INTERNASYONALISMO

Walang Maasahan sa Kongreso ng mga Kapitalista

Ang paglibing ng Kongreso sa impeachment ng kalabang paksyon ni GMA ay nagpapatunay lamang na hindi arena ng labanan ng manggagawa ang burges na parlamento kundi ito ay isang pugad ng mga “baboy”, “buwaya” at “puta” ng nabubulok na kapitalistang sistema.

Pareha ang layunin ng dalawang paksyon ng naghaharing uri (pro-GMA at anti-GMA) : Ilihis ang pakikibaka ng manggagawa palayo sa rebolusyonaryong landas. Kung hahantong man sila sa armadong bangayan ito ay pagpapatunay lamang na bumubulusok na ang kapitalismo at hindi na makontrol ng burgesya ang gulo na dulot mismo ng kabulukan ng sistema.

Sa panahon ng bumubulusok na kapitalismo isang kontra-rebolusyonaryong hakbang ang manawagan na makipag-alyansa ang manggagawa sa isang paksyon ng naghaharing uri. Lahat ng paksyon ng burgesya ay kaaway ng uri at ang tanging paraan para lumaya ang manggagawa ay lubusang ang aasahan nila ay ang kanilang sariling pagkakaisa at pakikibaka.

Kung meron mang paunlaring “alyansa” ang manggagawang Pilipino ito ay walang iba kundi ang alyansa ng manggagawa sa buong mundo. Tanging sa ganitong alyansa lamang madudurog ang pandaigdigang kapitalismo at maitayo ang sosyalismo sa internasyonal na saklaw.

Maling-mali ang mga “Marxista-Leninista” at Maoista sa pagpasok sa patibong ng uring kapitalista – pakikipag-alyansa sa paksyong anti-GMA. Hindi lumakas ang indepenyenteng kilusang manggagawa sa ganitong “taktika” sa halip ay nakatulong pa ang mga ito na itali sa ilusyon at repormismo ang uring manggagawa hinggil sa burges na parlamento.

Hindi na kailangang ilantad pa ng mga ito ang kabulukan ng burges na parlamento sa pamamagitan ng pagpasok sa bulwagan ng mga baboy, buwaya at puta. Hindi na kailangang lumahok sa burges na eleksyon ang mga rebolusyonaryo upang mailantad ang kabulukan nito. Ang mga baboy, buwaya at puta na mismo sa Kongreso ang naglalantad kung gaano kabulok at kabaho ang Kongreso.

Ang civil disobedience na gustong gawin ng panggitnang uri ay isang positibong hakbang laban sa rehimeng Arroyo. Pero mababaw ang isyung pinagbatayan ng panggitnang pwersa – ibinasura ang impeachment kaya mag-civil disobedience sila. Hindi lamang ang pagpapatalsik kay Gloria ang solusyon sa problema kundi ang mismong pagdurog sa kapitalistang sistema – pribadong pag-aari sa mga kagamitan sa produksyon at pagkakamal ng tubo para yumaman ang iilan.    

Independyenteng pakikibaka ng manggagawa sa bawat bansa ang tamang paraan ng paglaban. Rebolusyon ng manggagawa sa buong mundo ang tanging daan para sa paglaya ng mga manggagawa sa bawat bansa.

Makabayan o Makauring Laban?
(Nationalism or Class Struggle?)

Maraming nagsasabi na ang nasyonalismo angsolusyon sa paghihirap ng bansang Pilipinas. Ayon sa kanila, “si GloriaArroyo ay hindi makabayan kaya nagdurusa ang mga Pilipino.” “Si GloriaArroyo ay tuta ng imperyalistang Amerika kaya naghihirap ang masa.”

Ito ay linya hindi lamang ng mga Maoista kundi pati na rin ng mgamakabayang negosyante at propesyonal. Kaya naman marami sa panggitnanguri ang nakumbinsi ng Maoismo sa “pakikibaka para sa pambansang kalayaan at demokrasya laban sa imperyalismong Amerika”. Hindi kataka-taka kung bakit ang CPP-NPA ay labis-labis ang pagkahumaling sa“anti-imperyalismong Amerika” na simula noong panahon ni Marcos ay lagina lang nakakabit ang “US” sa bawat panawagan nila na ibagsak anggobyerno (diktadurang US-Marcos, rehiming US-Aquino, US-Ramos, rehiming US-Estrada at rehiming US-Arroyo).

Wala itong kaibahan sa sinabi ng isang tanyag na burges na politiko, si Manuel Quezon, noong panahon ng kolonyalismong Amerikano bago pumutokang Ikalawang Digmaan ng mga katagang kahalintulad nito, " I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos to a government run like heaven by Americans." Subalit pagputok ng Ikalawang Digmaan lumitaw ang kulay ni Quezon. Sumama siyang lumikas patungong Amerika. Ganito din ang linya ni dating pangulong Carlos P. Garcia,  ang kanyang “Filipino First Policy".

Ano ang nangyari sa bansa mula noon? Alam na nating lahat. Subalit kung ang CPP-NPA ang tatanungin, sila ay mga peke na makabayan dahil tuta sila ng imperyalismong Amerika. Possible pa ba ang “malayang Pilipinas” sa panahon ng lubusang kontrol ng mga imperyalistang bansa sa buong mundo? Kung makahulagpos ba ang Pilipinassa mga “kuko ng agila” ay hindi siya mapunta sa mga “pangil ng tigre”?

Sa panahon na nilamon na ang buong mundo ng nabubulok na kapitalistang sistema kung saan wala ng bansa ang makaligtas sa nakamamatay’ng lasong nalalanghap sa kabulukan nito, imposible na ang malayang bansa. Mahirap itong paniwalaan pero tingnan na lang natin ang katotohanang nangyarisa mga bansang nakibaka para sa “kasarinlan” pagkatapos ng Ikalawang Digmaan:

Hindi lang ang Amerika ang imperyalista sa mundo. Nariyan ang mga lumang imperyalista – Pransya, Britanya, Alemanya, Hapon, Rusya – at iilang gustong maging kasing-imperyalista nila – Tsina, Kyuba, Beneswela, Israel,  Sirya,  Iran,  Hilagang Korya at iba pa.

Bumahang dugo sa buong mundo. Dugo na mula sa milyun-milyong manggagawa at maralita dahil sa imperyalistang gera. Ang lahat ng ito ay sa ngalan ng nasyonalismo at “pagmamahal sa bayan”.

Sa Pilipinas, hindi ba ninyo napapansin na paparami ang mga negosyanteng Tsinoy at Pinoy ang bukambibig na modelo ang Tsina at Byetnam sapag-unlad ng bansa? Katunayan, labas-pasok na sila sa mga bansang ito, hindi lang nag-aaral kundi nag-nenegosyo na rin! Hindi ba ninyo alam nalumalandi si GMA sa Tsina kaya nagselos ang Amerika? Ang Tsina at Byetnam ba ang modelo ng mga makabayan nating kapatid? Hindi naman siguro.

Para sa manggagawa, uunlad ang bansa kung madudurog ang pandaigdigang sistema ng sahurangpang-aalipin. Aasenso tayo kung palakasin ang makauring laban hindi lang sa Pilipinas kundi sa buong mundo dahil ang paglaya ng uring manggagawa ay makakamit lamang kung lubusang mawasak ang imperyalismoat kapitalismo sa internasyonal na saklaw.

Makauring kamulatan at pakikibaka hindi makabayang kilusan ang makaahon sa atinsa kahirapan. Ang pagkakaisa ng manggagawa at sundalo sa ganitong labanang makapangyarihang pwersa laban sa lahat ng mapagsamantala.

State terror or ‘Islamic’ terrorism? A false choice to drag us into capitalist war 

The British policeman who announced the arrest of a number of suspects in the latest bomb plot said that the group had been planning “mass murder on an unimaginable, unprecedented scale”.

If they were indeed planning to destroy planeloads of passengers above US cities, this was certainly a plan for mass murder. The methods of Bin Laden and the ‘jihadists’ who admire him are the methods of barbarism. The victims of their attacks are first and foremost the exploited and the oppressed, the workers, the poor. In New York, Madrid, London, Mumbai, Beslan, in Iraq every day, the “Islamic resistance” massacres those going to work, those trying to survive day by day in a hostile society. In fact the methods of the ‘jihadists’ are the same as those of the ‘infidel’ powers they claim to oppose – the US, Britain, Israel, Russia and the rest.

And just as the governments of the ‘west’ try to stir up Islamophobia and racism against those identified as Muslims, the jihadis’ response is to preach racism against the ‘kafirs’, and in particular against the Jews, reviving the worst lies of Hitlerism. These ideologies are used to justify the mass slaughter of non-Muslims (in which Muslims also die by the thousands, as in Iraq today). The jihadis are the true mirror image of Bush and Blair and their ‘war on terror’.    

But that is our point. Terrorist atrocities against the innocent are neither “unimaginable” nor “unprecedented”. Those in power who condemn this most recent intended atrocity carry out far greater ones, because they have the superior firepower. These are the ‘democratic’ jihadis in charge of the world’s major states, those responsible for slaughtering civilians on a far higher scale – in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Lebanon, in Chechnya… The wars unleashed by the ‘democratic’ powers are the supreme model of terror: what else can you call the use of massive military force to intimidate entire populations? What else is Israel’s devastation of Lebanon, what else was the USA’s “shock and awe” campaign in 2003, or for that matter Churchill’s “area bombing” of Germany at the end of the Second World War?   

The ‘democratic’ state manipulates terrorists

Imperialist war is terror against humanity. And the states that wage it are equally adept in the shadowy methods of the ‘terrorists’ as they are in the open, massive terror of aerial bombardments. Who else trained Bin Laden to fight the Russians but ‘democratic’ America? Who used the Protestant gangs to carry out assassinations and bombings in Ulster? ‘Democratic’ Britain. Whose ‘founding fathers’ were also terrorists like Menachim Begin? ‘Anti-terrorist’ Israel. And through its spies and informers, the ‘democratic’ state can also make subtle use of the terrorist gangs even when they are on the ‘other side’. Despite the official polemics against ‘conspiracy theories’, there is mounting evidence to suggest that the US state allowed al Qaida to proceed with its attacks in September 2001; the aim – which had already been openly considered by the ‘Neo-Con’ theorists – was to create a new Pearl Harbour to justify a huge imperialist offensive in Afghanistan and Iraq. And it is equally capable of manufacturing terrorist plots when nothing really exists: Jean Charles de Menezes gave his life to one of these set-ups in Stockwell, and the massive raid in Forest Gate last June nearly resulted in another ‘accidental’ death. Because whether the threat is real or invented, the state will always use the activities of the terrorists to strengthen their arsenal of repressive laws, their vast apparatus of informing and surveillance.

After September 11 Bush offered us a false choice: with us, or with the terrorists. Today millions have seen what Bush stands for, but they haven’t escaped the false choice. Many young people who see that the world we live in is heading for disaster are being misled towards the terrorists as the only ‘alternative’. But it is a false alternative, an equally disastrous dead-end, turning them into recruiting agents in a suicide-march towards imperialist war. This is evident in the warfare spreading throughout the Middle East, warfare that is also rebounding to the USA and Europe

The class struggle is our only future

But faced with the inexorable decay of present day society, which is sliding into war and chaos, there is another side: the side of the exploited class, the proletariat, the vast majority of us, who have no interest in being dragged into fratricidal conflicts and inter-imperialist massacres.

Faced with the accelerating collapse of capitalism, which, in every part of the globe, has proved that it is endangering the very survival of humanity, there is one war still worth fighting: the class war, uniting the workers of all countries and colours against the gangsters who rule the planet but are now increasingly losing control of it.  

The battle between the classes, which many claimed to be buried, is once again breaking out. It can be seen in a number of recent movements:

These expression of working class solidarity are the outlines of the true community of mankind, a community made by human action for human beings, and thus no longer in thrall to religion or the state.

- taken from International Communist Current - World Revolution (14 August 2006) 

Conflict in Gaza, Israel, Lebanon: The ‘Peace Movement’ is a war movement

Apologists for the brutal assault of the Israeli armed forces on first Gaza and then Lebanon have scraped the bottom of the barrel for dubious ‘justifications’. In the face of attacks using indiscriminate air strikes, cluster bombs, phosphorous incendiary bombs, vacuum bombs, chemical weapons and all the rest of the devices available to a country that has nuclear weapons and warheads armed with depleted uranium, we are told that at least Israel issues warning leaflets before its bombardments. When the range of targets has included airports, roads, bridges, ambulances, UN personnel, civilians, factories, ports, farms and a whole range of other essential infrastructure (including an attack on a power plant that has resulted in tons of oil pouring into the sea), the propagandists for the Israeli offensive blame the hundreds of dead victims because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. As the military talk of “cleaning out” southern Lebanon, the apologists insist that Israel is defending itself, as any nation has the right to do. Nationalism is used to justify everything.

In Lebanon the main force set against Israel has been Hizbollah, as it has been since the early 1980s. It claimed to have 13,000 artillery rockets at the start of the latest conflict. It has generously deployed these against towns and cities across northern Israel. With a limited accuracy they have been launched against places including densely-populated Haifa and mainly Arab Nazareth.  Hizbollah claim to attack military targets, but the majority of its victims have been civilians, just like the Israeli state’s. The fact that it has so far killed dozens where Israel has killed hundreds only reflects the latter’s superior resources.

There should be no doubt as to Hizbollah’s intentions. Human Rights Watch criticised attacks on civilian areas in Israel on 18 July in part because “the warheads used suggest a desire to maximize harm to civilians. Some of the rockets launched against Haifa over the past two days contained hundreds of metal ball bearings that are of limited use against military targets but cause great harm to civilians and civilian property.” This is to be expected because Hizbollah’s ideology is identical to Israel’s – it is defending the state in which it plays a role in parliament and government, and over more than twenty years has proved itself as an effective military force. Nationalism is used to justify whatever it does.

Hizbollah’s role as part of the Lebanese state is not limited to the political and military sphere. It already fulfils basic state functions, alongside the ‘official’ state, with a basic welfare network of schools, hospitals, clinics and various development projects. The Lebanese ruling class is dependent on its contribution which, in turn, is supported by Iran and Syria.

Demonstrations for imperialist war

Many on the left are loud in their support for Hizbollah. George Galloway is blatant when he says “I glorify the Hizbollah national resistance movement” and recent demonstrations have been solidly pro-war in their backing for the Lebanese/Hizbollah military effort and against Israel.

Sponsored by the Stop The War Coalition, Muslim groups and CND the 5th August demo in London was a typical endorsement of the war. During the rally held at the end of the march we heard the insistence that Israel should be forced to pay reparations, sounding just like the French and British imperialists making demands on Germany after the First World War.

One speaker demanded “Yellow bellied Arab leaders get off your knees!” – a clear demand for the escalation of the war to draw in other countries and engulf the region.

Members of the Respect party claimed to be the only “anti-war” party as they dished out pro-war leaflets focussing exclusively on the damage inflicted on Lebanon. The main slogan of the march was “Unconditional ceasefire now”, but the qualification – “Stop Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Gaza” - confirmed that there was a condition to the  ceasefire: it does not apply to Hizbollah, Syria or Iran, whose war-drive the march and rally saluted.

Telling lies about the ‘resistance’

There are other ways of selling what Wilfred Owen called “the old Lie” of how sweet it is to die for a patriotic cause.

The Socialist Workers Party has called for “solidarity with the resistance” because “the resistance Israel is meeting in Lebanon is a barrier to further wars and further destruction”. This is the opposite of the truth. The current conflicts involving Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon did not start a few weeks ago. To understand the roots of the conflicts, just like those in Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Iran and Egypt, you have to go back to the First World War and the break up of the Ottoman Empire. The biggest imperialist powers then grabbed different parts of the strategically important Middle East and have been manoeuvring in the region ever since. Smaller powers, groups and factions have either been used by bigger powers or tried to satisfy their own individual appetites. The 1948 formation of Israel, the 1967 Six Day War, the 1978 invasion of Lebanon, the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Gulf War, the 2003 invasion of Iraq – these are all moments in imperialist war from which no power, big or small, can stand aside. Today every faction says it agrees with a ‘two states’ solution – but Israel wants it to mean a Greater Israel and its opponents a unified Palestine. Far from being a ‘barrier’ to further wars the current conflict between Israel and Hizbollah shows every sign of having the capacity to escalate and involve other forces, thereby letting loose much greater destruction.

The SWP says that Hizbollah “is being supported by a growing wave of solidarity across the Arab world”. This is a weakness in the struggle of the exploited and oppressed because it shows that there are widespread illusions in the nationalist forces that are thrown up by imperialist conflicts and can only play a part in their exacerbation. The various ‘resistance’ forces, whether in Palestine/Lebanon or Iraq or Afghanistan, are presented as the only possible responses to Israeli offensives or US/British repression.

For example, the SWP quotes an activist in Beirut as saying that “Hizbollah, and Hamas in Palestine, are the only models of resistance we still have, the only ones that work.” Yet both of these organisations owed their origins to factions engaged in imperialist conflict. Israel had a hand in the setting up of Hamas as a counter to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. Hizbollah was in many ways the brain-child of Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, Iranian ambassador to Syria in the early 1980s, and has had the support of Iran and Syria in the years since then. They are not ‘models of resistance’ but models of auxiliary forces to the main capitalist battalions.

You will not find any ‘barriers’ to future wars and destruction in the ranks of those who are engaged in the current conflicts. The only force that has the capacity to strike at the heart of the capitalist system that engenders imperialist war is the international working class.

Demonstrators internationally are not only being asked to support the current conflict; they are also told to ‘put pressure on western governments’. In this they are being asked to believe that big powers like the US, Britain, France, or Germany could behave in any other way than as imperialist predators. As for the ‘national resistance movements’, they are either already integral to capitalism’s forces of repression and war or have that as an ambition. Capitalist society puts the international working class in conflict with the capitalist state world-wide, but where imperialist war can only lead to increasingly massive destruction, the class war of the working class can lead to a society without national divisions, to the liberation of humanity. 

- taken from International Communist Current (6 August 2006)

Middle East: Against the slide into war, the international class struggle is the only answer

Once again the Middle East is in flames. Israeli planes and warships are systematically bombing Beirut and other targets in southern and northern Lebanon. Hundreds of civilians have been killed or maimed and vital infrastructure destroyed. Refugees are fleeing the bombed areas in growing numbers. At the time of writing there are preparations for some kind of ground invasion by the Israeli army. To the south, in Gaza, only a few months after the withdrawal of Israeli forces, the entire area has again become a battleground between Israeli troops and armed Palestinian organisations. The Israeli military blockade of both regions is strangling the economy and causing untold hardship to the local populations. But the Israeli population is also becoming increasingly fearful:  Hizbollah rockets had already claimed several lives further north when 8 people were killed by a missile landing on a railway depot in Haifa.

The stated reason for this major offensive by the Israeli state is the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by Hamas in the south and Hizbollah in the north. But this is just a pretext: Israel has used the crisis as an opportunity for trying to cripple or liquidate the Hamas regime in the occupied territories, and for demanding that the Lebanese state disarm Hizbollah (something which is completely beyond its means). It is also trying to draw Syria and Iran into the conflict, making threatening noises towards Syria, while claiming that one of the aims of the bombardment of Lebanon is to prevent the kidnapped Israeli soldiers being transferred to Iran, which arms and supports Hizbollah.

Threat of regional war

The present conflict thus contains the threat of escalating into a regional war. And because the Middle East is such a vital strategic region, every war there involves conflict not just between Israel and the Palestinians or its Arab neighbours, but between the great world powers. In 1948, the Russians and the Americans supported the formation of the State of Israel as a means of breaking the grip of the old colonial powers, Britain and France, that had previously controlled the region. The Suez war of 1956 confirmed that America was now top dog in the region: it humiliated the French and the British by demanding that they end their incursion against Nasser’s Egypt. The wars of 1967, 1973 and 1982 were integrated into the global conflict between the American and the Russian blocs, with the US backing Israel and Russia supporting the PLO and the Arab regimes.

With the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989, the stage was set for a ‘Pax Americana’ in Israel/Palestine. The United States became the broker of the Oslo accords in 1993. It  hoped that settling the Israel/Palestine conflict would allow it to become undisputed master of the region. The huge show of US firepower in Iraq in 1991 had the same aim. 

But all the efforts of American imperialism to impose a ‘new order’ in the Middle East have come to nothing. Ever since the Oslo ‘peace’ accords, but especially since the ‘Second Intifada’ of 2000, there has been constant conflict in Israel/Palestine – a never-ending round of murderous suicide bombings, followed by brutal Israeli reprisals, followed by more suicide bombings, and more reprisals. Parallel to this, US efforts to assert its mastery in Afghanistan and Iraq – the ‘War on Terror’ - have blown up in its face, creating two new Vietnams and plunging both countries into total chaos.  As the situation escalates in Lebanon, the Iraqi population is being tormented daily by horrific sectarian massacres,  while in Afghanistan the US/British-backed government  has lost its hold over the majority of he country. Furthermore, the effects of the military quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan are reverberating back to the Israel/Palestine conflict and vice versa. Israel’s provocative stance towards Iran echoes America’s stand-off with Tehran over its nuclear programme, while the ‘progress’ made by Islamic terrorism in Iraq influences the actions of Hamas and Hizbollah. And the ruthless slaughter by terrorist gangs of civilians in New York, Madrid and London confirms that war in the Middle East has already rebounded to the very centers of the system. The headlong rush into military adventurism is the only means at the disposal of every power or clique, from the greatest to the most insignificant, to defend their imperialist interests against their rivals.

In short, the situation throughout the Middle East is demonstrating not America’s control of the situation, but the spread of uncontrollable chaos. This is shown graphically by Israel’s ultra-aggressive attitude.[1]

The rivals of the US prepare to take advantage

As for the other great powers, they are waving peace placards as they did prior to the invasion of Iraq. France and Russia have clearly condemned Israel’s “disproportionate” military operation in Lebanon.  Britain is also adopting  a more independent line: it has issued sharp criticisms of Israel’s “collective punishment” of the Palestinians in Gaza and it has made a great show of sending in the warships to evacuate British nationals from Lebanon. These powers, however, are not interested in peace but in maintaining their own spheres of influence in the region. They will certainly try to profit from America’s weakness, but none of them are in a position to take on its role as the world’s policeman, and their conflicting imperialist interests make it impossible for them to evolve any coherent common policies. This is why at the recent G8 summit, the great powers took a ‘united’ stance on the Lebanon crisis which immediately gave way to mutual recrimination and disagreement.

All the states and forces involved in this conflict are busy drawing up military and diplomatic plans which correspond to their own interests. They certainly use the most ‘rational’ methods of calculation to arrive at these plans, but all of them are caught up in a fundamentally irrational process: the inexorable slide of the capitalist system into imperialist war, which today is increasingly taking on the character of a war of each against all. Even the mighty US is being dragged into this abyss. In the past, when civilizations were on their last legs, they became embroiled in endless war. The fact that capitalism has become a system of permanent war is the clearest proof that it too is in a state of profound decay and that its very continuation has become a deadly danger for humanity.

Class struggle is the only way out

If all of capitalism’s peace plans are doomed to fail, what alternative is there to the imperialist disorder that dooms them? Certainly not the various nationalist/religious gangs which claim to be ‘resisting’ imperialism in Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan – Hamas, the PLO, Hizbollah, al Qaida… They too are entirely caught up in the logic of imperialism, whether striking out on their own or lining up directly with existing capitalist states. Their aims – whether the establishment of new national states or the dream of a pan-Middle East Islamic Caliphate – can only come about through imperialist war; and their methods – which always involve the indiscriminate massacre of the civilian population – are precisely those of the states they claim to be opposing.

The only opposition to imperialism is the resistance of the working class against exploitation, because this alone can grow into an open struggle against the capitalist system, a struggle to replace this dying system of profit and war with a society geared towards human need. Because the exploited everywhere have the same interests, the class struggle is international and has no interest in allying with one state against another.  Its methods are directly opposed to the aggravation of hatred between ethnic or national groups, because it needs to rally together the proletarians of all nations in a common fight against capital and the state. 

In the Middle East the spiral of nationalist conflicts has made class struggle very difficult, but it still exists – in demonstrations of unemployed Palestinian workers against the Palestinian authorities, in strikes by Israeli public sector workers against the government’s austerity budgets. But the most likely source of a breach in the wall of war and  hatred in the Middle East lies outside the region – in the growing struggle of the workers in the central capitalist countries. The best example of class solidarity we can give to the populations suffering the direct horrors of imperialist war in the Middle East is to develop the struggle that has already been launched by the workers-to-be in the French schools and universities , by the metal workers of Vigo in Spain, the postal workers of Belfast or the airport workers of London. 

—

[1] The Israeli state’s barbaric war policy is under the direct responsibility of Amir Peretz, the left-wing leader of the Labour Party, a long time trade union boss and ex-militant of the pacifist movement "Peace Now". One might have imagined that it is a sort of "Israeli speciality" for a "man of the left" to play the unbending butcher - but it would be a mistake. A year ago, when the London police assassinated a young Brazilian worker in the Underground, one of the firmest justifications for the policy of "shoot to kill" anybody suspected of being a "terrorist" was none other than "Red Ken" Livingstone, the thoroughly "left wing" mayor of London. In its bloody military defence of the national capital, the "left" has always demonstrated an unscrupulous determination no matter what the country.

- taken from International Communist Current (17 July 2006)

Pagkakaisa ng Sundalo at Manggagawa

Walang duda na karamihan sa mga sundalo laluna sa rank-and-file ay mula sa pamilyang manggagawa at magsasaka. Karamihan sa kanila ay may mga kapamilya at kamag-anak na manggagawa. Kaya alam ng karamihan sa mga sundalo ang nakakaawang kalagayan ng manggagawa – mababang sweldo, walang regular na trabaho at tinatratong hayop sa mga pagawaan ng among kapitalista.

Ang kalunos-lunos na kalagayan ng manggagawa ay hindi lamang kasalanan ng gobyernong Arroyo. Ito ay kagagawan ng kapitalistang sistema na hindi mabubuhay kung hindi nito pahirapan at gutumin ang uring anakpawis. Si Gloria lamang ang chief executive officer ng kapitalismo sa bansa.

Sa ganitong pakahulugan ay hindi magkalayo ang sitwasyon ng ordinaryong sundalo sa masang manggagawa – nagpapapawis sa pagtrabaho nguni’t pinabayaan ng gobyerno. Binubuwis ng sundalo ang kanilang buhay sa gera na hindi naman kanila kundi sa naghaharing uri laban sa kanilang mga kapatid na manggagawa at magsasaka. Ginagamit ng naghaharing uri ang anti-komunismo at sinalaksak sa utak ng bawat sundalo para itago ang totoong layunin ng gera – durugin ang pakikibaka ng masa at depensahan ang naghihingalong bulok na sistema.

Lahat ng paksyon ng burgesya sa bansa (pro-GMA at anti-GMA) ay kapwa nanawagan ng “pagkakaisa”, “pagmamahal sa bayan” at “pagpapaunlad sa bansang Pilipinas”. Pero ito ay mga maskara para ang kanilang uri lamang ang magsasalitan sa Malakanyang. Kahit ang mga rebeldeng sundalo ay ginamit lamang ng uring kapitalista-haciendero para mapanatili ang bulok na kaayusan. Ito ang ating mapait na karanasan sa nagdaang dalawang Edsa Revolution at sa nagdaang mga pagtatangkang kudeta o rebelyong militar.

Sa kabilang banda, gayong nag-aastang rebolusyonaryo, ang CPP-NPA naman ay nabuslo sa patibong ng uring mapagsamantala. Sa pamamagitan ng gerilya-ismo sa kabundukan binigyang katwiran ng mga Maoista na magpapatayan ang masang anakpawis sa ngalan din ng “pagmamahal sa inang bayan”.

Walang dapat kampihan sa anti-komunismo ng kapitalistang estado at sa Maoismo ng CPP-NPA. Katunayan, ni hibla ay walang Marxismo sa Maoismo ng mga disipulo ni Joma Sison sa Utrecht.

Kung seryosong makipagkaisa ang mga rebeldeng sundalo sa masang anakpawis para baguhin ang bulok na sistema kailangang itakwil nila pareho ang anti-komunismo ni GMA-Gen. Palparan at ang Maoismo ng CPP-NPA.

Hindi mababago ang bulok na kapitalistang sistema sa bansa kung sasandal ang mga rebeldeng sundalo sa isang paksyon ng uring kapitalista-haciendero na anti-Gloria. Walang magandang kinabukasan ang Pilipinas kung ipako lamang sa isyung anti-Gloria ang pakikibaka.

Sa halip, dapat makipagkaisa ang mga rebeldeng sundalo sa uring manggagawa, ang tanging uri sa lipunan na progresibo at rebolusyonaryo. Sa pagkakaisa ng sundalo at manggagawa, hindi rebelyong militar ang dapat ilunsad kundi rebolusyon ng uring manggagawa laban sa kapitalistang sistema. Isang rebolusyon na magkaisang ilulunsad ng sundalo at manggagawa.

Ang tunay na lakas ng pakikibaka laban sa bulok na sistema ay nasa pagkakaisa ng sundalo at uring manggagawa. Ito lamang ang tanging daan sa tagumpay ng laban.  

Mungkahing pag-aralan at maging bukas ang mga rebeldeng sundalo sa pag-aaral sa teorya ng rebolusyon ng uring manggagawa – Marxismo.

Panghuli, isang kabalbalan ang mag-isip na maaring pagkaisahin sa isang pang-ekonomiyang sistema ang kapitalismo at komunismo. Imposibleng mangyari ito at walang ganitong sistema sa mundo. Ang Tsina, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba ay hindi mga sosyalistang bansa. Sila ay mga kapitalistang bansa na kontrolado ng estado nila – state capitalism. Sa mga bansang ito, pinagsamantalahan ang mga manggagawa para sa tubo ng kanilang gobyerno sa karatulang “sosyalismo”.

Ang sosyalismo ay hindi maaring itayo at konsolidahin sa isang bansa. Ang sosyalismo ay isang internasyonal na kaayusan. Higit sa lahat, ang komunismo ay uusbong mula sa guho ng pandaigdigang kapitalismo.

Sundalo Para sa Panlipunang Pagbabago, Hindi Para sa Isang Paksyon ng Naghaharing Uri

Isa sa manipestasyon na tuloy-tuloy ang paglalim ng krisis ng isang bulok na panlipunang sistema ay ang pagiging marahas ng bangayan ng mga paksyon sa loob ng naghaharing uri. Marahas na bangayan na umabot sa loob mismo ng pangunahing instrumento ng estado – ang armadong pwersa.

"War is not accidental but an organic manifestations of the capitalist regime.The dilemma is not ‘war or peace’ but ‘capitalist regime or proletarian regime’." To struggle against war is to struggle for the revolution. (Bilan no. 11).

"The working class can only call for one kind of war: the civil war directed against the oppressors in each state and concluding in the victory of the insurrection." (Bilan no. 11)

"It is not the existence of the Party that allows the existence of a revolutionary working class. Revolutionaries exist precisely because a revolutionary class exist."

"It is neither the ‘physical contact’ with the workers nor an all-out acitivism, which makes the Party a living part of the proletariat….It is the revolutionary organization’s ability to take up the political positions defined the proletarian struggle."