The global and national crisis worsens – Where does the struggle of the exploited go through?

The global and national crisis worsens

Where does the struggle of the exploited go through?

Masses 664 – editorial – May 15^th, 2022

The war in Ukraine is felt everywhere. It has been fueling the trends of low growth and stagnation of economies. The soaring inflation unbalances even more the accounts of the semi-colonial countries, and widely affects the living conditions of the exploited. The rise in food prices, combined with the huge mass of unemployed and underemployed, intensifies and expands hunger.

Soon, the war completes three months. There are no signs that it will cool down. On the contrary, the United States and allies are reinforcing the delivery of weapons with greater destructive power to Ukraine. They do not yield to an agreement that meets Russia’s basic requirements. Zelensky’s exhortation to the United States and allies to intervene in the Black Sea to unblock the export of corn and wheat in the name of ensuring food security is a symptom of despair, and a sign that imperialism is approaching danger zone of a wider military conflagration, beyond the Ukraine landmark. The Biden administration’s recent $40 billion to fuel the shipment of sophisticated weapons to Zelensky cannot be interpreted differently from the fact that there is already a semi-direct involvement of the greatest power in the war.

It is clear that the danger of war beyond Ukraine’s borders is increasing. Which means further worsening the conditions of the global crisis, which, since 2008, has resulted in recession and low growth. It is clear that this clash between the United States and Russia is the most serious since the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) disintegrated.

The warlike tendencies of capitalism in the imperialist era were strengthened with the exhaustion of the partition of the world after the Second World War, with the growth of financial parasitism, and with the impetus of the trade war, promoted from the United States. The destruction of productive forces is one of the fundamental characteristics that mark decaying capitalism. The ruins we have seen in the wars in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen and now Ukraine are portraits of the massive destruction of wealth, productive facilities and human lives.

Everywhere imperialism is present, led by the United States. The current difficulties in sustaining its almost absolute hegemony in the post-war period push US imperialism towards a trade war and the escalation of military interventionism. So that their actions aggravate the world crisis, dragging, not only the semi-colonial countries, but also the most developed European countries, to the process of destruction of productive forces, although in different magnitudes. This is what configures the general decay of capitalism in the imperialist era, under the domination of finance capital and monopolies. Thus, from the depths of the laws of history, the program of revolution and proletarian internationalism emerges.

We are witnessing, however, the absence of a powerful movement of the exploited masses for the end of the war of domination in Ukraine. The Ukrainian and Russian proletariat finds itself divided between governments and restorationist bourgeois oligarchies. The European proletariat, from countries indirectly involved in the United States war policy and its armed wing, NATO, is largely passively watching the barbarity of war and the danger that it will spill over into the continent. The unions, central unions and parties that claim to be of the workers are bowed before the pressures of imperialism. And in Russia, workers’ organizations are subordinated to the policy of capitalist restoration. This situation cannot remain indefinitely. Everything indicates that the most likely possibility is that the pace of the crisis will accelerate more and more.

The most sacrificed exploited since the 2008 crisis can no longer bear the brunt of economic disintegration, unemployment, underemployment and the devaluation of the value of the workforce. Vital necessities will enliven their revolt instincts and push them into the class struggle. If this path is not confirmed, the war in Ukraine will serve as a gateway to a period of enormous and free advance of barbarism.

The Liaison Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International* highlighted the strategic task of uniting the Russian, Ukrainian and European proletariat, as a starting point for the world unity of the working class, establishing a set of banners, whose need has been confirmed: end war immediately, dismantling of NATO and US military bases, revocation of economic and financial sanctions on Russia; self-determination, territorial integrity and withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.

In this framework, it is the duty of the class-conscious vanguard in each country to take the most elementary demands of the exploited into their hands, organize the struggle in the field of class independence, and develop the strategy of revolution and proletarian internationalism.

In Brazil, layoffs, the closing of factories, the unbearable cost of living, the destruction of labor rights and the proliferation of misery and hunger are the basis of the specific program of demands and the organization of struggles. This is why strikes and workers’ demonstrations have resumed. The growing dissatisfaction of the exploited with the rulers is visible. Under these conditions, the parties of the bourgeoisie and, among them, the reformists, such as the PT, have been settling the electoral field to divert the exploited from the method of direct action. On the contrary, it is about working for the unification of the struggles and exposing to the working class and the other exploited the importance and the need to put themselves under the banners of CERQUI, for the end of the war in Ukraine.

*English translation for “Comitê de Enlace pela Reconstrução da IV Internacional” – CERQUI