Build a mass movement against imperialist war and global capitalism
22 March 2007
League for the Fifth International statement to the International Conference 'With the resistance - for a just peace in the Middle East', 24th - 25th March 2007, Italy
This leaflet will be distributed by our comrades attending the international resistance conference in Italy this weekend
The US and Britain are losing the war in Iraq. The 21,500 extra troops sent in January were largely National Guard reservists. The frontline troops consist of war-weary regular soldiers, denied leave for months. A recent poll revealed that only 17 per cent of them still support the war.
An elite team advising the US commander in Baghdad, General David Petraeus, has told him that he has only six months to “stabilise” Iraq before he faces a Vietnam-style collapse. The USA’s staunchest ally Britain will pull out 1,500 troops in April and a further 1,500 later this year. A recently leaked US report states that the British have been comprehensively defeated in southern Iraq.
However the US and its European allies, have no intention from withdrawing from such a central strategic region, vital to their ambitions to make the 21st another American Century. No US president – Democrat or Republican - can risk being the man who “lost the Middle East.”
The USA and its Zionist gendarme cannot tolerate the prospect, however distant, of any state in the region having the sort of weapons that could deter them from expansion and domination of the region. For this reason the Pentagon is planning a huge bombing mission against “insubordinate” Iran.
If the Iranian regime does not capitulate, renounce its nuclear enrichment programme and submit to “international” (i.e. US) inspection an attack is inevitable sooner or later.
Already Bush has ordered two aircraft carriers to join the US war fleet in the Gulf. The United Nations Security Council - a thieves' kitchen of the leading imperialist powers - has called for sanctions to try to starve Iran into submission. Echoes from the build-up to the Iraq war are clear unmistakable. Whatever the exact timescale we are in the run-in to a new imperialist attack.
Yet thanks to the resistance in Iraq and the anti-war movement in the imperialist heartlands the social base for war is greatly weakened. With clear majorities in the USA and Britain for withdrawal from Iraq, with the occupying troops seething with discontent, it is time to step up the action, to go beyond marches to direct measures to stop the war machine.
Remembering the lessons of the Vietnam War, this can only be done by massive disruption of the war effort at home, by disaffection and disobedience from the troops themselves, supporting the continued heroic fight of the resistance
Since the historic February 15 2003 worldwide day of action and the actions following the invasion of Iraq on March 20 there have been several international mobilisations. But these isolated days of protests have not stopped the warmongers. nor could they have done. The imperialists do not care what they people of their own countries think as long as they do nothing to stop them.
What has to be done?
Put simply - occasional mass demonstrations, “direct action” by small groups of courageous individuals is not enough. Only the full force of the class struggle can defeat the imperialists at home. The wave of struggles against neoliberal reforms that we have seen in Greece, Italy, France, Germany, show that the forces are there to bring the warmongering governments to their knees. We need to make the link between neoliberalism and Globalization “at home” with the “new” Imperialism of the “War on Terror.” Modern capitalism and Imperialism are one. You cannot fight and defeat one without taking on the other.
Neither can we duck the question that we wish to see the defeat of the occupying powers, the USA and their European Allies. We want to see them driven out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, indeed all of their bases within the Middle East and Central Asian regions. Our actions are aimed at helping this.
As Lenin said:
“A revolutionary class cannot but wish for the defeat of its government in a reactionary war, cannot fail to see that its military reverses facilitate its overthrow.” (Socialism and War)
Mass assemblies should be held in every city to plan and co-ordinate resistance. They should bring together delegates from unions, immigrant communities, youth and women’s organisations. We must fight now for every union federation to pledge its members to strike action in the event of an aerial attack on Iran. Members of national parliaments who have denounced the war must use these tribunes to summon people to action
The day the US, Britain or Israel attack Iran, workers, school and university students, should walk out and occupy town and city centres. Attempts must be made to obstruct the transport of military supplies, blockade airbases and transport hubs. We should call on the troops themselves to refuse the orders to bomb and murder civilians, to refuse to fight resistance fighters defending their own homelands. We should defend all troops that refuse orders to do so.
The imperialist rulers and their diplomats regularly discuss, coordinate and plan their activities. But we - the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and anti-war war movement – don’t. We meet irregularly and even then we hardly make any practical decisions. This must change. This must change now!
We must create a real international and effective centre for resistance against imperialism and its wars, against the capitalist system which drives them. This means a mass movement which acts globally and locally around common demands with common tactics.
As a step in this direction the league for the Fifth International calls for:
* Hands off Iran and Syria. No to UN sanctions.
* End the imperialist occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan NOW.
* Solidarity with the Resistance in Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon, Afghanistan
* Defeat imperialism on all the fronts of its “endless war”
* Win the mass organisations of the working class and the oppressed to mass direct action the day any attack on Iran materialises.
* All UN/European troops out of Lebanon.
* Stop Israel’s strangling of the Palestine people! Throw the Israeli occupiers out of Palestine.
To coordinate action around these demands and react quickly if new situations arise we propose setting up an international coordination with delegates from all countries to meet several times a year and maintain regular contact in between its participants.
Give the G8 a warm welcome to Germany in June
The annual gathering of the world's rulers takes place in Germany this year.
The German Presidency of the G8 has outlined a recipe to push forward the agenda of globalisation and the project of the strengthening the European Union against its imperialist rivals.
The German capitalist class is determined to push forward the Lisbon agenda of neo liberal attacks on workers social rights across the whole continent. They also want to revive the EU's neoliberal draft constitution and make a major leap in the imperialist unification of Europe under German and French hegemony in order to challenge the US on a world level.
More importantly the whole agenda is also heavily focused on security - a euphemism for the occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine or Kosovo and the assault on democratic liberties in the G8 countries themselves.
Against this background it is no surprise that the European Social Forum and the left wing of the German Labour movement, rank and file unionists and young anticapitalists from across the continent are planning a series of actions to give the G8 a warm welcome in June.
A whole series of mobilisations are planned which will build up to against the G8 meeting in Heiligendamm, near Rostock.
On Saturday 2 June a demonstration in Rostock is expected to attract anything from 100,000 to 150,000 people. This will open an entire week of meetings and actions. These will include an Alternative Summit and, on Wednesday 6 June, a mass blockading of the summit. In addition there will be days of action against climate change, racism, imperialist wars and occupations.
Anti Imperialist network
The League for the Fifth International supports the Anti Imperialist Network which was established at the European Social Forum in Athens in 2006. We believe it is crucial for anti imperialists to intervene into these mass gatherings despite the fact that they are led, at the moment, by reformist “communists” and social democrats who talk left only until they come into government.
Anti imperialists who refuse to participate in these forums are effectively abandoning the fight against reformism and the millions of workers it misleads. Since we need these millions to defeat imperialism we have to fight them in every forum, national and international
In Italy, Germany and France the sections of the European Left Party, marched with the antiwar movement but when, as with Rifondazione Comunista, in Italy they are included in government, they have supported the imperialist policies of their own countries.
What is League for the Fifth international?
The League for the Fifth International is a revolutionary communist organisation. We fight for a new international that unites militants in the struggle for socialism We believe this must be based on the politics developed by the four previous Internationals before their degeneration and collapse. Thus we stand in the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.
We believe that the proletariat must lead the revolution, necessary in every country. It cannot stop at a democratic or capitalist stage but must culminate in working class power, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Nor can the task of building socialism be completed within a single country. The revolution can progress uninterruptedly towards this goal only if it spreads on an international scale.
We believe that capitalist globalisation is a new period of intensified imperialist exploitation and war, one that is creating mass movements of resistance on a global scale. But these struggles urgently need political and organisational coordination.
We need not just united actions against imperialism, like those we are discussing here in Chianciano, we need a world party of socialist revolution armed with a programme for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. The programme of the League for the Fifth International “From Protest to Power” and other political documents, plus coverage of world events can be read online at - http://www.fifthinternational.org/
We support the struggle of all national resistance movements against Imperialist occupation and militarism. We raised the slogan across Europe in the mass anti war movements and in the European Social Forums for the victory of the resistance in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.
We believe that for these movements to really succeed in driving the imperialists from the Middle East they must fight not just the military occupation of their country but also Imperialist capitalism and its local agents, “their own” capitalist class. The working class must stake independent action, as part of the resistance movements, to fight for an anti capitalist solution to imperialism. That means a socialist revolution!
The League for the Fifth International supports the struggle of the emancipation of women around the world. Everywhere women suffer oppression. They work not only in the sweatshops and the fields they also do the domestic work at home, where they often suffer from sexual and physical abuse and isolation. As socialists we fight for the freedom and equality of all women in society, and for women to take their place in the movement struggling against capitalism and imperialism.
We support the Palestinian Intifada and the struggle of the Palestinians for the right of return for all refugees, equal rights for jobs, housing and land in Palestine. We call for an end to the Israeli state and a secular, working class state in Palestine for Jews and Arabs.
Only a worldwide socialist revolution, uniting the struggles of the world working class and all the oppressed peoples, can put an end to imperialism and war and build a classless society - communism.
