Unification of Taiwan”: What Kind of Unity? here ♦ Nazi Anschluss of Austria: Fascist “Unification”for World War II here ♦
Unification of Taiwan”: What Kind of Unity?
The Chinese imperialist rulers say that “Taiwan is a sacred part of China.” Capitalist, imperialist President Xi Jinping once said, “Only when the country and the nation are good will the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait be good.”
The rulers talk of unity, but their plans will result in the deaths of workers in both mainland China and Taiwan. The rulers want the masses to unite with them for war.
For mainland Chinese workers and their children (wherever they live), who grew up with this idea, this nationalist ideology is hard to defeat. Especially since capitalist leaders sound as if they are actually promoting unity for something positive. But what kind of unity are they really promoting?
After the Chinese revolution, before the present capitalists took over, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) supported working-class internationalism. When the victorious Red Army, led by the CCP, took power in 1949 in China, US-backed Kuomintang capitalist dictator Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan with his defeated army and supporters. The Kuomintang took over Taiwan and subjugated the masses there to their rule. The communist Red Army tried to invade Taiwan to liberate the Taiwanese masses. But they were stopped by the US imperialist naval ships that sailed through the Taiwan Strait to prevent that.
More than forty years after Mao’s death, the current Chinese imperialist rulers again advocate “reunification” of Taiwan — this time, for their imperialist war plans. However, like in all capitalist wars, the capitalist rulers will draft mainland Chinese workers into the military to kill working-class siblings in Taiwan whom the Chinese rulers view as “separatist.”
The small island of Taiwan has been a bone of contention between the US and Chinese rulers since 1949. The Chinese imperialist rulers want to use Taiwan to launch their blue-water navy into the Pacific Ocean and worldwide. The US imperialists are desperate to prevent this by encircling China. They are arming the Taiwanese independence government with military weapons and soldiers, just like they are funding the Ukrainian fascist government. The imperialists will potentially escalate these regional wars into a nuclear World War III, which would be disastrous for all humanity and Planet Earth.
The “reunification” war would damage the economies and negatively impact the working-class in mainland China, Taiwan, the US, the Philippines, and beyond. Many workers and soldiers would be killed. The working class would become even poorer, while the capitalist warmakers would become richer. It is the workers who suffer in every capitalist war. Working-class families are torn apart forever.
Schools, serving the capitalists, teach racism, nationalism, and patriotism to win the masses to support imperialists. Nationalism unites workers and capitalist exploiters together. It divides workers against workers. The greatest death toll from nationalism comes from imperialist wars, where workers are mobilized to do “our patriotic duty” to kill other class brothers and sisters for the capitalists’ profits.
Working class unity and “national unity” are opposite types of unity. Working class unity means that mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, US, and all workers recognize our common class interests and turn the guns on our respective ruling classes.
“National unity” means uniting workers and capitalists in mainland China and Taiwanese supporters of “reunification” together to kill and displace Taiwanese workers who disagree with the Chinese ruling class propaganda.
Working-class communist internationalism.
Workers and capitalists never have common interests, no matter what lies the rulers spout. We workers are wage slaves. We work for a wage to survive. The capitalists are social parasites who exploit, brutalize, and murder workers. They make wars for maximum profits and control of markets. Together, the workers of the world are our brothers and sisters. We share the common class interest of ending wage slavery, imperialist wars, genocides, and exploitation everywhere.
Real communism will eliminate all nations, borders, classes, money, and wages. It will abolish all racist, nationalist divisions. Capitalist ideologues posing as scientists promote the lie that “race” and “nationality” are biological realities. In contrast, communist science will show there is only one race, the human race.
In communism, we will work, live, and make decisions collectively. We will share the fruits of our collective labor to meet everyone’s needs. Real communism will allow us to consciously choose communist collectivity and develop our full human potential.
The German Nazi Anschluss of Austria: Fascist “Unification” for World War II– Like China’s Promised “Re-Unification” with Taiwan
After World War I, Europe was in economic turmoil. With the Versailles Treaty, Germany and Austria struggled with massive reparations, political instability, and economic depression. Masses became jobless. They were plunged into poverty. The 1930s Great Depression made this worse. Revolutionary potential grew rapidly among the exploited masses.
In response, a new fascist terror regime led by Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933. The Nazis diverted workers’ anger away from the capitalist class. They scapegoated Jewish people. They threw communists, anti-fascists, Roma people and homosexuals into concentration camps. And they promoted extreme racism, sexism, and nationalism.
The Nazi German imperialist rulers promised economic recovery. They promoted “national unity” to win a populace desperate for social change to fascism. The imperialists also sought to “unify” what they claimed were “ethnically and culturally German regions” into one “Greater Germany.” Many Austrian workers, won to fascism, viewed the “reunification” of Austria with Germany as a solution to their economic woes.
The Nazis unleashed their supporters in Austria to set off explosives and tear gas bombs in public places and Jewish-owned businesses. For Austrian capitalists, the Nazi “reunification” movement was an opportunity to suppress leftist movements that threatened their interests. Eventually, in 1938, with communist anti-fascist opposition virtually wiped out, the Nazi terrorists took over the Austrian territory without firing a single shot.
This deadly event became known as the Anschluss (“connection” or “joining”). It had nothing to do with unifying the workers of Germany and Austria. This “reunification” of Austria with “Greater Germany” enabled the German imperialists to control Austrian resources and markets. It was part of the Nazis’ preparation for an all-out war and the deadly Holocaust of six million Jews, twenty-eight million Russians, and many others.
At first, the Soviet Union and the Communist International failed to effectively mobilize against rising fascism. They initially supported the idea of “German unification” as part of their broader “anti-imperialist” stance. But by 1941, the Soviet rulers had reversed their policies, opposed the Nazi annexation of Austria, and mobilized the working class massively to defeat fascism.
As imperialists seek to protect their interests, turn the masses away from revolution, and win the masses to fight for “the nation,” they turn to fascist parties. Fascism is capitalism and imperialism ruling with an iron fist. It is the imperialists’ response to deepening capitalist crisis, threats of workers’ uprisings, and their preparation for world war.
Today, the capitalist, imperialist rulers in China are following a nationalist “reunification” path similar to Nazi Germany. Workers in mainland China and Taiwan face being forced to kill each other in cold blood for capitalist profits. Class-conscious communists and anti-fascists who refuse to buy into the Anschluss-like propaganda will be violently suppressed by the fascist CCP and its nationalist backers.
Building a mass ICWP to mobilize and unite the masses everywhere for communism must be our answer.