FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
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November 18—As the news broke last Friday of the horrific attacks on civilians in Paris, French President Hollande said they were attacks “against France, against the values that we defend everywhere in the world.” US President Obama called them an attack on the “universal values that we share.”
What Values?
Capitalism values profit over human life. It is based on exploitation. It grinds the masses into poverty while a few live in luxury. Capitalist competition teaches selfishness and individualism. It requires racism for maximum profit and to maintain the rule of the few over the many. Its insatiable thirst for profits leads to a crisis of overproduction—trade wars leading to shooting wars, death and destruction.
The history of French colonialism and imperialism, from Vietnam to Haiti, from Syria to Algeria, from Rwanda to Senegal, from the docks of Marseille to the banlieus of Paris, shows us that racist exploitation is the key value that the French ruling class has defended. US capitalism, based on the genocide of Native Americans and the holocaust of African slavery, was built on the same values of racism and exploitation.
ISIS calls Paris the capital of vice, claiming to represent different values. And while stoning adulterers and other medieval punishments imply rigid moral judgments, ISIS shares a key value with French and US capitalists: the murder of innocent civilians in the pursuit of conquest.
ISIS justified its attacks by referring the dead—including immigrants from Turkey and a young Mexican-American woman from California—as “crusaders.”( The Crusades were racist military campaigns pushed by the popes between 1095 and 1291 to conquer the “Holy Land” from Muslim rulers).
The US refers to the thousands of civilians killed in its drone strikes against Al Qaeda as “collateral damage.” Neither values human life.
The capitalist media echo this racist disregard for the masses. Both France 24 and CNN referred to the November 13 attacks as the worst violence in France since World War II. This lie ignores the racist murder by the French police of more than 200 Algerians in Paris in 1961, during a massive street protest for Algerian independence.
War & Racism vs. Militant Solidarity
Like the US rulers after 9/11, the French rulers are using the attacks to build racism, war, and a police state. Soccer games and vigils include the French national anthem, which ends with a racist call to war: “Let their impure blood run in our furrows.” Hollande has ordered the bombing of the ISIS capital Raqqa, Syria and called for a permanent state of emergency in France. Ten thousand soldiers have occupied Paris.
The US CIA Director has called for increased surveillance of texts and emails. Thirty out of 50 state governors have announced that they will not accept Syrian refugees. Presidential hopefuls Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush have called for limiting immigration to Christians only.
The Obama White House, while tweeting #RefugeesWelcome, has its own refugee crisis. Central Americans fleeing the violence that US imperialism has created are turned back in Mexico or locked up in detention centers in the US.
Many have questioned the racist disregard for other victims of terrorism and the scapegoating of Syrians and Muslims: “Where was the Facebook overlay for Kenya when 147 students were killed by Al-Shabab in Garrisa in April?” “What about the Beirut bombings where 41 people died on November 12?” “Never forget the US refusal to admit Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939!”
Communist Values
Communism values human life—not profit, power, or property. It is based on cooperation, and working together to produce what we need. Cooperation requires and acting together for the whole human family once the bosses have been defeated. It means fighting against anything that divides us, including sexism, racism, borders, religious and ethnic prejudice.
When anti-Muslim fascists invaded a vigil in Lille, north of Paris, with a banner calling for the expulsion of Muslims, mourners sent them running. The police had to intervene to prevent these National Front fascists from getting their due.
The mourners in Lille and the masses in Europe who welcomed migrants this fall demonstrate a key communist value—working class solidarity.
This militant solidarity shows the potential for a communist world. But it won’t happen automatically. We must take our communist vision to the masses, increase the distribution of this newspaper, and build Party clubs and cells that can lead the struggle for a world organized by communist values.
This will guarantee that the call to battle for the world’s workers won’t be any racist bosses’ national hymn but that of the international working class: The International.
It is a gift from the French working class. It was born out of the struggle that established the Paris Commune, the first time in history that the working class took state power.
In this tradition, and mobilizing the masses for communism, we will build a communist world where, as our hymn says: “The international working class shall be the human race!”