Open Letter: Great Tasks demand Great Initiative!

A Call to All Revolutionary Organizations and Activists to Fulfill Our Responsibility in this Historic Time!

Open Letter from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 7 January 2019,www.thecommunists.net

Comrades, Brothers and Sisters!

We are living in historic times. Everyone with open eyes can see that the imperialist world order is in severe turmoil. We are heading towards a political volcano eruption.

The stock markets are in panic, reflecting the capitalists’ fear of another, imminent Great Recession which will be even worse this time than in 2008/09.

The tensions between the imperialist Great Powers are rapidly accelerating as indicated by the looming Global Trade War, the tensions in the South China Sea, at the Russian-Ukrainian border, the new imperialist scramble for Africa, etc. President Trump’s decision to withdraw substantial numbers of U.S. troops from the Middle East and his admission that the U.S. cannot continue to be “the policeman of the world” reflect the official end of the absolute domination of the former super-power. Only a political blind can ignore that the future will be decisively shaped by the rivalry between the imperialist Great Powers – the U.S., China, the EU, Russia and Japan.

At the same time we are at the beginning of a new global wave of liberation struggles of the workers and oppressed. The current popular uprising in Sudan, the ongoing liberation struggle of the heroic Syrian people against the tyranny of Assad, the mass protests in Tunisia, Lebanon, Jordan and Iran, the steadfast Palestinian people resisting the Zionist oppressor, the powerful “Yellow Vests” movement in France which is inspiring similar movements all over the world (as far as Taiwan!), the protesting low-income workers in Hungary, the popular insurrection in Nicaragua, … all these are powerful signs that we are facing a massive upturn of the international class struggle!

Comrades, Brothers and Sisters! No one should be surprised about these events. This is a complete confirmation of the prognoses which Marxists have repeatedly developed in the past years. We have pointed out since years that the laws of motion of class antagonism in the present historic period must inevitable result in such a development.

The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) says straightforwardly that each and every one of us bears a great responsibility in such a period! We have seen numerous heroic mass struggles in the past years. Remember the Arab Revolution since 2011 which has given so many martyrs! Remember the mass movements in Latin America struggling for social justice! Remember the South African miners fighting against super-exploitation! Remember the Indian workers and poor peasants launching several general strikes with the biggest number of participants in history! And these are only a few examples!

But all these impressive struggles have suffered major setbacks and terrible defeats! Why? Because the workers and oppressed have lacked an authentic revolutionary leadership! Because they have been disorientated by various bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, reformist and centrist forces! Because the workers and oppressed are misled by parties which talk about “liberation” or even “socialism” but which, in their deeds, are treacherously serving one or another imperialist Great Power or which are looking for a quick road to enter the system of capitalist power!

Comrades, Brothers and Sisters! The time has come to draw conclusions and to act! Great tasks demand great initiative! Do not wait for others, do not hope for “favorable situations” in the future! All this is nothing but a “socialist” version of resignation to fate. Such superstition is unworthy of authentic revolutionaries! Each and every one of us is obligated to exercise one’s responsibility now!

It is our responsibility to free the worker and oppressed from such corrupting and bankrupt forces! It is our responsibilityto provide the masses with a leadership which understands the dynamic of the world situation and which draws the consequential conclusions from this! It is our responsibility to organize the best, most dedicated fighters on the basis of a program of struggle and to unite them in a joint international organization! It is our responsibility to build a Revolutionary World Party which can replace the Stalinist, Bolivarian, reformist and pseudo-Trotskyist bankrupts! This is the only way to help the vanguard of the workers and oppressed to find the correct path of the liberation struggle!

Comrades, Brothers and Sisters! In order to meet the great tasks ahead, we must overcome routine, national-centeredness and complacency! We must join forces now in order to advance building a Revolutionary World Party with sections in each country! Such a party should be based on a program of struggle for the period ahead, a program which combines each and every struggle with the strategic goal – for the socialist world revolution!

In the last one and a half years the RCIT has intensified its efforts to expand and deepen its collaboration with other revolutionary forces. Today we have sections, activists and fraternal organizations in 18 countries all over the world. Last year, we have launched joint statements on crucial world events (see e.g. May Day 2018 Statement,https://www.thecommunists.net/rcit/may-day-2018-joint-statement/; Warmongering in the Middle East, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/joint-statement-warmongering-in-the-middle-east/; Global Trade War: No to Great Power Jingoism in West and East! https://www.thecommunists.net/rcit/joint-statement-on-the-looming-global-trade-war/). Our comrades are spreading the ideas of revolutionary socialism and are actively participating in the class struggles (see e.g. various reports on our activities on a special subpage of the RCIT website, https://www.thecommunists.net/rcit/activities-on-the-ground/, as well as on various websites of the RCIT sections).

We are aware that these are still only modest achievements compared with the big tasks ahead. But it is a beginning and it helps us to be better prepared for the tumultuous world situation ahead! It is urgent that we join forces together – by practical collaboration, discussion and clarification of possible differences, etc. – in order to move forward together and to build revolutionary unity on an international level.

Comrades, Brothers and Sisters! We have no time to lose! The coming months and years will inevitable provoke gigantic battles and political volcano eruptions! It is urgent that revolutionaries around the world achieve a higher level of unity. Below we reissue a slightly actualized version of the RCIT’s Six Points for a Platform of Revolutionary Unity Today which we published in February 2018. This is our proposal for a joint program of struggle in the current period. However, we are open to discuss any amendments or alternative platforms. We call all revolutionary organizations and activists around the world to contact us and to jointly elaborate plans for closer international collaboration! If you have proposals and suggestions for joint international campaigns in solidarity with liberation struggles, we welcome you to contact us! Please inform us about YOUR campaigns, YOUR ideas and initiatives for revolutionary unity! We plan to organize an international Skype conference of all those who agree on such joint work.

Comrades, Brothers and Sisters! Great tasks demand great initiative! Let us jointly tackle the great tasks of the year 2019! Let us join forces to march forward!

Unity – Struggle – Victory!

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Six Points for a Platform of Revolutionary Unity Today

A Proposal from the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT)

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; 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.

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The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency has sections and activists in Nigeria, Zambia, Kenya, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Israel / Occupied Palestine, Brazil, Mexico, Britain, Germany, and Austria. Furthermore, the RCIT has fraternal relations with organizations in Kenya, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Russia and Turkey.