“The first casualty of war is truth.”
With Ukraine on fire and Russia and NATO flexing their military forces within a handful of miles of one another, the capitalist bosses of the world are accelerating their momentum toward global war. None of the top imperialist powers—the United States, Russia, and China—are in total control over what happens next in Ukraine. Their desperation to protect their power and profits makes this a dangerous and volatile period for our class. As the rival rulers use their media as capitalist propaganda to rally workers around democracy and nationalism, their tools for racism and worldwide devastation, we must use our communist tools—including CHALLENGE—to combat them. Our rallying cry is for international working-class consciousness and solidarity. Our marching orders are to turn the guns around, to transform inter-imperialist war into communist revolution. Then we will have the opportunity to create the world the working class deserves, a society run by workers to meet workers’ needs—communism.
Slippery slope to World War III
The post-Vietnam decline of the U.S. ruling class, as evidenced by their debacles in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, has opened the door for the Russian imperialists to push the limits of their power through the invasion of Ukraine. President Joe Biden’s response—to revive NATO and other U.S. alliances with sanctions against Russia and arms shipments to Ukraine—has had mixed results. “The giants of the Global South – including India, Brazil, and South Africa – are hedging their bets while China still publicly backs Putin” (Washington Post, 3/10). Even Mexico is proving an unreliable U.S. ally as it keeps its doors open to a tightening Russia-China alignment(Reuters, 3/4).
On top of its weakening international ties, the U.S. ruling class is dealing with a deepening internal division between its two factions: the “Big Fascists” of finance capital and the more domestically oriented “Small Fascists” (See glossary, page 6). Finance capital’s fear of ceding power to the bosses who control domestic oil and gas has been exposed by their attempts to ease an international oil shortage by resurrecting relations with bitter adversaries like Venezuela and Iran (Washington Post, 3/7). But while the rulers’ loyalties bend as they lurch from one crisis to the next, one thing never changes. We know that none of these bosses—not the market capitalists in the U.S., not the state capitalists in Russia, not the profit-hungry bloodsuckers in Mexico or Venezuela or Iran—will hesitate to slaughter workers if it serves their interests.
It remains uncertain as to whether the imperialist war in Ukraine will become the first shots of World War III. But it’s safe to say that weakness and divisions in the U.S. ruling class are increasing the possibility of a much larger war, with nuclear weapons now openly on the table (New York Times, 3/13). China’s invasion of Taiwan and a move to take over the oil-rich South China Sea seem all but inevitable, leaving the U.S. bosses two bad choices: a war for which they're not prepared, or a surrender of the strategically vital “Indo-Pacific.” In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are moving more closely toward China, from trade deals to arms purchases (al-monitor.com, 3/14).
Though world events may seem more volatile and unpredictable by the day, two things are clear. The first is that no empire has ever relinquished global supremacy without resorting to war. The second is that a worldwide communist revolution can put an end to the bosses’ wars once and for all.
Blood, gas, and precious metals
Make no mistake about it! This latest bloodbath in Ukraine is just one more example of capitalist global competition over the transport and exploitation of natural resources. The bosses are always willing to sacrifice our class for their profits. In addition to Ukraine’s untapped reserves of natural gas, the second largest in Europe, the country contains vast quantities of lithium (third-most in the world), gallium (second-most), and titanium (20 percent of total world reserves). All of these metals are critical to capitalist commercial and military technologies and development.
Lithium is essential to the shift to electric vehicles. Titanium ores are required for airplane and aerospace construction. Gallium is vital to the development of 5G networks, military radar, lasers, and satellites. Classed as a national security concern by the U.S. government, 95 percent of the world’s gallium is currently extracted in China (Fierce Electronics, July 2019). Further, the Patriot Missile Defense Systems that NATO has activated to assist Ukraine in its war with Russia were upgraded with gallium semiconductors (Breaking Defense, 2/20/15). These resources are used to line the capitalists’ pockets and gain an advantage over rival rulers. We cannot let the bosses spill workers’ blood to secure them!
Nationalism, death trap for workers
Nationalism is a crucial tool for the bosses’ bloody war plans. The ruling class attempts to win workers to unite based on capitalist borders. This sets workers against their class sisters and brothers, those who share their same interests: the international working class.
In the few weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, workers in the U.S. have been deluged by commercials and billboards to “Stand with Ukraine.” U.S. schoolchildren are urged to dress in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. But we know that workers living in Russia are no more our enemies than Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky is our friend.
As imperialist powers jockey for global control, they will demand our blood to stay on top. The demonstrations of workers in Russia and the U.S. show us the potential for working-class solidarity in response to this death trap. We call on workers from Ukraine and Russia and turn imperialist war into a class war for communism just as the Bolsheviks did more than 100 years ago! We call on the rest of the world’s workers to join them. Only as one united class can we realize the true aspirations of working people everywhere: communism and an end to imperialist wars for all time. Join us!
***BOXX****
Democracy is the dictatorship of the capitalist class
Since its inception in the parasitic slave state of Athens in ancient Greece, to its sexist and racist resurrection in capitalist society, democracy has always stood for ruling-class dictatorship. In Athens, the only people who could vote were male citizens who’d completed military service. Athenian democracy was designed to maintain slavery and suppress slave rebellions, to use voting to resolve conflicts within the ruling class and prevent civil war, and to unify the citizenry in wars against rival city-states.
A similar story can be told about the rise of modern, capitalist democracy. After centuries of rule by feudal lords, and following the colonization, genocide, and chattel slavery in the Americas, vast amounts of wealth accumulated in the hands of a new class, the capitalists. This banking-merchant class needed a form of government that protected their capital and profits from the feudal monarchy and the Church. They established a new form of capitalist dictatorship over the newly formed oppressed class: the working class. Democracy must be understood in this way, as a representation of capitalist dictatorship that we must smash!
Today, the bosses of the world are trying to sell our class the false choice of U.S. and European democracy versus Russian or Chinese autocracy. Both are tied to the defense of capitalism, a dead end for our class.