Against Terrorism and Pacifism - For Class Struggle

A year after the US-British invasion of Iraq the reasons given to justify it have collapsed: Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction of either the chemical or biological kind. The ones which the USA had given him had been used up against Kurds and Shiites at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991. This completely confirms that the reasons were lies, political spin aimed at convincing a sceptical public. Equally false and ideologically motivated was the supposed desire of the invading governments to establish democracy in Iraq.

The real reasons for the invasion - we will never tire of repeating - are linked to the USA’s need to control energy resources and means of transporting commodities like oil: this is the precondition for benefiting from the enormous financial revenue which allows the USA to survive despite having the biggest trade deficit in the world. For these real material reasons the USA and the UK have not hesitated to indulge in mass disinformation to try to fool their citizens, to subjugate the entire press, and to make war with the their oversized military apparatuses against a state which rapidly collapsed leaving its population to suffer the pitiless tragedy of war.

Those who think that “the lies of democracy can become reality”, that it is possible to play on the ideological and political contradictions of the bourgeoisie are incurable dreamers. And it will not be the European states (united or singly) which will bring peace. The real reason for the American intervention is about maintaining the hegemony of the US dollar and therefore - at the very least - the limitation of the Euro’s development as means of international exchange. The opposition to the perspective of an Iraq completely subdued to the Us is the main reason for the “pacifist” position of Germany and France.

A European intervention would be part of the defence of their interests and therefore would lead to an acceleration of imperialist rivalry. Equally neither pacifism nor a pacifist outlook in our so-called civil society has never stopped war. The only force really capable of stopping war - as history has shown - is the working class when it fights for its own interests.

For years the world working class has suffered a series of attacks on its living conditions with scarcely a reaction. This has led many, not only the official spokesmen of the boss class, but also those who are supposed to be against them, to say that class struggle is a thing of the past. In reality the class struggle never goes away; until now the ruling class has simply held the initiative in its war on the workers.

It is a fact that the bosses have pushed down wages in order to deal with their economic crisis. This means that:

1. capital extracts surplus value from the labour of workers which it then divides amongst the whole bourgeoisie in terms of profit, interest and revenue;
2. the working class still exists and is the main opponent of the capitalist system.

But now the first signs of a working class revival are making themselves felt: from the workers in Argentina to the Italian tram drivers, from the spontaneous strikes in Fiat to the wildcat strikes in the British postal service, individual but significant sections of workers which are at the moment isolated but whose actions demonstrate that something is beginning to move.

It is to this revival that internationalists look as the only real obstacle to the war plans of capitalism. The leading sections of the working class, and those who want to oppose capitalism’s wars, must commit themselves to the development of these rank and file struggles, and to their coordination outside of and against the unions and their policy of collaboration with the capitalist state.

The revival of the working class self-activity is the condition that renders indispensable and urgent the recreation of the one essential political instrument of the working class: the international proletarian party.

On the basis of a sober critique of our past experiences as a class and a pitiless criticism of the economic and political reality of capitalism today the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party is already setting out on this road and with this perspective. We call on the workers who are in the vanguard of the struggle, and on all communists, to join with us.