Demonstration in Ghedi (Brescia), 21 October 2023
We are particularly proud to communicate that the appeal launched by RIT (Revolutionary Internationalist Tendency) and SI Cobas in recent months for a day of international and internationalist mobilization against the wars of capital, has had an echo throughout the world greater than our own expectations. We committed to moving in this direction at the meeting of 11 June in Milan, and we kept our commitment, as already happened with the demonstration in Ghedi on 21 October.
When this proposal was launched, the genocide operation of the Zionist state against the population of Gaza had not yet begun, but it is quite clear that today the denunciation of this infamous massacre and the poisoning of the environment of the entire Gaza strip to make it uninhabitable, the demand for an immediate cessation of this aggression supported by the United States, the Italian government and the EU, the sabotage actions against this new colonialist and imperialist war, take a leading place in the more general mobilization against the wars of capital.
We have begun to address this need, within the limits of our strength, in various ways: by participating in, and sometimes promoting, demonstrations in support of the Palestinian resistance; with boycott actions of Israeli/Italian economic interests; with the first strike in Italy against the Zionist occupation, the genocide in Gaza and the Meloni government, organized by SI Cobas on 17 November, in response to the requests of Palestinian trade unions, and with the promotion of the demonstration in Bologna on 18 November; working towards the realization of a second workers’ strike in support of the Palestinian resistance.
These initiatives are an integral part of that more comprehensive mobilization against the wars of capital which will see a first significant moment of international coordination on the day of struggle on 24 February, the second anniversary of the outbreak of the war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine which has slipped into the background in the media, but certainly not in our eyes, since it has continued to claim tens and tens of thousands of lives, and promises to last a long time and expand further, increasingly affecting the civilian population.
On February 24th there will be demonstrations on a common platform in many countries: from Argentina to Japan, passing through a series of countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. It was not easy to achieve this result because, as Marx once said, the past weighs on the brains of the living people like a nightmare. And in fact the very harsh controversies that split the old workers’ movement in the last century could not fail to leave heavy traces on everyone.
However – and this is truly great news – the pressing need to give a first unitary signal that says: at an international level there are forces that – in the midst of an increasingly profound upheaval of the world capitalist order – work to create an autonomous proletarian camp. An array of forces opposed both to the camp of Western imperialism in irreversible decline, and to the camp of rampant ascendant capitalisms led by China and the Brics, which cannot provide any preferable alternative to the program of destruction and death of the axis United States-European Union.
In the next few days we will give news of all the political, trade union and social organizations that have joined and are joining the day of the 24th. And we ask the organizations that would like to join but have not yet contacted us directly, to write to us (com.internazionalista@gmail.com)
For Italy the event will be in Milan, and an assembly will be held as soon as possible to prepare it.
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Call for a day of international mobilization against the wars of capital
In a historical phase in which the contradictions of global capitalism are intensifying, from Ukraine to Palestine, from Sudan to the Congo, imperialist states increasingly resort to war and the massacre of human beings. By doing so, they want to violently ‘resolve’ conflicts of interest between their capitalist monopolies, or renew their colonial and neocolonial domination over oppressed peoples.
The workers, the proletarians called upon to slaughter one another to decide who will exploit them, must declare war on the wars of capital and organise themselves to overthrow capitalist domination of the world.
With the ongoing war in Ukraine, on the European continent, for the first time since the Second World War, two alignments of great capitalist powers are openly clashing: Russia on the one hand (with partial support from China and several emerging powers), and NATO (US and European powers) on the other, supplying the military materiel, with Ukraine providing the cannon fodder. After almost two years and more than 500,000 casualties and 10 million displaced people, 6.2 million of whom have emigrated, the slaughter continues with the risk of escalation, which, combined with global rivalries, makes World War III a real catastrophic possibility, for which all powers are preparing with a generalised arms race.
In the face of this war that is imperialist on both sides, as in the face of the outbreak of World War I, some of the currents of the anti-capitalist left have split between supporters of one or the other of the two warring camps. Which talk of ‘self-determination’ of Ukraine when the fierce dispute between two wings of the national bourgeoisie has plunged this country into the tragic path of war and, with Zelensky, of complete submission to western imperialism? Which war against ‘Nazism’ on the part of Russia, when Putin and his entourage, who want to revive the tsarist empire, are supported by Russian Nazis and in turn support far-right organisations throughout Europe?
Against both camps of clashing powers, let us raise the banner of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, to give substance to the proletarian opposition to both war fronts: “the main enemy is at home!”.
In the Middle East, Israel’s heinous colonial and annihilation war against the Palestinians of Gaza, with the massacre to date of 32,000 civilians, mostly children and women, the displacement and imminent starvation of more than two million people, the systematic destruction of homes, public buildings, hospitals, and basic infrastructure, together with the fascist attacks by settlers and the army on the Palestinians in the West Bank. It proofs the support of the western powers to the Zionist state, their outpost in the Middle East; and the complicity of the other big powers and regional powers, unwilling to sacrifice their own affairs to the Palestinian cause. The only allies of the Palestinian people are the proletarians of the Middle East and the workers and youth around the world who are taking to the streets in support of the Palestinian people, in support of their extraordinary resistance, their century-long struggle for self-determination by putting an end to the Zionist and Western machine of oppression in Palestine. We support the Palestinian resistance, despite our criticism of the political and ideological alternatives of the Islamist forces. Today, more than ever, Palestine is the home of the oppressed!
All states, all governments, are expressions of profiteering bourgeoisies linked to the major imperialist powers, to the capitalist monopolies, to the international financial system, and are part and parcel of the social system that produces war; none of them can be allies in the war on war. The decline of the American superpower in the face of the emergence of new medium and great powers, the transition from a US-dominated world (dis)order to a ‘multipolar world’ cannot bring about equilibrium and peace, but – as we are already seeing – growing imbalances, tensions and new wars. Wars which, in their essence, are wars for the sharing out of the fruits of the exploitation of the vast majority of society by a small minority.
Our camp is not the camp of the bourgeois states, it is the camp of the exploited and oppressed classes, of the workers, of the international proletariat, the only class that has an interest, and has the strength – if it organises itself – to put an end to the wars that its exploiters wage at its expense. After the low point of the revolutionary movement has been passed, it is necessary for the organisations that stand on the ground of revolutionary defeatism against the wars of capital, on the ground of coherent proletarian internationalism, to come together in common initiatives. The time is now, before it is too late!
The past matters, but we will be judged from our ability to meet the challenges of our historical period head-on.
On Saturday 24 February 2024, the second anniversary of the war in Ukraine, let us join forces in an international day of protest and struggle against the wars of capital!
– against both warring parties in Ukraine, for revolutionary defeatism – “the enemy is at home!”
– on the side of the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people against the national, racial, religious oppression and discrimination of the imperialist-zionist state Israel
– for a society without exploitation and war, of harmony between man and nature.