For a New Zimmerwald!
The International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (ILTT) is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: For a New Zimmerwald!
Time: Apr 16, 2022 03:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
If you agree in substance with the call for a NEW ZIMMERWALD above, please contact us at intlleninisttrotskyist@gmail.com to get participation details.
Letter for New Zimmerwald
Comrades, anti-imperialists, socialists, trade unionists,
Six weeks into the war in Ukraine and the international working class has not reached out from behind the fog of national chauvinism to declare its political independence from the imperialist order and launch a class struggle anti-war movement. For the working class to assert its agency we need a New Zimmerwald to launch a new workers’ international that fights for socialist revolution against imperialist wars.
The Stalinist bureaucracy failed to sustain the workers’ states and as a consequence capitalism was restored to Russia (and in our view China). Due to the unique experience of Russia and China in completing the national democratic revolution, expropriating foreign and comprador capital and decades of central planning and military advances they could not be subordinated as semi-colonies and emerged as imperialist powers. Not by choice of malicious actors but by the economics of the transitional period of the terminal crisis of capitalism.
Only by arriving at a historical materialist analysis of the world situation can the working class mobilize the revolutionary class struggle needed to end imperialist wars. It was the conclusion of the Zimmerwald Left 107 years ago that in the imperialist age peace could only be won by socialist revolution.
We oppose and expose all the pacifists, social patriots and social imperialists who are calling for internationally mediated cease fires and “peace” under the auspices and guidance of the UN and other imperialist mashups for misleading and confusing the advanced workers, denying the working class agency and leaving the outcome of wars in the hands of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
“The causes of war can only be overcome by socialist revolution in the leading countries. “The left must struggle against social patriotism with every method at its disposal – rejection of war credits, propaganda against the war, demonstrations, fraternization in the trenches, strikes etc. Quoting Liebknechts letter, Radek concludes: “Civil war, not ‘civil peace’ is our slogan”” – (Lenin’s Struggle for a Revolutionary International, p. 299).
Already the crisis of leadership of the working class has been thrown into bold relief: how to step up to its historic task and end the threat of world war, of total oblivion such as we’ve seen in the militarists’ laboratories of Syria and Ukraine. Dual defeatism! It is the watchword of the internationalists of a host of minor socialist groupings. We must lead the class away from delusions of social patriotism, pacifism and phony anti-imperialism that disputes the historical fact of the rise of the China/Russia bloc. For the ILTT, this is a new imperialist bloc locked in terminal collision with the declining US/EU imperialist bloc.
The workers movement needs an open discussion and debate over the class character and trajectories of Russia/China in this new period. Some see Russia and Ukraine as dependent semi-colonies and arrive at a dual defeatist position; others see Russia as imperialist and Ukraine as a proxy of western imperialism and arrive at a dual defeatist position without characterizing China as either restored capitalist or imperialist. Regardless of how they arrive at dual defeatism, these organizations and individuals should find their way to jointly initiating a New Zimmerwald where the workers movement can negate the species oblivion which the imperialist system offers.
A new Zimmerwald is required to organize the working class anti-war movement. Those who already realize this are invited to participate in conferences we host, open to tendencies and individuals alike, as we travel the revolutionary road to the new Zimmerwald.
Build a new Workers International with a political program for world socialist revolution to end imperialist wars for all time!
