодная
война между США и Китаем вряд ли перерастёт в войну горячую. Во-первых, важный
сдерживающий фактор – ядерный паритет. Во-вторых, политическая неопределённость
в США, связанная с ноябрьскими президентскими выборами и массовыми непрекращающимися
акциями против расовой и любой другой дискриминации. То и другое не
способствует подготовке к столь крупной военной авантюре.
В Обращении организаторы
Ассамблеи высказывают серьёзную озабоченность ситуацией в КНР. Противоречивый
курс китайского руководства вызывает тревогу у марксистов во всём мире. С одной
стороны, Китай демонстрирует огромные успехи в науке, технологических
инновациях, образовании, космических исследованиях, примером чего служит первая
станция-лаборатория на обратной стороне Луны. С другой стороны, провозглашённый
курс «социализм с китайской спецификой» на практике, особенно в последнее
время, оборачивается тем, что «специфика» дискредитирует социализм. Крупный капитал всё более «врастает» в плановую
индикативную экономику, жёстко эксплуатируя
при этом высококвалифицированный пролетариат. Последний порой отвечает
забастовочной борьбой, получая поддержку от выпускников пекинских вузов,
получивших в них хорошую марксистскую подготовку. Их по требованию хозяев
арестовывают. Наше издание Коммунист Ленинграда, выписываемое JRCL,
систематически освещает эти тревожные тенденции в политике нынешнего
руководства КПК.
Исполком РПК благодарен
Оргкомитету 58-ой Международной антивоенной ассамблеи за внимание, уделённое в
Обращении к ситуации в России, где левые силы, включая РПК, ведут тяжёлую
политическую борьбу против правящего режима
государства полупериферийного капитализма. РПК призывала голосовать
против путинских поправок в Конституцию. Раскол оппозиции на сторонников
«против» и бойкота голосования помог режиму «продавить» поправки, которые
отбрасывают Россию ещё дальше, в сторону монархического прошлого.
Империализм, или
государственно-монополистический капитализм, – главная угроза народам мира. В
его природе заложены мировые экономические кризисы. Но если до последней
четверти ХХ века они отличались известной периодичностью, то начиная с 1970-х
годов, межкризисные периоды непрерывно сокращаются: 1973 - 1997-8 – 2008 – 2014-5 – 2020… Последний мировой кризис,
спровоцированный холодной войной и торгово-экономичесикм соперничеством США и
Китая, дополнительно усилен пандемией.
Глобальный империализм не в состоянии справиться с раздирающими его
противоречиями. Ступенька между наивысшей стадией капитализма и переходной
фазой коммунизма, социализмом, о которой писал Ленин в сентябре 1917,
становится всё более и более узкой. Но сам по себе империализм эволюционно эту
ступеньку не перейдёт. Только мировая революция как последовательность
социалистических региональных революций может решить эту эпохальную задачу.
После реставрации
капитализма на территории СССР и поражений социалистических проектов в странах
СЭВ социалистический строй сохраняется и укрепляется на Кубе и во Вьетнаме.
Острое классовое противостояние, в основном, в форме экономической борьбы
наблюдается во многих странах Латинской Америки. Но настоящей революционной
ситуации нет нигде. Одна
из главных причин – кризис политического авангарда современного пролетариата,
призванного вносить классовое сознание в ряды наёмных работников умственного и
физического труда. Не преодолён на
национальном и международном уровнях разброд среди коммунистических партий. Вы
правильно пишете: «Повысить гнев трудящихся до уровня классового сознания,
возродить пролетарскую классовую борьбу во всём мире!», «Крепить международное
единство рабочего класса!» Но мы считаем, что нельзя ограничиваться призывами,
нужно эту работу вести практически и систематически. Представители нескольких
общественно-политических движений России левой ориентации обратились к ряду политических
партий, приверженных учению Маркса и Ленина, организовать координационный центр
для выработки и проведения единой тактики в политической борьбе. РПК вместе с
рядом других партий поддерживает эту инициативу.
Желаем нашим японским
товарищам из JRCL и всем участвовавшим в 58-й Международной антивоенной
ассамблее успехов!
Да здравствует единство борцов за
коммунизм!
Исполнительный комитет Российской
партии коммунистов
04.08.2020
◆ Workers
Revolutionary Party (EEK)
Dear Comrades
The Workers Revolutionary Party-EEK of
Greece salutes the 58th International Anti-War Assembly and joins our voice,
our thought and our forces to your consistent struggle for an international
mobilization against imperialist war, tyranny and mass poverty!
Particularly now, the “perfect storm” of
an insoluble global capitalist depression and the coronavirus pandemic makes it
more urgent than ever before to fight back and defeat the global capitalist
system , which in its decay threatens now humanity and the natural environment
with destruction of all life on the planet.
The terrible nuclear holocaust of
Hiroshima and Nagashaki is a warning for all the oppressed and exploited
peoples in the world. The US-China conflict as well as the imperialist war
drive in the Middle East, in Eastern Mediterranean, in Africa and Latin America
brings the Armageddon closer. But, from the other side, the mass popular
rebellions in all Continents, from Lebanon to France and Chile, and especially
, the rebellion in the center of global capitalism, the United States , shows
that the international working class and the oppressed masses can defeat our
common class enemy by revolutionary means.
Forward to an international anti-war
class front against the warmongers of imperialism and against all the ruling
classes!
For peace, bread and freedom- forward to
the world socialist revolution!
on behalf of the Central Committee of the
EEK
Savas Michael-Matsas-General Secretary
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