Reformists Betray the Rebelling Ecuadorian Masses

Only Communism Can Destroy Capitalism and its Wage Slavery

July 8— After eighteen days of massive demonstrations that paralyzed Ecuador, the leaders of CONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities) once again betrayed the masses. The mobilizations ceased, while the government repealed the State of Exception and reduced the price of fuel by five cents.

The masses protested the rising cost of living, and the 56% unemployment rate. They also demanded a 35-cent reduction in fuel prices. The price they paid – eight dead and more than three hundred wounded – for these limited demands and petty concessions shows the complete bankruptcy of reformism.

Objective Pre-revolutionary Conditions Exist in Ecuador, Sri Lanka and Elsewhere

The masses are rebelling against unbearable living conditions because we cannot live like before. And the capitalists are resorting to fascism because they cannot control us peacefully like before.

This happened before in Ecuador in 2019, when the government fled the capital as masses surrounded the National Assembly building. More frightening for the capitalists, and even more indicative of a pre-revolutionary situation, was that soldiers refused to attack the masses. Instead they attacked the police and marched with the masses.

But the struggle was only for reforms. Therefore, as now, everything returned to “normal” after the rulers gave small concessions.

Capitalist Crises Create Fertile Ground for Communist Revolution

These crises are product of the need of capitalists-imperialists to maximize their profits. The only source of their profit is our labor power, which we sell to them for a wage. We call this wage slavery.

Maximizing profits means reducing production costs – reducing our wages, intensifying our exploitation and misery. Eventually we rebel, questioning capitalism and seeking radical solutions. We enter a pre-revolutionary situation.

Seeing that they are losing their ideological grip over us, the capitalists intensify their fascist oppression. This inflames us even more and predisposes us to consider communism to end wage slavery, the source of our exploitation and misery.

Wars Also Create Pre-Revolutionary Conditions

War is the inevitable result of capitalist competition for maximum profits. Whoever controls the cheapest natural resources and workforce controls the markets. Who controls the markets, controls the world.

This struggle eventually leads to wars like the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, which threatens to blow up into a nuclear World War III. This conflict has intensified our misery, inflating the prices of fuel and other basic needs.

The working class responds with more frequent and violent rebellions like the current one in Sri Lanka. The rulers’ response is to intensify their fascist repression to prevent our rebellions or suffocate them in blood. They correctly see them as fertile ground for communist revolution.

Our task is to create the subjective factor for revolution. We must win the masses globally to see communism as the only solution. We must massively recruit them to ICWP for the armed struggle directly for communism.

International Working-Class Unity Needed to Destroy Wage Slavery

Racism, casteism (as in India), sexism, and xenophobia are capitalism’s weapons to super-exploit sectors of our class. They justify the super exploitation of women, immigrants, and our siblings of color in imperialist countries and the inhumane super-exploitation of the masses in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Even more deadly for our international working class, they divide us and blind us to seeing the capitalists as mortal enemies.

Our enemies are not invincible. We can paralyze their nations because we run their industries and cities. Our class siblings in their armies can turn their guns around and join the revolution. Russian soldiers did this in World War I. The Ecuadorian soldiers in 2019 and Sri Lankan soldiers today showed it can be done again.

That is why ICWP concentrates in basic industries, in the bosses’ armies and among young people of military age. Join the fight directly for communism! Democracy, national liberation, and socialism only perpetuate wage slavery.

Join ICWP to fight for a world without money where nothing is bought or sold, especially our labor power! Where we collectively produce everything and distribute it according to need! A communist world without nations or borders or capitalists and their poisonous ideologies!

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