Ukraine: Workers Respond to Imperialist War and Propaganda

Imperialist War to Communist Revolution here ♦ Workers Eager to Discuss Communist Answers here ♦ US Iraq War here ♦

London, February 15, 2003: No War On Iraq

From Imperialist War in Ukraine to Class War for Communism Everywhere!

Workers around the globe are reeling from the effects of the war between Russia and the US/NATO in Ukraine.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are dead or wounded. Both armies have intentionally or recklessly harmed and endangered civilians.  Millions have been forced from their homes in Ukraine, and thousands have fled Russia.

In Europe, workers are protesting massively as rising unemployment, inflation, and soaring costs reduce their standard of living.  An estimated 30% of working-class children skip a meal every day.

This devastating crisis results directly from rising energy costs due to the war in Ukraine and US-directed sanctions on Russia. The US more than likely blew up the NordStream natural gas pipelines from Russia to Germany or at least abetted whatever pro-Ukrainian forces did it.

Certainly, US energy companies and their investors are profiting hugely from increased exports of liquified natural gas (LNG) from the US to Europe – at extortionate prices.  The US now sells Europe more than half its imported LNG.  This forces up energy costs to US workers (also squeezed by inflation).

Russia, in turn, has increased oil exports to China and especially India at a discounted price exchanged in Russian Rubles, Chinese Yuan (RMB), and Indian Rupees. Sanctions shut down thousands of US and European factories in Russia, but Chinese companies formed joint ventures to reopen them.

Expanding War in Ukraine: Are We Already Amidst a Global War?

The US imperialists have poured over $120 billion into supporting Ukraine’s fascist government (which they misleadingly call a “democracy”). US workers pay for this, egged on and misled by the rulers’ patriotic propaganda. Meanwhile the government cuts health care, food programs, and education.  Some NATO countries, pushed by the US, are reluctantly arming Ukraine—also at workers’ expense.

While US industrial output has been dropping sharply for some time, Chinese capitalism has leapfrogged and expanded its global reach.  The rising Chinese imperialists are encircling the globe using their navy, railways, and ports.

The declining US imperialists are increasingly isolated in Africa, the Americas, and even Europe.  Their increasing isolation makes them more dangerous. They called for sanctions against Russia, expecting their trading partners to fall in line.  That didn’t happen.

Chinese imperialists are openly preparing to support Russia’s war effort. President Xi declared recently that the “bilateral relationship has no limits and there are no forbidden areas of cooperation.”

President Lukashenko of Belarus, a close ally of Russia, visited Xi. They agreed to cooperate in defense, rail services, preventing pro-US ‘color revolutions,’ and combatting terrorism. An unstated objective was to assemble Chinese military equipment for Russia in Belarus, using the Belt and Road Initiative to avoid sanctions. But none of this will help workers in Belarus or China!

China proposed a “peace plan” to Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, knowing full well that he would reject it outright. As the communist poet Bertolt Brecht wrote during the last world war, “When the leaders speak of peace, the common folk know war is coming.”

Fight for the Working Class, Not for the Capitalist-Imperialist Rulers

From Ukraine to Taiwan and beyond, the drive to maximize profits makes imperialist war inevitable.  But the capitalist rulers can’t fight their wars without the active participation of soldiers, sailors, marines, and industrial workers.  The same military personnel and workers whose families are suffering already because of these wars and who stand to lose much more!

And therein lies the opportunity for industrial workers and soldiers to lead the masses in a revolution to destroy the bosses’ system.

Workers everywhere face increasing racism, sexism, caste violence, and xenophobia. Even with all the uneven development, we can see our class siblings suffering the same ravages of wage slavery.

Is there a way out for us?  Yes! It’s communism – real communism – not the state capitalism of Russia and China that wraps itself in a red flag.

Real communism will organize production “from all according to ability and commitment, to all according to need.”  No owners to profit. No one forced by hunger to submit to exploitation.  Communism can unite the aspirations of the working class everywhere to live in a world without capitalists, their wars, and all the barriers they have created to divide us to perpetuate wage slavery.

Revolution demands a communist party – one International Communist Workers’ Pary – that can grow by leaps and bounds amidst the imperialists’ expanding wars. A party that enables the most oppressed among us to give key leadership to the international working class. That prepares us to take power and use it to build a new communist world on the ashes of the old.

We build this party today by recruiting the ones and twos who will then recruit dozens and scores, eventually thousands and millions.

By building concentrations in factories, barracks, schools, and other workplaces.

By recruiting young leaders and helping them to develop as communist thinkers and organizers.

By analyzing our work using self-criticism and criticism in the collectives that are the basic units of the party.

We the working masses will become the leading force in the world, sweeping away the imperialists and their wars and ushering in a bright communist future.   

US Bosses’ Confusing Propaganda about War in Ukraine: Workers Eager to Discuss Communist Answers

UNITED STATES, February 24— “People are confused,” declared a New Jersey comrade, D. He has been fighting the surge of patriotic Western propaganda around the one-year anniversary of the NATO-Russian war in Ukraine. He’s contacted many workers, most of them active or retired industrial workers.

A Seattle friend has had it with the Ukraine propaganda. Speaking about the economic attacks on the global working class, including US workers, she said, “Yes, I can see how it hurts workers.”

C, a retired Boeing worker, listed ever-increasing attacks on the working class aggravated by the war. “Inflation, sleeping in the streets, food insecurity,” he began. “You’re never off the hook even if you are retired.”

Even the capitalist New York Times admits that US President Biden is having a harder time selling the war to US workers who are feeling the pinch of inflation.

A Portland area comrade, J, wanted to know more. He asked the party to organize a discussion forum. He was self-critical about focusing on the divisions and splits within the US ruling class, while almost ignoring how his co-workers feel.

“For communists, it’s more meaningful to focus on how the working class is reacting,” he admitted. “That way we can identify opportunities for party growth.”

Workers Need Experience With Communist Collectives

Initially, C. was frustrated. He saw some workers ignoring the plight of other workers. He remembered the pain of working where management pits workers against each other. Too many were ignoring he increased attacks on workers, even blaming the victims for those attacks. This attitude allows the capitalists to get away with their warmongering.

Capitalism organizes production to make profits. Pitting one group against another is necessary in a profit-driven system. So is promoting individualism, not collectivity, even though large-scale production is always a collective effort.

We discussed the potential of communist collective production, which would not be caught in that contradiction. Workers would plan collectively to gear up the whole factory to provide for the collective needs of our class. There would be no ruling class, no profits.  That will help to end many of the petty conflicts that arise among production workers today.

Many workers – eventually, all—would belong to communist collectives that would struggle against individualism and solve problems together.

“There is strength in every worker if you look for it,” added C. He described the close relationship he developed with a younger co-worker. Together they fought against the individualism that pitted one worker against another.

“Workers are not lazy and people who are homeless don’t want to live on the streets,” C concluded.

“Nor do university students want to scrounge for leftovers at the cafeteria,” added D. He sees this happen at colleges where he helps set up programs to get young Black, Indigenous, and other people of color into industry.

C. is convinced this is an era of war and fascism. Now, more than ever, workers must trust each other. He wants to build an Oregon collective to discuss this and build trust. Others suggested he talk with his friends in the school system. Seattle comrades will ask a comrade and a friend, who live about an hour away, to help.

J. summed up the discussion: “We need to give people confidence that we can end this system and place our trust in other workers.”

He volunteered to help with carefully planning the agenda for a forum so that it’s not just a lecture. We should engage workers in conversation. The workers we invite to this meeting may be thinking about the effects of the war on our class for the first time. Our friends must tackle this issue: it’s in their class interest.

Workers’ reactions to capitalist media lies about the war in Ukraine are unstable and changing.  US rulers’ propaganda is designed to confuse them.  We must counter the bosses’ ideas with communist answers and struggle for the growth of communist collectives.

Barcelona, February 15, 2003: No War On Iraq

February 15, 2003:  Twenty years ago, over 12 million people marched in almost 800 cities worldwide demanding “No US War on Iraq!” US imperialism invaded Iraq anyway.  As masses marched, the troops were already on their way.

Today, the US media hypocritically act horrified that Russia would invade Ukraine.  But that’s the nature of imperialism, US or Russian or French or British or Chinese:  Wars of conquest to win control of global markets, labor, natural resources, and strategic position.  Wars against rival imperialists trying to win the same.

We can’t stop these wars with peaceful protests or elections or anything else short of communist revolution.  By waging and winning the class war to end private property, nation-states, and the profit system, communism will finally eliminate the material basis for war.

Front page of this issue