For the defeat of U.S.-Zionist imperialism in the Middle East!
For Putin’s defeat in Ukraine!
This May 1st we commemorate a new International Workers’ Day. 140 years ago, on May 1, 1886, workers in the United States went on a general strike demanding an 8-hour workday. Chicago workers, in the framework of that strike, carried out massive demonstrations. A few days later, on May 3, several workers were killed in a harsh repression. The next day after a large march of repudiation, the police mounted an attack with a bomb that killed one policeman, 6 more died in the ensuing confrontation. Four workers were sentenced to die by hanging, falsely accused of that attack, later recognized as “The Chicago Martyrs”. Hundreds of other workers were injured, and several labor leaders were arrested. Starting 1889 The Second International established May 1 as International Workers’ Day.
This year the commemoration of May 1st takes place in a serious international context, where U.S. imperialism is once again showing its claws, seeking to increase the colonization and plundering of different parts of the planet. At the same time, Putin’s Russia, an ultra-conservative capitalist state, maintains its criminal invasion of Ukrainian territory, in a war that has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives. It is the task of the entire world working class to stand with the Ukrainian, Iranian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Cuban, against imperialist and colonialist attacks.
The United States: A Threat to the whole world
Together with its gendarme in the Middle East, the genocidal state of Israel, the United States began a military adventure in Iran just over two months ago. Seeking to take advantage of the relative fragility of the ayatollahs’ regime, the U.S. initiated a new imperialist aggression, killing dozens of Iranian leaders, thousands of civilians, and destroying part of the country’s infrastructure.
The imperialist objective was to end the Iranian regime or subdue it, destroying part of its military arsenal and its nuclear industry. However, Trump’s and Israel’s calculations have so far been wrong. The Iranian regime has resisted and shows no sign of surrendering. The consequences of the war in the world have been enormous, and Trump has been forced to negotiate to achieve the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
At the same time, Israel has reoccupied southern Lebanon and maintains its occupation of Palestine, advancing on the West Bank, despite recent truces with Hezbollah and Hamas. On the other hand, despite the genocide of more than 70,000 Palestinians, Israel has also failed to achieve its goals in Gaza. Hamas and other Palestinian resistance organizations have not accepted their disarmament and continue to have an important presence that limits the colonization plans of Isael and the United States. The same is true in Lebanon with Hezbollah.
Along with that, U.S. imperialism, led by Donald Trump, has intervened in Venezuela and threatens, with the oil blockade, to starve thousands of Cubans. These interventions and threats against these states have nothing to do with an interest in “defending democracy”. Its objective is to destroy any possibility of states with relative national independence and, to respond to its own crisis, to advance in the recolonization of those countries: in Venezuela, it wants oil (which it is already achieving due to the submission of Chavismo after the capture of Maduro); in Cuba, he wants to retake control of the island to return Cuban properties to their former owners (expropriated in the 1959 revolution), the Cuban bourgeoisie of Miami, and transform the island into a gringo vacation colony, with cheap labor and paradisiacal tourist places. Trump’s quick victory in Venezuela was due to the total capitulation of Chavismo. Something similar is being prepared in Cuba through the Castro family negotiations. The world working class, including Venezuelan and Cuban workers, must oppose all U.S. interference in their countries.
From the IRC we have been emphatic in opposing the Cuban dictatorship, the Chavista regime in Venezuela, the dictatorship of the Ayatollahs in Iran. Despite that, we did not hesitate for a minute to reject the actions of the United States against those countries. Nothing good can come out of these interventions, since the interests of the United States are of plunder and colonization.
That is why we say that U.S. imperialism, together with Israel, are the greatest dangers to the world working class and the peoples of the world. What they do today in Iran, Palestine or Cuba, will be done tomorrow, to any country where the masses rise up against their plans.
Thus, the first task of the working class this May 1st is to demonstrate for: No to the imperialist interventions and aggressions of the United States and Israel!
As we have written in other articles¹, currently there is the possibility of defeating, politically and militarily, U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. The huge demonstrations in the U.S., against the attack on immigrants, against ICE, and around the world against Israel and U.S. actions, reinforce the heroic resistance of the Arab and Persian peoples and show that Trump can be defeated.
That is why: We stand in solidarity with the Iranian, Palestinian and Lebanese resistance! We are for the defeat of U.S. imperialism and Israel! The Middle East can only begin a true path for freedom, independence and reconstruction with the end of the State of Israel and the destruction of all American bases in the region.
Putin, another bourgeois criminal
Another criminal war that has been going on for 4 years is the invasion of Ukraine by the far-right Putin, supported by the Russian bourgeoisie. Contrary to what much of the world left says, Putin is not an ally of the people and is not waging a war against U.S. imperialism and its allies (NATO). Putin’s actions in Ukraine have a colonialist objective. Putin wants to expand Russia’s borders and regain the influence that the Russian state lost in Eastern Europe after the dissolution of the USSR.
Most left-wing organizations, because of the disastrous Stalinist theoretical heritage, which divided the world into “two blocs”,² reproduce a characterization and policy for the current world that has nothing to do with Marxism or the interests of the working class. For these organizations, there is only one bad side, U.S. imperialism, and everything that opposes it is progressive. That is complete falsehood and does not consider that there are contradictions and confrontations between the different national bourgeoisies in their dispute for the division of the planet, and that most of the governments of the world, whether ultraright or “progressive”, are agents of imperialism. That is why, in addition to rejecting U.S. imperialism, we must reject all aggressions of colonial nature by all capitalist states, as is the case with the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Despite Russia’s enormous military superiority, in the last 4 years the Ukrainian working class and people have set an example of courage and self-sacrifice. The defense of Ukrainian territory has been heroic, despite all the attempts of U.S. imperialism and the Ukrainian regime to sabotage the resistance and negotiate with Putin. If Russia has so far failed to win the war, that depends largely on the fierce Ukrainian resistance, whose backbone is armed workers.
Therefore, it is the duty of all the peoples of the world to stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people in defense of their territory. For Putin’s military defeat! Down with Russian colonialism!
Climate change: socialism or capitalist barbarism
In addition to imperialist wars, humanity is facing grave danger. This is because imperialist capitalism and its incessant search for capital accumulation have pushed the planet to its limit. Global warming is already a reality and all peoples, especially the poorest sectors, have begun to suffer its consequences, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, mass migrations, etc. The UN itself recognizes that we are getting closer every day to the point of no return, for climate, which means that the consequences of global warming will not recede if capitalist destruction is not stopped, and there will be a feedback between the different climate imbalances, which will generate increasingly greater catastrophes for humanity and other species.
Capitalism and its dependence on the production and consumption of fossil fuels are fully responsible for the threat we face today. Undoubtedly, U.S. imperialism appears as the main destructive power on the planet, but it is closely followed by Chinese capitalism, which needs to grow more and more in its commercial competition with the United States and second-order imperialisms. Chinese capitalism, contrary to what the same left that defends Putin says, is not an alternative for humanity. China is part of the problem that threatens us as a species.
That is why the working class around the world must take the struggle against imperialism and global warming into its own hands. Only a socialist revolution that takes control of the means of production, particularly the energy companies, will be able to plan and centralize the economy to curb the environmental catastrophe.
This May 1st, we rise up all over the world against capitalist barbarism. We rise up against imperialist attacks and all colonialist aggression, for the defeat of U.S. imperialism, Zionism and Putin!
We rise up for Iran’s victory! For Ukraine’s triumph! For the destruction of the state of Israel! For a single, secular, democratic and non-racist Palestinian state! Free Palestine from the river to the sea!
We rise up for the rights of the working class, oppressed peoples, youth, women, and migrants!
We rise up for the seizure of power by the working class and for socialism, the only way to guarantee a future for humanity and other species on the planet!
¹ (https://cir-internacional.org/en/trump-arrinconado-iranpuedeganar/#:~:text=Al%20momento%20de,derrota%20del%20imperialismo!,
² That theory divided the world into two blocs: fascism and democratic imperialism, which today translates into: ultraright and progressive governments. What it ignores is that the central division is between bourgeois and workers, between exploiters and exploited.
