MAY DAY STATEMENT BY THE NEWS LINE EDITORIAL BOARD
THE Editorial Board of the News Line sends its revolutionary greetings to the workers of the world who are today engaged in a life and death struggle against a bankrupt and historically outmoded capitalist system that must be put an end to.
The present crisis of international capitalism is beyond doubt the deepest and most far reaching in its history – a crisis that cannot be resolved any other way than through the completion of the world socialist revolution which will consign capitalism and imperialism to the dustbin of history and take humanity forward to socialism.
The profound revolutionary nature of the crisis is apparent in every country in the world.
In Europe, the economic crisis has produced an acute political crisis for the bourgeoisie.
This in turn is dramatically accelerating the collapse of the world capitalist banking system as the working class across the continent rises up against the ‘austerity’ measures that the bourgeoisie are attempting to impose in an effort to make workers and their families pay for the sovereign debt crisis.
Europe today exactly fits the definition given by Vladimir Lenin of a revolutionary situation – the working class can no longer live in the same way and the ruling class can no longer rule in the same way.
This has been shown in the past week in the elections that took place in France.
For the first time in 50 years the incumbent president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was defeated by his Socialist Party rival, Francois Hollande, in the first round of voting.
The final round will take place on May 6th when Hollande will undoubtedly win, swept in by the votes of millions of workers who voted for the alternative ‘Left Front’ candidate.
Hollande has already pledged to inflate the economy instead of deflating it, and to tell the German bourgeoisie that its policy of starving the rest of the EU to satisfy the requirements of German capitalism must be halted.
The French election result coincided with the dramatic news that the Dutch government had collapsed and the prime minister, Mark Rutter, forced to resign after the ruling coalition government split irrevocably over the implementation of austerity cuts amounting to billions of euros.
It is beyond irony that the Dutch government – whose finance minister was a leading hardline supporter of the Merkel/Sarkozy ‘fiscal compact’ which the bourgeoisie of the 17 nations in the Eurozone signed up to just a few months ago – should fall because of a belated recognition that it could not impose the cuts demanded by the compact.
The fall of the government in ‘conservative’ Holland along with the French election result immediately sent the stock markets tumbling with the realisation that there could be no ‘containment’ of the crisis in the south of Europe, it is gripping every country on the continent.
Waiting in the wings are even more shocks for the bourgeoisie as May 6 also sees elections in Greece, elections that Merkel begged the EU appointed Greek prime minister, Lucas Papademos, to postpone.
Merkel and the bankers are right to fear this election.
The Greek working class has been fighting, for over three years now, the most savage cuts in public spending that Europe has seen since World War Two.
They have already forced the resignation of the ‘socialist’ PASOK leader Papandreou and are refusing to passively accept the savage cuts the European bourgeoisie are striving to impose.
There is no doubt that the pro-EU austerity parties will be wiped out in this election creating a crisis that can only lead to a revolutionary leap in the situation in Greece.
Having already tried to force through the cuts by throwing bourgeois democracy out of the window by appointing an ex-EU banker as prime minister and assuming dictatorial control of the Greek economy the ruling class have no option but to turn to military dictatorship.
Attempting this turn will enormously sharpen the class struggle, with the Greek working class equally having no option but to take the power through the socialist revolution.
Every other country on the continent is following the same revolutionary road as Greece.
In Spain and Portugal, the working class is engaged in the same struggle as Greek workers against governments determined to impose EU dictated austerity measures designed to drive them into poverty as the price for bailing out bankrupt capitalism.
As the crisis unfolds in Europe, the powerful German economy will be next in line.
Behind the facade of strength, lies an economy that is built on a banking system that stands as the most exposed to the international toxic debts of capitalism.
With country after country facing default on their sovereign debts, the German banks face a catastrophic collapse that will revolutionise the German working class.
This European-wide rejection of the austerity programmes of the ruling class is mirrored in Britain.
The Tory-led coalition, mired in the political scandal surrounding Murdoch and News International, is hated and only kept in office through the determination of the Labour and trade union leadership to stop the working class from bringing it down.
This treachery was answered at the by-election in Bradford where the Labour candidate was humiliated at the hands of the right centrist George Galloway.
The working class in Britain is moving along the same path of revolution being followed throughout Europe and is in the process of breaking with the hopeless reformists of the Labour Party.
The demand this May Day must be for the trade union leadership to call an immediate general strike to bring down the coalition and replace it with a workers’ government that will advance to socialism.
Those leaders who refuse to lead such a struggle must be removed and replaced with a new leadership that is prepared to fight.
On this May Day we declare that we are living in the period of the European socialist revolution which is itself a part of the world socialist revolution.
We extend our revolutionary greetings to the workers and youth in America who are refusing to accept poverty and homelessness as the price for keeping the capitalist banking system afloat.
The USA, the one-time great bastion of world capitalism, is being driven towards the socialist revolution.
The crisis has produced the conditions where the US working class will force their leaders to break with the Democrats and form a Labour Party to fight for their interests and open the way for the socialist revolution.
The inspiration for the Occupation movement in America, and indeed throughout Europe and the world, has been the revolutionary struggle of the workers and youth throughout the Arab world and we extend to them our warmest greetings this May Day.
In just over a year, this uprising has spread from Tunisia to Algeria, Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain, right across the entire middle east and North African region.
This mass movement has brought down Ben Ali in Tunisia and ended the thirty-year rule of Mubarak in Egypt.
In Egypt, the working class, led by the youth, is fighting every attempt by imperialism to maintain its grip on the country through the military.
This struggle must of necessity go beyond the bourgeois democratic struggle and advance towards the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The blow against imperialism and its allies in the region has advanced and inspired the Palestinian revolution which continues to drive forward towards establishing an independent Palestinian state along the 1967 borders.
The heroism and determination of the Palestinian masses have in turn been an inspiration to all those fighting imperialism and to the Palestinian people we extend our warmest May Day greetings and call on the working class internationally to support and aid their fight for a homeland.
Every blow against imperialism is a blow struck on behalf of the working class internationally and the heaviest blows have been delivered by the masses of Iraq and Afghanistan who have defeated the combined military might of the US and NATO imperialists and effectively driven them out.
We give our full support to all those fighting imperialism throughout the world and send revolutionary greetings to the people of Iran and Syria who are facing the threat of imperialist invasion as part of the desperate attempt to re-colonise the world and seize all mineral and oil resources.
To the people of Iran we say you have a perfect right to develop nuclear power for your national economy and that imperialism, which is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons along with its allies like Israel, cannot be allowed to keep countries like Iran in a state of technical backwardness.
The News Line sends its revolutionary greetings to the working class of the Soviet states.
Here the working class is steadfast in its opposition to the capitalist restorationists and their defence of the property relations established by the 1917 Russian Revolution.
We declare that this defence of the gains of October must be part of the struggle for the political revolution to overthrow the whole of the Stalinist bureaucracy and a return to rule through workers’ and peasants’ soviets as part of the world socialist revolution.
Our revolutionary greetings go out to the working class of China, who are also engaged in bitter struggles with their Stalinist leadership who are attempting to move even further to the right, after opening up the country to capitalism through the new economic zones.
As the world crisis of capitalism impacts on these degenerated and deformed workers’ states the struggle for the political revolution has reached its sharpest point.
The issue today is whether they are driven back to capitalism or forward to socialism through workers political revolutions as part of the world socialist revolution.
In every continent and in every country the great historic issue of the day is the same – for capitalism to survive it must smash the working class and impose the full burden of its crisis on their backs.
At the same time, the imperialist nations are driven to desperately seek to re-conquer the world for its resources in order to keep going.
Bankrupt capitalism has no inherent strength today. It is kept alive through the refusal of the existing leadership of the working class to bring it down.
These leaders are so wedded to the capitalist system that there is nothing they will not do to sell-out struggles and betray the working class to the class enemy.
This is why the working class internationally requires a new revolutionary leadership that is prepared to do whatever is necessary to take the working class to power in the world socialist revolution.
That leadership is only to be found in the ranks of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
On this May Day we send to the workers and masses of the world not only our warmest revolutionary greetings but our message – join the WRP and help build sections of the ICFI in every country to lead the developing world socialist revolution to victory.
