Author: Internationalist Perspective

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A DEBATE ON THE WAR IN UKRAINE

On September 10, Internationalist Perspective co-organized a public debate in Woodbine, a community hub in New York city, on the war in Ukraine, entitled “War and capitalist crisis”.

Since then, the war in Ukraine has escalated and many more ordinary people from Ukraine and Russia have died for worse than nothing. The Ukrainian forces, armed to the teeth by the US and its Nato-allies, have retaken some territory, Russia annexed provinces in eastern Ukraine, missiles of both sides sowed destruction on both sides, Putin ordered mass mobilization, provoking scores of protests, resistance and an exodus of many thousands refusing the role of canon fodder. All this and more has happened, but the fundamental question debated at Woodbine has remained the same: is this a local conflict in which the invaded nation deserves universal support? Or is it an interimperialist conflict, resulting from the global crisis of capitalism, in which the working class has nothing to gain and everything to loose?

Opposing perspectives follow from these assessments. In this debate, moderated by Ross Wolfe , three of the four speakers argued that this is a war between competing capitalists in which the working class is the victim and that the latter therefore can only defend its interests by refusing to fight each other and fight instead the ruling class in both countries.  

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Una tormenta perfecta

Carta del Reino Unido

Enormes franjas de la clase obrera británica están en huelga o harán huelga en los próximos días y semanas. Los recolectores de basura escoceses en todo el país están en huelga. La terminal de contenedores del puerto de Felixstowe, que maneja la mitad del tráfico de contenedores del Reino Unido, ha sido esencialmente cerrada debido a que los trabajadores están en huelga. Ha habido huelgas regulares de contratistas de ingeniería, especialmente en refinerías en todo el Reino Unido, trabajadores postales, conductores de autobuses, conductores de trenes y otros trabajadores ferroviarios, trabajadores del subte de Londres, incluso enfermeras y otros trabajadores del NHS, y los trabajadores de telecomunicaciones están en huelga o están a punto de hacerlo. Incluso los abogados penalistas están en huelga indefinida. Y también ha habido huelgas en Amazon. No ha habido nada como esto en el Reino Unido durante décadas. No se necesita mucho análisis para ver por qué está sucediendo esto.

El Reino Unido es el séptimo país más rico del mundo y, sin embargo, decenas de millones de personas se enfrentan a la pobreza. Las demandas de aumentos salariales son casi universales. De hecho el gran capitalista, el Estado, está arrancando los salarios de la clase trabajadora a un ritmo casi sin precedentes.  

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Une tempête parfaite

Lettre de Grande Bretagne

De vastes pans de la classe ouvrière britannique sont soit en grève, soit seront en grève dans les prochains jours et semaines. Les éboueurs écossais de tout le pays sont en grève. Le port de Felixstowe, le terminal à conteneurs – qui traite la moitié du trafic de conteneurs du Royaume-Uni – a été essentiellement fermé à cause des travailleurs en grève. Il y a eu des débrayages réguliers des entrepreneurs en ingénierie, en particulier dans les raffineries du Royaume-Uni. Les postiers, les chauffeurs de bus, les conducteurs de train et autres travailleurs du rail, les travailleurs du métro de Londres, même les infirmières et autres travailleurs du NHS (National Health Service), et les travailleurs des télécoms sont tous en grève ou sur le point d’entrer en grève. Même les avocats spécialisés en droit pénal sont en grève illimitée. Et il y a aussi eu des grèves chez Amazon. Il n’y a pas eu un mouvement de telle ampleur dans le Royaume-Uni depuis des décennies. Il ne faut pas être grand clerc pour comprendre pourquoi cela se produit.

Le Royaume-Uni est la septième puissance parmi les plus riches du monde et pourtant des dizaines de millions de personnes sont confrontées à la pénurie.  

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A Perfect Storm

Letter from the UK

Huge swathes of the British working class are either on strike or will strike in the coming days and weeks. Scottish refuse collectors all over the country are striking. The Port of Felixstowe container terminal – handling half of the UK’s container traffic – has been essentially shut because of striking workers. There have been regular walkouts of engineering contractors, especially at refineries across the UK Postal workers, bus drivers, train drivers and other railway workers, London Underground workers, even nurses and other NHS workers, and telecoms workers are all striking or are about to. Even the criminal barristers are on indefinite strike. And there have been strikes at Amazon too. There has been nothing like this in the UK for decades. It doesn’t take much analysis to see why this is happening.

The UK is the seventh richest country in the world and yet tens of millions of people are facing penury. The demands for wage increases are near-universal. The simple fact is that the major capitalist – the state – is gouging out the wages of the working class at an almost unprecedented rate. Yet, the government economic policy – unlike that in the decade following the 2008 recession – is not officially austerity.  

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A DEMOCRACY TO DIE FOR

“Russia’s war in Ukraine [is] a fight for global democracy, experts say”1

When the elite speak of freedom and democracy, duck and take cover!

We know this story all too well. Once our ancestors fought and died to liberate Jerusalem for the one true God, then for King and Country, for the Fatherland, for der Fuhrer, Il Duce, Uncle Joe (Stalin) and worst of all for ethnic nationalism. More generally they fought and died in conflicts claiming to be struggles between good and evil. God is always on the side of the soldier. In WWI they fought to “Make the world safe for democracy” and 30,000,000 deaths later some precarious form of democracy was attained; only to be swallowed by competing powers in the next decade, e.g. the Weimar Republic becomes the Third Reich and back to a democratic republic in a few short years. War needs the patriotic banners; the people need the songs and the sound of trumpets that urge them on to perform heroic deeds on the battlefield and to die for a glorious cause “if necessary.” In short, it would seem that the citizens need lies and democracy provides the most seductive deceit of them all.  

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NE VOUS BATTEZ PAS POUR «
VOTRE » PAYS

Tout le monde déteste la guerre. Surtout ceux qui en envoient d’autres mourir sur les champs de bataille. Ils prétendent qu’ils abhorrent la guerre, mais hélas, ils y seraient contraints par ceux d’en face. Ceux qui empiète sur notre pré carré. Ceux qui envahissent une nation « souveraine ». Nous n’avons pas le choix ! Nous devons nous défendre… De quel « nous » faites-vous partie ? La propagande implacable des deux côtés pousse tout le monde à choisir un camp, à devenir un participant actif ou une pom-pom girl dans la guerre. Parce que l’autre côté est vraiment horrible. Et c’est toujours le cas.

L’armée russe est accusée de crimes de guerre. Une bien étrange expression « crime de guerre ». Une expression redondante, en effet, parce que la guerre est par définition un crime, le plus grand de tous les crimes. Quel que soit le but, les moyens sont toujours le meurtre de masse et la destruction. Il n’y a pas de guerre sans massacres atroces. L’expression suggère qu’il y aurait deux façons de faire la guerre : une civilisée et une criminelle. Si jamais il y avait une différence entre les deux, elle a été effacée par les progrès de la technologie militaire.  

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¡NO LUCHES POR “TU” PAÍS!

Todo el mundo odia la guerra. Sobre todo las personas que envían a otras personas a morir en el campo de batalla. Afirman que lo aborrecen, pero por desgracia, el otro lado los obliga a hacerlo. El otro lado, que está invadiendo nuestros cotos de caza tradicionales. El otro lado, que está invadiendo una nación “soberana”. ¡No tenemos otra opción! Debemos defendernos… ¿De qué “nosotros” eres parte? La propaganda implacable en ambos lados empuja a todos a elegir un bando, a convertirse en un participante activo o animador en la guerra. Porque el otro lado es realmente horrible. Y siempre lo es.

El ejército ruso está acusado de crímenes de guerra. Un término extraño, “crimen de guerra”. Uno término redundante, en realidad, porque la guerra es por definición un crimen, el mayor de todos los crímenes. Cualquiera que sea el objetivo, los medios son siempre el asesinato en masa y la destrucción. No hay guerra sin masacres atroces. El término sugiere que hay dos formas de hacer la guerra: una civilizada y una criminal. Si alguna vez hubo una diferencia entre las dos, fue borrada por los avances en la tecnología militar. Desde principios del siglo 20, el porcentaje de víctimas civiles en las guerras ha crecido constantemente.  

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SOLIDARITY AND THE PANDEMIC

This is a response to the article Neither Idiots nor Sheep by comrade Sander. In it, Sander explores the impact that the virus has had on the economy and criticizes those, who, particularly in the left, essentially deny the reality of the virus by joining the no-vaxx camp, often mingling with reactionary forces on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Sander brings up the uncomfortable point that although capitalism will seize upon any crisis for its own ends, it is in the interest of both the ruling class and the working class to overcome the medical emergency. It is in the interest of the capitalists to have a “healthy” enough working class in order that they can continue squeezing profits in an uninterrupted process. It is also of course in the interest of the working class to have medical care against an objective life-threat. In this strained situation the polarization that has occurred fueled by conspiracies, misinformation and rightwing agendas seems to run contrary to a basic need for solidarity in overcoming an adversity which is social in nature.

I can find no fault at all with this criticism but I am left wondering in what shape this solidarity will manifest?  

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AGAINST CAPITALIST WAR !

The following powerful text was written by the comrades of La Oveja Negra in Argentina.

No war is easy to understand, no “geopolitical” situation is simple to grasp. Even less so when it is assumed that there are no social classes in the world: there are only countries, leaders and political ideologies. Thus, there are those who support and justify the massacres and the horror of war. There are those who forget or want to make people forget that wars are fought for money. As comrades in Russia point out at this moment, behind the war there are only the interests of those who hold political, economic and military power: “For us, workers, pensioners, students, it brings only suffering, blood and death. The siege of peaceful cities, the bombings, the killing of people have no justification.” (leaflet of the Section of the International Workers’ Association of the Russian Region KRAS-AIT)

War makes explicit the horror of a society based on accumulation and profit. It is capitalist peace by other means. What is happening in Ukraine is added to the wars and invasions that unfortunately are nothing new (Palestine, Yemen, Syria) and to the millions of dead from hunger, misery, work, preventable diseases or suicide.  

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