Sharpen Class Contradictions with Communist Struggle
June 3—As we go to press, US imperialism and the Iranian capitalist regime are again exchanging fire. Even as negotiations continue. Iranian drones target US allies Kuwait and Bahrain. US missiles pound Iran’s strategic Qeshm Island.
Lebanon announces a partial cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah. Trump says the fight will de-escalate. The next day, Israel kills at least eleven in Lebanon.
The communist Bertolt Brecht wrote in his World War II poem “From a German War Primer”:
THOSE AT THE TOP SAY: PEACE AND WAR
Are of different substance.
But their peace and their war/Are like wind and storm.
War grows from their peace/Like son from his mother
He bears/Her frightful features.
Their war kills/Whatever their peace/Has left over.
Let’s understand two things. First, the material basis for war and peace is imperialist competition. And at its root, the iron logic of capitalism. Second, everything changes as its internal contradictions sharpen and resolve.
For example: France, Great Britain, the USA, and the USSR were technically allied during World War II. In 1945, these Allies defeated Germany’s Axis powers. Immediately, contradictions among the Allies sharpened. The US pushed out a weakened France and Great Britain to become the leading imperialist power in what’s called the “Middle East.”
The US-USSR “Cold War” exploded. Contradictions between nationalist capitalists and US imperialism sharpened. The US successfully plotted to overthrow the elected nationalist leader of Iran, Mossadegh, in 1953. The brutal Shah replaced him. That cemented US control over Iranian oil. Until 1979, when Iran’s internal contradictions sharpened. A mass movement kicked the Shah out.
That heightened contradictions inside Iran. Islamists attacked the secular leftists. Thousands were executed. Many more fled the country. People everywhere should have learned a lesson about contradictions: The enemy of your enemy isn’t always your friend.
That matters today. The US rulers try to justify bombing Iran by pointing to the Iranian rulers’ attacks on the Iranian masses. Would the many Americans who hate Trump want another country to bomb the US? On the other hand, some people now support the Iranian Islamic fascists because they are fighting US imperialism. Same mistake.
In 1948, US imperialism empowered Zionists to drive out 750,000 indigenous Palestinian people from their historical lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The new Zionist state (“Israel”) depended on the US military. This “democratic Jewish state” also served as the most secure pillar of the US in the region.
Now masses see that a Jewish apartheid state cannot be “democratic” or secular. A state committed to genocide contradicts fundamental Jewish values. Internal contradictions are splintering Israel.
Netanyahu’s expansionist war against Lebanon now contradicts Trump’s need to disentangle the US from the unpopular – and losing!—war with Iran. Trump even cussed Netanyahu out on the phone with a roomful of people listening.
Does Israel have a choice? Possibly. Russian and Chinese imperialists have risen to challenge US imperialism worldwide. Even in Latin America. The balance of power is changing.
The contradiction that matters the most is the class struggle. Workers everywhere against all capitalists and imperialists. That’s Brecht’s central theme:
When the last [war] came to an end
There were conquerors and conquered.
Among the conquered the common people
Starved. Among the conquerors
The common people starved too.
That class contradiction is especially sharp within the rulers’ militaries:
WHEN IT COMES TO MARCHING MANY DO NOT KNOW
That their enemy is marching at their head….
General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.
Comrades, readers, working-class siblings: As imperialist contradictions sharpen, our task is to sharpen class contradictions. Especially in the bosses’ armed forces.
To develop the masses as communist thinkers. To prepare for the communist revolution that will bury the imperialists, contradictions and all. And then to build communist society to forever end exploitation and war.
Read the ICWP pamphlet Soldiers, Sailors, Marines: Crucial to Communist Revolution here
“From a German War Primer” here
History of communism in Iran here
Brief introduction to imperialism here