Ideological Struggle for Communist Ideas here ♦ National Liberation Doesn’t Liberate Oppressed Masses here ♦
Ideological Struggle Inside the Movement Against Genocide in Gaza: Communist Versus Capitalist Ideas
November 10—The US backed-Israeli genocide has intensified in Gaza and spread to Lebanon and Yemen. Thousands of our class brothers and sisters are being massacred. This will continue — in over a hundred wars raging in the world today — until the international working class ends capitalism-imperialism with armed communist revolution and builds communism worldwide.
The genocide is also a stark reminder and indictment of the bankrupt political line of leaders of the movement against it. They preach that marches, militant actions, and reformist demands for divestment from Israel, for a cease fire, and for ending Zionist occupation of Palestine, will end this genocide. They won’t.
Communists in ICWP participate in these movements to unite with the anti-fascist masses, to win them to see that only communist revolution can end genocides, World War III, and all exploitation. Many are looking for an alternative to genocidal capitalism-imperialism. Some agree with our communist outlook. Others agree with the leadership’s reformist outlook.
Local, regional, and world war are the products of the capitalists-imperialists competing over who will extract maximum profits from our labor. Profits are capitalism’s lifeblood, a life and death question. For them, we’re just “collateral damage.”
Thus, World War III looms, threatening to be nuclear. Some analysts claim it is already unfolding in the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and in the Chinese-Russia-Iran war against US-NATO-Israel in Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen.
These unending genocidal wars against our class call on us to organize a communist revolution to put an end to this and all capitalist-imperialist horrors. Only a communist world can free our class from exploitation and all oppression. That is why ICWP is organizing one Party internationally. We are in the US, Mexico, El Salvador, Spain, South Africa, and India. Our comrade Hamza is organizing in Gaza and a Jewish comrade is organizing in Israel.
Can Israeli and US Workers Be Won to Communism?
We don’t agree with those who say all Jewish and US workers are fascist. The interests of US and Israeli workers, like workers everywhere, are in opposition to those of the US and Israeli capitalists and imperialists.
Some US workers have supported US imperialism and have committed hideous crimes defending it. The My Lai massacre in Vietnam is one example of US soldiers participating in the extermination of 3 million Vietnamese workers. But the My Lai massacre was stopped by a US helicopter pilot who turned his guns on the US soldiers perpetuating that crime. Many other US soldiers rebelled against, and in at least 700 cases killed, their officers, refusing to fight the Vietnamese.
This gives us confidence that US workers and soldiers can be won to fight for communism. They are indispensable. Without them there can be no revolution in the US.
Youth are indispensable too. Instead of organizing reformist actions that can’t change reality, we call on young people worldwide to go into the rulers’ industries, including war production, and into the rulers’ armies to help organize for revolution. Also, mobilize your fellow students for communism.
This outlook comes from understanding that the interests of our class are diametrically opposed to the capitalist-imperialists’ interests. We have everything in common with our class siblings worldwide and nothing in common with ANY capitalist-imperialist ruler of the world!
Communist Revolution, Not National Liberation
Some who have voiced their support for national liberation say the Palestinian people will decide their future. We agree that they will decide. Our comrade in Gaza is showing the way forward by daring to mobilize for communism in the face of the genocidal onslaught! And many are responding well.
Palestinian and all workers need to learn from the history of national liberation struggles (see box). Just chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” by itself is an illusion. What does freedom mean if it is not freedom from exploitation, especially wage slavery?
The working class needs and will fight for and build a communist world. A world without racism, sexism, islamophobia, and all ideologies created by our capitalist masters to divide, exploit, and rule over us.
By eliminating money and wage slavery, we will destroy the material basis for these ideologies. Communist production for human needs will eliminate capitalist competition for maximum profits and for jobs. Collectivity will replace competition.
Communism is the future, but we must consciously fight for it! Join us! Long live communism!
Read Our Pamphlet:
Mobilize the Masses for Communism
here
National Liberation Doesn’t Liberate the Oppressed Masses
National liberation has never worked for the oppressed and exploited masses.
An early national liberation movement under capitalism was the thirteen US colonies’ “revolutionary war” against British imperialism. It liberated the US slave owners to exterminate five million Indigenous people, to continue enslaving four million people of African descent, and to become the most oppressive, destructive, and murderous empire in history.
Masses of workers and indigenous peoples in Latin America fought successfully for its independence from Spain in the 19th century. The struggle liberated the local ruling class to become even richer, no longer having to share any of the profits from the exploitation of the Latin American working class with Spain. But the working class and indigenous population remains mired in dire poverty.
Independence from Spain left an imperialist vacuum which was quickly filled by US imperialism. Local oligarchies and US imperialism have accumulated enormous wealth subjecting the Latin American masses to intensive exploitation and oppression. Tens of millions of our class brothers and sisters have been sacrificed for the profits of US imperialists and the local capitalists.
National liberation struggles against US imperialism starting in the 1960s led to the deaths of over five million in Latin America. Over 500,000 died in Central America alone. Yet, these struggles, that ended by peace negotiations in Guatemala and El Salvador, did not free one single worker. They made some of the leaders of those movements rich and kept US imperial exploitation in place.
In Nicaragua, the national liberation struggle was supposedly “successful.” The Sandinista National Liberation Front took power in 1979. US imperialism has been temporarily replaced by Russian and Chinese imperialisms. Sandinista leaders became the new rulers of Nicaragua, with Daniel Ortega taking the place of US-backed dictator Somoza as the richest person and owner of Nicaragua. Dissidents are beaten, jailed and murdered daily to keep the profits flowing into the pockets of the Ortegas and their new imperialist masters. The Nicaraguan working masses live in abject poverty: the minimum wage is $2 a day.
1967: The Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Millions of communist agricultural and urban workers and students, led by Red Guards and motivated by communist ideology, fought the “Red Bourgeoisie,” the Chinese Communist Party leadership. They aimed to go directly to communism, abolishing wages, ranks, privileges, and money. They were defeated because, instead of organizing their own party, they had illusions in Mao Tse-Tung, who betrayed them. ICWP learned from them that we can and must mobilize the masses directly for communism.
See Our Series on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution here