Palestine
In Palestine, the Israeli colonial state is continuing its genocide of more than 2 million Palestinians who are held prisoners in the Gaza Strip. Colonisation, assassinations and imprisonments are continuing in the occupied West Bank. All the imperialist powers are now hypocritically calling for a ceasefire. But the United States, Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy have approved Israel’s military offensive and continue to supply arms and munitions to Israel. They are not the ones who will stop the massacre. Only the proletariat can organise, in factories, ports and airports, an effective boycott of the supplies of arms and munitions which are essential to Netanyahu. This is what the Palestinian unions are demanding. The imperialists and all kinds of reformists claim that the solution lies in the creation of a Palestinian State alongside the State of Israel. But it is precisely the Oslo Accords that have led to today’s situation, with on the one hand the PLO capitulating and being reduced to serving as a police auxiliary to Israel in shreds of territory, and on the other hand an all-powerful Zionist state that is stepping up colonisation. Zionism implies oppression, expulsions and permanent violence against the Palestinians. There will be no peace in Palestine without the dismantling of the Zionist state, without the fight for a democratic, multi-ethnic, bilingual, secular and socialist Palestine. For workers’ and peasants’ government in Palestine! For a socialist federation of the Middle East. This is the perspective for the Palestinian proletariat as for the Jewish proletariat, which must break with Zionism. This is the struggle of internationalist communists!Ukraine
In Ukraine, Russia is waging an imperialist war of invasion. But it is not yet an inter-imperialist war. The Western imperialisms are supplying arms to Ukraine, but for the moment they refrain from intervening directly against Russian imperialism. They are supporting Ukraine like a rope supports a hanged man, while, with the complacency of the Zelenski government, they seize the best land, they do big business with privatisations, they monopolise their foreign trade in grain and they organise international conferences to divide up the business of future “reconstruction.” Part of the American bourgeoisie behind Trump and the Republican Party now even considers that American imperialism would do better to concentrate all its efforts against its main enemy, China, rather than continuing to support Ukraine.Ukraine is finding it increasingly difficult to resist the pressure of the Russian army. Zelensky’s government is waging war with the methods of the compradore bourgeoisie, combining chauvinist ideology, wheeling and dealing, privileges, restrictions on democratic freedoms and pressure of all kinds on the proletariat, subjugating and selling of the country to the economic and strategic interests of American, German, British and French imperialisms. This policy is demoralising the working masses, who are the backbone of the front, and it is suffocates the young people’s enthusiasm to join the defence. Democratic freedoms, including for soldiers, repeal of Zelensky’s anti-worker legislation, cancellation of the privatisations under the control of the workers and poor peasants! Military training, arming of workers and management of the war under the control of workers’ and peasants’ organisations! Respect for the Tatar, Russian, Belorussian, Moldavian, Roma, Jewish, Hungarian and Romanian minorities in Ukraine and in all the states of the region! Withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine! Withdrawal of American, British, French, Spanish and Italian troops from Central Europe! Dissolution of NATO!
On the Russian side, Putin set up a war economy with a 70% increase in military spending in 2024, to the detriment of the population. He is stepping up domestic repression, while opposition to the war is being voiced at every opportunity, most recently at Navalny’s funeral. The Russian proletariat has no interest in confronting its Ukrainian neighbour. It can stop the imperialist war that the Russian bourgeoisie is waging in Ukraine. It lacks a revolutionary organisation that would revive the 1917 Bolsheviks watchwords and would lead the fight against Putin. Withdrawal of Russian troops, return of the conquered territories to Ukraine, dissolution of the CSTO! Soldiers at the front, turn your weapons against your generals and force an immediate halt to hostilities! This is the fight of internationalist communists!
The imperialist countries are preparing themselves and their populations for war
Around the world, economic growth is slowing. But military spending is rising. In 2022, it reached 2,240 billion dollars. The rivalry between American imperialism and Chinese imperialism is growing. In the United States, military spending reached 860 billion dollars in 2023, while China is again increasing its military budget by more than 7% for 2024, as in 2023, to 231 billion dollars. European imperialisms are not to be outdone, with 480 billion dollars in 2022, still rising. Inter-imperialist rivalries are sharpening, and each bourgeoisie is strengthening its military potential, exalting nationalism, reinforcing protectionism and preparing for possible confrontations.In recent months, hardly a day goes by without some government official telling “its citizens” that “its country” must prepare for war. Everyone is afraid of war and its consequences. Yet the whole thrust of government action (military spending, legal changes to reintroduce compulsory military service, strengthening of military alliances) is aimed at preparing for a military confrontation.
According to the UN, 9.2% of the world’s population suffers from chronic hunger, and more than 60% of Africans were affected by food insecurity in 2022. Capitalism is incapable of organising an agricultural production on a global level to meet the needs of the population. On the contrary, the permanent quest for profit, competition, anarchic production, speculation and complete disregard for environmental conditions dominate everywhere. When the working class takes power, it will give agriculture and industry the sole mission of satisfying human needs. By expropriating the industrial groups, the agri-food groups, the big farms, the big distributors and the banks, the workers’ government will take control of the economy, freed from the race for profit. The producers themselves will best define both the needs to be met and the means to be employed. This is the struggle of internationalist communists!
The reaction is growing worldwide
In the most developed countries, the bourgeoisie is attacking earlier social achievements with increasing determination. For the proletariat, and for many other sections of society — small farmers, self-employed workers, students, etc. — living conditions are deteriorating. Democratic freedoms, the right to strike, women’s rights, the rights of sexual minorities, and the rights of immigrants are all being undermined. Traditional bourgeois parties, official defenders of “democracy,” are increasingly xenophobic and authoritarian. They are themselves paving the way for fascistic parties by vainly running after their nationalist and xenophobic one-upmanship. The “reformist” parties, whether in government or opposition, remain committed to defending their own bourgeoisie. In the United States, the DSA and the CPUSA line up behind the Democratic Party, an imperialist party. Under old or new names, reformism continues to betray and leads to defeat after defeat, demoralising the proletariat.Under these conditions, in many countries, populist, demagogic and fascistic parties are setting themselves up as a remedy, claiming to respond to economic and political crises by scapegoating foreigners and sexual or religious minorities, closing borders and erecting even more protectionist barriers. In their shadow, fascist groups begin to parade openly, attacking activists and workers’ meetings. To ask the bourgeois state to ban these fascist groups is to sow illusions by leading the working class to believe that bourgeois democracy can stop the rise of fascism. On the contrary, when it has exhausted all solutions, bourgeois democracy will itself put itself at the service of fascism, as history has shown in Italy, Germany and France. Now and henceforth, setting up workers’ self-defence groups and powerful security services to keep fascist groups off the streets is a vital necessity today. We need to build revolutionary workers’ parties. This is the fight of internationalist communists!
Breaking submission to the ruling class everywhere
Rampant inflation is eating away at the currencies of many weaker countries, Turkey, Argentina, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Iran, Pakistan, etc. The governments of these countries are passing on the full burden of the crisis to the masses. The bourgeoisie, even in dominated countries, can no longer play a progressive role. It often sees its only salvation in black reaction. In Iran, the ayatollah regime put in place by the bourgeoisie to crush the Iranian revolution continues to oppress women, labour activists, national minorities and sexual minorities. In Turkey, where more than a third of the population now lives below the poverty line, Erdogan’s regime persecutes the Kurds. In Argentina, where more than half the population lives below the poverty line, Milei’s government is making a frontal attack on the working class and on what remains of public services.The workers have nothing to expect from the fractions of the bourgeoisie who claim to be reformist, liberal or democratic when they oppose the governments in power, any more than from the so-called reformist ayatollahs in Iran than from the various varieties of Peronists in Argentina or Kemalists in Turkey. For none of them want to break with capitalism. Electoral or governmental alliances between workers’ parties and these fractions of the bourgeoisie only lead to maintaining the domination of the bourgeoisie. Parliamentary combinations such as the so-called constituent assemblies serve only as a screen behind which reaction is quietly preparing to take over, as happened in Tunisia and Chile. Only the independent struggle of the working class to seize power is a liberating prospect. Only a workers’ government that expropriates capital will be able to satisfy the immense needs of the masses and guarantee all democratic freedoms, including giving national minorities the freedom to form their own state if they so wish, like the Kurds who are currently repressed and torn between Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq. This is the fight of internationalist communists!
The upholding of capitalism is a mortal danger for humanity
One COP after another, global warming continues unabated, along with the majority of environmental pollution and degradation. The year 2023 will have been the hottest on record worldwide. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification estimated in 2022 that 2.3 billion people were facing water stress, that 75% of the world’s population would be affected by droughts by 2050, of which 700 million people could be displaced by 2040. Global CO2 emissions need to be cut by 43% between 2019 and 2030, and reduced to zero by 2050, to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees by 2100. Yet greenhouse gas emissions from the use of fossil fuels continue to rise. COP 28 was held last December in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, which is the world’s 6th largest oil producer, with 2,456 duly accredited fossil fuel lobbyists and a chief executive of the UAE’s national oil company. It decided that everything will continue as before. Only the seizure of power by the working class, particularly in the main imperialist countries, can halt the march towards the climate catastrophe that is becoming ever clearer. To produce differently, to free up research … we need to put an end to the production method based on profit and competition. This is the fight of internationalist communists!Building a revolutionary workers’ international
It is possible to put an end to this rotten system if, across borders, the vanguard of workers unites in a revolutionary workers’ international based on Marxism. In each State, the International will help build a Bolshevik-type party to expropriate big capital and destroy the bourgeois State, establishing workers’ governments based on councils.Then the working class will be able to take the lead in the struggles against exploitation and oppression, for democratic freedoms and secularism, for the rights of oppressed nations, for women’s equality and for the defence of the environment. Then the working class will be able to form its councils and arm itself, expropriate big capital and destroy the bourgeois State, and set up a workers’ government based on the councils. The dictatorship of the proletariat will pave the way for state-free world socialism-communism, a mode of production based on equality and solidarity, where workers will consciously manage resources, production and distribution for the benefit of present and future humanity. Join the fight of internationalist communists!