Celebrate may day on the basis of internationalism

In the whole world, we can see various organizations, parties and states observing May Day, the international working class day  this year. We can read and hear different statements and saw mobilizations from these organizations paying lip service to the gravedigger of capitalism.

The right of the bourgeoisie -- the explicitly pro-capitalist and pro-‘globalization' -- most of them controlled the different states and governments of many countries, like in the past, repeatedly tell the workers that there is no other system that can save them from misery but capitalism and globalization; that the ‘enemy' of peace and progress is terrorism (in the Philippines, the maoist CPP-NPA-NDF, the Moro secessionist MILF and the islamic fanatics of Abu Sayyaf and the likes). The basis of their call is to defend and develop the national economy while strengthening competitiveness in the world market. They are compelling the workers to sacrifice more for their bourgeois motherland!

These unambiguously profit-hungry sharks once again promise, as what they did in the past to the poverty-stricken workers that "once our nation develops, you can benefit from it so let us unite and help each other for our country!" 

But in the Philippines as anywhere in the world, the disillusionment of the class to the promises of the exploiters reigning in power is increasingly developing. The Filipino workers are more and more disgusted with what is happening to their conditions as the different factions of capitalist politicians alternately rule them through "people power revolutions" and elections.

The left of capital -- the Maoist CPP and MLPP, "Leninist" PMP, different colors of trotskyists, anarchists, radical democrats and unionists, ‘anti-imperialist' nationalists, and the likes -- using different words against ‘capitalism' and against globalization, are basically united to lock up the workers in the framework of national development (i.e. national capitalism) with words that are ‘music' to the ear of the Filipino proletariat -- democracy and nationalism. Shouting radical and ‘revolutionary' slogans of ‘overthrowing' the rotten system but in reality it is only the faction of the bourgeoisie in power they want to topple while helping the other faction to replace the former. Mobilizing for democracy which in essence means giving the workers the illusion that the capitalist system still work as long as the power is in the hands of the ‘people'! Deceitfully explaining to the proletariat that ‘foreign domination' is the root cause of poverty and by uprooting this cause, by liberating the country from ‘imperialism‘, capitalism will develop. Thus, as the maoists would say, "people's democracy" or "direct democracy" will become a reality!

Though the "Leninist" PMP and trotskyists pay lip-service to the overthrow of the capitalist state and socialism, it is no different from the democrats by sowing illusion to the class that "democracy is a necessary road to attain socialism". While the anarchists, abhorring all kinds of "authority", use "direct democracy" as their slogan to deceive the exploited class up to the extent of forming "model communities" in the localities.      

There is no basic difference between the right and left wings of capital on the basis of their viewpoint -- defend the national economy and democracy -- whether using conservative or radical slogans; openly against socialism and communism or defending the latter in words. Both of them mutually helping each other to chain the Filipino workers in particular and world proletariat in general to the mystification of democracy and nationalism.

The nature of the proletariat and its struggles

May Day is the international day of the working class. It is appropriate that on this day once again we must highlight the international nature of the proletariat as a class, which for decades the right and left wings of the bourgeoisie is trying to conceal and alter it with mystifications. And these mystifications, thanks to the Left, dominated the consciousness of the Filipino workers for almost a century.

Workers have no country; no motherland to defend and develop. The proletariat is an international class. Workers around the world, wherever they live and work have the same interests. They have one enemy -- the whole capitalist class. There interests are not subject to the interests of any country. On the contrary, their interests will become a reality if all the national frontiers will be destroyed. Socialism and communism will be realized on the world scale not in one country or group of countries.

Internationalism is one of the two cornerstones of the real proletarian movement. The other is its independent movement, independent from other classes especially to all the factions of the capitalist class. These are the basic difference between the authentic proletarian movement and the left wing of capital under decadent capitalism.

Since the proletariat is an international class, its struggles must also have an international character in order to win. Within the framework of advancing the world proletarian revolution that the struggle of every proletarian fractions in any part of the planet must be based. With this context one can understand that the "struggle for nationalism and democracy" under the current historical epoch of capitalist decadence is anti-proletarian and derail its struggles. In the decadence of capitalism, the tactics of supporting "national liberation and democracy", struggle for reforms, "revolutionary unionism and parliamentarism", and "united front", are all counter-revolutionary.

May Day 2007 in the Philippines

Basically, there are no distinction on the essence of "celebration" in the Philippines with the rest of the world -- dominated and controlled by the right and left of capital. The Filipino leftists used the May Day as propaganda vehicle for their electoral opportunism. ‘Championing' the interests of the class by compelling them to participate in the brutal and fraud-ridden electoral circus of the different factions of the capitalist class. But with the slow emersion of revolutionaries in the Philippines who are beginning to re-evaluate their practice on the basis of internationalism and independent working class movement; who started in theoretical clarification, we can say that indeed there is something to celebrate on May Day this year!

The re-evaluation of a handful of communists in the Philippines of their practice is part of the on-going development of the internationalist communist consciousness in many parts of the world since the late 60s. The international conference of revolutionary Marxism in Korea last 2006 was a glaring manifestation that even in countries where the works of the left communists were not yet read and studied for almost 100 years now there are revolutionaries and workers with their own experiences of the decadence of capitalism and the bankruptcy of the old concepts and tactics inherited from the various leftists organizations that are reflecting with their old theories from which the 50 years of counter-revolution had made them believed as "invariant".

Although the Filipino working class, increasingly disillusioned against the rotten system,  is still mystified with the bankrupt dogmas of the Left, we have great confidence that sooner as part of an international class and with their own experience, they will raise their own collective consciousness and build their own organizations as part of the world-wide efforts of building an international communist party in the future.

WORKERS HAVE NO COUNTRY!

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

INTERNASYONALISMO, May 1, 2007