Joint Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), Pan-Afrikan Consciousness Renaissance (Nigeria), Alkebulan School of Black Studies (Kenya), Sınıf Savaşı (Turkey), and Marxist Group ‘Class Politics’ (Russia)
On the occasion of May Day 2018, we send our warmest greetings to all revolutionaries around the world and to all militants fighting for the liberation of the working class and the oppressed.
In particular we wish to send our warmest regards to all political prisoners who are suffering state repression because of their engagement for social and democratic rights. In place of thousands we name the young Palestinian woman Ahed Tamimi, the Afro-American Mumia Abu Jamal, the Russian antifascists Viktor Filinkov and Igor Shishkin as well as the Catalans Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart.
We take note of
* the decay of the global capitalist system;
* the acceleration of the rivalry between the imperialist powers (US, EU, Russia, China, Japan);
* the acceleration of the capitalist attacks against the democratic and social rights of working class and oppressed on all continents (e.g. Brazil, Honduras, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, India, France, Catalonia, U.S.);
* the aggression of the Great Powers against the oppressed people (e.g. in Mali, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Chechnya, Afghanistan, etc.)
We resolutely declare our support for the heroic liberation struggles against the capitalist dictatorships and imperialist aggressors (e.g. Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Afghanistan). We state that only an international socialist revolution will open the road to freedom, peace and wellbeing for all people.
At the same time we decry the desperate lack of revolutionary leadership. As a result, the liberation struggles are currently misled by reformist, populist, or Islamist forces.
Hence, in conclusion, we state – in general agreement with the document “Six Points for a Platform of Revolutionary Unity Today” (see attachment) – our determination to commit our forces to jointly build a new World Party of Socialist Revolution.
The undersigned organizations
Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (Zambia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Tunisia, Israel / Occupied Palestine, Brazil, Mexico, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Britain, Germany, and Austria), www.thecommunists.net
Alkebulan School of Black Studies (Kenya), https://www.facebook.com/alkebulanschool/
Pan-Afrikan Consciousness Renaissance (Nigeria), https://m.facebook.com/pacorenaissance/?ref=bookmarks
Sınıf Savaşı (Turkey), http://sinif-savasi.blogspot.com
Marxist Group ‘Class Politics’ (Russia), https://mgkp.github.io/
Appendix
Six Points for a Platform of Revolutionary Unity Today
A Proposal from the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), February 2018, www.thecommunists.net
We are living in a world of rapidly accelerating contradictions and sudden turns. As capitalism is decaying, the capitalist robbers try to raise their wealth by aggressively attacking the working class and the oppressed, by increasingly destroying the environment and, at the same time, by aggravating their rivalry against each other. The survival of humanity is endangered with the uncontrolled climate change and the accelerating rivalry between the Great Powers which creates the danger of an imperialist World War III. This is why we say that the alternative is “Socialism or Stone Age!”
This dramatic situation makes the organized struggle for socialism more necessary than ever. This means that the working class and the oppressed must have a party dedicated to the international struggle for a socialist future!
In our opinion, it is highly urgent that revolutionaries all over the world immediately start collaborating in laying the foundations for a principled unification, so that we drive forward the process of creating a new Revolutionary World Party with stronger forces. The starting point for the creation of such a party has to be agreement on the most important issues of the global class struggle. The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) considers the following issues as such programmatic keystones in the present political phase:
1) Recognition of the Accelerating Rivalry between the Imperialist Great Powers – the US, EU, Japan, Russia and China
It is only possible to understand the driving dynamic of the present period of capitalist crisis and to take a correct position if one recognizes the imperialist character not only of the US, EU and Japan but also of the new emerging powers, Russia and China. Only on such a basis is it possible to arrive at the only correct, anti-imperialist program on this issue – proletarian internationalism and revolutionary defeatism, i.e., the perspective of consistent struggle of the working class independent of and against all imperialist powers. This means that revolutionaries refuse to lend support to anyGreat Power in inter-imperialist conflicts under the slogan “The main enemy is at home!”
A similar approach is necessary when India enters into a conflict with imperialist China, as India – a non-imperialist regional power – acts under such circumstances as a proxy for US imperialism.
Those who fail to recognize the reactionary and imperialist character of these Great Powers will inevitable fail to take a consistent anti-imperialist, i.e. Marxist, line and will end up, consciously or unconsciously, supporting one or the other imperialist camp as a “lesser evil”.
2) Consistent Struggle against Imperialism and for the Liberation of the Oppressed People
Revolutionaries stand for the defeat of imperialist states and their proxies in any conflict with forces representing oppressed people and for the military victory of the latter without, at the same time, giving any political support to the non-revolutionary leadership of the oppressed (e.g., petty-bourgeois Islamists, nationalists). This is true both in domestic conflicts (e.g., against an oppressed nation like the Chechen people in Russia or the East Turkestanis/Uyghurs in China) as well as in wars abroad (e.g., North Korea, Afghanistan, Syria, Mali, Somalia). Such an approach is not only valid in the countries of the South but also in cases of national oppression and discrimination inside the old imperialist states (e.g. Blacks and Native Americans in the U.S.; Catalonia’s struggle for independence against the imperialist Spanish State.)
Likewise, revolutionaries have to fight for Open Borders in the imperialist countries and for full equality for national minorities and for migrants (e.g. citizenship rights, language, equal wages).
Furthermore, revolutionaries refuse to lend support to one imperialist camp against another in any given conflict (e.g., Brexit vs. EU; Clinton vs. Trump).
Those who fail to support the popular struggles against oppression, referring to their bad leaderships as an excuse, desert the class struggle as it concretely takes place today and hence leave the camp of the working class and oppressed.
3) Continuing the Revolutionary Struggle in the Middle East and North Africa against Reactionary Dictatorships, Imperialism and Zionism
The mass popular uprisings in Palestine, Tunisia, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan and other countries have been the most important and progressive class struggle development so far since the beginning of the new historic period in 2008. True, given the lack of a revolutionary leadership, the masses have suffered a number of terrible defeats – like the coup d’état of General al-Sisi in Egypt in July 2013, or the ongoing slaughter of the Syrian people at the hands of Assad and his foreign backers. However, the revolutionary process is continuing. This is reflected in the ongoing popular resistance in Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, etc as well as its spreading to new countries like Tunisia, Iran, Sudan and Morocco. The Palestinian and international mass movement provoked by Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital opens a new chapter of the revolutionary struggle against the imperialist powers and against the Zionist Apartheid state and for the creation of a single Palestinian state from the river to the sea (a “Free, Red Palestine”). The spontaneous popular uprisings in Tunisia as well as in Iran against the capitalist regime show that the revolutionary wave in the Middle East might be revived and spreads even to non-Arab countries. Authentic revolutionary forces must give unconditional support to these popular struggles against dictatorships and reactionary forces, without giving any political support to their non-revolutionary leaderships (e.g., petty-bourgeois Islamists and nationalists).
Those “socialists” who have failed to support the Arab Revolution since 2011 or who declare it as already finished and defeated, prove to be socialists and democrats only in words but not in deeds.
Revolutionaries oppose any reactionary war between regional power (e.g. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, etc.). They will determine their revolutionary tactics in any given war by analyzing the concrete character of the war and its political background as well as the role of imperialist powers (in particular the U.S., Russia, China) in it.
4) Revolutionary Struggle against Reactionary Attacks on Democratic Rights
Revolutionaries can only serve the interests of the working class and the oppressed if they are able to recognize the class enemy and to mobilize against it. Thus they must consistently fight against all reactionary dictatorships and corrupt and authoritarian pseudo-democracies (e.g. Syria, Togo, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe), against all forms of national and racial oppression (e.g. indigenous people in Latin America, Rohingya in Myanmar, African slaves in Libya), against all coup d’états (e.g. Egypt 2013, Thailand 2014, Brazil 2016) and against all authoritarian attacks (e.g. state of emergency in France since 2015).
All those who fail to recognize and to fight against these reactionary attacks but rather support them or take a neutral position, are traitors of the working class. Between them and us is a line of blood!
5) Application of the United Front Tactic in all Mass Struggles
Revolutionaries oppose all forms of sectarianism which refuses participation in mass struggles under the pretext of their non-revolutionary leaderships. Instead they apply the united front tactic in the struggles of the workers and peasants led by reformist or populist forces (e.g., trade unions, mass organizations of the peasants and the urban poor, but also political parties like PT, CUT, MST in Brazil; CGT, CTA, FIT in Argentina; MORENA in Mexico; Islamists in Egypt; rebels in Syria; EFF in South Africa; SYRIZA in Greece before 2015, PODEMOS, Basque and Catalan nationalists in the Spanish State). Such an orientation must be combined with a consistent struggle against all forms of popular-frontism and petty-bourgeois populism, and for the breaking of workers and peasants away from these non-revolutionary leaderships and to advance the formation of an independent and revolutionary Workers’ Party.
Those who fail to apply the united front tactic in such mass struggles, render their support for these struggles to an abstract statement without any concrete meaning.
6) Start Building a Revolutionary World Party Now!
The struggle for repelling the reactionary offensive of the ruling class and for the liberation of the working class and the oppressed can only succeed if it is combined with the struggle for the socialist revolution. This means nothing less than taking power by the working class and the oppressed and the overthrow and expropriation of the capitalist class so that the road towards socialism will be opened. History teaches us that all struggles of the masses for liberation will ultimately end in failure if they are not led by a revolutionary party. Such a party should organize the most politically conscious and dedicated fighters of the working class and oppressed, it must be free of any bureaucratic degeneration; and it must exist as an international party in order to avoid the dangers of national-centeredness.
Hence we call upon all organizations and activists which honestly strive towards the creation of a new Revolutionary World Party to join forces on the basis of these programmatic keystones. Concretely, the RCIT proposes that revolutionaries constitute a Joint Contact Committee in order to politically prepare and organize an International Conference which will discuss concrete steps to advance the formation of a Revolutionary World Party. The RCIT is committed to serious discussions and the closest possible collaboration with all forces who share such an outlook.