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xxx  During
the past weeks a series of revolts, protests and strikes against the rising
food and energy prices have broken out in many countries of the capitalist
periphery. At recent meetings the guard dogs of the capitalist institutions -
IMF, World Bank and G 8 - have warned of a gigantic destabilisation and
conflicts in almost 40 countries around the world.
It is no coincidence that the hunger revolts are erupting now, since the sharp rise in food prices is not a natural disaster but a result of the sharpening of the capitalist crisis. Never have so many countries been hit by workers'
struggles at the same time. This is testimony to the strength and militancy of
the working class on an international scale. Faced with the black-out of the
bourgeois media, here are just a few examples, only going back to the beginning
of 2008. At our public meetings, via e-mails and forums (one of them being Revleft), we have received criticism as much from outside as inside Venezuela. We are accused of giving a proletarian character to a petty-bourgeois movement with nothing to do with a real proletarian struggle, or of supporting the children of the rich of the country who oppose the Chavist regime. We reaffirm our position for the following reasons... We have received the following article written by a comrade - a member of the ‘Nucleus of Internationalist Discussion' in the Dominican Republic. We salute his contribution. The article is a condemnation of the Cuban regime, that since the fall of the USSR, is still trying to continue the great lie of the 20th century - identifying Stalinist barbarism to "socialism" - and in these last years it has allied itself with Chavez's regime to renovate that lie with its "21st century socialism". On March 8th, all
the feminist groups once again commemorated International Women's Day with the
full blessing of the radical petty bourgeoisie represented in the various left
wing groups (the Socialist Party in particular). Once again this day,
associated with the struggle of working women, will be perverted and
transformed into a giant democratic and reformist masquerade. Through the following communiqué, Internacionalismo - ICC's section in Venezuela, analyzes the events in South America, following the appearance of Colombian troops in Ecuadorian territory. A year of strikes on German railways have been joined by the movement by Nokia workers against the closure of the factory in Bochum. This article relates the development of solidarity amongst German workers as they try to develop a fight back against the relentless attacks that are imposed on them. ICConlineArticles only available here online UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon has said that “the dramatic
escalation in food prices worldwide has evolved into an unprecedented challenge
of global proportions”. While the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation
(FAO) estimates that globally average food prices have risen 57% over the last
year, this average is exceeded by certain staples. The 1st May local election results were a very bad setback for the Labour government, with only 24% of the vote, the lowest share since 1968, the loss of a number of councils in their core areas of support, and most spectacularly Boris Johnson's victory over Ken Livingstone in the London Mayoral election. In WR 312 and 313 we published articles (for the first time
in English) on the evolution of British imperialism, from Bilan, the
theoretical organ of the Italian Communist Left. They first appeared in
1934-1935 and gave a marxist framework for understanding subsequent
developments. 400,000 workers were involved
in strikes, demonstrations and rallies on 24 April. 250,000 teachers took part
in their first national strike in 21 years. 100,000 civil servants were on
strike. Of the 25,000 on strike in Birmingham it was the second day for council workers. Just a couple of years ago, China's
President Hu Jintao promised a "peaceful rise" of his country onto the
international arena. Many international observers and commentators were taken
in by the Stalinist doublespeak from the military dictatorship of the People's
Liberation Army and argued that China's
economic ascension would make it a more reliable, responsible power for good in
the world. Poverty, uncertainty, the rising price of food and fuel - we are all feeling the pinch. Even the ruling class is getting worried about the global scale these problems have reached. Every day, around the world, 100,000 people die of hunger. Taken as a whole, food prices have risen by 83% over the last three years. In the first part of this article on the movement of May 68,
we retraced its first stage: the mobilisation of the students. We showed that
the agitation of the students in France, from 22 March 1968 up to the middle of
May, was only an expression in this country of an international movement
affecting almost all of the western countries... Faced
with all the conflicting arguments about the Russian revolution, it is
difficult to steer an even course between the predominant view - that the
revolution was a total disaster for humanity and inexorably led to the horrors
of Stalinism - and the less fashionable but equally uncritical portrayals of
Lenin and the Bolsheviks as superheroes who never made any errors... World RevolutionThe ICC's monthly press in Britain The leftist controlled capitalist government machinery has pounced upon the unarmed exploited masses of people and agricultural workers in Singur and Nandigram in the rural areas of West Bengal. The holy alliance of state armed forces and the cadres of the CPI(M), the predominant leftist political party of India have attacked the masses of exploited people rising against the government policy and practice of snatching agricultural land for setting up new industrial units and special economic zones giving special privilege and right to the capitalists to exploit the working class people as much as they please. Terrorists attacked the sleeping passengers in the Smajhauta express or the ‘peace express’ in the late night hours of 18th February07. Several coaches of the express train were set on fire 100 kilometers away from the Indian capital by the incendiary devices planted by terrorists. 67 persons including many children were killed on the spot. 15 persons were injured, 12 of them very seriously. Most of the killed are reported to be Pakistani nationals. Every sane person can not but condemn this abominable, barbarous act. About two months
after the serial blasts in the evening peak hour trains in Mumbai terrorists
have struck again in Malegaon, a textile town about 250 Km away from Mumbai on
8th September. Again the sole target of the terrorist bombs has been
the working class people. 93RD Amendment of Indian constitution and the
policy of hike in reservation by the ‘United Progressive Alliance’-Government.
Again after a decade and more Indian government has added new fuel to the fire of discontent of the youth and students by modifying the existing policy of reservation and has decided to implement a hike in reservation from 22.5% to 50% at one blow especially in higher studies and professional courses like medical, engineering and management courses in April06 in accordance with the 93rd amendment of he Indian constitution, adopted in last December 2005; In Mumbai, terrorist bombs have once again struck the defenceless civilian population. In capitalism's war of each against all, the workers and toiling masses are always the principal victims in an imperialist war increasingly fought with the methods of terrorism - and in which the workers have no side to support. During May and June this year, several tens of thousands of garment workers in and around Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, have struck against conditions of barbaric exploitation, confronting brutal police repression which has left several workers dead and many injured. No safety of life for the common masses of working class and exploited people in decadent capitalism Communist InternationalistThe ICC's press in India Up to now capitalism has shown a conspicuous inability to develop the countries where two-thirds of humanity live. Now, with the incredible economic growth in India and China - and throughout East Asia generally - we hear it shouted from the roof tops that from henceforth it will be able to develop more than half the world and that it would be able to go even further if only all the constraints imposed on it were to be eliminated. If wages and working conditions were to be levelled down to those obtaining in China, it is claimed, then growth in the West would also rise to 10% a year. This raises theoretical and ideological questions of great importance: does the development in East Asia represent a renewal of capitalism or is it no more than a stray occurrence in its on-going crisis? To answer this question we will consider the phenomenon throughout the whole of the sub-continent, though we will examine China more closely as it is the most publicised and the most representative example. For five years the class struggle has
continued to develop world wide. Against the simultaneous and ever deeper
attacks with which it is confronted the working class is reacting,
demonstrating its militancy and asserting its class struggle in both the
so-called developed and under-developed countries. Anarchism took the lead in
this resistance to the integration of the CNT into the bourgeois state apparatus as a tool to control the class struggle, when the majority of anarchists in the CNT regrouped to form the
Iberian Anarchist Federation (Federacion Anarquista Iberica - FAI) in 1927. The
aim of this article is to assess this attempt to preserve the CNT for the
proletariat. In 1915, as the hideous
reality of the European war became ever more apparent, Rosa Luxemburg wrote
"The crisis of social democracy", a text better known as the "Junius pamphlet"
from the pseudonym under which Luxemburg published it. The pamphlet was written
in prison and was distributed illegally by the Internationale group which had
been formed immediately after the outbreak of the war. It was a savage
indictment of the positions adopted by the leadership of the Social Democratic
Party of Germany. The day hostilities began, on 4 August 1914, the SPD had abandoned its internationalist principles and rallied to
the "Fatherland in danger", calling for the suspension of the class struggle
and for participation in the war. This was a shattering blow to the
international socialist movement, because the SPD had been the pride and joy of
the whole Second International; instead of acting as a beacon of international
working class solidarity, its capitulation to the war effort was seized on as a
justification for similar acts of betrayal in other countries. The result was
the ignominious collapse of the International. In 2007 the ICC held its 17th
International Congress. For the first time since 1979, the Congress was able to
welcome delegates of other internationalist groups coming literally from the
four corners of the earth (from Brazil to Korea). As we
have pointed out in the article on the work of the Congress, this was no innovation on our part: the
ICC did nothing other than adopt the same approach that had led to its own
creation in 1975, and which it had itself inherited - as we will see - from the
Communist Left and particularly from the French Communist Left (Gauche
Communiste de France, GCF). Whence the interest of the article which we are
publishing below, and which is the report originally published in
Internationalisme n°23, of a conference of internationalists held in May 1947,
just 60 years before our own 17th Congress. The following article was originally published in the November-December 1936 edition of Bilan (n°37), the theoretical journal of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left. It is the fourth article in the series "Problems of the Period of Transition" by the Belgian comrade who signed his contributions "Mitchell". The previous three have been published in the last three issues of the International Review. International ReviewThe ICC's theoretical quarterly On
February 28th, even though he acknowledged the risk of an economic
slowdown, President George W. Bush declared, "I don't think we're headed for a
recession...I believe that our economy has got the fundamentals in place for
us...to grow and continue growing, more robustly than we're growing now. So we're
still for a strong dollar." The
electoral circus is clearly at the heart of the political strategy of the
bourgeoisie in the current period. Revolutionaries differ from the bourgeois
media pundits because our concern is not to make electoral predictions or succumb to immediatist and empiricist
temptations in dissecting the minutiae of the day-to-day evolution of the
electoral circus... There are so many things that are going wrong in
today's world -- wars without end that are killing and displacing millions
around the world; health epidemics that condemn millions to early deaths and
suffering; famines; homelessness; degradation of the environment that is menace
the future of all life on earth; growing pauperization of the working masses of
the world.... For the past seven years the American ruling class has
moved relentlessly and forcefully to use the events of 9/ll as the pretext for
pushing through a tremendous reinforcement of the repressive apparatus of the
capitalist state. While ostensibly designed as a means to combat the
“terrorist” threat from Islamist fundamentalism, the strengthening of the
repressive apparatus is a means that the state will not hesitate to use against
any threat to its dominance... This article has already been published on this site here: http://en.internationalism.org/wr/313/tibet-protests Anyone
who has followed the ICC press in the last couple of years has certainly
noticed the articles where we saluted the emergence of a new militants in the
working class searching for political understanding and willing to take
militant action to defend proletarian interests. Dear Internationalism. I've read your series on how decadence affects capitalism in the International Review. Even though the union movement is portrayed as being progressive in the 1920's and 30's, it had moved away from being a worker's movement and became a hindrance on the working class. In the US, the situation was different... This article has already been published on this site here: http://en.internationalism.org/wr/313/may-68 InternationalismThe ICC's press in the United States |
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