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War in Ukraine: Smash imperialists, nationalism, & democracy!
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- 23 March 2022 126 hits
“The first casualty of war is truth.”
With Ukraine on fire and Russia and NATO flexing their military forces within a handful of miles of one another, the capitalist bosses of the world are accelerating their momentum toward global war. None of the top imperialist powers—the United States, Russia, and China—are in total control over what happens next in Ukraine. Their desperation to protect their power and profits makes this a dangerous and volatile period for our class. As the rival rulers use their media as capitalist propaganda to rally workers around democracy and nationalism, their tools for racism and worldwide devastation, we must use our communist tools—including CHALLENGE—to combat them. Our rallying cry is for international working-class consciousness and solidarity. Our marching orders are to turn the guns around, to transform inter-imperialist war into communist revolution. Then we will have the opportunity to create the world the working class deserves, a society run by workers to meet workers’ needs—communism.
Slippery slope to World War III
The post-Vietnam decline of the U.S. ruling class, as evidenced by their debacles in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, has opened the door for the Russian imperialists to push the limits of their power through the invasion of Ukraine. President Joe Biden’s response—to revive NATO and other U.S. alliances with sanctions against Russia and arms shipments to Ukraine—has had mixed results. “The giants of the Global South – including India, Brazil, and South Africa – are hedging their bets while China still publicly backs Putin” (Washington Post, 3/10). Even Mexico is proving an unreliable U.S. ally as it keeps its doors open to a tightening Russia-China alignment (Reuters, 3/4).
On top of its weakening international ties, the U.S. ruling class is dealing with a deepening internal division between its two factions: the “Big Fascists” of finance capital and the more domestically oriented “Small Fascists” (See glossary, page 6). Finance capital’s fear of ceding power to the bosses who control domestic oil and gas has been exposed by their attempts to ease an international oil shortage by resurrecting relations with bitter adversaries like Venezuela and Iran (Washington Post, 3/7). But while the rulers’ loyalties bend as they lurch from one crisis to the next, one thing never changes. We know that none of these bosses—not the market capitalists in the U.S., not the state capitalists in Russia, not the profit-hungry bloodsuckers in Mexico or Venezuela or Iran—will hesitate to slaughter workers if it serves their interests.
It remains uncertain as to whether the imperialist war in Ukraine will become the first shots of World War III. But it’s safe to say that weakness and divisions in the U.S. ruling class are increasing the possibility of a much larger war, with nuclear weapons now openly on the table (New York Times, 3/13). China’s invasion of Taiwan and a move to take over the oil-rich South China Sea seem all but inevitable, leaving the U.S. bosses two bad choices: a war for which they're not prepared, or a surrender of the strategically vital “Indo-Pacific.” In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are moving more closely toward China, from trade deals to arms purchases (al-monitor.com, 3/14).
Though world events may seem more volatile and unpredictable by the day, two things are clear. The first is that no empire has ever relinquished global supremacy without resorting to war. The second is that a worldwide communist revolution can put an end to the bosses’ wars once and for all.
Blood, gas, and precious metals
Make no mistake about it! This latest bloodbath in Ukraine is just one more example of capitalist global competition over the transport and exploitation of natural resources. The bosses are always willing to sacrifice our class for their profits. In addition to Ukraine’s untapped reserves of natural gas, the second largest in Europe, the country contains vast quantities of lithium (third-most in the world), gallium (second-most), and titanium (20 percent of total world reserves). All of these metals are critical to capitalist commercial and military technologies and development.
Lithium is essential to the shift to electric vehicles. Titanium ores are required for airplane and aerospace construction. Gallium is vital to the development of 5G networks, military radar, lasers, and satellites. Classed as a national security concern by the U.S. government, 95 percent of the world’s gallium is currently extracted in China (Fierce Electronics, July 2019). Further, the Patriot Missile Defense Systems that NATO has activated to assist Ukraine in its war with Russia were upgraded with gallium semiconductors (Breaking Defense, 2/20/15). These resources are used to line the capitalists’ pockets and gain an advantage over rival rulers. We cannot let the bosses spill workers’ blood to secure them!
Nationalism, death trap for workers
Nationalism is a crucial tool for the bosses’ bloody war plans. The ruling class attempts to win workers to unite based on capitalist borders. This sets workers against their class sisters and brothers, those who share their same interests: the international working class.
In the few weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, workers in the U.S. have been deluged by commercials and billboards to “Stand with Ukraine.” U.S. schoolchildren are urged to dress in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. But we know that workers living in Russia are no more our enemies than Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky is our friend.
As imperialist powers jockey for global control, they will demand our blood to stay on top. The demonstrations of workers in Russia and the U.S. show us the potential for working-class solidarity in response to this death trap. We call on workers from Ukraine and Russia to turn imperialist war into a class war for communism just as the Bolsheviks did more than 100 years ago! We call on the rest of the world’s workers to join them. Only as one united class can we realize the true aspirations of working people everywhere: communism and an end to imperialist wars for all time. Join us!
March 15, NEWARK, NJ — A multiracial group of workers stormed Newark's liberal fascist Mayor Ras Baraka's 'State of the City' address to demand the release of political prisoner Justin Rodwell. The group made demands that all the charges and harassment against the Rodwell-Spivey family CEASE. PL’ers and friends declared there ARE NO GOOD MAYORS, COPS, OR POLITICIANS in a RACIST SYSTEM! The only way to make attacks against our class by liberal misleaders like Baraka is to build toward communist revolution. Read more in demonstration in the next issue of CHALLENGE.
NEW YORK CITY, March 6–—The job of communists is to link workers’ struggles, making it clear that the international working class has one enemy—capitalism and its defenders. This is why we chanted “Imperialist war means—Fight Back!” across the Brooklyn Bridge with 1,000 people marching for funding for the City University of New York (CUNY).
On the bullhorn and as we talked with our students and coworkers, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) contingent connected the racist budget cuts at CUNY with the imperialist war unfolding in Ukraine; both are aspects of the profit system. Our friends also read our vision for the future in the pages of the 200 copies of CHALLENGE that were distributed: revolutionary war to end this system and replace it with communism.
Gotta be in the class struggle
Across all five boroughs and on many campuses across CUNY, we’ve been building a base for communist revolution with students and workers. We’ve fought for lower tuition, for more funding, and against war criminal David Petraeus. During the pandemic we’ve fought, for better health and safety measures, for lower online class size and to prevent CUNY from unfairly taking money from students who failed to adhere to CUNY’s confusing and arbitrary vaccine policy.
Even as we’ve fought for these reforms with our students and coworkers, we’ve struggled to make communist politics, such as the unity of all workers regardless of “race” or “nationality,” primary.
The hard work that we’ve been doing over many months and years was evident, as we were able to organize a sizable contingent of over 15 to attend the demonstration. The ride to the march was an opportunity, not only to connect the Russian invasion of Ukraine to our fight at CUNY, but also for discussion about where our struggles have gotten us, the possibilities and limits of these fights, and whether we need a different kind of fight—one that attacks the
capitalist system itself.
The best possible ending
At the march, we joined with a more militant section of education workers who have rejected the union leadership’s dead-end politics: call on legislators to “do the right thing.”
Instead, the chants coming from our section of the march ended with “Strike! Strike! Strike!”
A strike at CUNY would represent a significant sharpening of the class struggle and give us a tremendous opportunity to put forward a revolutionary line. The antiracist class consciousness of these militant education workers was also on full display, as they linked the financial attack on CUNY with an incident at Queens College, where racist graffiti was found on a campus building. We’ve been active with these education workers for many years and will continue to do so as the campaign for our next contract heats up.
The day ended on the best possible note: one of our students decided to become a member of PLP and join the fight for communism! This is most critical. We need to be active in reform fights, and we need to push these fights to be as sharp as possible.
But most importantly, as we fight alongside our students and coworkers, we need to struggle to win them to see that only destroying this system and replacing it with workers’ power will secure the future that we need.
Today we have one more member who will make this fight their own. Will you be next?
LOS ANGELES, March 6—Recently, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) held a forum about inter-imperialist rivalry, capitalism, and impending World War III (WWIII). About 20 comrades and friends, including members of impacted families whose loved ones were killed by police, came out to a neighborhood park. The forum was very active and rich in discussion about inter-imperialist rivalry as a basis of capitalist wars (see editorial on page 2) Only communist revolution where the international working class turns the guns around can resolve this dangerous competition over land, profit, and power between the world’s imperialist powers.
We started with a brief overview of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and a beginning definition of imperialism. Then we broke up into smaller groups to discuss more in depth, referencing recent articles about Ukraine from CHALLENGE, excerpts about soldiers rebelling in Vietnam, and a timeline of events leading up to the current war in Ukraine.
People in the group thought the discussion about imperialism and the threat of WWIII was particularly relevant given the current war between Russia and Ukraine. The workshop leader began with a detailed explanation of what imperialism is. It is not just one country taking over land of another, but can also mean economic imperialism, which is investment of capital in other countries. It also involves the fight over labor markets and resources.
After reading an editorial about Russia and Ukraine, the discussion started off with a local tenant declaring about imperialism, “It is for the rich, not the poor. They want to stomp us like cockroaches but they need workers to struggle and fight in their wars.” This led to a discussion of whether war ever benefits the working class and how to end imperialist war.
People had questions about how we can make a communist revolution and we talked about the Russian soldiers refusing to fight in World War I and turning that war into the Bolshevik revolution. We also talked about how U.S. soldiers in Vietnam rebelling, refusing to fight, and killing their officers is what led to the U.S. imperialists ending their war against Vietnam. Our discussion made clear the necessity of winning soldiers as well as masses of other workers to make a communist revolution.
One of the main lessons of the forum was the importance of doing work in mass organizations and the opportunities it presents for us. During the monthly Flores Fight Back action we passed out a leaflet linking the struggle against police violence with the struggle against imperialist war. The leaflet included an invitation to the forum and we also announced it during the speeches. As a direct result of our work with a group of tenants struggling to get repairs made to their apartments, one comrade met a young volunteer who, the comrade learned during their conversation, considers himself a communist.
The comrade invited the volunteer and his brother to the forum. They both came and participated vigorously in their workshop. One even volunteered to be on our May Day Committee. Everyone who attended was eager to continue these discussions and be involved in more actions. On to May Day!
WASHINGTON, DC, March 11 – Following an October overnight protest at the home of Jeffrey Zients, Counselor to President Joe Biden, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members joined a protest this week calling out Zients Joe Biden’s new blood soaked Covid-Czar. The march, organized by Justice is Global, Public Health Awakened, and R2H (Right to Health), denounced the COVAX program, the disastrous U.S. led global vaccine distribution and development initiative. With 18.2 million Covid-19 related deaths worldwide as a result of the vaccine apartheid (Washington Post, 3/14) and only 12 percent in many of small capitalist countries having been vaccinated( ourworldindata.org).
As we marched against Zients, Biden, and capitalist disregard overall, we took aim at the entire system of U.S. imperialism and its racist sexist healthcare system. As long as the fate of the world rests in the hands of imperialist butchers and profit hungry bosses, misery and death will continue to rain down on workers across the globe. Smashing capitalism is not just a moral imperative; it’s a life and death battle. Now more than ever we need communism, a system that is run by working people for the benefit of all. Under communism the core values of health and science care will put human life and progress at the forefront, and will be available to all. Money and the profit incentive will be eradicated along with preventable deaths from treatable illnesses.
A PL’er addressed the rally by linking the racist vaccination policy failures to capitalism and rising imperialism. She pointed out that the U.S. oligarch Bill Gates, in keeping with capitalism’s profits-only goal, fought to keep the profits flowing to the drug companies by limiting the Covid-19 vaccine supply and refusing to make the mRNA vaccine recipe available to the world.
Several additional people joined us at the rally and were introduced to PLP with our revolutionary newspaper, CHALLENGE. PLP members have been working with these organizations as well as the American Public Health Association to build international solidarity and raise revolutionary politics (see CHALLENGE, 11/17/21 and CHALLENGE Letters, 3/2).
Some demonstrators and members of these organizations have illusions that we can pressure politicians into serving the working class. In reality, these cronies, Democrats and Republicans alike, are controlled by the U.S. financial oligarchs and pharmaceutical corporations and will never seek to do right by our class.
Never-the-less we fight back. We are still planning to attack the pharmaceutical companies directly with a rally in Boston at Moderna headquarters in late April.
We continue to demand that the TRIPS Agreement waiver and technology transfer (a waiver that would temporarily waive intellectual property rights protections for technologies needed to prevent, contain, or treat Covid-19, including vaccines) be approved so that there can be worldwide capacity to respond to epidemics without companies like Moderna and Pfizer amassing huge profits by selling vaccines only to rich countries.
Other speakers described the risk of new Covid variants without widespread vaccinations. One worker movingly read an organizer’s account of the impact of Covid-19 on her life as a disabled person who has lost friends because they disagree with her safety requests (masks and vaccination). Others described the struggles of health workers, the fights to keep schools safe, and international lives lost without vaccinations. The pandemic has been so politicized that public health for everyone, already a pipe-dream under capitalism, has been compromised.
At the rally, a large prescription poster calling for firing Jeffrey Zients and replacing him with a public health expert was erected next to a giant report card giving him an F for public safety but an A+ for supporting corporate interests!
Several cardboard bottles called for PUBLIC HEALTH not PROFIT. The rally ended with a two-minute die-in complete with gravestones to commemorate two-years since the Covid-19 pandemic struck the U.S.
As similar protests were held simultaneously in many cities and towns in the U.S. and internationally, we as PLP members take a moment to remind ourselves and our comrades that under capitalism there is no just healthcare or equitable care for the working class. It is only under communism, where medicine and its supporting systems are built to put the patient not profit first will we ever truly know health. Fight for communism, power to the working class!
