This AWTWNS news packet for the week of 28 September 2015 contains two articles. They may be reproduced or used in any way, in whole or in part, as long as they are credited.
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– RCMG: “Migrant Crisis: Humanity Needs Communist Revolution!” (article and leaflet versions)
– 8 March Women’s Organisation:”No border, No nation, No gender – This situation is not tolerable any more, we must start a dynamic fight!”
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RCMG – “Migrant Crisis: Humanity Needs Communist Revolution!”
28 September 2015. A World to Win News Service. The following is by the Revolutionary Communist Manifesto Group (Europe). A leaflet based on this article, prepared for mass distribution by the RCMG, is included after it.
In order for the waves of the Mediterranean Sea and perilous paths to not swallow up war-ridden, miserable and oppressed masses, in order for the migrants who have survived the road to not be welcomed by police batons, barbed wire, prisons and camps, in order for thousands upon thousands of immigrant women to not become victims of international sex slavery networks, in order for the homes, jobs, existence and future of the people to not be burned in the fire of imperialist, national and religious wars, the capitalist system must be destroyed, in its totality, with all its exploitative relations of production and oppressive social relations, with all its old and reactionary institutions and thinking. To clear the face of the earth of all this darkness and garbage there is no other way but a forcible social revolution. It is only on the debris of this world that a new one can be built, with the participation of billions of toiling and oppressed women and men. A new world where people are not forced to defy the anger of seas and the fire of deserts in order to satisfy their mental and material needs.
(Adapted from the statement by the Communist Party of Iran [Marxist-Leninist-Maoist] on 29 August 2015)
A major crisis is shaking Europe, the very birthplace of capitalism and imperialism, as tens of thousands of refugees stream into it from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere where the very workings of the world imperialist system have made life intolerable. The direct results of the injustices, spiraling wars and invasions, of exploitation and the open wounds of colonialism, of the ever more obscene inequalities and the dashed hopes of so many millions are showing up on the very doorstep of Europe. The tip of an iceberg of tears of both suffering and anger, normally hidden away from the view of European polite society, is emerging and, in so doing, is seriously shaking the politics and institutions of the existing order, and even rattling its very legitimacy.
It is not that the magnitude of the human tragedy whose epicenter is now in Syria was unknown. Four million people have been forced to flee Syria and seven million more have been displaced within the country itself — astounding numbers, and even more so when we consider that the country’s population is about 20 million. Millions are crowded into camps, cynically manipulated by the Turkish authorities or stocked in impoverished Jordan, and a million more are in tiny Lebanon, itself never fully recovered from years of war and strife. Millions have been violently displaced in Congo, Mali and Afghanistan. Even many who have benefited from higher education or have a slightly better position in life from countries like Tunisia and Pakistan are losing hope in maintaining a semblance of normalcy.
The present horrors of the world have their main origin and source of fuel in the system of capitalist exploitation. All this represents not only the brutal legacy of past crimes such as colonialism and the slave trade, however deep and fresh these wounds may be. The breakneck penetration of capitalism over the past few decades under the signboard of globalization has further intensified the glaring inequalities in the world and further ripped apart the existing social fabric without offering a viable and desirable alternative. But today, thanks to television and the Internet, this growing and vicious inequality is flaunted in the face of people even in the most remote village while the supposed superiority of Western civilization is proclaimed in a thousand ways.
Nor has this “capitalism on steroids” done anything to end or soften other horrors that are wrapping themselves in the cloak of tradition and superstitious belief. Many of the West’s most important leaders are themselves promoters of anti-scientific nonsense and/or have no hesitancy to ally with and prop up the most backward, reactionary forces such as the rulers of Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, the very process of churning up the fields for further capitalist exploitation produces new batches of embittered and disoriented people susceptible to other forms of reactionary ideology, including Islamic fundamentalism, as well as Europe’s own home-grown fascists.
Even the most cursory look at the Middle East over the last period shows that the West has not brought Enlightenment but only helped aggravate the conditions for an ever darker obscurity. The workings of modern capitalist penetration have given rise to a perverse religious fundamentalist reaction, while the people suffer as these two forces increasingly collide in bloody antagonism, or collude when they find it expedient. Each new war or political intervention, large or small, has not only created new refugees, but also swelled the ranks of the jihadis. Even the economic development that has taken place has done so under conditions which are rapidly destroying the precious resources of the planet and leading to even more misery and dislocation.
No, the crisis in Europe has not been caused by the sudden realization of the depth of people’s terror and desperation, but by the inescapable reality that it will be impossible to forever wall off Europe from the ever increasing sea of misery and violent storms surrounding it. Thus the authorities of Europe, the political parties, the different institutions can no longer play deaf and blind, and are all being forced to take a position. For a week or two Germany was heralded for its “conscience” and “compassion”, before the re-introduction of border controls and the controversy over the suspension of the Schengen agreement reminded everyone of the underlying reality of fortress Europe.
In the midst of this hypocrisy, a virulent and growing fascist current is arising that demands the full mobilization of society against what it perceives as foreign hordes, and non-Christian to boot. While official society is sharply divided between reaction and worse reaction, there are also millions of people who are disgusted by all this and want to welcome the refugees, who proclaim a common humanity and sense some sort of intertwining of interests and destiny. But for the most part this sentiment has been confined and stifled by the inability to even imagine a real solution to the system that is ripping so much of the world apart. This is why it is possible for people who know better to suspend disbelief and put their hopes in people like Angela Merkel or institutions like the British Labour Party.
The truth is that it is impossible for a handful of wealthy countries to benefit from and enforce the backwardness and poverty in so much of the world without having to confront the consequences of that domination. No Europe which rests upon the foundation of capitalism can escape the fate and the need to be a “fortress Europe” that is protected and armed against the humanity on which it has preyed. This reality is just as true for Hollande and Merkel or Jeremy Corbyn, the British Labour Party’s new face, as it is for the openly cruel Orban of Hungary or the many neo-fascist parties waiting in the wings in Western Europe. They are using the present crisis to intensify their demagogic appeals and offering to solve the hypocrisy of European leaders and institutions by openly appealing to racism and chauvinism and rejecting even the capitalists’ own motto, “liberté, égalité, fraternité”.
The usual unquestioning assumption of the permanency of the prevailing order and values in Europe is eroding. Why do some people have rights to a cushion against the sharpest edge of exploitation while others have only the “right” to a speedy deportation? The guiding principles and norms of the West are revealed to be the protection of privilege and inequality at the expense of the great bulk of humanity. Discourse legitimizing the present order, the domination of the planet by capitalism, is losing its usual hold on many people, who are now declaring their support of migrants: “They are here because we were (and are) there”, or “Open the borders so we can breathe”. These beginning cracks in the ideology and justification of the capitalist order need to be burst open into full-scale rejection. People need to be won clearly to see the need and the possibility for a radically different socio-economic system, a different political order, a different culture, and emancipating morals and values in keeping with people’s highest aspirations and true potential.
People do need to be outraged, express their common humanity, fight against the cold-heartedness and hypocrisy of Europe’s leaders. We do need revolution, and nothing deserves the name of revolution that does not have as a central motor addressing and ultimately overcoming the contradictions between a handful of wealthy countries and the hundreds of millions who have suffered at their hands. Any revolution in Europe must have an internationalist, not a “European” perspective.
The political power in every European state rests upon and protects a whole socio-economic system of exploitation whose tentacles reach throughout the world. Globalization has only made this exploitation more pervasive, more brutal and more disruptive of the existing social fabric. Every government of these states is required to enforce and facilitate this process. Even the pathetic Tsipras of Greece is now explaining how these bitter realities cannot possibly be avoided.
Belief in the possibility of a welcoming, inclusive but still imperialist Europe is worse than just an illusion. It hides the present and past reality of what Western capitalist democracy and its value system perpetuates on the world; it cannot possibly be implemented regardless of who is elected; and it is incapable of standing up to the reactionary attacks from either the howling fascist forces or the Islamists who pretend to offer an alternative moral and social order in opposition to the “decadence and misery dished out by the West. Indeed, war in the Middle East is spreading; even more refugees will take even more desperate measures to escape the horrors of all sorts that will only intensify; and women, half of humanity, will continue to face old and new forms of oppression and degradation. Obscene inequality, virtual slavery in the sex trade or sweatshops, vast populations condemned to disease and squalor, children and youth whose future is stolen from them – capitalism needs all this to thrive.
Millions in Europe have been moved and outraged by the razor wire on the frontiers, the deportations at gunpoint, the squalid camps and threats of worse. This is a very important and overdue development that can and must be developed into an uncompromising struggle to beat back the reactionary response and to extend a real welcome and solidarity to the sisters and brothers arriving in Europe as well as the many more trapped in hellish conditions abroad. Through this process people need to confront what can and needs to be done to overthrow this system and build a completely different kind of society, including the fact that this can only be brought about through communist revolution.
Overcoming the horrors of capitalism and imperialism has been undertaken before. Indeed tremendous and inspiring things were accomplished in the socialist revolutions of the 20th century, in the Soviet Union and even more so with the Chinese revolution. These revolutions were ultimately defeated by a new capitalist class of exploiters in those countries. As a result, capitalists the world over have triumphantly declared the permanence of their system and the futility of any effort at real social transformation. Today’s refugee crisis is one more evidence and a wake-up call that the world needs a completely and radically different social order, without exploitation and oppression, one based on the collective conscious cooperation of all of humanity and the collective and judicious management of the world’s resources and habitat for the benefit of all of the people of the earth and for the protection of the planet. Revolutionary communists today have a deeper, re-envisioned and more scientific understanding of both what society requires and the complex processes needed to achieve this world historic transformation. Bob Avakian has developed a new synthesis of communism based on deeply learning from the great achievements as well as the significant shortcomings of the previous efforts at proletarian revolution while incorporating knowledge obtained from other fields of human activity.
The immigration crisis profoundly reveals the conditions of humanity today and the need for a deep-going revolutionary change. Glimmers of humanity reaching for genuine emancipation can be seen in both the determination of refugees not to be deterred and the welcome many are offering. The political turmoil is setting enemies of the people and guardians of the old order at each other’s throats and creating openings for bringing forward something really new. But to confront the complexities of the developing Europe-wide political crisis, to be able to withstand the reactionary onslaughts likely to come down, to be able to build upon the positive stirrings and sentiments that are emerging but also in danger of being smothered once again by ruling class hypocrisy and cynical manipulations, people need a rigorous and scientific understanding and outlook that correctly explains the world and shows what we can do about it.
The current crisis is full of real and serious dangers, not only for the refugees but for everyone. But these same explosive conditions also bring real opportunities to begin to carve out a different type of future. No more pining over the broken promises of an increasingly bankrupt European social democracy! Rather we need to look beyond the horizons of the present system and begin to construct the kind of movement that not only fights to beat back the reactionary onslaught but can also lead towards the only real solution, communist revolution.
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Migrant Crisis: Humanity Needs Communist Revolution!
In order for the waves of the Mediterranean Sea and perilous paths to not swallow up war-ridden, miserable and oppressed masses, in order for the migrants who have survived the road not be welcomed by police batons, barbed wire, prisons and camps, in order for thousands upon thousands of immigrant women to not become victims of international sex slavery networks, in order for the homes, jobs, existence and future of the people to not be burned in the fire of imperialist, national and religious wars, the capitalist system must be destroyed, in its totality, with all its exploitative relations of production and oppressive social relations, with all its old and reactionary institutions and thinking. To clear the face of the earth of all this darkness and garbage there is no other way but a forcible social revolution. It is only on the debris of this world that a new one can be built, with the participation of billions of toiling and oppressed women and men. A new world where people are not forced to defy the anger of seas and the fire of deserts in order to satisfy their mental and material needs. (Adapted from a 29 August 2015 statement by the Communist Party of Iran [Marxist-Leninist-Maoist].)
The truth is that it is impossible for a handful of wealthy countries to benefit from and enforce the backwardness and poverty in so much of the world without having to confront the consequences of that domination. No Europe which rests upon the foundation of capitalism can escape the fate and the need to be a “fortress Europe” protected and armed against the humanity on which it has preyed. This reality is just as true for Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel, and Jeremy Corbyn, the British Labour Party’s new face, as it is for the openly cruel Victor Orban of Hungary or the many neo-fascist parties waiting in the wings in Western Europe.
The present horrors of the world have their main origin in the very system of capitalist exploitation. This is not only the brutal legacy of past crimes such as colonialism or the slave trade, however deep and fresh these wounds may be. The breakneck penetration of capitalism over the past few decades, under the signboard of “globalisation”, has only intensified the glaring inequalities in the world, further ripped apart the existing social fabric without offering a viable and desirable alternative. It produces new batches of embittered and disoriented people susceptible to other forms of reactionary ideology, including Islamic fundamentalism, as well as Europe’s own home-grown fascists. Even the most cursory look at the Middle East over the last period shows that the West has not brought Enlightenment but only helped fuel the conditions for an ever darker obscurity. Each new war and military and political intervention, large or small, has created not only new refugees, it has also swelled the ranks of the jihadis. Even the economic “development” which has taken place is done under conditions that are rapidly destroying the precious resources of the planet and leading to even more human dislocation.
Overcoming capitalism and imperialism has been undertaken before. Indeed tremendous and inspiring things were accomplished in the socialist revolutions of the 20th century the Soviet Union and even more with the Chinese revolution. A radically different social order is needed. A social order without exploitation and oppression, based on the collective, conscious cooperation of all humanity, and the judicious management of the world’s resources and habitat for the benefit of all the people of the earth and the protection of the planet. Revolutionary communists today have a deeper and re-envisioned understanding of both what society requires and the complex processes necessary to achieve this world-historic transformation. Bob Avakian has developed a new synthesis of communism based on deeply learning from the great achievements as well as the significant shortcomings of the previous efforts at proletarian revolution.
All discourse legitimizing the present order, the domination of the planet by capitalism, is losing its usual hold on many people who are now declaring about migrants, “They are here because we were (and are) there” or “Open up the borders so we can breathe”. People need to be outraged, express their common humanity, fight against cold-heartedness and hypocrisy. The world cries out for a different economic system, a different political order, a different culture, and emancipating morals and values in keeping with people’s highest aspirations and true possibilities.
The current crisis is full of real and serious dangers, not only for the refugees but for everyone. But these same explosive conditions can also bring real opportunities for beginning to carve out a different type of future. There is no use in pining over the broken promises of an increasingly bankrupt European social democracy. Rather we need to look past the boundaries of the present system and begin to construct the kind of movement that, fighting to beat back the reactionary onslaught, can lead in the direction of the only real solution, communist revolution.
Revolutionary Communist Manifesto Group (Europe) September 25, 2015 rcmanifestogroup@gmail.com
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8 March Women’s Organisation:”No border, No nation, No gender – This situation is not tolerable any more, we must start a dynamic fight!
28 September 2015. A World to Win News Service. The following is by the 8 March Women’s Organisation (Iran-Afghanistan) (www.8mars.com).
The picture of “Aylan”, the three-year-old Syrian child who fell asleep forever, tired of the “death game” on the Mediterranean shores, shook the world and reminded us that these conditions are no longer tolerable. Aylan came to notice for a short moment through the camera lenses when he was no longer alive, while according to the statistics at this very moment there are more than 20 million refugees who need a safe shelter to live. Their story is witness to the unbearable and shameful catastrophe that humanity is facing. These are people who had to bear the atrocities of migration, banishment and homelessness and step out onto a death route to escape occupation, reactionary war, national, racial, religious, sexual and other sorts of oppression… as well as the destruction of their environment, all in order to be able to make a better life for themselves and their children!
Although migration is hardly a new phenomenon, this wave of thousands of desperate people has compelled the media and the politicians, who at first deliberately held their silence, to speak about this “humanitarian catastrophe”, especially in the countries that are the destination of the majority of the asylum seekers. Some of them sympathize demagogically with these asylum seekers and pretend to support them, while others clearly insist on anti-migration and war-mongering policies. It has reached the point that Angela Merkel, the leader of economic austerity in Europe, who is responsible for shattering pressures on lower class people – especially “foreigners” – is posing flagrantly as a “savior angel” for the refugees. Her goal is not to sympathize and commiserate with the refugees, but either to absorb the Syrians, who were once at the top in the Middle East, as part of an educated professional labour force, so that they can rebuild the capitalist crisis-stricken Germany, or else to make them, like other “foreigners”, part of a “reserve army of labor” so as to help lower wages through “legal” and “illegal” work, and thereby enhance profitability, and also to fuel the fire of racist and anti-foreigner tendencies among the fascist parties and groups. The solution England and France offer to end the wave of immigration is to bomb Syria some more, which merely means greater destruction in the living hell where these wanderers once lived and where many who do not have the opportunity to escape are still trapped. The United States of America, the world leader in war, crime and killings, especially in the Middle East, has proposed to accept ten thousand Syrian refugees in order not to fall behind the “humanitarian” squad! They are maintaining a meaningful silence about how the Syrian crisis is the result of the U.S.’s aim to build a “Greater Middle East” in the first place with their invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now that the area has become a swamp for the U.S., which no imperialist solution can ever end, every leader in these war crimes is pursuing their own interests and covering their criminal, blood-stained hands amidst the global commotion.
They all avoid the reality of WHY thousands of women, men, children, elderly, young, handicapped, sick, etc., are crossing borders on foot or in sub-standard rubber boats, or crowding into meat trucks or trains to escape, dead or alive? What is the reason for these people’s homelessness and misery? Who is the perpetrator?
Isn’t it the patriarchal capitalist system in the first place, which is honorably supported by their Excellencies (these politicians) who are in fact trying to save it at any cost? Isn’t the reason for this flood of refugees fleeing the Middle East and northern Africa to be found in the interference and wars fostered by these imperialists, who signed the firing orders for the conflagration that has spread day-by-day, with the entire region now in flames?
In facing the bitter reality that these refugees feel in their very bones, one should never forget that the civil war in Iraq and Syria is the continuation of the U.S. and their allies’ militarism, which was intended to ensure their own advantages. They destroyed Afghanistan in the name of “freedom for Afghani women” and bringing “democracy” and “fighting the Taliban”. Now that the Taliban has become their partner in power, women are more oppressed than ever, and “democracy” is a demagogical charade that is trotted out every couple of years in elections. The same bitter story of destruction, fragmentation and homelessness took place in Iraq, where Islamic fundamentalist groups emerged, ensuring that the people of Iraq and Syria wouldn’t see a day of peace.
Out of 18 million Syrians, 230,000 have been killed, 11 million people displaced, 3 million children cannot attend schools, and more than 4 million people have fled across the country’s borders. Almost four out of five Syrian refugees are either women or children. 145,000 refugee families live in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and even Iraq, one-fourth of whom emigrated under a woman’s leadership or guardianship. Women have had to defend their families against extreme poverty, fear of imprisonment, threat and constant violence, disdain and rape.
This gives only a glimpse of the conditions of Syria’s homeless women, who, like always, are the first victims of war and occupation, and besides facing the enemy’s dangers and threats, also face other kinds of threats, cruelty and rape from their menfolk who are otherwise sharing the same fate. They grapple with dangers and threats at every moment, with fewer resources at their disposal. Many women have been kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery or the flourishing prostitution markets of these countries, sometimes thousands of kilometers from their homes and families, under the control of mafia prostitution networks in Europe and the US, or they become domestic slaves. Women generally have responsibility for the children too, and, due to sexual discrimination, when overloaded boats capsize they lack the techniques and skills to swim, so together with their children become the major victims of the sea. This is not only the fate of Syrian women but also the fate of many women from Honduras, Nigeria, Myanmar, etc., who travel to other imperialist countries like the U.S. and Australia, or even to the poorer countries like Turkey and Lebanon. Today the fate of millions of refugees and women, who have been displaced around the world without hope or a future, is intertwined.
One thing is certain: the perpetrators of all these displacements, killings, homelessness, rape, sexual violence, kidnapping, etc., are the European and U.S. patriarchal imperialists who have helped or fostered the formation of Islamic fundamentalist tendencies in the Middle East and North Africa in order to preserve and stabilize their own privileges, and are supporting and strengthening them today. Despite the ideological-political opposition that they have with these regressive religious groups, not only have the imperialists not stopped supporting them, but they have also maintained the main source of their military equipment. Their privileges are preserved by the survival of this system, which is based on oppression and exploitation, even at the cost of killing and displacing millions of people in this region and throughout the world.
Everyone shouting “Open the doors, we want fresh air!” across Europe’s streets needs to be able to understand the message of this migration: “This life is not worthy of humanity”. The people who have opened their doors and hearts to these tired and hopeless refugees today must be able to lead a movement that guarantees a world in which there are no borders, no nationalities, no gender, no barbed wire, no camps, no prisons, no wars, no bullets, no batons, no discrimination, no oppression, no exploitation, no hunger, no destruction, no homelessness, no banishment, no threats, no rape. Such a movement must go beyond commiseration, mercy and humanitarian assistance, and must engage in a revolutionary and fundamental fight! It must be a movement that has the potential to bring about such a world and we, the women and activists of the 8th of March Women’s Organization, see ourselves as a part of this struggle to establish it.
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