Workers, whether casual, part-time, full-time, unemployed or retired, the vote will not change our conditions, let’s not kid ourselves!

At the last election, five years ago, politicians were full of promises. We were told that after the sacrifices the crisis would pass and that our conditions of life and work would improve. For all workers, the unemployed, and pensioners, it’s true that after five years things have changed … but for the worse. The economic crisis has continued to make its weight felt and as usual we are paying for it: cuts in services, layoffs, job insecurity, unemployment, lower wages and pensions that often do not allow us to make ends meet.

The deception that lay behind those promises is even more obvious this time. Before we had the right-wing government with the Northern League and Berlusconi’s Party of Liberty, then we got the government of “technicians” ... almost five years on all parties sitting in Parliament have made their contribution to the measures (reforms, laws, cuts) that have worsened the lives of the workers, their children and even parts of the middle class . The disagreements between the different political factions have only been stage-managed, or at least, are only the expression of a struggle to grab a comfortable seat of power, nothing more. Now, with an inevitable chutzpah, these same parties are back with the usual promises but let’s not kid ourselves: the vote is only a trick, for the working class nothing will change whoever wins the election.

Nothing will change, because the progress of the international economic crisis does not depend on who wins the election, nor on how many protest votes smaller groupings will collect. The crisis is in fact linked to the workings of this economic system – capitalism – a system based on laws which are as contradictory as they are barbaric.

Nothing will change, because the current economic system is based on the class divide. On the one hand there is the bourgeoisie that thrives on exploitation, composed of those who own and manage funds, banks, industries, the owners of any kind. On the other hand there are those who are exploited, the proletariat, the working class. Bourgeois and Proletarians have conflicting and irreconcilable interests, Parliament and other institutions cannot therefore be, as they want us to believe, organs above the parties. The state institutions are the bureaucratic and repressive instruments of the bourgeoisie, to make the current economic system fully functional.

We internationalist communists therefore, say to the workers: do not vote, reject this fraud. This, however, is not an invitation to passivity, or resignation. Workers must respond to the continuous worsening of their conditions, but this reaction can not be entrusted to the electoral vote or trade union representatives. We must oppose the bosses’ plans by organizing autonomously, without institutional parties and trade unions, forming strike and struggle committees, organizing meetings in the workplace, striking for real, blocking the production and distribution of goods, damaging our enemies: the property owners and their profits.

It is right to fight and we have to do it; and we internationalists, will of course always be with the workers and will support their struggles as much as we can. We feel, however, it is our political duty to reaffirm that demand struggles - including the most widespread and combative – do not mean certain victory and we can never just turn back the clock. In addition, the partial gains can be reabsorbed into the system: the bosses will attempt to come down heavily again on the working class, to make us pay the price of any concessions obtained, even more so in this time of crisis. All this because crisis and exploitation - as well as war and environmental disasters - are the product of the economic system, a system that can not be reformed, but only completely overcome.

If we want to avoid the barbarism towards which we are moving, then we will need to have a radical, revolutionary transformation, led by the working class. A transformation through which the means to production are socialised, or taken from the ruling class – which today manages them for themselves – and made ​​available to society as a whole. Only in this way can we escape the logic of production for profit to turn it in to a system which satisfies human needs, only then will we get rid of exploitation of man by man, and therefore class divisions. To implement this transformation we have to overthrow the existing institutions and the proletariat must seize political power. In short we are saying that humanity needs a communist revolution, which – we want to make this clear – has nothing to do with what was achieved in the USSR, China, Cuba, etc..

We internationalists intervene in the working class and in its communities to develop this revolutionary programme, we work with other sections of the Internationalist Communist Tendency (Internationalist Communist Tendency) to build and strengthen an international party of the proletariat, able in the future to act as a reference point for the working class, to push it and direct it toward the revolutionary transformation of society. Without the political organization of revolutionary forces – in a word the party – even the most widespread movement of rebellion is destined to be reabsorbed by the system, or will be crushed without hope of victory. We invite you to visit our website, to get in touch with us, and – perhaps – to start to give us a hand.

NZ

Sunday, January 13, 2013