ON MAYDAY TURN THE HEAT UP FOR THE WORKERS OFFENSIVE AGAINST IMPERIALISM!
ON MAYDAY TURN THE HEAT UP FOR THE WORKERS OFFENSIVE AGAINST IMPERIALISM! We say PREPARE THE INDEFINITE GENERAL STRIKE FOR WORKERS POWER: Make the exploiters “share the pain!”
From the echoes of the Haymarket martyrs to the ghosts of Gaza, the voices crying out from under the rubble in Lebanon are together demanding we overthrow the destructive rule of Capital. Their sacrifice and suffering must become a call to arms! For the working class to survive, Capitalism must die! Workers to power!
The bloody decay of capitalism in its prolonged terminal crisis is intolerable for all but the capitalist class and their lackeys the world over. They do not value the laboring classes whom they have reduced to wage slavery and render expendable and replaceable by robotic AI. They do not value the life-giving forces of the planet and nature their industrial machines are destroying. For them we, as conscious nature, only exist to be exploited. Capitalism has not been progressive for over 100 years; its existence is parasitic.
Everywhere is war initiated by imperialist monopoly capital against nature, against oppressed dependent countries and against the laboring classes. Their wars are attempts to download their crisis of the declining rate of profits onto the working class. They think they “hold the cards” but the balance of power has shifted; both between east and west by the ‘axis of resistance” fighting the U.S. led Zionist genocide, and between labor and capital as workers build class consciousness through resistance to become a “class for itself!”
Let’s take the outrage of the working class and turn it against the capitalist system! The capitalist ruling class and its politicians have nothing to offer but austerity, inflation, depression, authoritarianism, environmental catastrophe and endless wars. Their elections are a sham, their ‘democracy’ is exposed as a farce everyday and their judicial review, both nationally and internationally serves the rich. Reformism, liberalism, progressivism, campism, and Stalinism have discarded the class struggle, reducing our class efforts to begging for crumbs from the bosses table. The enemy of the workers of the world is the entire capitalist class, the capitalist states, their parties and their apologists.
For Workers to live Capitalism must Die! Build the General Strike against the War!
AGAINST THE U.S. WAR ON IRAN WE SAY: Victory to Iran, Down with the twin parties of wars, racism, climate destruction and union busting! Build a workers united front for the General Strike against imperialist wars!
On this May Day the international workers’ resistance to imperialism is mobilized against the U.S. led wars of genocide and Israeli expansion. The reaction of the decaying U.S. empire to the shift from the unipolar to the multipolar world is an escalation of the class war against workers’ living standards gained in the imperialist centers and the denial of aid, and denial of self determination to the masses of the global south compounded by anti-free trade tariffs, sanctions, secondary sanctions, arm twisting, extrajudicial executions, murder and outright piracy on the high seas.
Only the bosses paid liars in media and academia still deny the squeezing of wage standards by inflation, the disastrous effects of deregulation, the waste of military production and the real nature of crypto and financial scams which rob the gullible as bankers, grifters and conmen posing as politicians create and use government offices for their own enrichment. Unable to create real use values in the west, the capitalist class became speculators. Berlusconi, Pelosi, and Netanyahu were just foreshadowing the exposure of the Trump crime family and Epstein aligned cabal The U.S. power has been reduced to its military prowess funded by the position of the dollar as the world reserve currency; the rent paid via the petrodollar is being challenged and war is the inevitable consequence when the trading arrangements unravel. As we wrote in February.
“The U.S./Zionist plan for west Asia is one of many fronts in the inter-imperialist repartition of the world. The trade for oil in Yuan represents the leading edge of the war for the control of the oil receivables which serve as collateral for the loans, the rent payments upon which the “Petrodollar” sustains the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency. The west has lost the economic war for production of use values to China. It is the hegemonic role of the dollar alone that floats the wealth of the U.S. capitalist class. The war over Iran is for control of the rentier capital, the borrowing capacity the parasitic bourgeoisie lives off. The petrodollar vs the Yuan is behind the military attacks on Nigeria and the kidnapping of Maduro.”
The defeat of the USA and Israel in the war against Iran and Lebanon will weaken imperialism and give workers everywhere a leg up in their struggles against exploitation, genocide, ecocide and authoritarian capitalist rule. While giving no political support to theocratic, capitalist regimes or national liberation organizations revolutionary workers stand for the Victory of Iran and Hezbollah in this war ” Workers in the USA have a special responsibility to hasten the victory of Iran by bringing the war home using class struggle methods to turn the imperialist war into class war against their own ruling capitalist class.
Without Class-Political Independence Workers Cannot Escape Capital’s World Crisis
Everywhere Workers need their own independent mass workers’ parties to fight for workers’ governments! Capital’s crisis is escalating worldwide; oil and fertilizer shortages are shutting down Europe and Asia and famine is predicted by fall! Even in the more fortunately supplied U.S., oil and food prices are ballooning! Only the workers’ own historic political program put into action by the working masses can stop this from becoming a world depression!
In the imperialist centers of the U.S. and Europe, workers and broad sectors of the middle class have mobilized against the wars and economic conditions of imperialist decline. Comprador forces in the semi-colonial world are looking at regional self-defense alliances forming to attempt self determination. Without the program of Permanent Revolution this drive will fail. But the masses have not been defeated or even consulted yet! The new regional self-defense alliances workers need are not the same ones their leaders are building in or around BRICS. Workers need regional federations of worker’s states, not navigation of weak capitalist economies between competing imperialist powers and blocs. That navigation won’t feed you!
Despite promises and leftist propaganda podcasts, BRICS is not win-win for the people of the semi-colonies; already Russia and China have shown that they won’t risk their superprofits by providing the necessary support to Iran or any semi-colonial or oppressed nation. These two super-powers took a hands-off attitude during the last three years of genocide. Tankies may tell you that behind the ‘axis of resistance’ is Iran and behind Iran is China, but all the while China and Russia are trading with Israel, undercutting the work of BDS in practice. During the Gaza Genocide China became Israel’s top trading partner.
To defeat imperialism, the declining hegomon, its EU allies and the rising Chinese competitor, the working class must take power. To fail to do so is to condemn the world to inter-imperialist slaughter and authoritarian plans of social control, surveillance, and repression to enforce wage slavery.
U.S. imperialism in terminal crisis has no option but to impose its crisis on the workers all the way to genocide. Its existence was created by genocide and now joins with Israel the latest, white settler colony conducting genocide across West Asia. Iran has blocked this with its deterrence backed by the BRICS. Therefore the U.S. decline cannot be halted by a repartition among imperialists. The U.S. ruling class is forced to back down or go nuclear. Either will mean fascism and war on the world’s workers. The only way out is for the U.S. workers to lead the new American revolution in the Western Hemisphere.
The Inflection Point from Unipolar to Multi Polar World: the material basis for the redivision of the world.
The U.S. empire and G7 were surpassed by BRICS both in gross domestic product and purchasing power parity in 2018. This signaled a global shift in economic power. First the economic rise of the new powerhouse, China, then the wars to hold onto the U.S. empire commenced. The 2020 and 2024 U.S. presidential elections boiled down to which group of political operatives would be responsible for navigating the terminal decline of the empire. A real Humpty Dumpty moment.
The transition of industrial production from the west to the east has created a new relationship of forces economically, politically and militarily. This unfolding war will determine if the U.S. ruling class has been caught with its pants down with a force structure and mission that doesn’t fit its 21st century challenges. They’ve spent a lot to prevent a redivision of the world. They got Europe to buy a lot to support Ukraine. Much doesn’t work with the hoped-for versatility that was supposed to eliminate U.S. casualties, which by all serious observers are being under reported. They can’t ramp up military production fast enough to match their needs, or even Israel’s, skimming equipment from Taiwan, South Korea and redirecting that already promised to Ukraine! Those dependent allies of the U.S. who based their security on PAX AMERICANA are, not unlike Donald Trump, freaking out as the empire slowly unravels!
China today produces greater than ten times the crude steel produced by the U.S. In 1980 the U.S. produced two and a half times that of China. China produces more than three times the motor vehicles than the U.S. In the 1950 the U.S. built 48,890 miles of Interstate Highway recently dwarfed by China’s BRI (114,000 miles) linking 140 countries, many funded by China, loans from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road fund. China, having outpaced the U.S., is now the largest investor in foreign infrastructure including roads, railways, telecommunications and energy supplies. The U.S. foreign debt hovers at thirty Trillion dollars, (roughly the amount spent by the Pentagon this century.) China holds ~$768B in U.S.Treasurys used to keep their value of the Yuan lower than the dollar, keeping Chinese export prices down. China is slowly selling off U.S. debt as the BRICS and SCO nations are beginning to settle foreign debt in Yuan, further threatening the dominance of the Petrodollar.
The world is experiencing a shift from the unipolar to the multipolar world. Unable to keep pace with the industrial output of the rising BRICS economies (China in particular) the dying empire and its proxies rely on its hoarded military might to forestall the inevitable displacement of the petrodollar. The redivision of the world is being conducted by wars where civilians and civilian infrastructure are directly targeted.
Everywhere U.S. imperialism is retreating or suffering defeats. Some have called it the U.S. Suez moment, where the empire seeks to show its strength, only to display its rapid decline. Despite Trump the ruling class liberal consensus pretends it has ‘democratic’ wins in the elections in Hungary and Benin, but these do not win the U.S. any business. Rather they are just counter-tendencies and appear as victories for a Canada/France-led Europe and the ECOWAS nations (Economic Community of West African States.) The west is in decline and whether in NATO/Europe or sub-Saharan Africa, the U.S. is either trimming its losses (read “foreign aid,”) or is being given the boot by new African rulers in the Sahel.
In West Asia as elsewhere, imperialism cannot turn its terminal crisis onto the workers without victory in war. But win or lose it has to thrust its costs onto the masses. But lose it is, with Iran serving the U.S. daily defeats. Here it is demonstrated by an oppressed country fighting the declining U.S. hegemon to a standstill and challenging the ongoing genocide in West Asia. The “Greater Israel” project requires genocide! Iran, Yemen, Hezbollah and the Palestine solidarity movement internationally have exposed the complicity of the western imperialist powers driving a wedge into the Post WWII and cold war consensus and alliances. In addition the U.S. imperialist banking concerns and big oil conglomerates now have no prospect of reasserting the monopoly of the petrodollar in the world oil market. The balance of power has shifted between West and East thanks to the axis of resistance to genocide. And this is just as true in Africa as in west Asia; only the scale of destruction of capital is different!
Rising Workers and Masses Resistance
The terminal crises is being downloaded onto workers and oppressed of the world in the form of depression, famine, wars, fascism and genocide; this decent into barbarism is the punishment the working class suffers for not having taking power yet; it will be our burden until we do!
Turn economic strikes into class wide political strikes! Worldwide, contracts from before the U.S. war on Iran, i.e before the accelerated current inflationary cycle, no longer serve our classes’ needs! Wage increases and promises of secure employment workers thought we won are being undercut by the economic contraction. Big employers are firing thousands of workers and our wages no longer fill the family food basket or the commuter’s gas tank. Just the arrival of a single oil tanker in Japan became a cause for national news headlines. Simply striking or negotiating for another few dollars is not sufficient to stop the bosses’ offensive destroying our lives.
Reformism has no program to deal with the contraction of trade, ballooning prices and the downstream consequences for unemployment! To fight layoffs a sitdown strike wave is the required logical answer of the wage earners! Likewise, the unemployed should be organized to support the strikers and to demand work! We demand 30 hours work for 40 hours pay to provide jobs for all!
Are we supposed to do without while the masters of war fatten at the profits trough? Hell no! Neither war nor depression are acceptable to the productive social class. Single day walkouts and a “Day of Action” are no substitute for the power of the indefinite general strike for workers’ power! We say MAKE THE GENERAL STRIKE REAL and make it last long enough for the exploiters to “share the pain.” Prepare to win! Organize workers’ self-defense guards to drive away scabs and ICE goons!
The working class historic program against unemployment is transitional! Our demand: JOBS FOR ALL can only be won at the bosses expense by shortening the work week and rising wages. We must take back the gains made in productive capacity by labor saving technology. Mental labor invents the technology our class must reap the benefits. The bosses have forever pocketed profits from every productive advance achieved by innovation of fixed capital inputs at the expense of labor. We cannot permit speed ups enforced on those who are still employed! The speedup only advances the day when the worker is laid off in an oversupplied, contracting market! Strike!
Brave individualist action can’t deliver gains if not leading directly to actions of massed organized/organizing workers! We are not telling you to be fired, blackballed, sent to jail or killed by goons.The capitalist parties and their cheerleaders recite pap about peaceful, legal “action” that only organizes car pools to voting booths! We say STRIKE! The only illegal strike is the strike that loses!
The bourgeoisie cannot stop workers’ spontaneous resistance to wars and fascism. The evidence is now being shown in actual class struggles around the world. The working class is defiant. In Minneapolis the working class united to defend the immigrant community and drive out ICE while suffering the murderous retribution of the state. Across Iran millions mobilize against the Trump/Netanyahu escalations, resisting threats of annihilation with defensive mobilization around power and water treatment plants. Against Starmer and his government’s characterization of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, thousands line up to be arrested in Solidarity with Palestine.
In Belgium workers prevented transhipment of British arms to the Zionist state. Workers around the world take notice of the Italian and Greek dockworkers strikes against arms shipments, and from Newark to Oakland Palestine solidarity activists are bringing the lessons of Italy and Greece to port workers in the U.S.
As we wrote in “Workers Unite to Defeat U.S. Wars For Oil”…,
“Likewise the U.S. arm twisting of India to stop buying Russian oil is confronted by class struggle played out in real time against a historic general strike where 300,000,000 workers downed tools in opposition to the U.S. trade deal. This strike portends greater revolutionary upheavals, whipsawing the Modi regime in inter-BRICS friction, as Modi seized 3 U.S.-sanctioned oil tankers to please Trump.”
Exemplary individualist action is no substitute for a strike and is only worthwhile if it results in mass labor action. The hard work of organizing requires wall to wall industrial unionism, building action committees in every workplace, building workers solidarity organizations in all workers communities and organizing self defense for all workers organized actions. These are the tasks our unions should be doing but only the revolutionary socialists are advocating. The entrenched leaderships connected to the capitalist parties, NGO’s, CBO’S or state entities will never advocate working class political organization from the lowest to the highest level because they do not want you to even consider the working class taking power as a serious option. We need a revolutionary workers party to dislodge these labor fakers, the labor lieutenants of capital and replace them with militant workers foremost from among the youth, the women and oppressed minorities who are committed to building a workers government!
In February, 1917, the women of Petrograd marched against food price inflation caused by the war; their vanguard action triggered two revolutions in one year and hastened the revolution in Germany that ended WW1. There’s no telling what workers’ action will detonate international uprisings. This is a reason to build a new workers’ revolutionary international, a mass world party of socialist revolution! An organization to coordinate workers’ actions to overthrow the capitalist system around the planet for humanity’s historic march to socialism. Together we can end exploitation and oppression and proceed to the liberation of social being!
What’s Necessary: Internationalism, Organization, Leadership, Political Program, Struggle
For Independent Working Class Political Action, the labor party and the general strike:
For the working class to win its necessities of life, it must have its own party advancing its own program of demands and the power to implement them. That power can only be wielded through a workers state which has defeated the capitalist state. True internationalism fights all imperialists in every country. Those who wage imperialist wars or supply their proxy wars must be defeated by their “own” working classes.Both imperialist blocs must be put down. This is the suppressed lesson of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, the Bolsheviks and E.V. Debs! The working class can defeat war!
Economism and reformism exist in, around and on top of the working class. They promise living wages, advances in housing, health care, education, child and elder care can be provided within the constraints of the capitalist mode of production which they claim can be regulated and forced to reform via electoral wins of the capitalist Democratic party. A signpost of the AFL-CIO for the whole post-WW2 era has been “We work for some very nice people. The Union made them that way.” This is an excuse for the Democrat legislators, who have delivered nothing and no longer can! There isn’t a whisper from the bureaucracy that recognizes the truth. They are supporting imperialism as the empire dies! Variations on their model of chaining our class to Capital are exported to every dependent country!
The Trade Union leadership and labor bureaucracy work overtime to prevent the working class from establishing its political independence and fighting for a workers government The labor lieutenants of capital’s job is to restrain every incipient outbreak in the class struggle and rally the energy of the ranks into the two century old coalition with the Democrats. The Trade Union Federations (in particular the labor bureaucracy,) and the organizations of oppressed minorities and women rally the masses in limited opposition so as to reform some of the worst excesses of the state; their methods are primarily electoral, legislative and judicial. When the masses get out of hand as in the upsurge in Minneapolis, when the masses are demanding a General Strike and are organized for direct and mass action they jump to the front of the movement to limit its trajectory.
The masses want a General Strike. But the bureaucracy and leadership refuse to call their members out citing ‘no strike’ clauses in contracts. Rather they support limited sick outs and one day protests, not indefinite General Strikes. They then take advantage of their authority and leadership to reinforce labor’s bloc with the Democrats.
Popular frontist politics acts to defend capitalism by tying the working class to a layer of the ruling capitalist class in different formulations that abandon working class program demands, most often for an electoral bloc with sectors of Capital. This takes different organizational forms in different countries, but always subordinates all political initiative to the capitalist bourgeoisie and always maintains their state power. It is a traitorous and idealist project which elevates the cross-class mass mobilizations and electoral collaboration over working class independent political action. Be warned! Organize around the demands of your own historic program and exclude Capital’s goals! Class-political independence is required to crush fascism and prevent its reinvention by Capital!
Thus, labor must implement an action program of class struggle which asserts working class methods to win working class demands!
Victory to Iran! Build a workers united front against imperialist wars! Labor must block all military shipments to the Zionist State and the war on Iran.
Turn the war on Iran into a working class war against the US capitalist class! Both in the USA and world wide.
Organize enlisted service persons unions! Elect your own officers! Organize the troops to close all overseas bases, fraternize with the Iranian people and reject and end the war!
Make the general strike real, make it hurt the imperialist exploiters. Multi-national strikes against multinational employers!
Defend every worker’s strike and neighborhood from the state and the fascists. Defend immigrant workers, women and oppressed minorities! Build workers self defense guards in every union hall.
Fight Unemployment with industry wide sit down strikes. Jobs for All! For a reduced workweek at full pay! For a 100% cost of living increase against inflation enforced by workers committees! For workers wages and prices committees! Open the books!
Stop plant closings by occupying and taking over production! Organize the Unorganized! Organize the Unemployed and Immigrant workers.
Smash anti-immigrant xenophobic state agencies such as ICE in the USA and non-state fascist organizations like Proud Boys, the JDL 613, Reform UK, etc.
Workers of the World Unite! For a new revolutionary Workers International! For Workers’ Governments to expropriate the capitalist means of production! For the World Socialist Revolution!
