2019 in Review Rising fascism & fightback

From Europe to South America and from Asia to Africa, the profit system is in crisis. The inherent callousness of capitalism is catching up to the bosses. As we review 2019, recent events between bosses and workers across the world demonstrate how the system is further moving towards fascism. Inter-imperialist rivalry between fascist factions give the communist international working class a chance at burning the whole thing to the ground and smashing the system for good.
Big Fascists vs. Small Fascists
This year, PLP stressed the use of Big Fascist and Small Fascist to raise the consciousness of workers: to deeply analyze the results of competing factions within the ruling class. The main-wing finance capitalists, or Big Fascists, representing the big banks and multinational oil companies, are committed to maintaining U.S. control over the oil-rich Middle East. The main-wing bosses realize they’re not nearly prepared for an all-out war with growing superpowers China and Russia. First, they’ll need to force unity and discipline upon their own class, hence the looming impeachment of current, openly racist and unhinged president Donald Trump. The main wing will need, for their war purposes, to build a rainbow coalition of a mass patriotic, multiracial, fascist movement within the working class.
As of late, they are pushing environmentalist moves like the Green New Deal, led by new liberal misleaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and war-mongering wolf like Elizabeth Warren to crush their domestic rival bosses. Meanwhile, the big auto bosses have opened up their own front against Trump and his Small Fascist backers, including the Koch Brothers, whose empire relies on oil within the U.S. borders.
We’ve also seen French President Emmanuel Macron proclaim that we must “save the Amazon,” followed by lame-duck German Chancellor Angela Markel calling for a renewed effort to fight climate change. Meanwhile, France remains Europe’s second largest consumer of energy after Germany.
It all falls down
The old liberal world order, dominated by the U.S. ruling class since World War II, is under siege. The question of who is a ride-or-die ally of the U.S. is getting harder to answer. As the Empire falls, its allies—from France, Italy, and Germany to Saudi Arabia—are hedging their bets.
Russian President Vladimir Putin followed up on missile system sales to Iran and Turkey by offering a similar deal to Saudi Arabia (Reuters, 9/16/19). In June, Putin declared that Iran would not be alone if attacked. Clearly, the Russian bosses are also willing to play both sides and ready to capitalize on U.S. weakness.
In September, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned Abqaiq and Khurais oil processing plants were attacked, disrupting five percent of global oil production and pushing rival imperialists closer to World War III. The latest conflicts in the Middle East demonstrates the deteriorating influence of a fractured U.S. ruling class. Under President Donald Trump, who fronts the priorities of more isolationist domestically oriented bosses, the U.S. has undermined the G-7 by opting out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, imposing tariffs on allies and enemies alike, attacking Germany’s trade surplus, and attempting to restore Russia’s membership despite its annexation of Crimea.
Chinese imperialism rising
Chinese imperialism has grown immensely in the last several decades as they’ve made strides in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. China’s checkbook diplomacy has opened rifts within the broader European Union. After receiving massive Chinese investment, Greece and Hungary defied the U.S. bosses and watered down an EU statement on Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. In addition, Italy, a G-7 member, endorsed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s gigantic global infrastructure project. Even more ominous, Germany, the EU’s largest economy, now has more trade with China than with the U.S. As China continues to rise at the U.S. bosses’ expense, the threat of a global military conflict looms.
Cyber fascism is also on the rise in China as things as big as artificial intelligence and as small as various phone apps like “Study the Great Nation” are pushing ruling-class ideas. Additionally, China’s building a social credit system that will not only track your financial status but also calculate your “honesty” and “patriotism.” Fresh out of a Black Mirror episode, workers’ scores will determine if they can get on an airplane, use a high-speed train, or be allowed to purchase “luxury items” (South China Morning Post, 3/26/19).
Similar to the U.S. “Big Brother” methods, China’s bosses have installed surveillance cameras, monitored online discussions, and sent thousands of undercover cops to spy and keep a close watch of families of Uigurs to prevent any rebellion. More recently, China’s bosses have deployed facial recognition software to racially profile the Uighurs and track their movements. This “automated racism” (NYT, 4/14/19) has also been extended to other parts of China. Furthermore, Google is under attack for pulling out of a contract to work with the U.S. military while continuing to partner with China in developing artificial intelligence research.
It’s even clearer that the U.S. bosses’ powers are waning, as seen through the failure of Juan Guaido’s staged presidency takeover in Venezuela. The coup backed by U.S. bosses was not received well by Venezuelan oil bosses as they rather planned to welcome two more Russian imperialist planes with supplies to support the government of president Nicolas Maduro.
No matter the region, capitalist bosses are only loyal to the capitalist moves that benefit themselves. It’s best that the international working class takes note and chooses our working-class brothers and sisters over individualism and capitalist exploitation.
A strike wave!
Many workers and students are pivoting toward anti-capitalism and criticizing liberalism and pink tides more sharply as a wave of strikes has struck the globe. Wherever they are, workers are fighting back.
Starting the year off in France, a multiracial movement of high school students put forward some of the most antiracist and class-conscious ideas in the movement.
In Haiti, anger at ruling class thievery has sparked the sharpest and most sustained anti-government demonstrations in years.
In China, thousands of “mass incidents” with Chinese workers, educators and students are erupting each year, especially on college campuses and small towns outside the city.
Education workers have protested against racist working conditions, without hesitation against newly elected liberal mayor, Lori Lightfoot.
Young people are striking for climate change with school walkouts in Europe, Chile, India, Kenya, South Africa, New Zealand and dozens more.
Across the Midwest and South, nearly 50, 000 General Motors workers went on strike and members of the United Auto Workers are pushing for international class solidarity at Labor Parades and meetings.Transit workers in D.C. and youth in NYC are fighting back against working conditions, police brutality and skyrocketing transit fees.
Protesters in Newark and New York City are lead-infested water, new jails, gentrification, and the ongoing housing crisis.
Workers fought the growing fascist conditions against undocumented youth and workers, including tracking system of licenses and the bondage of cages.
PLP pushes forward
There will be more strikes to come. The world under capitalism is a vicious cycle of blood sucking politicians, fightback from workers, following more parasitic politicians looking to benefit off of the work of working-class fighters.
In 2020, politicians of all colors of the political rainbow will be ready to march out in the streets and among workers just to get likes and votes. Though it is a dark night of class struggle, still workers will fight back and reveal the truth underneath the cloak.
Progressive Labor Party is here to arm strikers with communist ideas and build an international Party for workers’ power. Comrades in Chicago, Haiti, Colombia, NY, NJ, Baltimore, Texas and Mexico continue to build a working-class base fighting in the class struggle. This year, we’ve held communist schools and projects in Colombia, Mexico, Texas, Pakistan, and more.
In a climate of intimidation and fear, antiracists and communists still work to create an atmosphere of fightback. Throughout each of these strikes and protests is a thread of learning how to practice communism in action.
It is the job of communists to help build a fighting and growing Party that includes workers from all reform struggles. Reforms do not lead to revolution. We implore workers to continue calling out the fascists, Big and Small, as PL’ers spread revolutionary communist ideas and leadership. If we don’t, the working-class will be funneled into dead-end political options: passivity, electoral politics, cynicism, and increasing fascism.
In 2020, we’re looking forward to continuing the fight, joining in struggles for a better world for workers and putting communist ideas in action with our summer projects and leadership efforts. Let’s turn the bosses’ imperialists wars into an international class war for communism.