"The International Communist Party", no.60, October 2024

"The International Communist Party", no.60, October 2024
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The International Communist Party
Issue 60
October 2024
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Last update March 5, 2025
WHAT DISTINGUISHES OUR PARTY – The line running from Marx to
Lenin to the foundation of the Third International and the birth of the
Communist Party of Italy in Leghorn (Livorno)1921, and from there to the
struggle of the Italian Communist Left against the degeneration in Moscow and to
the rejection of popular fronts and coalition of resistance groups
– The tough work of restoring the revolutionary doctrine and the party organ, in
contact with the working class, outside the realm of personal politics and
electoralist manoevrings
Contents:
–  1. -
The Depraved Bourgeois Circus In America
Will Soon Have a New Ringleader
–  2. - Massacre of Palestinian, Israeli, Lebanese, Ukrainian and Russian People for
a New Partition of the World
by the
Imperialist Blocs: In the Middle East - In Ukraine
–  3. -
Germany in the Grip
of InterImperialist Balance of Forces
–  4. -
All Flights Are Grounded at Boeing
–  5. -
Longshoremen’s Strike in America
–  6. -
Union Activity of the Party in the US
–  7. -
Strike at Evolution Georgia
–  8. - Service Workers:
For Class Unionism, Against Electoralism!
–  9. - May 24-26, 2024: Converging Working Contributions in the
General Party Meeting
[GM149]:
Introduction of the center - Women’s Issue - The origins of left-wing socialism and class unionism in the Ottoman Empire - Origin of the Communist Party of China - Disparities in world steel production - Bourgeois ideology, Medieval Aristotelianism, Averroism and Occamism: Scholasticism
– 10. -
To the readers
The Depraved Bourgeois Circus in America Will Soon Have a New Ringleader
The 2024 Presidential election is underway in the United States. As is the
custom and tradition, every four years the American working class are treated by
the bourgeois to another clownish sideshow of debates, political rallies, &
advertisements. On social media the masses are bombarded with quippy or alarmist
reels & shorts, and all are encouraged to share in the collective narcissism of
opinion exchange & debate, joining the chorus of moronic self assured experts
and political pundits. This election cycle as the masses choose Democrat or
Republican, to turn on CNN or Fox, to eat their Big Mac or Whoppers, to enjoy
their Pepsi or Coke, or get drunk from their Coors or Budweiser, we ignore the
bourgeois call to exercise our god given right to freedom of choice. Instead, we
only call upon the workers to dispose of your ballots into the closest trash
can, as we always have.
As the bourgeois pour an unlimited amount of money into the election circus,
hundreds of millions of dollars in perverted propaganda is forced upon the
public to tell us that to save the nation is to save ourselves and to do that we
must “Vote or Die”. This famous slogan of the, selftitled, bipartisan
electoral activist campaign fronted by Sean P. Diddy Combs, now forever lives on
in infamy as the debauched hiphop mogul and cultural representative of the
American bourgeois, is charged with innumerable sexual crimes following a
similar exposé of bourgeois insider and sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein. As the
Caligula like depravity of the representatives of American bourgeois is
increasingly exposed year after year, and the edifice of American imperial
hegemony continues its sharp decline, each passing election cycle only confirms
the total moral degeneration, incoherence and senility of the entire putrefying
bourgeois order.
While the bourgeois, their schools and their media would like us to believe that
in this demented ritual known as “elections” we are provided a mirror of the
will of “American People” as reflected by the number of votes earned by the
candidates, the truth is that this democratic system long ago eliminated any
independent working class political expression, fully establishing a two party
class dictatorship following the class upheavals at the conclusion of the
American Civil War. Within this rotting capitalist civilization there is only
democracy for the capitalist class, who selects which Party’s political program
it will adopt for the next four years, through a grotesque system of “voting
with their dollars” which is nothing other than a competitive propaganda war
waged against the proletariat.
Between January 2023 and April 2024, US political campaigns collected around
$8.6 billion for the 2024 House, Senate, and presidential elections. Both
parties enjoy more or less equal monetary support from the banks & the financial
sector, the medical industry, and real estate; however, the Republicans tend to
receive more support from the traditional and long established production and
extraction industries; whereas the Democrats receive more support from tech,
Hollywood, the middle class lawyers, civil servants, the nonprofit industrial
complex and elements of the labor aristocracy in the unions.
In 2023-24 Republicans received 92.8% of the financial contributions from the
mining industry, 88.3% from the oil and gas industry, 85.1% from Trucking, 81.5%
from home builders, building materials 81.2%, automotive 76.0%, steel production
71.8%, poultry and eggs 95.2%, dairy 69.9%, crop production 67.1%, livestock
68.2%, chemicals 68.3%, Sea Transport 65.2%. In 202324 Democrats of all
donations received from Electronics Manufacturing & Equipment 64%, 86.7% of the
TV/movie industries donations, of all unions 93% of donations, education
(universities and schools) 91%, internet companies 85.2%, publishing companies
84.4%, nonprofits 80%, lawyers 78.9%, civil servants 76.4%.
The competing economic interests of the bourgeois shape the basis of the chasms
that exist between the Democrats and Republicans in their policy positions;
however, both parties have historically played a crucial “bad cop” and “good
cop” role in disciplining the American proletariat. In a general sense, the
Democrats have tended to represent the interests of the petitbourgeois and the
middle classes. While today they attempt to espouse the classical liberal
bourgeois rhetoric and pose as a historically progressive force, in the not too
distant past they were the party of Manifest Destiny and Black Slavery, then of
Jim Crow segregationists and the white labor aristocracy. Today we are supposed
to believe they are the champions of the oppressed (just forget about their
sending of aircraft carriers to guarantee the free slaughter of tens of
thousands of proletarians in Palestine) pitched against a regressive
conservative right wing which allegedly seeks to establish a Mussolini style
dictatorship.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are a party which has always primarily
represented the interests of industrial capital. In this election cycle the
Republicans have begun to flirt with the labor aristocracy and attempted to win
the unions to its side. The first ever invitation of a union president, Sean
O’Brien of the Teamsters, to speak at the Republican National Convention
alongside Trump’s visits to UAW picketlines earlier this year, were
unprecedented events; however, demonstrating the shallow nature of the
Republican’s attempts to win over labor, Trump, in a recent interview with
fellow capitalist Elon Musk, expressed his support of breaking with established
labor law and firing striking workers.
The Republicans’ current experiment in appealing to workers is based on the old
recipe of appealing to white workers fear of immigrants stealing American jobs
in order to win the labor aristocracy to the side of industrial capital. This
has so far failed, as the Teamsters announced that they would not support either
of the bourgeois Party’s this election. Regardless of the reasons, this break
with the two bourgeois parties by one of the largest unions in the country
represents a significant moment in the history of the working class which is
today finding a newly combative footing amid a mass strike wave that continues
to grow across the country and the world. While we put no premium of
significance on popular opinions, even bourgeois sources show that public
approval rates for unions have grow astronomically to 70% in recent decades,
while support for the bourgeois parties and government is in constant decline.
This is merely an indication of the shifting tides within American society where
unions and strikes are increasingly seen as the realm to deliver material gains
for workers as the false promises of economic recovery for the working class by
the bourgeois parties continue fall flat.
As such, the Republicans (and by extension, the Democrats) opt to propagandize
“cultural” critiques of society, reducing the deepening economic crisis into a
narrowly conceived moralistic degeneration that appeals to the reactionary
traditional sentiments of the petty bourgeoisie. For instance: amid the global
recession that followed the 2020 pandemic a socalled “labor shortage” emerged,
as workers began taking up strike action and refusing to work for low wages, the
bourgeois screamed,“no one wants to work”. In response the Federal Reserve
organized an attack on the working class by raising interest rates, creating
wide scale unemployment to reduce workers bargaining power. Likewise, the mass
migration to the southern national border which is a result of the imperialist
domination of the global South, conveniently becomes the source of American’s
losing jobs, the opioid crisis, crime and homelessness; portraying desperate
workers in search of employment to be only criminals bringing social blight upon
the nation and thereby absolving any responsibility on behalf of the
international bourgeoisie.
The Republican Party, offers a border policy which will never completely cut off
immigration but instead works to create a section of highly exploited labor
constantly in fear of deportation. The national capital has little interest in
completely drying up it’s reserve army of labor, merely using its state
apparatus to crush them into total submission. The Republican Party’s policy is
intended to act as the hammer against the most exploited workers: the
immigrants, indigenous peoples, poor Black workers, women and gender nonconfirming; while the Democrats act as the velvet glove that keep the workers in
place for the next firing round by offering false promises of upward mobility
for a select few minorities to the ranks of the labor aristocracy and middle
classes.
While as a result of the growing accumulation crisis within the capitalist
economy, the industrial interests are increasingly at odds with elements of
liberal democracy and the middle classes who defend it; the two capitalist
parties, the collective capitalist class, have always found unity in the
patriotic work of beating the American and international working class into
submission. Be it from the use of its marines and aircraft carriers or its
police, prisons and border walls; nothing will ever change the nature of these
two blood drenched social machines of hypocrisy and war which sacrifices all
that is sane and beautiful in the world on the monstrous altar of capitalist
imperialism.
Regarding the particular issues confronting the bourgeois in this election, the
most important is Trump’s proposal of a national tariff of 1020% on almost all
imported goods, with much higher tariffs proposed on China. The tariff benefits
the domestic manufacturing and extraction industries in the United States, as it
helps keep out foreign imports of finished goods and raw materials. Thus it
eliminates competition and keeps the domestic market captured by the national
industrial capital. From the Biden administrations successful passage of the
CHIPS act to this tariff, the US capitalist class is in a mad rush to
reestablish its industrial base, in preparation for the next interimperialist
war; however, while Trump claims it as a method of developing U.S. industrial
production capacity, its ability to actually effect significant growth of the
U.S. industrial bases at this point in history is highly questionable as are the
other policies recently passed by the bourgeois; despite this, by hamstringing
foreign competition it will enable a further attack on the living standard of
the US workers by allowing US companies to jack up prices on consumer goods
unabated.
The implementation of a national tariff is a major trade policy shift away from
the free market policies of the bourgeois in the postwar era. It is a return to
the old mercantilist trade policies which predominated the world in the
preWorld War era and has always been an essential policy of developing
capitalism’s which sought to cultivate their own industrial centers through
protectionism. The tariff builds on Trumps “trade wars” which despite his
claimed “isolationist” foreign policy allegedly aimed at preventing “world war
three”, sets the stage for future imperialist conflict by escalating the
respective national capitals competition over raw resource markets escalating
tensions with U.S. imperialism’s primary enemy China.
Democrats have branded the tariff a national sales tax which will result in
increased costs for each household up to $4,000 a year. Many of the financial
interests also feel it will increase inflation. The Democrats currently favor
retaining cheap imports from China, while focusing the forces of U.S.
imperialism on the in Ukraine with Russia. Trump on the other hand has stated
that he would immediately bring about a negotiated resolution to the conflict.
Trump’s position on Ukraine is a primary cause of one of the now three alleged
assassination attempts against him in the course of the election. During his
presidency Trump was constantly at odds with his generals and fired many. It
seems his position on Ukraine is out of line with the established consensus
doctrine within the U.S. military bureaucracies.
The Democrats under Kamala Harris have made halfhearted calls for price
controls to restrict price gouging which has led to inflation. As usual, the
Democratic campaign has once again made more empty promises to raise taxes on
big businesses and Americans making $400,000 a year; whereas, the Republicans
propose a number of tax cuts worth trillions. Harris’s “opportunity economy”
attempts to appeal to petitbourgeoisie, by offering competitive relief in their
struggle against the big capitalists through various tax breaks and start up
capital incentives. Under capitalism, competition is a precondition of monopoly
and vice versa; there is no idealistic “small capitalism” that does not
eventually result in, or dissolve from, monopolization. Her pie in the sky, plan
for the “opportunity economy” offers nothing to the working masses, who
themselves struggle against both the petty bourgeois and the big bourgeoisie. It
is easy for the Democrats to adopt empty nationalist union rhetoric like “When
unions are strong, America is strong”, but when the serious, actual power of a
strike like the railroad strike of 2022 was brought to the point of
materializing, they destroyed it by necessity, collaborating with the business
union bureaucracy to effectively disarm the working class of their strongest
economic weapon.
Yet, despite all this, we see posturing between the two bourgeois parties– both
claiming to represent the workers and accusing the other of being the “real
enemy” of labor– even though the emancipation of the working class is simply
impossible through the very system that enslaves it. At their logical
conclusions, these parties can only “develop” to the point of the aforementioned
consolidation, realizing fascistic or socialdemocratic forms. Thereby achieving
temporary national bourgeois political unity and openly subordinating the
working class for the interest of the national economic interest. Such was the
strategy of the ruling classes in the period of crisis leading up to the second
World War with the emergence of European fascism, Stalinism, and FDR social
democracy.
The Republicans’ disproportionate backing by the traditional landed industrial
interests compared to the liberal middle classes which forms a large part of the
Democrats base, explains how the increasing polarization and hostile
partisanship between the two bourgeois parties has emerged amid an increasingly
unhealthy capitalism facing a profit accumulation crisis which forces the big
bourgeois to eat up the middle classes and labor aristocracy to retain its rate
of profit accumulation. As a result the two bourgeois parties find themselves
increasingly unable to come to agreement on many key issues, including the
federal budget on a recurring basis.
In this election cycle Trump continues to diverge from the norm in American
bourgeois politics by openly threatening use of the military and legal system to
take retribution against political rivals within the bourgeois while also
alluding to the possibility of establishing himself as an unelected head of
state. In response, the Democrats have again taken up an anti fascist rhetoric
in a campaign to “save democracy”. Many Republicans have openly discussed the
possibility that Trump’s election may be the last presidential election in the
United States amid more comments referring to a possible civil war should Trump
not be elected. In light of the events of the January 6th “insurrection” where a
disorganized mob of a few thousand Trump supporters stormed the Capital, as well
as the subsequent failed legal prosecution by the Democrats, Trump has certainly
become a martyr to his base which is composed of a large section of declassed
petitbourgeois and lumpen elements who see the liberal order as needing
replaced by an authoritarian leader imbued with special powers.
While Trump’s own comments and those of other Republicans indicate that the idea
of shedding the democratic veneer to the bourgeois regime is certainly being
considered by many within the ruling class, Trump himself in this election cycle
has made contradictory comments about his own ambitions this election. His
chaotic leadership style, unpopularity within many in the military and the
general division among the bourgeois amid the absence of a true existential
threat to their class order in the immediate future, make it highly unlikely for
their class to consolidate itself around Trump at this time. The presence of a
strong and defiant Democratic Party means that it would be very difficult for
Republican’s to establish a thoroughgoing one Party state. Regardless of whether
or not Donald Trump himself strives to become a full blown dictator in the
immediate future, it does not deter from the long established world wide march
of the bourgeois states towards increasingly authoritarian and fascistic
methods.
As Marx poetically noted, “The structure of the economic elements of society
remains untouched by the storm clouds of the political sky”; the stage of
development of economic production is always, in the last instance, the deciding
factor of a nation’s actions, and individuals are only but a living conduit of
their corresponding class force. As long as the capitalist mode of production
prevails, it can only provide capitalist forms of political expression in its
system.
Heading into this upcoming election we are faced with other inevitable crises on
the horizon: the next great war of the most developed bourgeois nations
continuously encroaches, the rising price of goods and the ability for the
masses to replenish their natural needs is becoming harder and harder to obtain,
and the looming natural disaster brought about by capitalist overproduction is
largely unaddressed.
Imperial tensions in Europe and the middleeast are reaching deadly peaks, with
bourgeois wars ravaging innocent working masses through the guise of national “selfdetermination”
on all sides. In America, many are horrified by the inevitable results of such
wars and are confused by their own country’s role in the devastation; some
protesting in the streets with proclamations of pacifism and “general”
democratic freedoms yet again. Only now, the protests are happening under
Democratic Party rule which has promised to continue making the American
military the “most lethal force in the world”, despite also hypocritically
claiming to be an alternative to Trump’s “violent” demagoguery.
We are reminded, as was established in the Third Communist International, there
is no “general democracy” that is above class; it is always firstly a tool of
the ruling class and shaped around its protection. Who is elected will make
little if any serious difference in the everyday life of working class
Americans, because in the end, American workers are presented with one choice
with two faces: Capital and Capital will elect which ever candidate best suits
it’s interests regardless.
The only path forward towards emancipation for the proletariat is to
continuously organize ourselves along the class lines of our economic reality as
workers and to struggle against capitalism and all of its expressions(including
it’s bourgeois parliamentarianism), not relying on “democratic” tyranny to “free
us” from itself; for if there are “stormclouds” forming, they are not the
clouds of bourgeois electoralism, but the impending final confrontation of the
two warring classes engaged in a protracted battle for the fate of history.
It is only through the victory of the proletariat directed by the historical
organ of the working class, The International Communist Party, that the
irreconcilable contradictions between labor and capital can finally be put to
rest; by destroying the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie and realizing new
systems of proletariat dictatorship, thus eliminating class society once and for
all.
Massacre of Palestinian, Israeli, Lebanese, Ukrainian and Russian People for a New Partition of the World by the Imperialist Blocs
The clashes of armies in the Middle East and Ukraine are not embedded in any
perspective of historical accommodation, either global or regional. The purpose
of imperialist war is war, capital, war. And it is also an economic activity in
itself, a branch of industry.
Moreover, in it’s national and religious disguises, it serves to arouse division
and dismay in proletarians.
The atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had no military purpose, nor were
they dropped on naval bases or industrial complexes. Instead, they were
knowingly used against the population. By August 1945, World War II had its
victors, in the East as well as in the West. It needed an ultimate sanction of
the overwhelming power of America’s capitalists, of their conquered world
empire.
But it was also a "vae victis" (woe to the vanquished) launched against the
proletariat, a reminder of what the bourgeoisie is capable of in order to
maintain its domination. The proletariat emerged from the second imperialist war
annihilated, politically defeated and prone to the capitalist interests of
reconstruction and national capital accumulation. In Russia, the
counterrevolutionary Stalinist ideology had been the expression of the working
class’s submission to domestic state capitalism, and in the war to the
"democratic" imperialist bourgeoisie front. It had cost the working class tens
of millions of deaths.
Then began eighty years of social peace, of bourgeois peace, with increasingly
bestial rhythms of exploitation of workers, and of robbery by imperialists in
all corners of the world.
But the capitalist economy has its limits. The giantism of production collides
with an evershrinking market; the inordinate increase in the mass of the means
of production strangles the rate of profit. Capital today, increasingly hungry
for profit, like a wounded monster runs mad the world in order to invest itself.
But submission to order is already creaking in areas where bourgeois rule is
less firm. In more recently formed countries with extensive proletarian youth,
social peace is shattered by uprisings, still sporadic, still disconnected and
still lacking class organization and direction.
In the Middle East
Hamas’ Oct. 7 action fits into this context, kicking off a war not between
religions and nations, but between world giants of capital that in the narrow
region come to measure and challenge each other, through proxies, supplying
states and militias with endless giant arsenals and with aircraft carriers at
anchor.
The war in the Middle East benefits all capitalists, near and far. Among other
things it supports the price of oil. And it is against all proletarians, near
and far.
Hamas, a "terrorist" party founded with the financial support of the State of
Israel, would have prearranged an incursion of this size without the ubiquitous
Mossad and CIA spies having any inkling of it and without any defensive reaction
from the efficient Israeli army.
Militarily, it has had the sole purpose of exacerbating tempers in the certainty
of immediate fierce retaliation by the Israeli state. Domestically, the war is
necessary for Hamas, a bourgeois party, to keep the mass of the dispossessed in
the Gaza Strip subdued.
The deadly Israeli Air Force bombardments are not against Hamas but against the
population, to push them, in desperation, to side with Hamas or seek its
protection. Bombing militarily makes no sense, in the tunnels underground life
goes on, and the ruins are only an obstacle to armored action. The German defeat
at Stalingrad teaches this.
But the massacres by the Israeli air force benefit all the bourgeoisie in the
area. It is a warning to workers, Egyptians, Syrians, Israelis, Palestinians,
Lebanese: this is fiery wrath of your local bourgeoisie.
That is why in imperialist warfare, in which brigands among themselves share the
spoils, it is profoundly wrong for the working class to take sides.
Knowing the relations and interests of imperialist blocs and their changing
sides is important, to refute we communists the lie behind their "morals" and
their false "international law". But for the working class, the enemy is at
home. The war is not so far away. In fact the class war every day the
proletariat fights it.
The bourgeoisie has its centers of analysis and study for military and economic
issues. But above all it has its state, the supreme organ for its defense as a
class. The proletariat today has its party, tomorrow it too will have its state,
temporary but inflexible, which will be able to deal with the bourgeois enemy
states with defeatism and war on war.
In Ukraine
While attention is focused on the massacres being perpetrated in the Middle
East, Russian armed forces are marking progress in eastern Ukraine: in the
southern Donbass region, the country’s industrial heartland, they have occupied
the mining town of Vuhledar after a resistance of nearly three years. A few days
later they entered Toretsk, another important center on the Pokrovsk route, a
key access junction to the region.
The fall of these cities confirm that Ukraine, despite its government’s
bellicose declarations, will have to surrender to the greater strength of the
Russians.
Even during this tough battle, as in many episodes of this war, Ukrainian
soldiers were forced by their commands to hold out to the last, even when it was
evident that any further sacrifice would be in vain. The surviving troops had to
retreat under enemy fire, which was approaching from three directions. Hunted
down by drones over their heads ready to launch grenades, under mortar and
rocket fire and with the constant threat of guided bombs, the Ukrainian soldiers
had to flee on foot to save themselves.
This shows how much the Ukrainian government and General Staff care about the
fate of their soldiers,defending the "aggrieved homeland", who are increasingly
sent to the front without adequate training and armament. Many young recruits
try to abandon the front, deserting.
The lack of the class party, the absence of an organized labor movement, and the
consequent rampant individualism, prevent this refusal to fight from taking on a
collective aspect today, from being transformed into a movement against the
imperialist war that, starting from the trenches, involves the proletarians in
the cities, taking on classist and anticapitalist connotations.
The lies of the bourgeois Ukrainian government match those with which the
equally bourgeois Russian government defends its war, called a "special military
operation".
It is actually a war against the Atlantic Alliance and the United States, which
is very interested in striking, in addition to the Russian state, the German
ally and Europe in general. A Europe increasingly linked economically with
Russia and China.
Arms manufacturers everywhere are doing a brisk business. While many tens of
thousands are dead or maimed proletarians at the front, the industries for war
are working at full capacity. In Russia, unemployment would have all but
disappeared. The blood of Ukrainian and Russian proletarians is spilled in
defense of the interests of capital, arms suppliers, industrialists and bankers.
Through war capitalism seeks to overcome its economic crises of overproduction
and settle scores between rival imperialist blocs, making its wage slaves pay
the price.
The Debate Over Long-range Missiles
In September in the upper echelons of diplomacy of the United States, Britain
and European states, the possibility of allowing Ukraine to strike deep into
Russian territory with missiles supplied by Western countries was discussed. For
their use, in fact, Ukrainian personnel are not enough, but Western technicians
are needed.
The "experts" were already taking the concession for granted. The foreign
minister of Britain’s new Labormajority government, but as militaristic and
warmongering as the previous "rightwing" one, had even gone to Washington to
urge President Biden to assent. But in the end this decision was again
postponed. The reason may perhaps lie in the threatening intervention of the
Russian government, which said it would respond very harshly. But also because
of the doubts expressed by many governments in NATO itself, such as Germany and
Italy.
The use of these missiles, from a military point of view, could not change the
fate of the conflict, and lead to "victory" in the Ukrainian camp. Last week
both U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Council
spokesman John Kirby clearly illustrated their substantial military futility.
But Kiev insists on this demand only to involve the Allies in the war: it knows
that it has no resources to hold out much longer and seeks an escalation of the
conflict and its widening.
The Russian government, for its part, has made it clear that if it is allowed to
launch those missiles, it will consider itself at war with NATO, respond
militarily and has even threatened the use of the atomic bomb.
The European Parliament, which sees war as good business and tanks as a useful
substitute for electric cars, which are "environmentally friendly" but do not
"pull", has passed a resolution calling on states to remove restrictions on the
use of weapon systems supplied to Kiev against Russian military targets. While
this decision is not binding on individual states, it demonstrates that the
European one is a warmongering lobbyist assembly. This is confirmed by the
appointment of former Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, a member of
the Fatherland Party and the strongly anti Russian European Conservative Group,
as European Commissioner of Defense.
The Adventurous Foray into Kursk
In early August Ukraine launched a daring offensive in the Russian Kursk region,
using surprise and speed to outflank Russian defenses. The operations were led
by a mixed group of units, totaling about 10,000 to 15,000 men, with elements of
regular brigades and special operations forces. These were some of the best and
most experienced Ukrainian troops.
Some were withdrawn from the Donetsk and Kharkiv fronts, where they were
fighting the Russian advance, while others would serve as an important reserve
to stem it.
This operation, which immediately received the support of Western diplomacy and
was prepared in cooperation with the intelligence services of Britain and
probably the United States as well, is turning out to be a major failure.
The purpose was probably the capture and control of the Kurchatov nuclear power
plant and the Sudzha power distribution node, as well as forcing the Russians to
divert some of their troops from the offensive in Donetsk.
Neither goal was achieved. The nuclear power plant remained in the hands of the
Russians, who used the superior availability of assets and soldiers to stop the
Ukrainian advance without diverting units from the Donetsk front. The
commanderinchief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces himself, Oleksandr Syrsky, said
Russia had intensified its efforts and deployed its most combatready units to
the Pokrovsk front in Donetsk.
Moreover, the invasion of Russian territory by enemy troops, with the blatant
technical, material and training support of Western powers, reinforced Moscow
propaganda based on the syndrome of encirclement of the homeland and aggression
by the West.
Diplomacy Talks Peace While Expanding War
The difficulties of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are reflected in recent
statements by President Zelensky, who, going against a law he himself had
passed, proposed inviting Russia to the next peace summit scheduled to be held
in November. A few days later he made another trip to the U.S. to present his
bumptious "Plan for Victory" and to call for new loans and weapons to continue
the war.
According to the Financial Times, Ukraine and its allies are considering a
possible deal that would see Kiev join NATO in exchange for a compromise on
Russianoccupied territories. Russia would gain "de facto" but not "de jure"
control of the currently occupied Ukrainian territories, a fiction by the
Ukrainian government to justify before its people the sacrifices, deprivations,
and nefariousness it has imposed to fuel the war.
This situation of uncertainty and diplomatic vacuum increases the danger of
provocations that could lead to a widening of the conflict. The blows struck in
recent days on important ammunition depots inside Russia seem to respond to
provocative will rather than to results on the military plane. Ukraine risks
collapse and its rulers risk their heads, while the vaunted reconquest of "all
occupied territories" would demand costs in men and weapons that not only
Ukraine but not even its Western allies can afford and do not want to shoulder.
The Russian government, which immediately rejected the invitation to participate
in peace talks, also has quite a few problems to solve. Although tens of
thousands of young men have been sacrificed in this war and many voices even in
Russia are ready to demand an explanation, for Moscow, the occupation of the
Donbass alone would probably not be sufficient to provide the soughtafter
security guarantees, especially if Ukraine, though maimed of part of its
territory, joins NATO. Russia’s objectives therefore could expand and the war
continue.
But even when peace is reached, it can only represent an uncertain truce in
preparation for the general war that is brewing.
Let the proletariat, the Ukrainian proletariat as well as the proletariat of
Russia, who have suffered deprivation and death in recent years because of their
capitalists’ war, draw the painful lessons and turn against the criminal
instigator, which is the bourgeois regime and its states.
This is the only true historical dissolution, the transformation of war between
states into war between classes, the overthrow of bourgeois power and the
establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which alone can pave the
way for communism.
Germany in the Grip of Inter‑Imperialist Balance of Forces
Germany, the second largest "donor" to Ukraine, will halve its military aid in
2025 from eight billion this year to four. The difference would have to be made
up by drawing on interest earned on Russian bonds frozen in Europe, which is
difficult to achieve. To this end, Germany is counting on the creation of a
special financial instrument using frozen Russian assets.
The difficulty for German capitalism, its state, its bourgeoisie and its
business committee that is the German government, to remain a loyal province of
the empire to which it belongs is obvious.
Contrary to what some selfstyled antiimperialists believe, imperialism is not
a moral category, caused by wickedness and thirst for conquest, but the supreme
and terminal phase, in every sense, of capitalism; it is therefore inseparable
from the conditions and needs of capitalism in the various states. The servility
of various European countries, and not only to the larger U.S. imperialism, does
not depend on the meanness and poor quality of the "political class", much to
the chagrin of the various Mosca, Pareto, and modern epigones, but on the
overall interests of the various national capitalists. The latter may sometimes
also be harmed by the imperialist center to which they are linked, but overall
so far the advantages have outweighed the disadvantages. If capital traces the
furrow of its own reproduction and multiplication, it is the sword of
imperialism that defends it and partly determines the conditions of its growth.
Moreover, individual states are always afraid that they lack the necessary force
of repression against the proletariat: just as the ancient Greek poleis gave
themselves spontaneously to Rome because the proprietary aristocracies that
ruled them saw the empire as the guarantee of their power and property, so
modern states see imperialism as the salvation of their bourgeoisie in the event
of a powerful awakening of the class struggle.
If the German and European bourgeoisie in general has made its state a loyal
vassal of North American imperialism, it is therefore not out of stupidity or
servility, but in pursuit of its own interests.
Should these interests diverge there could be changes in alliances that are
difficult to predict. Germany, as a vassal of U.S. imperialism, has had to
participate in a war that is not only against Russia, but also against Europe’s
interests and in particular its own: the sabotage of the gas pipeline in the
Baltic was an act of war against Russia and against Germany, which now has to
pay dearly for the methane, which is not least the cause of an economic crisis
that is driving it toward recession.
The German bourgeoisie bears this very badly, but perhaps the advantages of the
Western alliance still outweigh the disadvantages. The imposed break in
relations with Russia can still be borne by the German economy, but if it were
forced to break relations with China as well, which is not unlikely, it might
not be able to bear it. It is difficult to predict the development of
interimperialist relations: after two lost wars with the United States surely
Germany will think a thousand times before breaking up, but the thing is by no
means impossible.
However, it is not the German state and its bourgeoisie that will decide, but
the survival and growth needs of its capitalism: as always, the big decision
makers decide nothing but are merely the puppets of history, almost always
unaware and moved by strings invisible to them.
In the major geopolitical scenarios painted in America, Germany is already
considered an enemy country, despite being part of NATO. We still reiterate that
we communists are not antiAmerican, just as, for example, we are not anti
Israel: we are against all imperialism and against all states that are not in
our hands. To be against only a few bourgeois states implies that there are
"lesser" ones, with which we can always ally ourselves: this is the logic of
antifascist and interclass alliances, it is the reneging of communism.
Imperialism large and small, like states large and small, sends proletarians to
slaughter each other in endless wars.
Proletarians must be very clear that when bourgeois class rule is in danger, all
empires, all states will be ready to make a new "holy alliance", to throw
themselves together against the proletarians, the "new barbarians" who are
endangering "civilization", which, in their language, is their wallet.
Communists have no allies in the bourgeois class, just as they have none in the
bourgeois states and imperialist blocs, which are only mortal enemies of
communists, proletarians and, more generally, the human species.
All Flights Are Grounded at Boeing
On September 12th 2024 approximately 32,000 workers organized under District 751
and District W24 of the IAM (International Association of Machinists and
Aerospace Workers union) working for the Boeing company overwhelmingly voted no
on their proposed tentative agreement and likewise voted yes to strike. This is
the first time in 16 years that a full contract has been on the table for
negotiation. The tentative agreement included changes to wages, health care,
mandatory overtime, and more. The last major contract was passed after almost a
2 month strike, though with significant turnover and an inexperienced workforce
the majority of current union members were not a part of that action. While the
company and leadership in the union would like to suggest this was a great
offer, the rank and file at Boeing would beg to differ.
The initial demands the union proposed was for a 40% raise over the life of the
4 year contract while Boeing responded with an offer of only 25%. At first
glance a "reasonable" person may think that the offer from Boeing is a good one
that the members should have accepted. Once one decides to look deeper into the
issue though we can see why members are willing to say no for the chance for
more. Bad contracts being extended, low wages in a high cost of living area, and
the desire to reinstate their pension plan have pushed these workers to say no.
We applaud the workers’ desire to strike and their voting against the defeatist
tentative agreement, going against the wishes of their District President who
was quoted as saying that "We recommended acceptance because we can’t guarantee
we can achieve more in a strike.
Of course there is no guarantee of success when we are compelled to fight,
though there will forever be nothing but an increase in misery for workers who
are unwilling to come together in their collective interests and take a stand
against the capitalist class. Besides the opportunity for material gain that can
be had from collective action it is also a training moment for the workers
involved in potential future struggles, and can be a point of valorization for
workers in other industries that can see their brothers and sisters openly and
proudly saying no! We will not take it anymore! Workers across the world who are
willing to fight are a beacon for others who at times may have little to no hope
that they even have the ability to push back against the bosses, or union fat
cats.
Whether it’s from reading statements from company or union officials, or their
lap dogs in the mainstream media,we can draw parallels in how this contract is
being sold to workers by remembering the most recent national rail union
negotiations in the USA. Not only by looking at what these figures bring up but
also what facts that they leave out. Company officials in both industries love
to tout the size of the percentage wage increase especially in regards to
contracts that have been passed prior. One of the most obvious issues with this
though, is the fact that these talking heads don’t mention the reality of record
inflation across the United States, nor the fact that both the railroads and
Boeing are employing less people across the board than during prior contracts.
While numbers may look impressive when they are first seen, they become
increasingly less impressive when you account for the fact that prior contracts
for most of the unionized workers within America have been nothing but
capitulation for the last two decades. Workers who were in the past, clear
members of the labor aristocracy, have either started the process of, or are
being increasingly proletarianized. Regarding Boeing, the rejection of the
proposed agreement is an obvious sign of the will to fight against this current
fate.
It should be of no surprise to anyone that has been following the situation at
Boeing to see these workers pridefully say no to a contract that isn’t worth the
paper it was written on. Workers with the IAM took a strike sanction vote at T
Mobile Park in Seattle in July of this year and a landslide vote, showed 99.9%
of the rank and file were in support of striking if a meaningful contract
couldn’t be reached by the September deadline. Along with the show of force in
Seattle there have been numerous workplace actions in the lead up to this
contract vote. Workers across all facilities have been marching on the job, and
using horns along with music to harass management on the shop floor. All of
these actions are a positive development within the US working class. The more
that workers take up an openly antagonistic relationship with the bourgeoisie
the clearer it becomes that we have distinct and separate interests. Members of
both the company and the union try to promote a perspective that suggests that
Labor and Capital can go happily hand in hand into the future. That their
upcoming successes are bound up in one another, and when one wins so does the
other.
Here is a quote from IAM leadership that explains exactly how they view their
relationship to Boeing "Ultimately, we love this company and couldn’t be more
proud of the jobs we do or the products we build.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Labor’s success will be in
understanding its position in an historical movement. We know that in this
parasitic relationship within class society what is good for the goose is not
good for the gander. When one takes up this collaborationist perspective
promoted by leadership within the IAM, the only win is for the companies, and
trade union bureaucrats. When leadership of organizations for worker’s struggle
defang themselves, the company is emboldened and will consistently try to take
more from less, whether that is cutting wages, and benefits or threatening the
loss of jobs by shipping them elsewhere. We applaud the workers at Boeing for
banding together to defend their immediate interest but that must also be
coupled with a rejection of this collaborationist perspective. Workers and their
bosses do not win together. When workers secure higher wages or better working
conditions this directly cuts into the profit that is accumulated by the
company. This real distinction between producers and exploiters is at the very
heart of class society, and will never be undone by the well wishes of romantic
"leaders" within the workers movement.
Workers will only ever win in the historical sense when they band together,
under the leadership of a revolutionary fighting organization, the International
Communist Party with the explicit goal of striking the death blow to class
society. Of course not every battle is of such serious importance but workers
must become aware of the situation they find themselves within, and recognize
that antagonism and not capitulation is the answer to the woes in class society.
We must attempt to build fighting organizations of the class that openly
recognize the antagonistic relationship between Labor and Capital, and are
willing to organize and defend the widest swathe of workers. When leaders in a
union wax poetic about the love they have for the bosses, they should be met
with a swift kick out the door!
Longshoremen’s Strike in America
On October 1st, 2024 over 40,000 workers at 36 ports represented by the
International Longshoremen’s Association went on strike for the first time since
1977. The strike came about after there was a standstill in negotiations over
wages between the ILA and the USMX. The ILA is formally the East Coast
equivalent to the West Coasts ILWU which almost had a 22,000 person strong
shutdown of 29 Pacific ports in 2023 over similar demands. Wages, and a fight
against automation. The United States Maritime Alliance is a collection of
powerful shipping companies joined together as a united front to handle
negotiations with the union that represents East and Gulf coast port workers.
The ILA and the USMX have a closed off bargaining process where very little
information flows in and out of but what has been said publicly was that the
union initially asked for a 77% increase in pay over the life of the six year
contract. While the USMX responded with an offer of only 50%. This wage dispute,
along with a fight over automation, and shipping container royalties was the
straw that broke the camels back, and after the USMX was served with a strike
notice as required by law, the ILA held true to its word and stopped almost all
work along the East Coast at 12:01 Tuesday morning. We sadly have to specify
almost above because the self identified I Love America union will not be
stopping US military cargo, nor are they stopping any cruise ships that need to
dock or depart. It is quite a sight to behold that of one of the most powerful
unions in the USA today decided to keep their hands off of Americas crown
jewels, that is the physical nourishment of a brutal global empire, and floating
theme parks with unlimited frozen yogurt.
Flippancy aside the ILAs gameness secured them a tentative agreement after three
days which includes a 61.5% raise over the life of the contract. This is not the
end of the bargaining process though, work has resumed on the ports but may come
to a halt again mid January. The agreement that was put forward was solely
bargaining over wages, and the other critical issue of automation has not been
dealt with at all yet. The ILAs current President Harold Daggett has been very
vocal about stronger language in the contract about automation. Desiring to have
an agreement that disallows any meaningful new automation at the ports while the
contract is ratified. So if Mr. Daggett sticks to his words we may very well see
this powerful union with a New Years Resolution of striking come January 16th.
This large of a strike in such an important sector has put the ILA in the sights
of other labor organizations. With this newfound media spotlight a variety of
other unions including the ILWU, Netherlands Port Workers Union, and Bermuda
Industrial Union have put out statements of solidarity with the ILA. Now, at
this point in time the strike is over so any practical application of this
"solidarity" is null and void. Though it begs the question that if the ILA would
have been on strike for longer would these unions have rejected cargo that came
from ILA ports, would they have also went on strike, or slowed down in
solidarity? The answer is probably not, but an increased practical solidarity
and shared fighting capacity should be something that we strive towards in our
unions and all labor struggles. Whether it is fighting for demands that are
applicable to the whole class, uniting struggles of different workers, or
attempting to build a class wide union these are practical things the labor
movement within the US should be striving for, and while these statements of
solidarity are practically irrelevant at this moment they are a microcosm of a
positive development within the class.
The necessity of unifying workers across unions, and different workplaces is
made incredibly apparent in a struggle such as this. How much greater the blow
dealt to capital would be if workers not only on one side of the continent were
on strike but both? How much more could workers win if not only port workers
were unified but railroad workers, truckers, and seaman had unified contracts
and struck at the same time. This unity among the class must be fought for, and
needs to transcend national boundaries. Workers in North America from the bottom
of Mexico to the tip of Canada must come together to defend their immediate
interests and to build a unified class. The bourgeoisie has no qualms with
holding hands with their "enemies" whether it is other governments, or different
companies that they are in competition with when that unification can continue
their domination of the working class. Workers in these different industries
must come together so that the fight not only benefits themselves but the entire
class in their struggle within class society. This unity will be the very
foundation of what will allow a new world to be built. A world constructed on
the basis of necessity and a true freedom. An antithesis of this "freedom" that
we have in our current global capitalist age. The freedom to split society into
those who work and those who take. A freedom that allows an ever increasingly
smaller amount of individuals to live wonderful lives while the rest are
supposed to support and be grateful for their subservience to the class of
owners. The International Communist Party happily encourages workers not only to
fight for their immediate interests but to also struggle for a world in which
this division is overcome. This can only happen when workers of all races,
industries, and creeds are united sea to shining sea.
Union Activity of the Party in the US
Strike Intervention
Boeing Workers’ Strike in Washington/ Oregon
A handful of party militants went to the picket line in Gresham Oregon and then
to several 5 of the 7 locations in Washington state including Everette where the
largest contingent of workers are located. CSAN and Party material was
distributed among the workers. Despite threats from some picket line bosses who
wished to expel our members, the vast majority of workers expressed a positive
interest in our positions and literature.
University Food Service and Custodial Workers’ Strike in Illinois
The building and food service workers at University of Illinois represented by
SEIU (Service Employees International Union) Local 73 voted against initial
bargaining attempts by the Board of Trustees and the union. Alongside SEIU Local
73, the union representing graduate student workers started an undergraduate
labor solidarity group in which the party is militating. A solidarity rally was
held about one week before the strike began where a Party leaflet explaining
class unionism, steps to take to further the struggle, and calls to push back
against the pitiful electoralism of SEIU was distributed. Negotiations with the
union continued throughout the week as they attempted to avoid the strike. This
concluded with an affirmative strike vote. The strike of building and food
service workers at the University of Illinois began on September 22nd after
attempts from the University to delay it with legal action. A CSAN quarter sheet
urging unionized workers to call in sick, work slowly and work the bare minimum,
and to organize a walkout was made and handed out to those still working during
the strike. The strike concluded on October 2nd with the workers demoralized and
ready to accept an unsatisfactory contract. While this new contract was
certainly an improvement over the initial offer, it fails to come close to the
higher wages being paid just ten years ago. To reach these heights and to go
further still, class unionism is needed. We distributed the following leaflet on
the picket line.
UFCW Fred Myers Workers’ Strike in Portland, Oregon
One of the largest of the fights in which the party is militating is the fight
of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555. Most sections of Fred Myers
grocery workers in Oregon went out on strike earlier in September over issues
such as wage demands and a lack of willingness on the part of the boss to
negotiate with the union. The strike was to take place for a set limit of days
(6 days) with the boss getting advance notice of the strike allowing Fred Meyers
bosses the chance to hire scab workers. During the strike the stores largely
continued to operate and many customers and workers crossed the picket lines.
Workers and this strike were further weakened by divisions within the union.
Despite collaborationist leadership who encouraged workers to take a pacifist
attitude to scabs and those crossing the picket lines, we reinforced the lines
and alongside the militant elements in the union encouraged workers to defend
the lines, distributing the newspaper as well.
In addition to this, workers organized in United for Class Wide Action within
UFCW, supported by Party members and CSAN, have pushed for the strong wage
demand of $40 and this demand was propagandized for among Fred Myers workers.
This led to the union being successfully pressured into significantly increasing
their original demands to $32 an hour from the company. When previously it was
much lower and groups like Essential Workers for Democracy, a reformist caucus
within UFCW, only wanted to see a wage demand of $30.
Efforts in Oregon Educators Association
In OEA the party, militating within a local education workers union, organized a
strike solidarity committee within their local to bring fellow education workers
to join Fred Meyers and then Boeing workers on the picket lines. The union has
also been engaged in a year long open bargaining session, where we agitated for
strong wage demands, and successfully argued against compromises against
collaborationist attitudes that sought to compromise in the face of “budgetary”
issues claimed by the district. We put forward the benefit of strike action in
strengthening the unions leverage against the boss and the need for immediate
collective action when the bosses began refusing the unions wage demand.
Class Struggle Action Network
Party militants continue their work within CSAN, to coordinate with other
combative and anticapitalist elements within the unions. Recently, the most
prominent of these fights is within Starbucks Workers United. A Starbucks worker
and member of the CSAN organizing committee alongside coworkers at his store and
others continue to struggle against the inclusion of a No Strike clause (NoStrike
clauses are regularly included in labor contracts banning workers from striking
during the duration of a labor agreement; a historic burden on the working
classes struggle in the United States) within a Starbucks workers labor
agreement and against the leadership of Starbucks Workers United whom has failed
to prioritize organizing a majority of Starbucks stores in the United States and
wants to enter into a friendly relationship with Starbucks bosses by putting
forward weak economic demands and conceding workers ability to strike. CSAN,
party militants, and these Starbucks workers continue organizing efforts to
bring together more Starbucks workers around this fight through leafleting and
holding meetings.
Strike at Evolution Georgia
In July, in Georgia of the Caucasus, 1,700 workers employed by the company
Evolution, a Swedish company that operates worldwide offering services in
land-based and online casinos, went on strike. It employs 16,000 workers, and
Georgia has the largest number of employees, about 7,000. Many are migrant
workers from countries such as India, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey and others.
The company is known for its poor working conditions. Wages range from a minimum
of 800 Lari (the Georgian currency introduced in 1995 by the government of
former USSR Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze) to a maximum of 1,000 Lari,
which can be achieved only through the receipt of bonuses for which additional
time and health must be sacrificed. The average salary-officially stated-is
1,100 Lari (at today’s exchange rate about 410 Dollars or 370 Euros). The wage
situation has been exacerbated by inflation in recent years. The sanitary
conditions of the workplace are equally terrible. Treatment by middle and upper
managers is in line with this situation: before the strike, screenshots of
managers’ chats were circulated showing their racist, sexist comments, in which
they mocked workers by making jokes about their appearance and even their
health.
The workers are organized in a union formed in the company just over
two years ago, called Evo Union, which is part of a union federation called
Labor that organizes mainly workers in the agricultural sector but recently,
under the leadership of a new young and energetic leader, Giorgi Diasamidze, has
expanded to other sectors. Since 2018 Labor has led several strikes, often
victorious.
Labor is part of the Georgian Trade Union Confederation (GTUC),
founded in 1992 after national independence in 1991, the result of the
dissolution of the USSR. It continues the tradition of state unionism of the
former supposadely socialist regime, not defending the interests of the working
class but submitting them to those of corporations and capitalism in general. It
is a corrupt organization, headed personally by Irakli Petriashvili, elected
five times. It claims 250,000 members.
The Evo Union has made a variety of
demands. Among the main ones are: a 100 percent wage increase; pegging of wages
to inflation; a permanent medical garrison at the main workplace in Tiblisi;
food vouchers and healthy food; and paid leave during menstruation.
Initially,
the union followed the legal process for calling the strike, seeking to resolve
the dispute at the labor court. After the mediation period ended unsuccessfully,
it declared the strike, which began on July 12.
Other unions, especially those
formed outside the GTUC, actively expressed solidarity with the current
strikers. The most active has been the deliverymen’s union, which was engaged in
a major struggle last year that we reported on in our Italian, English and
Turkish periodicals (iPC420, TCP51, KP3), whose militants have constantly helped
the strikers, including with food and water, and joined our comrades in
suggesting more aggressive and determined measures to the union.
The start of
the strike was a little hesitant, which, for example, did not allow the full
effect of the denunciation of management behavior resulting from the circulation
of insults to workers contained in their private chats. Only 4-5 union militants
were involved in organizing work and this was not enough.
As soon as the
strike began, the company took various countermeasures, from circulating rumors
about the closure of its operations in Georgia, to placing fences around union
stands at entrances to workplaces.
Since August 1, union action has become
more incisive, organizing sit-ins in front of the workplace entrances, forcing
those who wanted to enter to climb over them. Some members of bourgeois
left-wing parties spoke out against this decision, asserting that it "divided
the workers". Instead, the action was successful, discouraging more workers from
going to work. At its peak, the strike was joined by 1,700 workers, but many
others, totaling about 4,600, while not declaring themselves on strike, absented
themselves, by agreement with the union, asking for leave of absence or placing
themselves on sick leave.
On the morning of August 3, the company declared
that the union was illegally blocking the building, leaving no way in; for the
entire month of August it would more easily issue bonuses to workers who were
not on strike; for each shift of attendance it would give an additional payment
of 20 Lari; and it would impose a warning for each strike shift (after 3
warnings the worker is fired).
After that statement it rounded up 600 shift
workers urging them to overcome the chain of sitting strikers and even trample
them. However, this arrogance of the management backfired: only about ten went
in. The company also hired a dozen new guards who attacked the workers, sending
one worker to the emergency room. But most of the guards actually sided with the
workers, obeying company orders slowly and unwillingly, basically ineffectively.
After that failure, the company relaunched its threat to close or downsize the
business. It sent all workers an email asking them, if they intended to continue
working, to fill out a form. It then canceled the night shift on August 3 and
the morning shift on August 4. A brief lockout. Then resumed activities but at a
reduced pace. This action began to have a negative effect on strike morale
which, having peaked in early August, began to decline.
On August 8 the
company hired new guards, bouncers in clubs and festivals called the "Zonder
brigade", known in Tbilisi for being openly violent. Their first action tried to
disrupt strike committee elections that were taking place in front of
Evolution’s administrative building.
From that moment the union leaders began
to call for help from all kinds of bourgeois parties and politicians. In
general, they reacted to the decline of the strike by promoting actions that
could be described as liberal, unrelated to the methods of class struggle,
ineffective and individual in character.
On August 13, several union militants
began a hunger strike. Our comrades tried to dissuade the workers from taking
such an initiative and proposed to try to involve other workers in the struggle,
but they went unheeded.
Since August 15, it has been decided to hold
"surprise" sit-ins without notifying the company and police which entrances
would be manned. The company hired additional guards, bringing the number to
150.
On August 19, the union leader stated that if the company continued to fail
to respond to the workers’ demands that evening at 8 p.m. the union would
organize a demonstration and block the road. Police were promptly mobilized to
the scene at 6 p.m. and their numbers matched those of the strikers and
solidarity workers. The police warned that if they blocked the road they would
arrest the workers, and the union desisted.
This development generated some
discontent among the strikers about the conduct of the struggle.
The company
recovered from the initial slaps and spent considerable resources against the
strikers, sowing discord among the workers and demoralizing all those who sided
with them. Anti-strike propaganda aims to marginalize striking workers, to
present the strike as an individual choice of an irrelevant number of unjustly
disgruntled and uncivilized employees. The fake social media accounts and
professional lackeys of capital are "influencers" who spread disinformation and
use arguments as foolish as they are effective, echoing the dominant ideology.
They target strikers, attacking their integrity, painting them as liars and
troublemakers who violate others’ right to work and act against their fellow
workers. The voluntary and amateur action of workers cannot compete with the
social media propaganda machinery that the company can afford, and
unfortunately, at the end of the day anti-worker disinformation efforts get more
results than pro-strike propaganda, which is natural given the strikers’ lack of
resources. The strength of the workers’ struggle lies not in counter-information
but in extending the struggle, in breaking down the boundaries between companies
and categories. Locked in the individual company, day after day even the most
determined struggle is worn down and defeated. To this end, the strike must be
well prepared already with the aim of not limiting it to the single enterprise.
On September 7, the "Zonder brigades" ravaged the strikers’ tents, taking away
chairs, tables and other tools.
Since early September, in response to
complaints about the line of conducting the struggle, the organizing group has
been expanded. A day of mobilization was promoted for Sept. 21 to revive the
strike.
Despite its limitations and flaws, the strike went better than expected, led
to closer contacts with militants of other unions and represents a wealth of
important lessons for the continuation of the working class struggle in Georgia.
Service Workers
For Class Unionism, Against Electoralism!
The
International Communist Party commends your struggle for better wages
and better working conditions. The necessity of this fight is
something endemic of our exploitative mode of production:
capitalism
Despite being a public institution, the University still
exploits
its workers
like any other capitalist enterprise, state owned or
private. There is no better demonstration of this than the bosses’
clear interest of keeping your wages low and making you work more
hours even while inflation rises; in a word,
increasing
immiseration
It
is only through the power of
striking indefinitely
that the
capitalist class is forced to give concessions to the working class.
This is why the bourgeois state collaborates with the bosses and
actively sabotages your
freedom to strike
by making it
illegal
in the public education sector to abandon the
no-strike clause
in your contract. The bourgeoisie fears the strike and will do
anything it can to reduce its power.
Our
power to strike does not come from bourgeois “rights” enshrined
in their constitutions. It comes from our shared material interest as
a class and our will to act. The Government, whether Democrat or
Republican, will always take the side of the bosses when push comes
to shove, i.e. when the state or the bosses are under serious threat
from combative workers. The Democrats have clearly shown this during
the recent rail strike and through their promotion of class
collaboration and submission to the bosses instead of worker
combativity. If the Democrats truly had the interests of the working
class, they would repeal the Taft-Hartley Act and support the freedom
to strike at all times in every sector.
SEIU
will spend
$200 million
attempting to buy influence within the
Democratic party, but this is an erroneous maneuver. The bosses and
capitalists will
always be able to outbid the unions
as the
extraction of surplus-value guarantees that they will have the
monetary advantage; it is a
DEAD END
. This money would have
been better spent on valuable organizing initiatives to bolster the
power of the strike and to organize the unorganized.
WORKERS!
To further your struggle, to extend it for even higher wages and a
shorter working day made even more necessary by the rising cost of
living and the depressing reality of having to work more than one
job, means to
UNITE AS A CLASS
. Practically, we must work
towards
aligning contract expiration dates, striking in solidarity
and at the same time as other workers
, and unifying our trade
unions across occupation and country into a genuine
CLASS UNION
AGAINST SUBORDINATION TO BOURGEOIS PARTIES!!
AGAINST LIMITATIONS ON STRIKE POWER!!
AGAINST COLLABORATION WITH THE BOSSES!!
FOR INTERNATIONAL AND CROSS SECTOR SOLIDARITY!!
Comrades
workers
Our
trade union struggle and the formation of the class union is the
essential step in the process of eliminating capitalist exploitation.
To that end, the authentic working class communist party is necessary
to direct the unions towards revolution and proletarian dictatorship.
It is only in this way that capitalist society can be overcome with
communist society, one without classes, without wage-labor, and
without the state. Only after this necessary and monumental leap
forward for the human race can we finally GIVE according to ability
and TAKE according to need.
WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!
May 2426, 2024
Converging Working Contributions in the General Party Meeting
[RG149]
We came together, comrades from different countries, to bring the contribution
of our work to the great cause of communism.
For this goalwhich is not close to us in time, though certainly inscribed in
the course of historywe know it will require a world communist party, capable
of handling Marxist doctrine well and both leading the working class. Without
the leadership of the Communist Party, revolution is impossible.
We do not gather to compare our personal or group opinions. Not to invent
original theories. Not even to listen to brilliant new discoveries about the
course of history. We gather to defend the continuity of the Communist Party, in
its program and, today, in its small living organization.
It is first of all a continuity of doctrine. We have an impersonal theory, born
in the midnineteenth century and then only strengthened and confirmed. In that
theory is contained the answer to all our questions of today and tomorrow.
Every answer is already written. And it is within the reach not only of a few
exceptional priests or men but also of the last of the comrades: just go and
read, just study.
General custodian of our revolutionary science and revolution can only be the
collective organ of the party. The Communist Party is not the sum of
individuals, but a unitary organ that precedes and exceeds our individuals.
It lives outside in the harshness of social warfare, "in contact", and tomorrow
at the head of the working class.
Internally it presents itself as an anticipation of communist society. In
strident negation and overcoming of all the miseries of the petty bourgeoisie,
among which the most deadly are individualism, envy, competition, and permanent
intra species struggle.
Communism already lives in the Communist Party. We prove to the despicable
bourgeois that it is possible for a human group to operate, disciplined and
efficient, without an apparatus of coercion, spontaneously ordered because it
already knows all its orders.
This is how the Communist Party wanted to be from its now distant origins in the
League of Communists and in its even older generous pre scientific utopias.
These meetings of ours are further confirmation that communism is possible.
As usual, the meeting, attended by the entirety of our sections and held in the
usual maximum order, was divided into a preparatory session of the proceedings,
in which all groups are asked to report on their progress, and any difficulties,
for which they can ask the remaining comrades for help, and a session for the
presentation of reports.
Everything presented proved consistent with our program and confirmed the
correspondence of the party’s tactical direction, receiving the unanimous
approval of those present.
These are the exhibits we heard:
• Course of Capitalism
Disparities in World Steel Production
Origins of the Communist Party of China
The Founding of the Communist Party of Turkey
Report of the Study on the Women’s Issue
• The Agrarian Question
The Ideology of the Bourgeoisie
• The Civil War in the Donbass
• The National Question in the Middle East
• Report on Trade Union Activity in Italy
• Report on Union Activity in North America.
Report of the Study on the Women’s Issue
The group’s goal is to give continuity to the elaboration of the comrades before
us, to reiterate that it is the party that anticipates the integral program of
communism, which will come to remove the barriers that make one human being
economically dependent on another.
The working group met three times. In the meetings, each comrade was assigned to
read a party text and report on what he or she discovered there. Discussions
focused on extracting insights and questions elicited from these texts.
The list includes Engels, Bebel, Kollontai, Zetkin and from our party since
1953.
We also have the collection of "Compagna, organ of the Communist Party of Italy
for propaganda among women".
Today women’s dependence on both the capitalist and, because of their inveterate
subordination, on men remains. The party must prefigure the appropriate tactics
to combat the double exploitation of women, which has persisted since the
beginning of human history and today has no reason to exist and only hinders the
path to the economic equality of the sexes and liberation from the millennial
social exploitation of men.
We aim to dissect the intricate layers of patriarchal oppression still emerging
at the surface of modern capitalist societies and explore avenues for women’s
emancipation as embodied in the invariant body of the party’s theses.
The working group identified several discussion points that will be explored
with further readings and meetings: patriarchy in the past; women’s labor in the
wageearner; domestic work; the issue of abortion; divorce; prostitution; the
issues of homosexuality and transsexuality; and genderbased violence.
The comrades emphasized the need to contextualize these issues within a general
critique of the mode of production, capitalist and previous.
In future studies (perhaps not of us but of comrades after us), just as our
nineteenthcentury comrades analyzed the results of science from a dialectical
materialistic point of view, we will examine some new studies in the field of
anthropology (progressing slowly and with difficulty), especially on the
development of technology, and based on the extension of knowledge, and relevant
studies in the field of education, which in the last period have affected the
whole world.
We do not find it of much use to draw on many of the theoretical works of
feminists because they do not relate to the actual course of history.
It is necessary to fight patriarchy. It is necessary to open our eyes more
clearly to the propaganda and psychological violence of the surviving
overpowering within the capitalist system.
As a result of today’s classbased education system, women are made insecure,
subjected to psychological stresses and strains and inequalities in their living
conditions. Oppressed by domestic work, they find it difficult to return to the
scientific and theoretical field, of which they have been deprived for thousands
of years.
And this also as communists and in the party. Yes, women comrades need a working
group, just as they may need their own newspaper, addressed specifically to women.
In particular, the situation of workingclass women is to be described. It is
necessary to struggle against the oppression of women just as one struggles for
wages. Although it will end only with the proletarian revolution. It is a
struggle that our socialist comrades began in the 19th century, work that has
continued into the 20th and will continue until the fall of bourgeois society.
There have been setbacks due to the defeats of the working class and the
prevalence of antifeminist propaganda and intimidation by the state
apparatuses. Communist militants we seek a light in the harsh conditions of
defeat, which it is our responsibility to analyze and learn about.
Just as in order to end the exploitation of man by man we must break down its
first cause, its commodification, so we cannot achieve communism without the
liberation of all the oppressed. From the time of social harmony from primitive
communism to the antagonism of exploitation, with the dualism of oppressors and
oppressed, we seek the return of the human species to its organic unity where
all contradictions are resolved. Here the centrality of this work as well.
Women’s advocacy must also affect unions is an area of application of this
study. After the historical report this is the topic we will focus on.
In the past, communists have supported claims that were not just of the working
class, such as women’s suffrage. But changing historical conditions led us to
the rejection of parliamentary means to advance women’s conditions as well.
Working women must demand their protection from unions. These today do not even
perform their most basic function of defending wages and hours. But it is their
job to defend the condition of the entire proletariat, the unemployed, immigrant
workers, women workers, homosexuals and all oppressed groups of workers. We must know the
conditions that vary from country to country and from union to union. We need to
articulate in unions all the demands of the working class.
We turn our gaze from primitive communism, free from exploitative relations and
in harmony with nature and each other, to the egalitarian society to come, with
a return to immediately human relations between the sexes. Only in the
postcapitalist world will the seeds planted for millennia in men’s brains by
classist modes of production wither. The study of patriarchy is generally
concerned with the relationship of human beings to each other in class
societies.
Deep in our minds, traces of what has been imprinted on them for generations
survive in our behaviors. Primitive community groups existed as an organic
structure that functioned together, while we are isolated and opposed to each
other.
The party is the organic link that connects us to man’s historical
responsibilities. With the party we return to an organically functioning
community. But we are no longer in the purity of early man; we are today still
under the domination of capital, in which most of our life takes place in areas
dominated by exploitative relations. Only in the party does the light of
doctrine allow us to unveil the traumas and miseries that external society
spreads. Only then, as communists, can we explain in unions to workers, who
cannot be free, the necessities we have learned from our history.
It is essential to communicate among comrades with affection and respect, even
under the present bourgeois conditions, to create a party environment that
welcomes in warm camaraderie the sentiments of the future society.
We will also be able to deal with the issue of ethics, starting with how Marx,
Lenin and all our comrades understood it, which leads us to given behaviors,
according to certain forms. And to think about how we revolutionaries embrace
each other, even in a society around us based on antagonistic relations. This,
too, is an issue we will have to address.
The Origins of Left‑Wing Socialism and Class Unionism in the Ottoman Empire:
Early Years and Founding of the Communist Party of Turkey
The antecedent of the founding of the Communist Party of Turkey can be traced
more or less directly to the October Revolution. The first effect of the
revolution on Turkey, which was at war with Russia at the time, was immediate.
Russian soldiers returning from eastern Anatolia left power to a Soviet
government representing Turks, Kurds and Armenians, based in Erzincan. In
addition to Erzincan, the new Soviet government had influence in Erzurum, Dersim,
Bayburt and Sivas. But it was soon suppressed by the Ottoman army before the
Union and Progress Committee surrendered to the Entente and Constantinople and
most of Anatolia were occupied by the victorious powers.
The first congress of Turkey’s leftist socialists was held in Moscow in 1918,
with the participation of former prisoners of war, and led to the creation of
the Communist Organization of Turkey, headed by Mustafa Suphi, Sharif Manatov
and Süleyman Nuri.
In late 1918 and 1919 legal socialist organizations emerged in Constantinople,
such as the Socialist Party of Turkey with 14,000 members and the Social
Democratic Party with 2,000. To their left, Turkish students returning from
studies abroad, mainly in Germany, formed the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party of
Turkey, later renamed the Socialist Workers’ and Peasants’ Party of Turkey, a
party that followed the ideological line of the USPD.
Some of the remnants of the left wing of Ottoman socialism reorganized in
Constantinople as the Communist Group, under the influence of Bolshevism.
Meanwhile, the Nationalist Forces emerged as irregular militias in 1919,
opposing the occupation. Soon some officers, led by Mustafa Kemal pasha,
defected from the Ottoman army and, after a series of congresses, assumed
leadership of the movement. Mustafa Kemal and his allies formed the Society for
the Defense of Law, which soon became organized throughout Anatolia. By the end
of the year, the Nationalist Forces had about 7,000 militants. In 1920, the
Society for the Defense of Law established the Grand National Assembly of Turkey
in Ankara, as an alternative to the Assembly of Deputies in Constantinople.
Within a few months, the Nationalist Forces reached 15,000.
Its largest component was the Mobile Forces, which were 5,000 strong. These were
based in Eskişehir, where a section of the Socialist Party of Turkey isolated
from the center of Constantinople was organized. They often engaged in acts of
dispossession of the rich to benefit their cause. The Mobile Forces included a
700man Bolshevik battalion, so named because it was commanded by a follower of
Mustafa Suphi.
In those days Sharif Manatov arrived in Ankara and, together with dissident
military vet Salih Hacıoğlu and some other comrades, declared the founding of
the Communist Party of Turkey on July l4. The party opposed the government in
Ankara as well as the government in Constantinople. It published the Comintern’s
Appeal to the Peoples of the East. By the end of the year the party had 350400
militants, assisted by the Communist Organization of Turkey, now based on the
Caucasus in the Black Sea region.
Yet it was neither the Communist Group of Constantinople nor the Communist Party
of Turkey founded in Anatolia that established the first contact with the newly
formed Communist International by sending representatives to Moscow, but the
leftist Socialist Workers and Peasants Party of Turkey. İsmail Hakkı, one of
this party’s delegates to the Second Congress of the Comintern, expressed a
position completely contrary to that of the Anatolian Communists: "After the
Russian Revolution and the partition of Turkey by the European imperialists,
when the Janus face of the English and French capitalists was openly shown to
the Turkish people, a new movement, a liberation movement, was born in Turkey.
The Anatolian movement, now led by the Democratic Party, is the best response to
the ruthless exploitation to which Turkey has been subjected by the Entente
countries (...) Now the revolutionary state of Anatolia, which is gathering
around it all the forces hostile to the Entente, driven by a centuriesold
hatred of imperialism, is preparing for the struggle against European
imperialism. The workers of Turkey will not allow themselves to be enslaved once
again by the Entente and, thanks to the Russian revolution, which is the best
friend of Turkey in struggle, the Turkish people will achieve complete freedom
in a short time and, together with the workers of all countries, wage the
struggle against imperialism throughout the world".
Shortly thereafter, between September 10 and 16, the First Congress of the
Communist Organization of Turkey was held in Baku. Renamed the Communist Party
of Turkey, it was the only Turkish organization represented at the congress was
the Socialist Workers and Peasants Party of Constantinople. However, the Baku
organization included rather radical militants, so the congress documents were
considerably to the left of the positions of the Socialist Workers’ and
Peasants’ Party: "We are convinced that the national revolutionary movement
under way in Anatolia helps the proletarian movement of the whole world in its
struggle against imperialism of the whole world, and it is certain that this
national movement, with its development and deepening within the country, serves
the emergence of class consciousness and thus prepares a suitable field for the
social revolution of tomorrow. The Communist Party of Turkey will, on the one
hand, contribute to the growth of the movement against imperialism in Turkey,
and on the other hand, strive to prepare the principles for the real goal and
ultimate aspiration of the workers, of the working people, to win power for the
proletarians".
Moreover, thanks to the influence of Bolshevism, the congress recognized the
Armenian genocide and adopted a proletarian internationalist approach to the
question of nationalities: "They did not hesitate to create enmity between the
Turkish and Armenian people. They have made enemies of these two nations that
have lived together throughout history. It is the poor and helpless people who
die everywhere and always, who are oppressed and deprived of the right to live.
During the World War, which was a consequence of European imperialism, the poor
Armenian peasants again fell prey to the lies of the British, the lies of the
dashnaks and the instigation of the priests. They began to massacre the poor
Muslims of Van and Bitlis, burning their houses and looting their property (...)
In response, the government of the Union and Progress Committee acted without
hesitation, the Armenians were deported, their property was confiscated, and
most of them were killed by secret orders.
"Like any nation, Arabs, Kurds and Bulgarians will decide and determine how to
live. As Russia accepts federation, so must we. Not only we, but all nations
must accept this principle. Only through this principle can humanity become one
big family. Just as the Communist Party of Turkey will try to save the Turkish
workers and peasants from the influence of the Unionists and treacherous
Socialists, it must separate the oppressed classes of the Greek, Armenian and
Kurdish nations from the Dashnak or Badr Khan organizations, uniting them in the
name of the same interests and purposes as one class".
Shortly after the congress, the International Workers Union (IWU), a
coordination of combative workers hoping to form revolutionary class unions, was
founded in Constantinople in October 1920. It was initially inspired by the
American Industrial Workers of the World. It sent a warm letter to the Comintern
announcing the founding of the union and asked to join the Profintern.
These developments alarmed Mustafa Kemal, who in late 1920 founded a
progovernment Communist Party of Turkey. The fake party’s application to join
the Comintern was rejected. However, he forced the Communist Party in Anatolia
out of illegality to prevent the masses from being deceived: he founded a legal
organization under the name People’s Communist Party of Turkey. The party line
also changed, seeking to broaden its appeal to classes other than the
proletariat and softening toward the Kemalists.
The party in Anatolia merged with leftist nationalists who critically supported
Mustafa Kemal.
Despite the warnings, all the party leaders from the Baku Congress went without
precautions to Anatolia. When they arrived in Erzurum, the local branch of the
Society for the Defense of Law incited the population to attack them. The same
scenario was repeated in Trebizond, where they later moved. Mustafa Suphi, Ethem
Nejat, İsmail Hakkı and other comrades decided to return, but after leaving the
city on a boat, they were approached by another boat and were all killed on the
direct orders of Mustafa Kemal. Following this trauma for the communist movement
in Turkey, the section stationed in Baku split into a left wing led by Süleyman
Nuri and a pro Kemalist right wing led by Ahmet Cevat Emre.
Meanwhile, the Communist Group was struggling within the International Workers’
Union against the influence of anarchism. Ginzberg of the Communist Group
expressed this struggle in his 1921 report to the Comintern’s Eastern
Secretariat:
"The IWU (...) has given itself a bad policy in the last five months because of
the acceptance of the principles and program of the American IWWs".
In a 1924 report entitled "A Brief Overview of the Turkish Labor Movement",
Ginzberg describes these events as follows:
"There was also an Armenian Social Democratic Party (Hunchakist) in
Constantinople with 2,000 members, mostly workers (...) In 1921, the communist
group of the IWU (...) came into contact with the left wing of this party and
the two groups merged to form the Communist Party of Constantinople in December
1921 (....) The Communist
Armenian faction of the Communist Party of Constantinople conducted a massive
campaign in favor of Soviet Russia and Soviet Armenia through the press,
conferences and agitations.
"Until the Franklin Bouillon agreement, the political line of the Communist
Party of Constantinople was to support the Kemalist movement, but after this
agreement, which was considered a betrayal of the independence movement, the
party did not hesitate to unmask the Kemalists and lead the working class, while
supporting every progressive step, to fight against the local bourgeoisie and
imperialism through class struggle".
Origin of the Communist Party of China After the Third Congress
At the Third Congress of the Communist Party of China there was a bitter clash
over the issue of relations with the Kuomintang, with many comrades opposing the
tactics of entrism in that nationalist party. Immediately after the conclusion
of the congress, in a letter dated June 20, 1923 and addressed to Zinoviev,
Bucharin, Radek and Safarov, Maring made the leadership of the International
aware of this, reconstructed the steps that had led to the adoption of the
tactic of entry into the Kuomintang and defended the reasons for it.
Underlying his proposal was a negative assessment of the development of the
revolutionary movement in China, characterized by the country’s economic and
social backwardness and the weakness of the Communist Party, while, on the other
hand, he showed admiration for the strength of the Kuomintang in southern China.
Hence the proposal to push Chinese communists into political activity in the
Kuomintang and support for the national revolution as their main task. Maring
wrote that since August 1922 the Party had been pushed to help the nationalist
movement by participating in organizing the Kuomintang. Despite this, according
to Maring, at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern Radek had proposed that the
CPoC carry out independent political action under a communist banner, with the
proposal for China to quickly develop a mass party. Maring immediately after the
Fourth Congress went to Moscow to advocate the continuation of the tactics
adopted in August, with the result that in January 1923 the ECCI adopted a
resolution that the nationalist revolution was the main task of the Party and
that its members should remain in the KMT.
The resolution, however, gave rise to discussions in the CPoC: about what was to
be done in the KMT; how many communists were to be employed at this intervention
and how many in propaganda among the workers; whether the Chinese bourgeoisie
had a revolutionary role or everything would have to come from the workers and
peasants.
While it was stipulated in the theses of the Third Congress of the CPoC that the
party’s task was to develop the KMT throughout the country, at the same time
criticism was leveled at the nationalist party for its tactics based mainly on
the military aspect, thus leading it to bind itself to the feudal militarists of
the North, and to seek relations with foreign imperialists, a tactic
incompatible with a revolutionary nationalist party. Instead, the KMT should
have been forced down the road of revolutionary propaganda and created a left
wing in this party made up of peasants and workers.
Zhang Guotao, who opposed the view that wanted strong support for the KMT,
summarized Maring’s position in his November 16, 1923 letter to Comintern
officials Voitinsky and Musin as follows:
"The Comintern considers that the central task of the CPoC at this time is the
nationalist movement and Soviet Russia should support the Kuomintang. So the
Chinese Communists should concentrate their efforts in the reorganization of the
Kuomintang and
work within the Kuomintang and develop the Kuomintang. All the political
propaganda work of the CPoC should be done inside the Kuomintang (...) The labor
movement should be brought inside the Kuomintang and workers throughout China be
brought inside the Kuomintang. Only when the class consciousness of the workers
within the Kuomintang has
developed, could a left wing of the Kuomintang develop. Only at that time could
a real PCdC be formed. This would be the only process of the Chinese
revolutionary movement".
It seems clear that since 1923 the perspective had been outlined that the
revolution in China subordinated the social movement of proletarians and
peasants to the demands of the national revolution and that only the party of
the Chinese bourgeoisie, the Kuomintang, could lead the revolutionary movement.
The Communist Party of China was to confine itself internally, bringing in
workers and peasants. Although on paper the independent existence of the
Communist Party was left standing, in fact it was reduced to the "left wing" of
the Kuomintang, a directive endorsed by the leadership of the International and
given to the Chinese Communists.
But the CPoC was still not convinced, and still in November 1923 resistance
persisted. Zhang Guotao denied that the Kuomintang was the sole representative
of the Chinese revolutionary movement. He then argued that the Chinese
bourgeoisie was dependent on foreign capitalists, and although there were
contradictions between the Chinese bourgeoisie and foreign imperialists, the
local bourgeoisie was far from fighting against foreign oppression. On the other
hand, the strength of the working class was yes young and weak but it had
already shown its pugnacity. Zhang Guotao believed that workingclass
strength was already present and could be a major component of a future
nationalist movement. He accepted the need to remain in the Kuomintang,
organizing sections and trying to reorganize it, but he did not consider this
work predominant. Communists were to continue to propagate their political
positions independently, and it was necessary to prevent the labor movement from
passing from the hands of the CPoC to those of the KMT. The main task remained
to organize the workers.
Zhang Guotao believed that the Kuomintang was not only not a true nationalist
party but that it was not even an organized party. He believed that the arrival
of a Chinese nationalist party would take years. He proposed, therefore, that in
workers’ centers where the Kuomintang had no influence it should not be allowed
to organize sections, while only in Canton and Hong Kong was the work of the
CPoC in the workers’ camp forced to be conducted within the Kuomintang.
Thus, there were comrades within the CPoC who were unwilling to cede the leading
role of the revolutionary movement in China to the KMT and give up the political
independence of the Communist Party. The CPoC leadership itself, at a meeting of
the Executive on November 2425, 1923, was forced to acknowledge that the
resolutions on the national movement and the Kuomintang question, laid down at
the Third Party Congress, had not received substantial support from grassroots
party members.
Despite the opposition to the tactics established at the Third Congress and the
difficulties encountered in its implementation, the CPoC leadership confirmed
that it was continuing on that path. The November 1923 meeting of the CPoC
Executive resolutely condemned the "leftist distortion" of the single front
policy and adopted a decision ordering communists to actively participate in the
reorganization of the nationalist party.
The resolution left no doubt as to the path taken: all Communist Party work was
to be conducted within the Kuomintang, now considered the central force of the
revolution in China. The reorganization and development of the Kuomintang had
become the main tasks
of the Communist Party, and to this end, the resolution issued precise
directives: the Communists, while remaining members of the CPoC, were to join
Kuomintang sections in centers where these were already present or to create
Kuomintang sections themselves where there were not yet any; the program
dictated by the KMT leadership was to be followed; and the correction of the
KMT’s political tendencies was to be carried out "in accordance with the
nationalist principle embodied in the Three Principles of the People".
It was the full adherence to Sun Yat sen’s bourgeois program and the submission
of communists to the political leadership of the nationalist party. The
nationalist movement had become the focus of all the work of the CPoC and the
solution of the "national question" was placed above class interests and its own
struggle.
On December 25, 1923, the CPoC Executive issued "Circular Number 13", which
obliged, among other things, to ensure the election at the next KMT Congress,
set for January 1924, not only of communists but also of "relatively
progressive" figures. Special envoys were sent to Party sections to implement
these decisions.
These decisions in the field of tactics were accompanied by new theoretical
formulations to support them. The revolutionary character of the bourgeoisie and
its function in directing the national revolution were exaggerated.
Mao Zedong himself, newly elected to the Central Committee, advocated this. In
July 1923 he wrote that it would be the merchants, i.e., the bourgeoisie, who
would feel "most acutely and most urgently" the sufferings of dual oppression to
local militarists and foreign imperialists, and although the national revolution
to overthrow militarists and imperialists "is the historic mission of the
Chinese people" as a whole (merchants workers, peasants, students, and teachers
in Mao’s formulation), because of the contradiction between the economic
interests of merchants and those of foreigners and militarists, the role of
merchants was considered by Mao to be "more urgent and more important than the
rest of the "people".
Thus, by theorizing a preeminent role of the merchants, and thus of the
bourgeoisie, we approach the classical position of Menshevism, which leaves the
leadership of the revolution in the still backward countries to the national
bourgeoisie. This interpretation of revolutionary development in backward
countries, according to which the imperialist yoke made the national bourgeoisie
of colonial and semicolonial countries more revolutionary than the Russian
antifeudal bourgeoisie in later formulations, will be the same with which the
degenerate International will justify all the directives imposed on the Chinese
communists, which will lead to the tragic defeat of the proletarian revolution
in China, while Lenin had already made it clear that "bourgeois revolution is
impossible as a revolution of the bourgeoisie", definitively separating
Bolshevism from the Menshevik current.
Disparities in World Steel Production
At the meeting, we returned to a theme our party has explored since the 1950s.
Using old studies and new statistics, we restored annual steel production tables
from 1860 to today for Great Britain, France, Germany, the U.S., Japan, Russia,
Italy, China, and the world total.
Today, capitalism is shaking the entire world. After the crumbling of the Soviet
Union and the rapid increase in production in Asia, especially in China, we have
witnessed an exacerbation of the crisis. This crisis can only be resolved
through a global war.
While Western economies decline, their contest for control of natural wealth
across the planet continues. The Chinese state seeks domination of nearby seas.
In Africa, nations like China and Russia compete with Western ones to influence
local economies. Middle Eastern oligarchies defend income from their oil
resources, trying to ensure their processing as well. Latin America is
witnessing increased extraction of raw resources. Thus, preparation for war and
the continuation of proxy conflicts persist, maiming and destroying the working
class.
In the past, it was a matter of national pride to flaunt the successes of one’s
country’s steel industry. Now, the bourgeoisie of the old capitalist nations are
forced to admit that they must buy metallurgical products where they cost less.
National economies in industrial decline are giving way on the international
market to new emerging national economies.
But everywhere, this evergrowing productive capacity is marked by a constant
slowdown in the relative pace of increase. This shows that not even the new
emerging economies are immune to the same decline that Western countries have
experienced.
In this post-war period, two dramatic changes have occurred in the steel
industry. We have measured these changes with production data and their annual
percentage variation. Both of these numerical series have indicated deep
economic crises, with lasting effects on the rate of production expansion in
general and on the industry’s rate of profit.
From the production graphs, it is clear that the main Western economies have
experienced a decrease in steel production or at most a halt in growth. In
contrast, China, Japan, and Russia were not initially affected as dramatically
as other capitalist nations. This is because steel production has moved from the
old economies to emerging ones, from China to Mexico. These data will be
presented and analyzed in more detail later.
We have compared the production and increases of the last 50 years with the
timeline of the previous 150 years. From 1860 to 1910, the main Western
economies were in a development phase, and growth followed a more or less
exponential trend. Until the First World War, steel production continued to
grow.
In the period between the two wars, it was observed that production continued to
follow this exponential curve in the United States. Meanwhile, European
countries like England, France, Germany, and Italy recorded stagnation. In
contrast, China, Japan, and the Soviet Union showed a constant increase in
production, just like the Western economies from 1860 to 1910.
The preparation for the Second World War required an increase in steel
production worldwide. After the First World War, the main European nations had
recorded stagnation. A decline in production occurred after the devastation of
the Second World War. This time, stagnation also occurred in the United States.
It did not occur in the Soviet Union, China, and Japan.
The production of China and Japan did not immediately surpass that of the West
during this period. However, in 1949, with the founding of the People’s Republic
of China, there was an explosion in steel production that continued to grow
exponentially, as with all production.
But already in the 1970s, the old capitalist economies suffered from a crisis
caused by overproduction. While China continued to record exponential growth in
steel production, in Japan it no longer increased. Comparing China’s growth with
that of the United States, one can see the sudden decline in U.S. production in
the mid1970s. Meanwhile, Chinese steel production continued to follow an
exponential curve. In Japan, one can also see the halt in steel production
growth. Relevant graphs were shown at the meeting.
Western steel companies will continue to see a slowdown in the rate of growth of
production. Even Japan, after the 1980s, would soon see a dramatic decline in
national production. All the gains made after World War II would vanish.
Since the early 2000s, all Western economies have seen their production either
remain constant or even contract. Meanwhile, China has continued to grow, but
even this at an increasingly slow pace.
The rate of increase in production is directly related to the rate of profit. It
is not that capitalist steel production at a given moment stops growing. The
accumulation of capital within the global economy always increases. But the
amount of this accumulation, which increases from year to year, is always
relatively smaller compared to the mass of production. This is true for each
national economy. Graphs were shown at the meeting that demonstrate this.
Faced with the falling rate of profit, the European, Japanese, and North
American bourgeoisies have reacted with restructuring and subcontracting. In the
process, subcontractors are forced to give up part of their profits to get the
order. They have also relocated part of the production to countries where costs
are lower. Mexico, for example, has become a key center for the production of
cars destined for the North American market.
Since the 2000s, the United States, Japan, and Germany have invested colossal
sums in China, transforming it into the new "workshop of the world". Among other
things, China has become the world’s leading steel producer. It supplies part of
the steel needs of Europe and the United States.
Marxism does not foresee a growth of capitalism followed by a decline. Rather,
it predicts the simultaneous dialectical strengthening of the mass of productive
forces that capitalism controls and their unlimited accumulation and
concentration. This occurs simultaneously with the antagonistic reaction of the
dominated forces, that is, the working class. The general productive and
economic potential increases until the equilibrium is upset and an explosive and
revolutionary phase occurs. In the course of an extremely short and intense
period, the old forms of production collapse and the productive forces diminish,
opening the way to a new arrangement and a new, more powerful rise.
But while production always expands, the relative rate of this production is
always decreasing. Thus, if in 1943 the United States produced almost 80 million
tons of steel, to maintain the 3.9% increase of 1943 in 1944, the country would
have had to produce 83.74 million tons. Of course, this was not the case. In
1943, production increased by only 3.3%, although it was 1.3 million tons more
than in 1942.
Furthermore, within a given national economy and a given branch of production,
one can observe not only a decreasing rate of growth in steel production but
also a constant absolute slowdown in production.
As a historical trend in steel production, for example in the United States, the
rate of growth not only decreases but goes into negative territory. This means
that, regardless of the amount of annual production, the economy will not be
able to produce at the same volume as in the past. This effect is found in all
the countries analyzed. For the United States, this turning point occurred in
1980; for Japan, in 2009.
Therefore, on the one hand, we are witnessing an explosion in production. On the
other hand, there is a slowdown in the pace of such production. We can say that
the tendency of production increases exponentially since capitalism always tries
to produce more. However, the tendency to slow down the rate of increase of
production, which corresponds to the rate of profit, imposes itself. This
tendency is difficult to distinguish through the noise created by the contingent
oscillations of production. But as an inexorable trend, this rate of increase is
decreasing. At a certain point, production stagnates and a crisis occurs.
It is a growth that, however, entails a decrease in the rate in the long run.
This translates into periodic economic crises.
The loss of production of a particular commodity can, of course, be compensated
by importing it from abroad. And this is only if that commodity is still
socially necessary and has not become obsolete. This is obviously the case with
steel, which is increasingly needed to produce machines, buildings,
infrastructure, and always weapons of war.
Bourgeois Ideology
Medieval Aristotelianism, Averroism and Occamism
We are still in the prehistory of bourgeois ideology. The party is not an
academy of historical or philosophical studies, nor even of Marxist studies.
What interests us is how much of the concepts from the 13th and 14th centuries
were considered useful and adopted by the nascent bourgeoisie. This is
regardless of the actual fidelity to the doctrines in question, which were
almost always distorted according to the needs of different societies in
different eras.
Scholasticism
Scholasticism had the task of understanding the Revealed Truth through rational
activity. Not trusting reason alone, it also appealed to religious tradition and
authorities: the decision of a council, the writings of a Church Father, a
biblical saying. If this was a limitation, it was also a virtue. It manifested
the common and nonindividual character of the research, proven by the fact that
the writings were often not signed. On this we are in complete agreement:
intellectual property is the most despicable form of private property, which
deprives the human species of the use of its best results. Even in this, we have
not invented anything. We have recovered, dialectically, a part of our
history – the history of the species—a history that, as we have already written,
we claim in its entirety from the club to the missile.
With Augustine of Tagaste, Neoplatonism became the philosophical basis of
Christianity. Neoplatonism, along with Stoicism, remained at the foundation of
Christianity for about eight centuries, until the rediscovery of Aristotle in
the 13th century.
The Rediscovery of Aristotle
In 1210, the Provincial Council of Paris banned the philosophical writings of
Aristotle. Only with Albertus Magnus of Cologne and Thomas Aquinas was
Aristotelianism incorporated into the Christian vision. Thomas purged Aristotle
of everything that was in contrast with the Christian religion. It then became
the supporting philosophical structure, the official doctrine of the Catholic
Church.
The Church adapted to a world that saw the birth of a new class – the
bourgeoisie – and the slow decline of feudalism and its ideological bases.
"Thomism" was the ideology of a still feudal world, but to a lesser extent than
the previous one.
What is obvious, but only for us Marxists, is that these conceptions did not
transform their world but were a reflection of such transformations.
The interest in the investigation of nature, stimulated by Aristotelian texts,
was a step towards the claim of greater autonomy by the nascent bourgeoisie.
This movement fostered autonomy and selfconfidence against the Augustinian
tradition, which considered knowledge of the world to be of minimal importance.
Since God was within man, true knowledge was considered internal.
Furthermore, Aristotle’s reasoning in terms of cause and effect led to viewing
the cosmos as governed by necessary laws. In some authors, these laws could be
identified with God himself – a God different from that of the biblical tradition,
because necessity denied him omnipotence and absolute freedom. To the point of
making him a "useless hypothesis", as in the response attributed to Laplace
towards Napoleon.
Knowledge of Aristotle’s "Politics" was important in the second half of the 13th
century. Here, we find that human communities are governed by their own
laws – laws of nature – without the need to introduce divine law. If in previous
centuries the law of nature was part of divine law, now it gained its own, more
or less broad, autonomy. Thomas Aquinas himself, for whom the important thing is
the relationship between man and God and who considered the relationship between
men among themselves to be of little importance, accepted Aristotle as he was
with regard to politics.
There is therefore a sphere – politics – governed entirely by the law of nature,
where it is not necessary to introduce divine law.
A few centuries later, the bourgeoisie took possession of a very limited and
unimportant "right of nature". They expanded it enormously and made it their own
revolutionary ideology. This is attributable to a class reality that overwhelms
and distorts, along with the old world, also the old ideologies. In the ethics
and politics of Aristotle, the bourgeoisie of the 14th and 15th centuries, while
certainly remaining Christian, found a way to affirm partial autonomy with
respect to the Church and the feudal world it represented.
Averroes and "Free Thought"
Ibn Rushd, called Averroes by the Latins, was born in Cordova in 1126. He was a
doctor, philosopher, and jurist. The myth of an Averroes who was a rationalist
if not an atheist has survived to this day. He supported a rigid distinction
between the sphere of faith and the sphere of reason. The theory of the "double
truth" was suited to the bourgeoisie. While as Christians they condemned lending
at interest – always considered usury – bourgeois bankers or merchants, they
practiced it.
We Marxists agree with Averroes: for us too, "right reason illuminates right
faith and vice versa". Our science, without our communist faith, would be
nothing. It is not even possible to separate them, except by making an
abstraction. Faith and communist sentiment without science are blind and
destined to fail. A Marxist science, separated from communist faith and
sentiment, would resemble a Golem. Like the Golem of Central European Jewish
tradition, it would be directionless – a sort of phantom pure science or pure
technique destined to turn against its creator.
Averroism in the Christian world was a conception held by some philosophers,
useful to the nascent bourgeoisie. For them, the rigid separation between the
sphere of reason and the sphere of faith – between the investigation of nature and
revealed truth – was an instrument to affirm autonomy between the "earthly city"
and the "city of God". All this meant greater autonomy of the bourgeoisie from
the power of the Church and from the feudal relationships it embodied. In
Aristotle, Al Farabi, and Averroes, happiness consists in attaining knowledge
and therefore contemplation. Now, contemplation becomes proper to the "city of
God", while knowledge increasingly aims at the "earthly city" – politics and the
production of wealth.
Occam and Nominalism
In his polemic against Aristotelian and Neoplatonic metaphysics, Occam goes so
far as to deny the very principle of causality. While this aspect does not
advance science, experimentalism does, as it takes the place of the apriorism of
Platonic ideas and Aristotelian categories. What the bourgeoisie adopted was not
the denial of the principle of causality, and only partly experimentalism, but
the nominalism at its basis.
The "nominalists" deny reality to universal concepts, considering them mere
concepts, verbal forms, signs. Science no longer has the universal as its object
but the individual, whose knowledge can only be founded on experience.
Nominalism is a step in the direction of materialism.
Averroism and Occamism led an attack, from two opposite sides, on Scholasticism,
contributing to its dissolution. Occamism, with its nominalism and the
importance attributed to experience, was the more disruptive of the two.
Individualism, which Occam also takes from Duns Scotus, was certainly the main
aspect adopted by a bourgeoisie that was uninterested in other aspects of his
thought. Connected to Occam’s nominalism are also his political conceptions,
adopted by the bourgeoisie, according to which the Church must not have claims
of temporal dominion. The rigid separation of the plane of faith from that of
reason translates into a pro imperial position. It also leads to a position
where truth no longer resides in the Church understood as hierarchy or in the
pontiff, but in the Church understood as the totality of believers – a totality
formed by the reality of individual Christians. Such conceptions were functional
to all the classes that could not stand the feudal structure of society: to the
bourgeoisie as well as to poor peasants, and sometimes even to kings and nobles
in conflict with ecclesiastical power.
(Continued to next issue)
To the Readers
The change of the masthead of this newspaper was not of our own choosing, nor
was it due to even the slightest need for discontinuity or rectification with
what has been published in the past and throughout the party press, which we
totally claim. The fact is that, as a result of an outflow of one group from the
party, we lost the bourgeois ownership of the masthead of our Italianlanguage
newspaper, “Il Partito Comunista”. And we want to keep the same title for the
party organs in all languages.
To the motives of those who wanted to take a different path – among them the
inescapable questions of organic centralism and union address – we are not here
to give contradiction or rebuttal: the answer is written in clear letters in all
the columns of fifty years of our newspapers and will be confirmed in the
studies and deepenings we will continue to expound in our meetings
and publish in the issues to come.