August 14 — “My wife and my co-worker are afraid of nuclear war with Korea, but I’m not,” said a Los Angeles MTA driver, taking Red Flag.
“We shouldn’t be afraid,” replied the comrade, “but we need to be prepared. The rulers’ wars are for world domination. We, the working class, have to be prepared for communist revolution. That’s how we’ll put an end to their system that makes war, including world war, inevitable.”
The worker nodded as he entered the MTA premises.
This conversation, and many more like it, show how the deepening crisis between the US and China/North Korea is providing an unprecedented opportunity to win masses of workers to communism.
Behind the Crisis: Imperialist Competition.
The US mass media portray the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as an irrational madman. Mass media elsewhere portray the US president Donald Trump similarly.
Behind the blustering and the military maneuvers, the real cause is a fight mainly among Chinese, Russian and US imperialists for control of the mineral-rich, heavily industrialized and strategic Korean peninsula.
Korea was ruled by Japan from 1910 to 1945. The day after dropping its second atomic bomb on Japan, with Soviet troops poised on the Korean border, the US rulers started dividing up Korea. The Soviets agreed.
In 1949, the Chinese workers made a revolution. US imperialism now faced the prospect of a Chinese/North Korean advance into South Korea.
In response, the US carpet-bombed and napalmed North Korea for three years. It dropped more bombs there than against Japan during World War II, annihilating one fifth of its population. U.S. bombers destroyed most buildings, hydroelectric and irrigation dams, flooding farmland and destroying crops.
When US forces got to close to the Chinese border, the Chinese Red Army intervened ,soundly defeating them. US military experts then debated using atomic bombs. But this and all their firepower couldn’t intimidate the communist-led masses of Asia. US imperialism was forced to accept a truce. North and South Korea have remained on the brink of war ever since.
War: Sooner Rather than Later
Today South Korea is the world’s fifth-largest export economy. It’s home to strategically important US army, navy and air force bases. But it does $220 billion/year in deals with China, double its trade with the US. Its populous capital is only 38 miles from the North Korean border. Chinese constitute half of South Korea’s tourism. China is an economic power that South Korea cannot ignore.
Last year South Korea and the US agreed to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system, supposedly to counter North Korean threats. Really it is aimed at China, which retaliated with economic sanctions.
Chinese imperialism wants the US out of the Korean peninsula. It says that if North Korea attacks the US with nuclear weapons, China will remain neutral. However, China is prepared to counter a US-South Korean pre-emptive strike against North Korea. It’s helping North Korea build bomb shelters.
US imperialism is strategically on the defensive. That makes it all the more dangerous. Its only military options would be extremely deadly.
A non-nuclear massive bombing campaign would take at least several weeks to destroy North Korean firepower. The retaliation from China and the North would be devastating. Alternatively, the fallout from a surprise nuclear attack on the North Korean command and control center would affect China, Russia, South Korea and Japan.
Should we be afraid? No, but we should be prepared.
As the bosses get ready to unleash their imperialist war, we must get the international working class ready to end capitalism forever with communist revolution.
“North Korea is communist, right?” asked a US transit worker.
“No,” replied a comrade. “It’s a state-capitalist country, called socialist. Like here and all other capitalist countries, there are rich and poor. Communism won’t have money or rich or poor. We won’t be wage slaves – there or here. We will all work to meet our needs.”
Communist power doesn’t depend on weapons of mass murder and mass destruction. It depends on the masses who want to live and to build a world without racism, sexism, xenophobia, borders or nations or war. It depends on the leadership of a massive International Communist Workers’ Party.
We must grasp the urgency of the situation, and step up the distribution of Red Flag and the recruitment to our Party worldwide. Workers and youth on every continent are rising up against intensified exploitation and racist-fascist terror. They are looking for change. We must be amongst them showing always that the change they need is communism.
A mass communist party with branches worldwide will survive imperialist war. We’ll build our communist society on capitalism’s ashes.
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