One year
after the massacre of workers in London
To the Terrorism of big Imperialist States
Answers back the
Fundamentalist Islamic Terrorism
(«Proletarian»; Nr. 2; September
2006)
Whichever the group organized them, the attacks
in London bear without any doubts the reactionary mark of fundamentalist
Islamic movements. The target of these bourgeois denominational organizations
are not the imperialist states leaders which lead wars of plunder in
Afghanistan, in Chechnya or in Iraq, but the civilian population, the workers
who use the public means of transport. In the same way the main targets of the
bombings and machine-gunning by the US armies and their allies, English,
Italian, Polish, Spanish, French and so on, yesterday in Yugoslavia or today in
Iraq are civilians, predominantly workers, as they are in Chechnya for the
Russian troops or in Palestine for the Israeli soldiers.
The state terrorism
exerted by war, military occupation or economic blockade, and the terrorism of
Islamic-style movements, carried out by bombs or suicide bombings in places
where large numbers of people congregate, converge unrelentingly to strike
especially the proletarian masses. Bled day after day by an increasingly more
bestial capitalist exploitation, workers are also used as cannon fodder or
sacrificial bomb victims in inter-bourgeois confrontations where war finds its
response in terrorism.
Wars, in general,
on the military level, are a consequence of the politics of imperialist armed
robbery, the means by which the imperialists seize economic territories
(Lenin) which have become vital to preserve their capitalist profits in the
midst of increasingly intense international competition. The terrorism of
nationalist movements (religious or secular) is the means used by weaker
bourgeois fractions to resist the crushing pressure of the major imperialists:
the impotence to combat the latter in an open war is thus compensated by
the action of small groups which are part and parcel of the general population
or community. The religion-based movements precisely for this
reason, mix-up the nationalism characteristic of any bourgeoisie with
reactionary universalist features, and much more than traditional
nationalists with more targeted objectives, tend to strike indiscriminately at
the mass of the population.
The massacre of
defenceless workers and civilians is characteristic of bourgeois reaction: this was
the case yesterday for the New York attacks, for those in Madrid and Moscow,
and it is true today for those in London. The attacks in London occur at a time
when the contradictions between imperialist states which rule the world do not
tend to resolve themselves, but on the contrary to worsen. The war in Iraq puts
the Anglo-American policy in difficulty, not only because the occupying troops
haven’t managed to stabilize the situation but because the war has left the
door wide open to fundamentalist Islamic terrorism. What was presented as a
preventive war in the fight against so-called “international terrorism”; is in
fact a war of plunder which caused and continues to cause terrorist reactions.
The American, English, Italian, and Polish soldiers who died in Iraq fell in an
operation of pure imperialist armed robbery (let us recall for example
that there was no declaration of war nor any justification even on the
meagre basis of international bourgeois law), in a particularly revealing
expression of state terrorism being exerted in two directions: the
first, directly, towards Iraq with its gigantic oil resources and its strategic
position in the Middle East; the second, indirectly, towards the other states
of the world and especially their Western allies in order to line them up
behind the Washington-London alliance. To the terrorism of the big bourgeoisies
of Washington-London and their supporters, corresponds the terrorism of
nationalist groups which fight for the same economic and political objectives:
possession of the oil resources, the control of the country and its borders
which means also the availability of the labor force of million of Iraqi
proletarians.
NO TO THE UNION SACREE
After the attacks
in London, the bourgeois leaders, as they do every time launched
the call for the union sacrée, for the union of all citizens
for the common war against terrorism, for the war of civilization
against barbarism, in the war against anti-Christian acts,
as stated by the new pope. To the proletarians that they exploit down to the
marrow in the workplace, that they persecute daily, and that they imprison in
increasing misery and precariousness, to the proletarians that they force into
industrial accidents, and that they throw out onto the street when they can no
longer exploit them, whom when they are too old they “warehouse” in retirement
homes which are nothing but waiting-rooms for death, to the proletarians who
have no say in governmental decision-making, the bourgeois ask that they forget
their own interests and their own needs, to unite in the name of the motherland
or nation with those who enrich themselves off their sweat.
The call to
national solidarity that all bourgeois governments launch, from Blair to Bush,
from Berlusconi to Chirac, from Schroeder to Putin and Zapatero, is the
traditional trap set by the bourgeoisie against proletarians when it is in
difficulty. Every time they have yielded to this call, the proletariat could
readily notice that its situation of being exploited did not improve and that
only the bourgeoisie benefited from its sacrifices. The proletarians must free themselves
from the ideological and material pressure exerted on them by the bourgeoisie
through its thousands of channels, the most powerful being those of class
collaboration, and competition between workers; the bourgeoisie systematically
organize the latter by splitting up the proletarian class into a thousand
categories, while instituting and feeding national, racial, religious; gender
and other group divisions.
The blows suffered
in terrorist attacks are no different from the blows suffered in wars in which
they are obliged to take part, nor from those received within the framework of
wage labor at rates and rhythms always more exhausting, and in working
conditions increasingly more harmful for health, or in the misery and
marginalization of unemployment under capitalist duress.
There are no common
interests between proletarians and bourgeois, neither in the immediate
sense, nor from a political point of view. The proletarians must reserve their
solidarity only for proletarians, whatever their race or their nationality. Any
solidarity demanded by the bourgeoisie, whatever the pretext is, must be
rejected by proletarians because it is always only a solidarity for the benefit
of the bourgeoisie, bourgeois profits, bourgeois property relations, the bourgeois
State. The interests, profits, property, and laws, of the bourgeois state never
benefit proletarians: they are always against proletarian interests and
needs
The proletariat will never be able to fight against
bourgeois terrorism in common with the bourgeoisie or under their guidance. It
will be able to fight against bourgeois terrorism only within the framework of
its class struggle against the bourgeoisie, against its interests,
its profits, its property and the bourgeois state. Without class struggle,
there is no possibility of fighting against any of the countless evils that
capitalism continuously brings about . In breaking with national and democratic
bourgeois ideology, In breaking with the class collaboration promoted by all
the varieties of political and trade-union reformism, In returning to the
defense of its exclusive class interests, the proletariat will liberate its
strength and will always find the necessary energy in its class struggle to definitively
destroy this blood-drenched capitalist civilization.
International Communist Party
www.pcint.org