FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!International Communist Workers Party |
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We thank the comrade who contributed this article and hope that others will also write about this topic. Please send contributions to ICWP@anonymousspeech.com
June 30 -- The writing is on the wall. The Brexit vote, or the vote for Britain to leave the European Union (EU), tells us that day-to-day life under "austerity programs" is creating an ungovernable working class, a class capable of being racist or revolutionary. It is a nightmare for the capitalists because, given the economic crisis that grips the world, all they can offer us is "austerity programs" (layoffs and cutbacks) and war.
Their horror becomes our opportunity. It allows us to address an enlivened working class (everyone is talking about it) about the deadly limits of democracy. It strengthens our call for building a revolutionary communist share-and-share-alike alternative.
Amid all the media hype it is easy to forget, the masses only voted for Britain to leave the European Union. It hasn't left yet!
In fact, it is going to take at least two years of negotiations where the experts decide what the masses actually meant by their vote. And these negotiations will be carried out by bureaucrats dedicated to serving the almighty profit needs of bankers and captains of industry. They will be carried out away from the glare of the media and we, the masses, will not be invited or consulted. Democracy is a system of capitalist class rule, not mass rule.
The communist world we are beginning to build calls on mobilizing the masses to get rid of money and profits (which are always private and hidden). It calls on organizing society based on our commitments to one another. We need to be active (organizing, mobilizing), not passive (voting)!
We have no power in "Democracy." The Brexit campaign shows us that. Well over $200 million (in austerity governed Britain) was poured directly into the referendum. The masses, did not supply that money, the capitalists did. They did not develop the arguments, the political establishment did. They did not generate the talking points, the media did. In short, the masses did not frame the issues. They had no dog in this fight.
They only were assigned one crucial role: they were asked to endorse the whole (capitalist) package by putting an x in one box or another. Choose the EU style of austerity (vote "REMAIN" and get treated like the workers in Greece) or choose the Brexit style of austerity (vote "LEAVE" and get treated like the workers in Greece but wrapped in a British flag). The ballot box is participatory in form but not in content! The ballot box is not political activity, it is political passivity. Democracy is a system of capitalist class rule, not mass rule.
Communist society won't need a box with a slit in it placed behind a drawn curtain to show our commitment to one another! We'll build an open society and put the ballot box in a museum. It will be an exhibit of capitalism a society run on secrecy, deceit and distrust of one another! Who needs a ballot box when we can raise our hand and be open about our opinions because we are building a share-and-share alike society?
But to the horror of the main wing of the British ruling class the masses did not follow the complete script. They voted the "LEAVE" racist card not the "REMAIN" racist card! They voted to protest the bosses opening of 'humanitarian' borders to rescue of millions of refugees (from US and European supported racist wars). The "REMAIN" racist card wanted to use the mass of refugees to compete against and lower the wages of workers in Europe. Capitalism needs racism so that it can pit worker against worker.
However, in thinking democracy and racism could deliver any sort of control over their lives, the British workers made a great mistake.
The day after the vote, the Airbus group (a joint European aircraft building company) in Wales warned its workers that unless they remained 'competitive' (i.e. work harder and faster and cheaper) the company could leave Britain!
In other words, if a stronger Brexit border prevented a mass of refugees entering Britain and being used to lower wages in manufacturing then the company would move to where it could exploit the misery of the refugees. Democracy is a system of racism and capitalist class rule, not mass rule.
The Brexit vote took place in Britain but the issues involved in it, the passion and anger it showed are common the world over. And so are the lessons. "If voting changed anything (for the better)," the saying goes, "they would have outlawed it by now!" And that saying is just as true today.
In the US as the capitalist class prepares to spend at least $5 billion just on the upcoming Presidential elections we must learn the lessons of the Brexit vote:
Democracy is a system of capitalist class rule, not mass rule.
Don't vote, mobilize the masses for Communism.
Join the International Communist Workers’ Party!
July 2-- The British vote to leave the European Union (“Brexit”) is both a result of global capitalist crisis and a cause of the sharpening of that crisis. It heightens the danger of imperialist war and expands opportunities for communist revolution.
Brexit demands that we redouble our efforts to mobilize masses everywhere for communism.
The masses can’t live in the old way. Incredibly, 65.3 million people are refugees today: one person out of every 123 in the world. One in ten lacks clean water – 75.8 million in India alone. One of us out of every nine does not get enough food. Most live in countries ravaged by imperialism. One in five of our class sisters and brothers lacks adequate housing.
We don’t have to live like this. And we don’t have to live in the “old way” -- capitalism never met the needs of the masses. Workers produce everything. When we break the chains of capitalism’s wage slavery we can produce and share everything we need.
That means communist social relations of production. We must organize ourselves as a mass international party that collectively makes and carries out all decisions in the best interest of the world’s workers.
Communism means no racism. The Brexit vote mobilized a significant section of the working class around anti-immigrant nationalism and racism – against its own class interest.
In contrast, communism unites the working class. It fights all divisions by “race” and nation, gender and religion. A communist world will have no borders!
Marx noted 150 years ago that the English rulers did all they could to divide English from Irish workers, much as white and black workers were divided in the US. “It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power,” he wrote. They’re still doing it.
But British workers also have a proud history of anti-racism. Lancashire millworkers boycotted cotton picked by enslaved persons in the US. Workers led the Anti-Nazi League. British workers joined the anti-Apartheid movement. Recently, thousands have brought supplies to refugees trapped in Calais, France.
Mass mobilization for communism will create the material basis for ending racism and nationalism forever. Conscious communist-led mass struggle against the racist remnants of capitalist society will finish the job.
No borders. No nations. No refugees. Instead: One International Communist Workers’ Party.
The rulers can’t rule in the same old way. “Brexit accentuates and deepens global forces that have been building for years,” wrote New York Times analyst Neil Irwin. “Governments have been unable to limit any of it. And those forces have self-reinforcing, vicious-cycle dimensions that make it a particularly perilous time for the global economy.”
Capitalist competition inevitably leads to global crises of overproduction. “There is a glut of global commodities, particularly oil,” wrote Irwin. “There is a glut of labor, with elevated unemployment in much of the world.”
Too much labor! In communism there will be no such thing. Everyone will work to produce things we need or want, to take care of each other, to strengthen social bonds and to expand the realms of human creativity.
Capitalism’s inner logic demands ever-more-rapid growth. But the global economy is slowing down. World capitalists have not been able to stimulate it with low interest rates and monetary policy. Brexit could intensify these trends. It has already thrown currency and financial markets into turmoil.
Communism has no use for money and markets. Money allows a handful of capitalists to extract unheard-of wealth from workers’ labor. Worldwide, 62 individuals at the top today own more than the 3.7 billion people at the bottom!
Ruling elites worldwide and their politicians are desperate to corral angry and alienated workers and youth. In communism we will share according to need. There will be no elites and no alienation.
Sharpening inter-imperialist competition means world war sooner than you might think. “Is the post-1945 order imposed on the world by the United States and its allies unraveling, too?” asked the New York Times. Brexit suggests “the potential for a reordering of power, economic relationships, borders and ideologies around the globe.”
In short: the potential for World War III.
Brexit makes the world less stable. The EU is already weaker. It may become more so as other extreme nationalists (some backed by Moscow) are emboldened.
It’s not clear which British capitalists-imperialists (if any) would actually benefit from Brexit. If they decide they won’t, they’ll find an excuse not to carry out the threat to leave the EU.
Great Britain was formed when England, Scotland and Wales united in 1707, joined by Ireland in 1801. The Irish Free State seceded in 1922. Scotland narrowly defeated secession two years ago. If Britain leaves the EU, Scotland may well leave Britain.
Brexit is a setback for US imperialists. The disintegration of the EU would be a geopolitical disaster for them. But a united EU without Britain might organize an army outside of NATO.
Brexit has already undermined the US diplomatic “pivot to Asia Pacific.” That makes US military presence there even more important. It increases the likelihood of a confrontation with China.
China stands to gain from Brexit and the trouble it is causing the US. It may be better able to play off Britain against Germany. But it is less able to count on the EU as a counterweight against the US. Again this raises the specter of war.
Russian capitalists are also likely winners. Russia Times openly encouraged Brexit. An EU without Britain is less likely to enforce sanctions on Russia. Russia hopes that European turmoil will weaken NATO.
A non-EU Britain will likely strengthen economic ties to Russia. But Europe is Russia’s main trading partner, and deepening economic crisis in the EU could hurt Russian capitalists.
US rulers, seeing a weaker Europe, might try harder to build direct relationships with Ukraine and Central Asia. This would increase the chance of a US-Russia military confrontation.
In this period of global “reordering of power” it is all the more important to organize for communism inside the bosses’ militaries as well as in the factories, the schools and the streets.
Brexit is revealing the emergence of an objectively revolutionary situation worldwide. Communist revolution is the only way out of the bosses’ crisis. But no revolution can happen without the consciously communist organization of the masses.
Join the ICWP and do your part to turn the bosses’ crises and wars into mass mobilization for communism!