Communist Revolution, Not Elections, is Answer to Fascism
MEXICO, January 10, 2017—The “Gasolinazo,” that is the increase by up to 20% in fuel prices, announced on Dec. 28, triggered massive violent protests during the first week of January in 25 of the 31 states in Mexico.
The anger that has been accumulating for years erupted in the streets and on the roads throughout the country with marches, protests, and blockades. There was also looting of stores in many cities. More than a thousand people were arrested in clashes with the police.
The wave of nationalism that is proposed as an alternative to privatization leaves wage slavery intact. Spontaneous protests are limited. The masses must direct our discontent to the building of a communist society, where there is no exploitation. Help us build the Party (ICWP) that will lead this revolution for Communism!
The business of selling gasoline (regular and premium) as well as diesel, in Mexico is a $32 billion-a-year business. It is what millionaire consortia are distributing using the policy derived from “energy reform” of the government of Peña Nieto.
Proposed by PAN (National Action Party, a conservative electoral party) for 2016, the “Liberation of the price of gasoline” (and diesel) was postponed by the current government until 2018. However, at the end of the year, they resolved to start it now. For this, they counted on the approval of the Revenue Act of 2017, along with all the other electoral parties except MoReNa. It promotes the struggle against privatization and defending nationalization (See box).
The price of regular gasoline increased 14.2%; premium 20.1% and diesel 16%. According to the government, the increase is not due to structural reforms, but to external factors like an international increase of 60% in the price of gasoline and to the subsidies (“that [supposedly] only benefited a minority that owns automobiles”).
But with the international drop in the price of crude oil, gasoline is produced today at lower cost. According to Margarita Zavala, aspiring presidential candidate for PAN in 2018, “in the PAN governments, the price of gasoline was not used for tax purposes. And the gasoline that was bought from the US cost 11 pesos and sold for 7 pesos a liter. There was a subsidy for more than 20 billion pesos a year that had to be “corrected” and that was done. The government of Peña Nieto buys gasoline for 11 pesos and will sell it for up to 20 pesos a liter. Now there is no subsidy to correct.”
Service station owners will be the beneficiaries. These are large consortiums, like FEMSA, the largest bottler of Coca Cola in Latin America with Pemex franchises that will now operate as OXO stations. They now have about 350 stations, and this year intend to expand to 500. Others include “7 Eleven” which has a goal of 300 stations, followed by Hidrosina and Texaco.
The protests and mobilizations will continue. However, the leaders believe that fascism can be confronted peacefully, or through elections. They do not see it as capitalism in crisis, whose violence is inevitable and which can only be destroyed with a communist revolution. This means today that we need to constitute ourselves in a Party. We need to discard all these illusions the bosses have created among the masses of workers and mobilize the masses for communism instead. Other leaders promote the slogan “Peña Out,” as if the revocation of his mandate would resolve the problems caused by capitalism.
Capitalism only benefits a few exploiters of workers’ labor power. We need to overthrow it. By fighting for communism, a bright future awaits us. Join our struggle, join ICWP!
WORKERS’ POWER, NOT NATIONALIZATION
The nationalization of natural resources under capitalism only serves the interests of the national capitalists. In 1938, oil workers went out on a massive strike that caused a national crisis. To crush the strike, President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized some US-owned industries, giving a bigger share of the profits to the Mexican bosses. The oil companies were compensated by public funds and donations from workers, benefitting the Mexican capitalist state and the functionaries who have administered PEMEX ever since.
Nationalization was supported by the communist movement, which wrongly believed that it would pave the road for the emancipation of the working class. The national capitalists took advantage of this fatal error to mobilize the masses to strengthen their dictatorship over the working class. There are no “progressive” capitalists! They are all exploiters.
The worst thing about nationalization—and nationalism itself—is that it created ideological confusion which is still an obstacle to the development of workers’ communist class consciousness. Our line of mobilizing the masses directly for communism makes explicit our opposition to the death-trap of nationalism. The only way to make it “our oil” is with a communist revolution. Then, with no capitalists and no profits, we’ll share all resources for the well-being of the international working class. Then it will be “our world!”