International Secretariat, League for the Fifth International
The International Secretariat of the League for the Fifth International sends May Day Greetings to the workers’ movement of the world.
Fight imperialism, war and austerity!
Imperialism, as Lenin put it, is reaction on all fronts. Today, we witness once again, how true these words are.
In Ukraine, the western imperialist powers, using fascists and pro-western oligarchs, have installed a new government in Kiew. They want complete control of the country – even if that means armed confrontation with Russian imperialism.
Whatever, the outcome, this crisis demonstrates the increasingly sharp power struggle between the rival imperialist powers; the US, the European Union around Germany and France, Japan as well as the new emerging imperialist powers, China and Russia.
We are at the beginning of a period of struggle for the re-division of the world, driven on by the global capitalist crisis of 2008. This is why all the powers are reluctant to compromise. It is why the US has shifted its global priorities to the Pacific to try to contain its most dynamic rival, China. It is why all the imperialist powers are engaged in interventions and even wars in central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
In Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq – we can see the results of these “wars against terror”. They terrorise the ordinary people and leave whole countries or regions devastated, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions impoverished and made refugees in their own countries.
After 2008, the ruling classes and their governments were only able to prevent a collapse of the world market by a combination of increased exploitation of the poorest countries, forcing up the price of essential goods, a massive attack on the living standards and working conditions of the workers and small farmers across the world and huge state borrowing to rescue failing banks and industries.
These measures have led to dramatic changes in the lives of the masses; not only rising prices but rising unemployment, especially for youth, alongside cuts in welfare, social services and pensions. Women have been under attack at work and their burden of work at home has been massively increased as a result of the smashing of social services.
At the same time, racism against migrants, national oppression and attacks on minorities, by the established states and governments as well as by far right and even fascist forces, have increased. Throughout the world, we see a massive attack on democratic rights, the establishment of even more new “security” and “anti-terror” laws.
Such a wave of attacks could not be imposed without a fight. Since the beginning of the great crisis, we have seen mass strike actions, or even revolutionary uprisings, in many countries, be it Southern and Eastern Europe with mass movements in Greece, in Spain, in Portugal or uprisings in Bulgaria and Bosnia; be it in Asia with mass strikes in countries as different as Cambodia and China. We have seen tremendous mass mobilisations in the so-called emerging markets such as Brazil and Turkey.
However, time and again, we have seen these fightbacks defeated. All too often, the imperialists have been able to rely on the existing leaders of the working class and popular movements to make the masses pay for the crisis. Many of the large trade unions have backed the “anti-crisis” measures of their governments. Others rejected them verbally, but only in order to divert the actions into half hearted and ineffective token campaigns.
Worse still, where the reformist, social-democratic parties have been in government, they have themselves imposed many of the austerity policies. Even the left reformists have been embroiled in this – or proved incapable of organising successful mass resistance.
This combination of mass anger and mobilisation with misleadership and treachery shows that, all around the world, it is the working class that has the potential to put a stop to the whole madness of this barbaric capitalist system, but only if it can generate a new leadership.
For this it needs to take control of the mass trade unions and workplace organisations away from bureaucratic and corrupt leaders. It needs to re-organise them on the basis of workers’ democracy and class struggle politics.
Likewise, we need to fight for the creation of a new working class women’s movement and a mass revolutionary youth movement.
In the last period, the working class itself has started to push for new organisations, has set up organisations that are based on direct democracy and can wage courageous struggles like the LQM in Pakistan. As revolutionaries, we are inspired by this and we will fight to generalise such experiences across the world.
At the same time, we have also seen the creation of new working class parties and regroupments of the far left, aiming to address the political weakness of the working class movement. Some of them have proven to be only left reformist versions of the “traditional” social-democracy. But, where they organise significant parts of the vanguard and the youth, revolutionaries must intervene into such initiatives, fighting to win them to a revolutionary programme.
Others have been more left wing, openly proclaiming the need for new anti-capitalist parties. We welcome such steps but, at the same time, we need to be clear that such proclamations have to be filled with content, with a programme and action. We are actively trying to build such organisations, fighting openly for them to evolve into genuine revolutionary parties.
– Parties that are controlled not by unaccountable functionaries but by their members
– Parties that are not just electoral machines, but fighting organisations
– Parties whose aim is not to restore or revive capitalism but to fight to overthrow it by revolutionary means.
Not least, parties that are not confined to the national terrain, but are committed to the creation of new working class international.
Long the International Working Class, Long Live May Day, Forward to the Fifth International!