In the first issue of Dünya Devrimi, dated September 2008 we have written: "...the reason we have chosen the name Dünya Devrimi is that we have organizationally entered a direction regarding our international future. Based on our conclusions that a communist organization can't exist on a national or regional level and that communist militants functioning in a locality has to be a part of an internationally centralized communist organization, we have been discussing the platform of the International Communist Current which at the moment has sections in fourteen countries and with whom we have already been working together and in solidarity with, with the perspective of forming a section of this organization in Turkey. Just as there is no room for impatience in any activity of revolutionaries, there is no room for impatience in this process of discussion, clarification and integration into the ICC. An integration made in a hasty and artificial way rather than a solid and organic way would not do any good and we continue the process of integration which we knew to have been a long term process with patience and the purpose of developing real clarity. On the other hand, we are clarifying within this process as well and we feel it would be helpful to draw our activities closer to those of an organization whose political principles as well as conception of an internationally centralized organization we share. For this reason we have found giving the name of ICC papers World Revolution in England, Revolución Mundial in Mexico, Weltrevolution in Germany and Switzerland and Wereld Revolutie in Netherlands to our publication. Also in this context we have found the opportunity to anounce that we are working in order to be integrated into the ICC."

We want to inform our readers with great happiness that as a result of deep discussions held with patience we have been integrated into the International Communist Current and formed the section of the International Communist Current in Turkey named Dünya Devrimi by dissolving our previous group, Enternasyonalist Komünist Sol. Thus Dünya Devrimi is no longer the publication brought out by a small number of militants in one country but is the publication of an organization centralized on the international level. Our organization is now one organization united on the world level around our programatic principles, our platform, it is a world organization and with this mode of centralization it differs from international roof-like foundations in which different national organizations aren't even properly aware of one another.

The decision of militants who formed Enternasyonalist Komünist to join the ICC is not an isolated incident on the international level. It was thus that our last international congress, for the first time in a quarter century, was able to welcome the delegations of different groups that stood clearly on internationalist class positions (OPOP from Brazil, the SPA from Korea, EKS from Turkey, and the Internasyonalismo group from the Philippines[1], although the latter was unable to be present physically). Contacts and discussions have continued since with other groups and elements from other parts of the world, especially in Latin America where we have been able to hold public meetings in Peru, Ecuador, and Santo Domingo[2]. With the same perspective, the militants of the group called Internasyonalismo in the Philippines have, just like us who joined the ICC from Turkey, patiently been through a process of indepth discussions and have became a part of the ICC, forming the section of our organization in this very important country. We hope that with the rise in the class struggles internationally, the fact that the International Communist Current has two new sections now is only a beginning.

Dünya Devrimi

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[1] OPOP: Oposição Operária (Workers' Opposition); SPA: Socialist Political Alliance; EKS: Enternasyonalist Komünist Sol (Internationalist Communist Left); Internasyonalismo (Internationalism).

[2] See on our web site "Internationalist debate in the Dominican Republic [1]", "Reunión Pública de la CCI en Perú: Hacia la construcción de un medio de debate y clarificación [2]" and "Reunion pública de la CCI en Ecuador: un momento del debate internacionalista [3]".

This article is available as a leaflet here [5] to download and distribute

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The circumstances surrounding the forthcoming G20 meeting are historically unprecedented. Economic crisis wracks the globe, the bourgeoisie seems to be on the ropes. The massive injections of credit into the money markets, the equally massive budget deficits, and now the latest round of ‘quantitative easing' have enabled the bourgeoisie to prevent a total implosion of the financial system in most of the central countries, but this hasn't resolved the underlying crisis.

Internationally the bourgeoisie has been forced to admit that the world is facing its most brutal downward plunge since the Depression of the 1930s. Countries such as Japan and Germany are suffering breath-taking collapses in exports and industrial production. Much of Eastern Europe is threatened with outright disaster on the scale of Iceland, and Greece, Ireland, Italy and Spain are not far behind. The ‘emerging markets' are also beginning to show the strain - China's layoffs alone number in the tens of millions - as these economies are caught up in the same tsunami as the rest of the world economy. The OECD and the IMF now predict the world economy as a whole will contract this year - something not seen since World War Two.

40 years since the end of the post-war boom all the policies which the bourgeoisie have used  to manage the crisis are on the brink of failure. Decades of state intervention (i.e. state capitalism) have left the bourgeoisie standing at a precipice. The main mechanism of maintaining demand in the face of massive over-production - ever-increasing amounts of credit - has now left the economy like a patient who has overused antibiotics: the effectiveness of the counter-measure has been reduced to virtually zero. Worse, credit has become part of the problem: the whole of the system is now, literally, bankrupt.

The result of this for the working class is already clear: a vicious assault on jobs, wages and living conditions that will make the last 40 years look like an oasis of prosperity.

Putting people first?

The impulse to come out onto the streets, to meet and discuss with other people who feel the same way about the state of society, to show our indignation with the way the world is being run, all this is healthy. The problem with today's demonstration is that the alternative being offered by its organisers, ‘Put People First', doesn't at all challenge the basics of the capitalist system and its state machine.

They argue that putting pressure on the existing system of governments and states can bring about changes in the society.

- They demand "a transparent and accountable process for reforming the international financial system" as "this will require the consultation of all governments, parliaments, trade unions and civil society, with the United Nations playing a key role".

They claim that "these recommendations provide an integrated package to help world leaders chart a path out of recession", and can open the way to  "a new system that seeks to make the economy work for people and the planet", with "democratic governance of the economy", "decent jobs and public services for all", a "green economy" etc. etc. 

Spreading illusions in the state

What these campaigns fail to recognise is that neither capitalism or the state, which has always expressed the interests of those that rule us in opposition to those it exploits and oppresses, can be reformed. Bourgeois economists from the Left and Right have for the 80 years since the Depression been tinkering with the way the state intervenes in the capitalism system. This is the most obvious lesson from the current crisis: 40 years of state intervention have failed to solve the problems inherent in this system. War, mass unemployment, poverty and the destruction of the environment aren't the result of ‘bad governments'.  They are the direct products of a senile system, a social order that has outlived its usefulness to humanity.

Instead of falling for illusions that capitalism can be made a little more democratic, a little greener, thanks to the intervention of the state, we need to recognise that capitalist social relations are inhuman to the core. They are inseparable from the drive to accumulate profit and this drive will always put people last. This is why the existing relations of production - based on wage labour and production for the market - need to be totally uprooted and replaced with a genuinely new society - communism, a world-wide, stateless and moneyless community where all production is geared towards human need.

The global political apparatus of capitalist states, including the UN, is there to preserve and defend capitalist social relations. If present-day society is to change, that apparatus needs to be dismantled by revolution, in every country on the planet.

There is a real alternative - the class struggle

Revolution is not a utopia. It is contained as a possibility and a necessity in the existing class struggle. And while ‘Put People First' wrestle with the niceties of bourgeois democracy, real class struggles are taking place all around us. Internationally since 2003 the working class has been returning to the stage. From New York to Nanjing workers have been rediscovering the bonds of solidarity that bridge the divisions of age, religion and nation, as they flex their collective muscles in defence of their interests. The demonstrations and assemblies of the students in France and Italy, the general revolt that swept through Greece, the mass strikes in Egypt and Bangladesh, the fight against unemployment by the oil refinery workers in Britain: even if only a minority recognises it as yet, these are all part of an international movement which shows the common interests of workers in all countries in the face of the capitalist crisis. 

These are the struggles we should be putting ‘first', as they are the only ones that have in them the perspective to really change society. To do this workers have to move these struggles beyond their immediate goals and build a movement which can begin to challenge capitalism. Campaigns like 'Put People First' are a barrier to this deepening of consciousness and workers will have to overcome the illusions they peddle if they are to build a real alternative to the barbarity of capitalism.

WR, 28 March 2009.