MEXICO MAY DAY

MEXICO CITY, MAY 1—A group of 45 comrades, sympathizers, and friends of Progressive Labor Party carried the red flags of communism in the May 1st march in Mexico City. Our revolutionary slogans and chants were heard by thousands of workers. We distributed 1,500 pamphlets of Challenge. In Oaxaca, another group of 12 comrades distributed 3,000 pamphlets in the march organized by the Teacher’s Union Local Section 22.
History has taught us that workers can only confront imperialist war if we fight to get rid of the capitalist system that creates crisis, war, and fascism. That teaching is the heritage that the Russian and Chinese workers left us when they took power during WWI and WWII, respectively. We shouldn’t forget that in order to put an end to both wars, it was essential that workers took power into their own hands.
The recent attacks by the United States on Syria and Afghanistan, much like the mobilization of aircraft carriers to the Korean Peninsula, is a signal of war against the imperialists of Russia and China, their true targets. It’s a sign that the bosses are, with each action, closer to initiating a third world war, in which they will use both conventional and nuclear weapons and spill the blood of millions of workers, all for the sake of their profits. Under this reality, capitalism confirms its devastating and criminal essence.
Within the shadow of imperialist war, the ruling class of Mexico can only offer an electoral circus with increasing fascism. Workers must be very clear that bourgeois “democracy” is a dictatorship of the capitalist class over the working class—a dictatorship of a few privileged parasites who exploit that great majority of impoverished workers.
Electoral democracy is a fraud. This sham tries to trick the working class into thinking they have the “freedom” to choose their rulers, but the reality is that it only serves to legitimize the new oppressors and exploiters. In no place or moment in history has the working class achieved its liberation by means of elections. The working class can  only liberate itself when it organizes itself into a revolutionary party to take power through force and establish a dictatorship of the working class.
In the electoral process, the only ones who can participate are those who have millions in resources at their disposal and are willing to represent those who finance them. During their term they have to work to comply with their commitments to those who carried them into power.
All of the electoral parties represent the interests of some faction of the capitalist class, allied or subordinate to imperialist interests, principally those of the US. No electoral party actually represents the workers. The working class needs its own party to achieve a change from the capitalist economic, political and social system – a transformation that cannot be achieved through the electoral path, as that is a process completely controlled by the capitalist class.
When the capitalist “democracy” fails, the bosses turn to fascism, the most violent form of their judicial, police, and military apparatus that invokes the spread of fear among an upsurge of intense violence. To achieve this climate of fear, it is necessary for the country to usher in repressive state institutions before the presence of some supposed enemy that intends to “destabilize peace.”
In Mexico, the supposed democracy has achieved alarming rates of robbery and murder, the deviant millionaires and the abuses of power of the governor of Veracruz through the orders of Felipe Calderon of PAN and of Enrique Peña Nieto of PRI, the killings in Ayotzinapa that they carried out, under the direction of Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD). PRD is the leader of Morena (another electoral party) and represents a nationalist sector whose win will only benefit a small group and not the mass of followers that they have succeeded in convincing. None of them represents the interests of the working class.
Drug trafficking, corruption, murder, and disappearances of journalists and fighers, the increase in poverty rates, the sexism that women suffer every day, the enrichment of a select few – all go hand in hand with the “democratic process” created by the capitalist system, the same system that has to be stopped, through the process of understanding its inner working and how to best fight it.
During election season all candidates are
labeled corrupt rats, but no one blames the capitalist system for the tragedies that the working class has to live through day to day in order for the bosses to gain more and more profit. No political platform or candidate in any election attacks the profit system of the bourgeois class. They only put ridiculous names to insufficient programs that are designed to gather votes.
The ex-mayor of Huixquilucan del Mazo Maza (the region with the most drug traffickers) represented the private sector of Banco Azteca and Grupo Servin. He has family connections with different politicians of Grupo Altacomulco, to which President Peña Nieto belongs. Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) politician Vásquez Mota is involved in allegations for his foundation Juntos Podemos (Together We Can), which has received more than $1 billion pesos (Proceso, 5/18). Although Morena candidate Delfina Gómez isn’t known for corruption in her past, her party’s connection with billionaire Carlos Slim and bosses’ union Coparmex leaves many questions to be answered (El Financiero, 5/22).
We can’t ignore the massive business of these elections. For example, according to official electoral sources, there is at least $394 million pesos that will be spent on this election (El Financiero, 5/22), and the 2017 budget for all the political parties combined is over $4 billion pesos (Excelsior, 2/15). These figures may not even be an accurate estimate, as the different ruling class parties sponsor various other activities and buy votes. It’s always necessary to consider the fact that all electoral parties spend exaggerated sums to promote themselves; to follow the money shows who really benefits.
What’s at Stake?
What drives the desire to win the electoral dispute in one of the most important states on a national level? It’s not the high poverty levels or the alarming rates of sexist violence. It’s the control of one of the most important industrial zones in the country at a key geostrategic point, with one side close to a metropolis that guarantees a cheap work force and the other side in the middle of the country’s most important commercial routes. If this were not enough, it’s also a migrant route for an exploited semi-slave workforce. We find ourselves in an upsurge of capitalist crisis, which will not hesitate to expose its fascist face and exalt the poisons of nationalism, individualism, and sexism, making it harder for workers to fight together against the international ruling class.
The bosses want to make us believe that nothing can be done to change the oppressive and exploitative system that is capitalism, but the Russian and Chinese workers showed that it is possible to wrench power from the capitalists and build a new society, led by the working class. Despite the dark night that offers imperialist war and fascism, the workers, with dedication and organization, will forge a communist future.