Communist League Bulletin No. 3

International Workers’ Day 2005:
Unite for Liberation! Unite for a Workers’ Republic!

The Communist League extends greetings to the working people of the United States and the world this May Day, International Workers’ Day, struggling every day for their rights, their livelihoods and their future. On this 120th May Day, we find ourselves in a world of both fear and hope. From the Great Power centers of Europe and North America to the Middle East and Global South, the working people of the world continue to struggle with the misery of the past, the brutality of the present and the desires of the future.

International Workers’ Day offers us an opportunity to look back at what we have experienced over the last year with an eye toward the coming battles we will inevitably face. It allows us to see where we stand in our struggles against exploitation and oppression, and against the capitalist system that uses their methods to maintain control. Most importantly, though, this day allows us to look ahead and focus on what we, as working people, must do to begin building a better world.

Over the last year, we have increasingly seen the true nature of the “Bush agenda” — i.e., the agenda of U.S. imperialism — unfold before our eyes, both within this country and across the globe. The theft of the 2004 election by the corporatist and semi-fascist Republican Party, a chilling replay of the events of 2000, has forever buried the notion that the U.S. is a “beacon of democracy” in the world. In its place, a corporatist police state has emerged that regards anyone who does not blindly accept the regime’s propaganda as aiding “terrorism.” The armed forces of the state have been used to violently suppress or disrupt civil protests, spy on legal political and issue-oriented groups, and intimidate those who disagree with the policies of the regime.

Walking hand-in-hand with these attacks on democratic rights have been moves to further undercut and erode the living standards of working people. The efforts of the Bush regime to establish a so-called “ownership society” is in fact a campaign to strengthen the modern slave society. The attacks on Social Security, one of the few remaining social safety nets from the New Deal era of U.S. capitalism, are a thinly veiled effort to crush what is left of the ability of workers to collectively defend their interests. This is still only the beginning. The ultimate goal is to eliminate whatever remains of the rights of working people, including the right for form labor unions and bargain collectively, and reduce our class to the status of modern slaves dependent on the (“faith-based”) charity of capitalists to survive.

Dovetailing into these political and economic attacks is the ongoing “culture war” against working people — primarily those from oppressed backgrounds. Through the use of flowery phrases like “culture of life” and “protecting marriage,” the corporatist ruling class has sought to make workers fight each other along racial/national, gender and sexual lines for the crumbs that capitalism is willing to part with. Combined with a media-driven propaganda war meant to undo any of the progressive social gains made throughout the 20th century and make universal the outward expressions of oppression and bigotry, the capitalists have been relentless in their “class warfare” against the working class.

These attacks on working people in the U.S. are part of a broader program, international in scope, meant to facilitate the wholesale reorganization of the world along lines favorable to Washington and Wall Street. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the installation of phony “democratic” client states, were the opening moves of a larger campaign being waged by the neoconservative corporatists. When viewed in conjunction with the recent “revolutions” in Georgia, the Ukraine and Lebanon, as well as the entrenching polarization of European states along “pro-American” and “anti-American” lines, a picture emerges of a classic geopolitical chess game being played by the U.S. imperialists.

Looking at the situation from a geopolitical perspective, the realignment of states formerly allied with the defunct Soviet Union as part of the U.S. imperialist cartel, the conscious efforts to project military and economic power into the Middle East and South Asia, as well as the strengthening of ties with Great Britain and Australia, its “peripheral” imperialist junior partners, has created a map of the world where the three main rivals of the U.S. — the European Union, Russia and China — find themselves geographically isolated and virtually surrounded on all sides by the Bush regime and its cartel states.

Such a patchwork division of the world, which can only continue for a relatively short time, is often a prelude to war — both “cold” and “hot.” Already, economic conflicts between the Anglo-American imperialist cartel and its rivals has begun to develop; both the U.S. and EU have slapped large tariffs on each other’s exports, China is beginning to send its overproduced goods to the U.S., reversing a decades-long trend, and many countries have begun to opt out of both the U.S. dollar as its hard currency reserve and the international credit schemes (e.g., the International Monetary Fund) meant to buoy Wall Street.

But as much as these developments give the working people of the world justified reason to be fearful of their future, there are also emerging signs of hope. The U.S. imperialist drive toward reorganization of the world on its own terms has been met at every turn by organized and determined resistance by the exploited and oppressed.

In Iraq, where the grinding repression of occupation and guerilla war with Islamic fundamentalists has trapped the people of that country in a brutal cycle of violence and poverty, working people are organizing to fight for their rights and lives against both forces of reaction. The growth of independent labor unions, organizations of the unemployed, a mass movement for women’s equality and, most importantly, the Workers’ Council movement have created a basis for a genuinely independent and secular Iraq based on the democratic rule of the exploited and oppressed in that country. On this International Workers’ Day, we extend special greetings to our brothers and sisters involved in this movement for a free, democratic and independent working people’s republic in Iraq.

On the other side of the world, the exploited and oppressed of Venezuela are continuing their struggle to expand and deepen their hard-won revolutionary gains by pushing forward. The declaration by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in favor of a “21st century socialism” should be seen as a barometer of the mood and sentiment of the working people who made the Bolivarian Revolution. The victories of Venezuelan workers in securing the nationalization of the paper industry under workers’ control, the “war on the latifundia” that is beginning to bring land to the poor and landless peasantry, and the ongoing experiment in participatory democracy, represent the first tentative steps toward building a society consciously striving for an end to classes and class antagonisms. In extending greetings to our Venezuelan brothers and sisters — our compañeros in struggle — on this May Day, we also renew our pledge to continue fighting for a working people’s republic in the U.S. that can be an honest friend and ally of the Revolution and of the Bolivarian workers’ republic that would ultimately result from the victory of the Venezuelan proletariat and its struggle.

But what is happening in Iraq and Venezuela are not isolated incidents. They represent a growing trend and stirring of the basic revolutionary sentiment of the exploited and oppressed around the world. Whether we are talking about the popular revolts in Ecuador, the French general strikes, the Palestinian intifada, the Nepalese “People’s War” or the spontaneous workers’ uprisings in China, the working people of the world are standing up and demanding an end to war, poverty and repression. They do this using whatever means and avenues are available, even if they are not the most desirable or immediately lead to their liberation.

Here in the U.S., too, working people are beginning to reorganize themselves for a struggle against the Bush regime. The recent demonstrations against the ongoing war in Iraq and the second inaugural ceremony for George W. Bush show that working people, as with people from all classes in this society, are starting to move to defend their rights and their interests (as well as their lives and the lives of their loved ones). In neighborhoods and workplaces across the country, workers are talking about what’s happening in the world and asking the right questions about what it will take to make things better. And the outrage felt by working people about the second theft of the presidential election, as well as the capitulation of the Democratic “friends of the people,” is leading them to ask if there is an alternative to the way things are.

We say: Yes, there is an alternative! The only alternative is communism!

The capitalists, with Bush at their head, would like to think that communism has been a historical “shipwreck.” We say that there can be no shipwreck if the ship has not yet sailed (or is still on test runs)! Those states in Eastern Europe and Asia that have been called “Communist” by the capitalists and their media were (and are) flying a false flag — just as the Bush regime flies the false flag of “freedom” and “democracy.” Real communism lives in the struggles of working people for liberation from exploitation and oppression. Every strike, every mass protest and every spontaneous uprising by our class is proof positive of its continuing life and vitality. No amount of political maneuvering, media propaganda or police violence can kill it.

The Communist League, as a political organization composed of and led by working people, organizes to create a unified proletarian movement that can overthrow and forever bury the capitalist system. We fight for the abolition of private ownership of capital — the machinery and land that workers use to produce the needed goods and services for the people of the world. As Marx and Engels explained in the Communist Manifesto, such a revolutionary rupture with traditional property relations allows us to create similar ruptures with the social relations that rest on the private ownership of capital (classes and class society), and the ideas and institutions — including political and cultural institutions — that reinforce those social relations.

In place of the overthrown capitalist system, communists fight for the establishment of a workers’ republic. A workers’ republic, based on common ownership and working people’s control of capital, would usher in new social relationships, new ideas and new institutions that represent and reinforce the interests of the working and oppressed majority of humanity. Based on assemblies of workers elected in workplaces and neighborhoods, a workers’ republic would be the first society worthy of being called “democratic.” But this democracy — the democracy of the exploited and oppressed majority, proletarian democracy — would not be confined to just the political arena. Common ownership of capital means nothing unless those who use those instruments of production democratically decide how to use them. Similarly, the changes in economic and political relationships would usher in a democratization of human culture and development, and the creation of the first truly human history, not just the “history” written by the current rulers.

But in its achievement of such a genuinely democratic system for the exploited and oppressed, it sets its sights higher, looking to move forward from formal democracy to a society of general freedom and the free association of all those who labor. That society is communism.

Throughout history, working people have risen up and started to take the steps necessary to build this society. However, when our brothers and sisters have relied on those who call themselves “friends” or even “comrades,” and came from exploiting and oppressing classes, to lead them to victory, they have suffered only betrayal and defeat. The lesson is clear: The liberation of working people must be carried out by workers themselves. This is a guiding principle of the Communist League, and our commitment to this principle is why so many other self-described socialist and communist organizations recoil in horror at our existence. We have sought to learn (or re-learn) the lessons of the past and the attempts to build both a mass revolutionary proletarian movement and a genuine working people’s republic. The understanding we gained from these experiences has led us to the positions we take, and we make no apologies for them.

But the work continues, and we encourage you, our brothers and sisters, to join in this process with us — not only going through and learning the valuable lessons a century of struggle has left us, but also applying those lessons to the struggles of today and tomorrow. We understand that it may seem a difficult task balancing the necessary responsibilities of life and survival with a commitment to building a new world. Members of the League understand these challenges because we share them with you, and we are willing to help in any way we can to make it possible for you to become involved — whether that means discussing with us on occasion or taking the plunge and joining the League, or anything in between.

Communism is about the liberation of humanity, nothing less. But it cannot succeed without the aid and support of the majority of humanity — first and foremost the majority of the world’s exploited and oppressed — taking part in this historic movement. Every generation of working people on this planet have brought forward committed fighters and thinkers ready to make that commitment and join the struggle for liberation. These brothers and sisters, committed to building a better world, organized to wage a common struggle and fully understanding the lessons of the past in order to fight for the future, represent the best hope for achieving these historic goals. We appeal to you on this International Workers’ Day to become a part of this and to join with your comrades in struggle for a future worthy of its name.

Central Committee, Communist League
Adopted: April 29, 2005