Contents "The internationalist proletarian" n.14
Workers of the world, unite!
TO PUT AN END TO WARS, WE MUST PUT AN END TO CAPITALISM!
War is the capitalist solution to its crisis
It has been almost two years since the CARNAGE in Ukraine began and one year since the MASSACRE in Gaza, while multiple other less mediatic conflicts are being carried out in today's capitalist world. It would be extremely BLIND to try to understand these conflicts by considering them only on their local scale, and even more to try to look for a “solution” on that scale. These conflicts are determined by the intersection of the necessary processes of concurrence between the different imperialisms on a world scale.
The accumulation of intertwined imperialist interests that collide and explode in the form of armed conflicts, takes place in the framework of the processes that determine the current period, once the cycle of bourgeois anti-colonial revolutions in Asia and Africa has been finished and the extension of capitalism on a world scale has culminated: the displacement of the center of gravity of capitalism to Asia, the rupture of the division of the world and the crisis of overproduction.
These processes determine, among other things, the displacement of the US by other imperialisms and its withdrawal from several of its areas of influence, the exacerbation of the trade war, the trend towards intra and interregional interconnection, the irruption of alterations in trade routes and the supply chain in an attempt to contain the avalanche of commodities and counteract the quicksand of overproduction, their materialization in military conflicts for the moment localized but with an unquestionably international and worldwide participation and impact.
Both the rupture of the division of the world and the crisis of relative overproduction of capitals lead the capitalist world towards imperialist war; it is not a question of the madness of one or another puppet but of the essence of the capitalist solution to the crisis: "And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced DESTRUCTION of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the CONQUEST of new markets, and by the more thorough EXPLOITATION of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented." (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848).
The macabre game of the various imperialisms
Some imperialisms and others act pushed by material determinations in defense of their interests, but the results of the actions of one or the other often produce effects different from those expected, without being able to stop in their uncontrolled race to displace their rivals.
The war in Ukraine was prepared by the US with the intention of breaking the connections between the EU and Russia, with the aim of isolating and wearing down Russian imperialism at the same time as European imperialism, and to impose itself a posteriori on the exhausted contenders (as it did in the two world wars). It was initiated by Russia with the intention of recovering its area of influence incited by the process of withdrawal of the US at world level. European imperialism tries to contain with it the push of Chinese and Russian imperialism. The Ukrainian and Russian proletariat is sacrificed at the front and subjected to redoubled exploitation in the rear, fighting and working for a cause which is that of their exploiters.
The massacre in Gaza was detonated as a means of slowing down the integration of Israel with the rest of the Middle East area, which was accelerating with the Abraham accords in the framework of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and practically from Iraq, the Iran-Saudi Arabia agreement under the auspices of China and the recognition of Israel by Saudi Arabia that was to be imminently announced. This integration process would leave without material basis several sectors on the Palestinian and Israeli sides: the administrators of the Gaza concentration camp (Hamas) and the Israeli faction currently ruling and linked to the ultra-Orthodox and the “colonists”. These factions are the ones that were pushed to try to stop this integration, some organizing the attack of October 7th in the territory of the current Israeli State and the others allowing this attack on the civilian population to develop without contention, in order to have the excuse to enter Gaza militarily and carry out the work of massacre and destruction that the Israeli Army has been carrying out since then. Both Hamas and the Israeli State have actively sabotaged any ceasefire, trying to extend the military escalation as far as possible (to Lebanon or directly with Iran), in order to keep alive the conflict that gives them their reason to exist. Each of the main imperialisms involved moves its pieces on that chessboard. The consequences are suffered by the proletariat from Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Iran and the rest of the area.
Wars are inevitable under capitalism
The role reserved for the proletariat in the bourgeois plot we have described and in the subsequent episodes is that of CANNON FODDER in the field of exploitation and on the war front, unless it rises up against the exploiters as a class for itself and not for capital, unless it resumes the class struggle and constitutes itself into International Communist Party.
Out of the First World War and in the heat of the October Revolution, the Communist International – organ for the international revolution – arose in 1919 and declared to the world proletariat:
"‘Remember the imperialist war!' These are the first words addressed by the Communist International to every working man and woman; wherever they live and whatever language they speak. Remember that because of the existence of capitalist society a handful of imperialists were able to force the workers of the different countries for four long years to cut each other's throats. Remember that the war of the bourgeoisie conjured up in Europe and throughout the world the most frightful famine and the most appalling misery. Remember that without the overthrow of capitalism the repetition of such robber wars is not only possible but inevitable. (...) The imperialist war once again confirmed what was written in the statutes of the First International: the EMANCIPATION OF THE WORKERS is not a local, nor a national, but an INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM." (Statutes of the Communist International, II Congress, 1920).
This International suffered a serious degeneration over a short period by committing a series of errors: tactical (political united front, 1921), tactical-programmatic (workers' government, 1922), and organizational (the incorrectly termed 'Bolshevization,' 1924). These errors ultimately led to the Stalinist counterrevolution ('socialism in one country' or the claim that socialism existed in Russia, 1926). These errors destroyed the International itself, turning it into a subsidiary subordinated to the needs of capitalism’s construction in Russia. In 1943, in the middle of World War II, Stalinism dissolved its corpse as an offering to better divide Europe and the world with the rest of the imperialist powers.
Without the complete and definitive overcoming of these tactical-programmatic-organizational errors the resumption of the class line, of the International Communist Party, is impossible.
Without the reappropriation of the Marxist program and theory there is no alternative to the macabre script reconstruction-overproduction-crisis-war-destruction: "without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement." (Lenin, What is to be done?, 1903).
Any pacifist illusion in a capitalism without wars is a SOCIAL STUPEFACIENT that delivers the proletariat bound hand and foot to its bourgeoisie at the moment of truth:
"Only by cursing all war and everything military, only be demanding disarmament? The women of an oppressed and really revolutionary class will never accept that shameful role. They will say to their sons: “You will soon be grown up. You will be given a gun. Take it and learn the military art properly. The proletarians need this knowledge not to shoot your brothers, the workers of other countries, as is being done in the present war, and as the traitors to socialism are telling you to do. They need it to fight the bourgeoisie of their own country, to put an end to exploitation, poverty and war, and not by pious wishes, but by defeating and disarming the bourgeoisie.” (.....) Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before." (The Military Program of the Proletarian Revolution, Lenin, 1916).
The proletarian alternative to war is the anti-capitalist social revolution
The militant communist position is that of REVOLUTIONARY DEFEATISM, the transformation of imperialist war into revolutionary civil war: "The proletariat must not only oppose all such wars, but must also wish for the defeat of its 'own' government in such wars and utilize its defeat for revolutionary insurrection, if an insurrection to prevent the war proves unsuccessful." (The Military Program of the Proletarian Revolution, Lenin, 1916).
A part of opportunism would like to make us choose between the US, the EU, Russia, China, Iran, etc. We must reject this trap, which is the same as always. The lesson of 1871, when Prussia liberated the French army to massacre the Paris Commune, is valid today at world level: all the armies of the world are confederated against the proletariat.
Just as in the heart of every petty bourgeois beats the ambition and greed of big capital, in the heart of all the anti-imperialist bourgeoisies of yesterday beats the imperialist ambition and greed of their colonialist oppressors of yesterday. The areas that were the scene of this bourgeois anti-colonial struggle are now an integral part of the world market and the bourgeoisies that dominate in them play a role of their own in the war for the domination of the world market and the distribution of the exploitation of the world proletariat. The position of Marxism was established for the entire current historical cycle after the social-chauvinist betrayal that led to the bankruptcy of the 2nd International: “(…) picture to yourselves a slave-owner who owned 100 slaves warring against a slave-owner who owned 200 slaves for a more “just” distribution of slaves. Clearly, the application of the term “defensive” war, or war “for the defense of the fatherland” in such a case would be historically false, and in practice would be sheer deception of the common people, of philistines, of ignorant people, by the astute slaveowners. (…) It is not the business of Socialists to help the younger and stronger robber to rob the older and overgorged robbers. Socialists must take advantage of the struggle between the robbers to overthrow them all.” (Socialism and War, Lenin, 1915).
For the resumption of the class struggle, for proletarian internationalism
National union is the grave of the working class: nationalism consigns us bound hand and foot to capitalist exploitation in times of commercial war and to the slaughterhouse as cannon fodder in times of military war. Any defense of one's own "fatherland" is a betrayal of the cause of the revolution: "The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got" (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848).
History offers only one way to eliminate all exploitations, all tyrannies and oppressions: the path of revolutionary class action which, in any country whatsoever, aligns the working class against the local bourgeoisie, with complete class autonomy in political thought, organization and behavior, in combat action; uniting the forces of the proletarians of the whole world across the frontiers of all countries - in "peace" and in war - in a unitary organism whose action will not stop until the complete annihilation of the institutions of capitalism.
The only way to oppose the wars that capitalism produces is the resumption of the class struggle against our ‘own’ bourgeoisie, the rupture of the national interclassist front (in the belligerent countries and in the rest). For this we need to fight against the organizational and ideological influence exerted by the bourgeoisie through state-integrated unionism and through parliamentarism, developing an extensive network of solidarity and struggle on the labor union level, outside the tentacles of the State, in which the International Communist Party has gained a decisive influence.
In order to carry out its historic mission, the working class needs the International Communist Party which should gather the most advanced and determined part of the proletariat, unifying the efforts of the proletarian masses, directing them from the struggle for contingent interests and results to the general struggle for the world revolution, for the transitory establishment of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat towards a classless society, without private property, without wage labor, without state, without mercantile and company regime.
The slogan of revolutionaries worldwide must be uncompromisingly and without exception:
- Rejection of all nationalism: “the working class has no country.”
- Rejection of solidarity with the corporate economy and with the "national" economy.
- Revolutionary defeatism against the bourgeoisie itself in times of commercial or military war.
- Joint and international organization of the proletarians of all languages in the International Communist Party for the COMMUNIST REVOLUTION ON A WORLD SCALE.