Striking Tea Workers in Bangladesh picture here ♦ Answer with Red Fist of Communist Class Struggle here ♦
August 18—Tea plantation workers in Bangladesh began an indefinite strike demanding a wage increase from the current 120 taka per day (US$1.26 or 20.40 Rand or 100 INR). Their only escape from this brutal wage slavery is communist revolution.
Answer Global Capitalist Crisis with the Red Fist of Communist Workers’ Power
“The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. The hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps” —Thomas Friedman, New York Times, Feb. 24, 2001
War is central to capitalism. Over half of its discretionary spending goes to the military. That’s how it could bomb workers in other countries 46 times a day (on average) for the past 20 years.
The US-led NATO war on the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s launched 34,000 bombing raids in 78 days. The attack was aimed at intimidating the whole of eastern Europe. The military performs a major economic function.
Capitalists closed plants in western Europe and opened them in the east. Soon lower-paid East European workers were making one in four cars sold in Europe. By 2004, NATO had expanded into ten East European countries, setting the stage for a more direct US attack on Russia via Ukraine. Why?
Because capitalism – as a world system – is in a period of general crisis. The productive forces have developed so much that they can no longer return profits sustainably for their capitalist owners. That sharpens conflicts among the biggest imperialists.
For example, the main section of the Chinese ruling class (capitalists all) are building a massive new worldwide system of railways, highways, coastal ports, and airports. They have the capital to invest in this “Belt and Road Initiative,” the political agreements, the skilled workforce, and international monetary systems capable of collecting its profitable returns.
China produces 60% of the world’s concrete. This directly threatens giant US engineering firms like Halliburton and Bechtel. It limits their ability to attract capital, raw material, or contracts in the world’s civilian markets. Similar rivalries exist in many industries.
“China,” declared US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, “is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to seriously challenge” the US-led global status quo.
The massive growth of the productive forces means that any major imperialist bloc must dominate both world markets and the world’s working class. This requires them to confront both their fear of defeat by rival imperialists and their fear of the working class. The first fear pushes them to world war, but the second makes them hesitate.
Fear of imperialist rivals pushed capitalists into World War I, which ended with the communist-led Russian revolution for workers’ power. The same fear pushed them into World War II, which ended with the Chinese communist-led peasant and working-class revolution. That history holds back today’s imperialists from launching a full-scale World War III.
China and the US are fighting proxy wars on military fronts (Ukraine, Ethiopia, Yemen) and political fronts (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Taiwan). As NATO’s expansion accompanied West Europe’s industrial penetration of East Europe, the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement (a military alliance) accompanies China’s Bridge and Road Initiative.
China is now in a stronger position than the US following US defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan. With crucial military support from Iran and China, the Ethiopian government has pushed back the US-supported Tigray Liberation Front. In Yemen, China is poised to be the strongest force in any negotiated settlement. If the US is fighting Russia in Ukraine to the last Ukrainian, China is fighting the US to the last Russian.
No worker anywhere should support any capitalist or imperialist power! Our war is for communism, nothing less. From all according to ability and commitment, to all according to need!
We do not welcome the carnage and mass destruction of present and future imperialist war. But we expect and plan to build our new communist world on the rubble and ashes of the old.
The Soviets built war communism amidst a bloody counterrevolution. The insurgent Chinese Red Army practiced a communist “supply system” during its protracted People’s War. In Poland at the end of World War II, with Nazis still controlling half of Warsaw, communists organized masses to rebuild the other half without wages or markets.
The huge political error of 20th century communists was preparing the masses to fight for national liberation or socialism, but never for communism itself. When things stabilized, they intentionally handed power back to capitalists (Poland) or put themselves in charge of a new state-controlled system of wages and markets. In the Soviet Union and China, communist parties became the new capitalist classes.
Today, the capitalist crisis has put masses in motion from Sri Lanka to Sierra Leone and beyond. The youth especially see a future of climate crisis and increasingly deadly wars. Those young people, won to communist politics and enlisted in the bosses’ armed forces, are key to turning imperialist war into revolutionary war.
The International Communist Workers’ Party must sharpen our work everywhere, as comrades are already starting to do in South Africa, El Salvador, and India.
Let’s build stronger collectives to concentrate our efforts.
Let’s discover in practice what it means to lead communist class struggle.
Let’s find more ways to build communist ties with young people in the military.
Let’s develop a broader network of communist relationships that will help us all to see more clearly the potential of the communist world that’s coming.
Let’s raise the red fist, hidden no longer, of the international working class!
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