Workers Worldwide Must Prepare for Communist Revolution
Last May, the US Pentagon sent two warships, the USS Higgins and the USS Antietam, close to one of the newly fortified Paracel Islands in the South China Sea that the Chinese claim as their own. The Chinese rushed to send their own warships to challenge them. They claimed the US “seriously violated Chinese sovereignty.” Neither side is backing down.
Capitalism is a dog-eat-dog system where different capitalists and imperialists constantly compete for markets, natural resources and workers’ labor power in order to maximize profits. Capitalists that lose this competition go under. No capitalist wants to go under. This inevitably leads to general crises, wars and world war.
Today, the main contradiction in the world is US and Chinese inter-imperialist rivalry. It is getting sharper as both sides are increasing their military preparations to confront each other. Their claim to the contrary is to lull us into passivity.
The international working class needs to take this situation seriously so that we make our own preparations. We need to spread Red Flag and build ICWP clubs everywhere, especially in the factories, military and among the youth to mobilize the masses for communism, to turn the bosses’ war into a revolution for communist workers’ power.
China’s economy is already the world’s largest. It seeks to replace the US as the world’s dominant capitalist-imperialist power. The US has tried in vain to stop China’s rise through its dollar hegemony. The most recent example is Trump’s expanding trade war against China.
Thus, to continue to rise, China’s Yuan must replace the dollar as the world’s global reserve currency. In March, 2018, China launched the Petro Yuan to challenge the US dollar and the Petrodollar. Its “Belt and Road” infrastructure project will increase trade with Europe, further increasing the use of the Yuan and Euro to the detriment of the dollar. China, Russia, Iran and other capitalists-imperialists are creating a parallel financial system to dethrone the dollar from its pedestal.
At the same time, the Chinese imperialists are building up their military. They have modernized their navy and missile forces. Last year, China’s navy became the world’s largest in the number of ships. They are building aircraft carriers to deploy a “blue water” navy capable of defending Chinese expanding interests worldwide.
“China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States,” the new commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command acknowledged in written remarks submitted during his Senate confirmation last March.
China has already developed an arsenal of high-speed ballistic missiles, known as “carrier killers,” designed to strike moving ships, including the powerful US ships and aircraft carriers.
On May 30, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced that the US Pacific Command (PACOM) which oversees all US military forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). It is “the latest move to counter Chinese economic and military pressure in the region.” (www.militarytimes.com).
“Think of it as a signal that the US military is already setting the stage for an eventual confrontation with China,” wrote one analyst.
Recently, the US Navy stepped up its patrols near Chinese–occupied islands in the South China Sea. So has China. Mattis said that the US plans “a steady drum beat” of naval operations in these waters. Departing Admiral Harris of the Pacific Command said at the May 30th Ceremony, “China remains our biggest long-term challenge…we should stand ready to confront them when we must.” To this end, the US is trying to build a military coalition with India, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Australia.
All the bosses can be taken out by the masses mobilized for communist workers’ power. All the bosses are the enemy of the workers. Politically, all these capitalist-imperialists must try to build patriotism to win the masses to support their murderous war plans. But these are all the same bosses whose racist, sexist and xenophobic system exploits, attacks and terrorizes us daily.
Their sharpening competition and war plans are an opportunity to mobilize for communism—especially inside the factories and barracks and among youth—to show that we need a communist system based – not on mass murder for the profits of a handful of capitalists-imperialists – but on cooperation and collectivity to meet workers’ needs. A world without currencies, markets, profits or competition of any kind. A communist world – where workers share everything collectively as one global family – will eliminate all wars.
The war we need to fight is to get rid of capitalism and build communism. Our preparations to build this world must go forward with confidence. Let us build and expand ICWP clubs to show that only communist revolution can and will put an end to the bosses’ wars.
When capitalism resorts to war, the rulers have to mobilize the population to fight for them. When they are in motion, when the masses of workers, soldiers and sailors cannot survive in this system, there’s even greater opportunity to mobilize the masses for communism. During WWI, the Russian workers, sailors and soldiers, led by the Bolsheviks, took power in the Russian Revolution. Communist-led Chinese masses successfully took power after WWII. We need to build one mass ICWP to fight to turn the bosses’ imperialist war into revolutions for communism everywhere.
Sailors on the Battleship Potemkin played a key role in the Russian Revolution of 1905. Soldiers and sailors must mobilize for communist revolution today.
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