Mobilize Masses Everywhere for a Communist May Day!
USA, April 2 – “[John] Bolton’s ascendance [as national security advisor] increases the risk of not one but two wars — with North Korea and Iran.” (Foreign Policy, 3/23/18)
With or without Bolton, US imperialism is on a collision course with China and Russia. Its long-term capitalist allies like South Korea and Saudi Arabia are increasingly independent. The global crisis of capitalist overproduction sharpens competition. It fuels nationalism, racism, and escalating trade wars.
Our working-class family is increasingly engulfed in war and its deadly consequences. Civilians suffer the most injuries and deaths. More are caught up in a massive refugee crisis, experiencing intensified disease and hunger. It would be short-sighted for any workers, anywhere, to think they can escape unscathed for long.
But it would be short-sighted, too, to overlook the potential for armed revolution. World Wars I and II gave rise to the Russian and Chinese revolutions. Today’s brutally murderous global capitalist system can and must be destroyed!
From Syria to El Salvador, from India to South Africa to the USA, comrades of the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) are finding workers and youth increasingly open to the ideas in Red Flag. In the face of a possible World War III, working-class youth, especially, must prepare to turn the guns around again—this time for communism.
US rulers are divided over how, not whether, to prepare for their expanding wars. Bolton and Trump represent one faction, and Jim Mattis represents the main wing of US imperialism. When Mattis became Defense Secretary, declared the New York Times, “it was almost possible…to imagine him as the spokesman of an emerging Trump Doctrine not so different from what Hillary Clinton… might have staked out.” (3/26/18)
Mattis, like Clinton, is an “Iran hawk.” They – and mainstream US imperialists—want to use diplomatic alliances to enforce restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. At the same time, they favor “credible threats of force,” especially in Syria. They want to prepare to fight the Russian imperialists.
Last November, Mattis stated publicly that US forces would remain in Syria, contradicting Trump’s campaign promise of a speedy troop withdrawal. He got Trump to sign off on the plan to keep US troops there.
While Secretary of State Tillerson presided over the gutting of the State Department, Defense Secretary Mattis worked more closely with US Embassy officials to continue US imperialism’s traditional two-prong strategy of diplomacy and force. But negotiations over Syria or anything else are stymied because nobody can predict what Trump might say or do next.
Can Mattis hold onto his job? Can Trump hold onto his? President Pence – if it came to that – would likely return to a traditional Republican brand of mainstream US imperialism. If Trump is pushed out, the real reason will be that he abandoned core US imperialist interests in pursuit of his family’s immediate gains.
We the international working class must not allow ourselves to be distracted by the rulers’ infighting or persuaded to take sides in their electoral circus. We must not allow ourselves to be diverted from the fight for communist workers’ power. We must reject fear and take wars as our opportunities to mobilize soldiers and sailors for communist revolution.
Communism will end capitalism’s borders and nations and, with them, the increasingly deadly profit wars ahead. This is no wild dream. It is the only plan that corresponds to the reality we face. Let’s unite workers, soldiers and youth everywhere into one International Communist Workers’ Party and remake the world to meet our collective needs!
Organize a group from your job, school or community to march with the ICWP on May Day! Use Red Flag, banners, signs, leaflets and whatever else it takes to mobilize masses for communism everywhere!
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