THE News Line Editorial Board sends its May Day greetings to the working people of the world at a time when the historic crisis of world capitalism has reached the point where it cannot be resolved except through the world socialist revolution.
We salute the heroic struggles of the masses of Palestine for their independent state, the masses of Syria for their revolutionary defence of their country against imperialism and its stooges, and the workers of Greece and the Ukraine both defending themselves from attacks by the European and US capitalists.
In the most advanced capitalist countries the old method of rule by the capitalist class, through class compromise and bourgeois democracy, has been completely jettisoned, as a bankrupt system is forced to fight it out with the working class in order to dump the full effect of the crisis on the backs of workers and the poor.
Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the United States.
It is a measure of the depth of the economic crisis that the nation that proclaimed itself the master and ruler of the capitalist world should now be at the very centre of the collapse of the capitalist system.
The crisis first erupted in 2008 in the US with the collapse of Lehman Brothers bank under the weight of a mountain of debt run up in the sub-prime mortgage industry.
Obama and the US Fed allowed Lehman’s to go down, little realising the effect it would have.
So entwined is the international banking system, where debts are daily traded between the banks as if they were real ‘assets’, that this one banking collapse threatened to bring down every single bank and financial institution across the planet.
The word went out from the US, never again could a large bank goes under, and all their trillions of dollars of debt had to be underwritten or taken over directly by the nation states.
By transferring the bankers’ debts to the nation state capitalism was ensuring that it would be the working class and the poor who paid the price for banks that were ‘too big to fail’.
The price would be paid through the most savage austerity measures imposed on workers and their families in the US, Britain, Europe and across the globe.
At the same time as inflicting austerity on the working class, the US, British, Japanese and lately the EU central banks resorted to all manner of untried experiments to rescue a collapsing capitalist system.
Everything from near zero interest rates, and now even negative interest rates, and the production of over $10 trillion of worthless electronically produced ‘money’ through Quantitative Easing has been tried.
Capitalism has tried to overcome its debt crisis by running up more and more debt, creating a debt ‘time-bomb’ that will bring the whole bankrupt capitalist system crashing down at any moment.
The figures are staggering, the combined public debt of the world’s biggest econ-omies alone has grown by 40 percentage points to around 120pc of GDP since the start of the crisis in 2008, while globally, the total debt of private non-financial sectors has risen by 30%,far outstripping even the pathetic claims of ‘economic growth’ claimed by Obama, Cameron and the Eurozone leaders.
The only weapon left open to capitalism is to go to war with the working class, to destroy all its hard won rights to pay, conditions and welfare.
This attack has led to a new revolutionary determination amongst workers, and especially amongst young people, not to submit to a life of poverty and servitude in order to keep the bankers in their million pound pay packets and bonuses.
This revolutionary movement of workers and youth is being expressed in the United States, where a movement by low paid workers has snowballed into a mass movement of millions fighting for a living minimum wage of $15 an hour.
At the massive demonstrations that took place in 230 American cities on April 15 this year it became clear that a unity has been formed between the fight of workers over pay and the struggle by black workers and youth against the state organised repression of the most oppressed sections of the working class.
Protesters wore ‘Black Lives Matter’ T-shirts in solidarity with the wave of protests following the recent spate of police killings of unarmed black workers and youth, linking the economic struggle of workers and youth to the issue of state violence.
These protests against shootings and ‘death in custody’ cases have turned into an all out confrontation between workers and youth and the police and National Guard.
The mood of these workers is insurrectionary and it is sweeping the country.
This week pitched battles between police and workers, sparked by the death of Freddie Gray in the back of a police van, have spread from Baltimore right across the country with confrontations in New York, Washington and Boston amongst others.
In Baltimore authorities declared a state of emergency, moved troops and heavily armed police onto the streets and dumped the principle of Habeas Corpus, arresting hundreds of people and holding them without charge.
US imperialism, which boasts of ‘ruling the world’, cannot even control its own cities today.
US capitalism is having to bring home all the methods of violent repression it has carried out against the people of the world.
This lesson has been driven into the consciousness of the American working class who have seen their wages kept low and full-time work replaced by part-time insecure jobs with no protection or health insurance.
American workers are now refusing to support the imperialist wars for oil, as witnessed by the inability of Obama to get agreement to send troops into Syria.
This mass movement in the US, in conflict with the state, is creating the conditions for workers to break with the bourgeois Democrat and Republican parties and go forward to building their own independent party of the working class opening the gates for the building of a revolutionary party of the Fourth International in the US to lead the coming American socialist revolution.
In Europe the world crisis has reached breaking point with millions of workers across the Eurozone rising up against austerity.
The acute crisis gripping Greece is not an isolated case.
For years the Greek workers have fought the most savage austerity measures seen in Europe as the Troika have demanded cuts and privatisations that have left workers penniless and youth unemployment at over 60%.
Despite the craven leadership of the reformist and Stalinist trade unions, Greek workers have fought against al the cuts with a determination that has inspired workers across Europe.
The election this year of the Syriza party, a coalition of ‘left’ radicals and reformists, who were elected on a platform of ending all austerity, has created a huge crisis for the ruling class of the Eurozone.
The election was an expression of the refusal of workers to pay for the bankers’ bail-outs.
The willingness of the Syriza leadership to seek compromises with the eurozone has met a ruling class completely opposed to anycompromise on making the working class pay for their crisis.
With the Greek workers refusing to give an inch, the scene is set for Greece to crash out of the eurozone and default on its debts.
This will precipitate the complete crash of the eurozone and the banking system of Europe – a crash that both the IMF and Obama administration have warned will bring down the whole world financial system of capitalism.
With this world crisis developing at breakneck speed, British capitalism is completely exposed.
Next week’s general election is a crisis election in which both Labour and Tory parties are putting, as their priority, cutting the massive budget deficit and dealing with the enormous national debt of over £1.5 trillion.
The Tories are so scared of the working class that they have resolutely refused to reveal what cuts they will try and impose to pay the bankers’ debts.
In fact, the entire welfare state will have to be smashed up and privatised while wages and benefits will be cut to a level not seen since the 1930’s.
The Labour Party is equally committed to saving this bankrupt British capitalist system by bringing down the deficit while refusing to say how this will be achieved.
Whatever party or coalition emerges from next weeks election it will face a working class determined to defend its historic gains against all cuts.
This will bring it into open conflict with the reformist trade union leadership who have resolutely refused to lead any struggle against the coalition for fear of bringing down the government and opening the door to the socialist revolution in Britain. These reformist traitors will not be able to keep the lid on this crisis in 2015, this will be the year of socialist revolution in Britain.
On May Day 2015 we send our revolutionary greetings to all the oppressed people of the world fighting imperialism.
The same world economic crisis of capitalism that is driving civil war against workers at home is driving imperialist wars to re-conquer the world and grab its mineral and oil wealth while opening up these countries to massive exploitation.
Advanced countries, like Libya and Iraq, have been ruthlessly levelled in this cause while hundreds of thousands of Syrians are being killed by NATO’s Islamists and other stooge forces, in a desperate attempt to reorder the Middle East and its vast oil wealth for the benefit of imperialism and Israel.
In Syria, as we have said, such was the opposition of workers Cameron and Obama were unable to intervene directly with troops as the working class today recognises that the enemy of the people of the Middle East is the same enemy they face at home – imperialism.
We send our revolutionary greetings to the Palestinian people who defied the entire might of the Israeli armed forces for 50 days of murderous attacks on Gaza last year.
Their heroic stand defeated the Israelis who were unable to carry out their aim of disarming the Palestinian resistance fighter and won the support of workers throughout the world, particularly in Europe where the demand for a complete boycott of Israel and for the recognition of an independent state of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, for an end to settlements and for the right of all Palestinians to return, has become unstoppable. 2015 will be the year of the declaration of an independent Palestine.
The crisis that is driving imperialism to war against the people of the Middle East is also driving forward its war plans against Russia in order to overthrow the gains of the 1917 October Russian Revolution and open it up to capitalist exploitation.
Last year’s coup in the Ukraine, paid for by the US government, orchestrated by the EU and spearheaded by their allies amongst the fascist gangs of the Right Sector, was an attempt to completely surround Russia with Nato countries from which to launch a war.
We send our revolutionary greetings on this Mayday to the workers of the Ukraine who have defied the Kiev coupists and their fascist supporters and who have successfully fought off all attempts to subdue the resistance of the workers in the east to submitting to the illegal regime and its imperialist backers.
We send our revolutionary greetings to the working class of Russia who are fighting to defend the gains of October against the concerted efforts of imperialism to smash up their economy through sanctions and an oil war with the aim of creating a crisis favourable to a coup by the oligarchs.
Russian workers however will not surrender the gains of the October revolution.
The crisis situation is creating the conditions for a revolutionary movement amongst Russian workers to bring down Putin from the left and reconstitute the USSR, and rule through workers soviets by revolutionary means as part of the world socialist revolution.
The world crisis of capitalism in its death agony is historic. Never before has every country in the world been hit by the devastating impact of this crisis of the capitalist system.
From Africa, where the black working class is rising up in revolutionary struggle against the ANC government and its supporters in Cosatu and the Stalinist SA Communist Party, through to South Korea where the working class is engaged in general strikes against austerity cuts, workers and the masses are recognising that the enemy is capitalism and its attempt to retain world domination.
Capitalism in its highest and most bankrupt stage of imperialism can offer no future for anyone in the world except war – civil war at home and brutal war abroad.
The essence of the present situation is that the deepening of the world crisis of the capitalist system is driving forward the world socialist revolution in every corner of the planet.
In Britain the immediate task is to build a mass movement of revolutionary workers and youth in the WRP and YS.
This leadership is absolutely vital in the struggles that will emerge immediately after the general election, struggles that can only be won by mobilising the unions in a general strike to bring down any government that emerges and carries out savage austerity, to go forward to a workers’ government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers and bring in socialism.
Internationally the building of revolutionary parties in every country is vital for the success of the developing world revolution.
• Build the Fourth International in every country in 2015!
• Forward to the British socialist revolution!
• Forward to the victory of the World Socialist Revolution!