"The Internationale" Is Our Hymn!
Confronted with the new bloody attacks in Paris, let us not waste our time by asking ourselves "who is behind them" – whether they are really the work of the so-called Islamic State or of some other organisation that makes use of its cover for terrorist activities in the service of this country or that. Rather, let us ask ourselves whether all these attacks are not a further step forward in the ideological preparation of a new world slaughter: the most powerful imperialist States, with their following of obedient, weaker ones, will be obliged – by a situation of systemic economic crisis – to fight each other, on the basis of the principle, rust-proof in the capitalist universe, of "mors tua vita mea" ("your death, my life").
USA: Ferguson, Missouri, again
As the vile stream of cold-blooded murders of young black people by repressive U.S. (state and federal) bodies continues, to the extent that it's hard work keeping up with all the episodes 1, a demonstration was held in Ferguson (Missouri) in memory of Michael Brown, killed on 9 August 2014. There were clashes with the police in their anti-riot gear, who used tear gas and other deterrents to break up the crowd, and there was shooting: a young man fired at the policemen and was then seriously wounded by them.
The social situation is tense throughout the United States, where news of economic recovery and a (relative) decrease in unemployment is certainly not enough to change the basic reality, which sees the more disadvantaged and exploited (and numerically greater) sectors of the U.S. proletariat – first and foremost blacks and Latinos (Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Central- and South-Americans), but also growing segments of poor whites – under constant attack, endless repression, both by the "legal" forces of repression and by "illegal" armed bands.
Islamism, the reactionary and imperialist response, following the closure of the miserable bourgeois cycle in the Middle East
Let us start by reminding that the positions of communism have nothing to do with bourgeois anti-clericalism, whatever form this may have taken or may assume: liberal, anarchist, masonic, "socialist". Communism links the fight against religion to the actual practice of the class movement, which tends to remove the social roots of religion forever, whatever they may be. When the revolutionary French bourgeoisie clashed with the old feudal régime, it had to fight religious ideology because, in order to let the capitalist mode of production progress, it had to promote its own science and thus do away with the ideologies that opposed it; by replacing religious faith with the Goddess of Reason and raising the banner (equally metaphysical in a society divided into classes) of Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood, the French Revolution is still the classical model of bourgeois revolutions, in this context too. Germany also had to attack the privileges of Catholicism, seizing many of the Church's possessions and imposing a lay society. From Japan to Turkey, Iran to Egypt, Spain to Mexico, many other bourgeois revolutions have attacked religion. As to the countries of the Middle East, the attack on the Islamic religion was made primarily on the mosques and the Koranic schools. A different age…
In Greece, another "great show" of democracy and nationalism
The Greek situation (or better: the Greek side of the crisis in world capitalism) has not been disappointing on this first Sunday of July. Indeed, it has demonstrated, emblematically, the putrefaction of the present political and ideological system. The political and economic positions that "confronted" one another in the recent referendum called by the government (which – it is as well to remember – contains elements from the "left", the centre and the right), apart from the variegated recourse to rhetoric, were really basically identical. Above all, they wereequally antiproletarian. And they ended with the operation of castration carried out, as always, by democracy, which infects the proletariat with hopes and illusions, sending it hurtling down an endless precipice. In practice, the referendum's presumed alternatives posed the following question: "Do you accept the Troika version or the Syriza version of the attack on the living and working conditions of the proletariat?" The "Syriza version" won 61 to 39. Thus, national pride blended with popular democracy.
From the rebel ghetto of Baltimore, let the battle cry again be: "proletarians worldwide, unite!"
Following the umpteenth murder of a young black man by "the forces of law and order" in Baltimore (Maryland), the Afro-American community is back on the streets again to express its anger, as has already happened so many times in the past months. There have been demonstrations, clashes, fires, injuries and arrests. The National Guard has been called in, a state of emergency proclaimed, a night curfew imposed for a week.
The media, observers and institutions speak of "race riots". But these rebellions sink their roots in a class condition. Together with the Latin American ones, black proletarians constitute the most exploited, oppressed and marginalized sector of the US proletariat. They are our class brothers. With great difficulty and in total political isolation, they react as best they can to the attack led against them at all levels (on the job, in the city ghettoes, on the borders at sea and on land) and byall available means (open daily police and military repression, the oppression of religious and non-religious ideologies, democratic-parliamentary fetishes, individual destruction and self-destruction, the cunningly fuelled "war of the poor against the poor") – an attack that has always been moved against them by Capital, in times of peace and of war, in times of prosperity and of crisis. They have our complete solidarity.
Wherever they come from and whatever the colour of their skin, the keyword for proletarians all over the world is once again class unity against and beyond any barrier or division, a common battle to finally overthrow the capitalist mode of production, which starves, destroys and massacres. Most important of all, the urgent reinforcement of the revolutionary party and its rooting all over the world can no longer be delayed: without its guidance and organization, its programme and revolutionary perspective, even the most widespread and generous rebellions risk being transformed into yet one more proletarian bloodbath.
Recent articles in our press: "USA: social (and not only financial) on the horizon",The Internationalist, n.2/2015; "USA: la guerra in casa", il programma comunista, n.2/2015.
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