Getting It Off My Chest on Mayday Weekend

Richard Mellor

4-30-22

 

I just woke up this morning and needed to express myself. Nothing more nothing less. A Catharsis if you like. It’s not a manifesto.

 

I had a restless night last night thinking about the world my grandchildren are inheriting. The crisis in Ukraine right now is yet one more example of the unraveling of capitalism and the crisis of leadership of the working class internationally.

 

Throughout the world it is workers that suffer in the imperialist wars and the inability of the capitalist system to develop society, to provide basic human needs like water, health care and the social infrastructure humans need to live a decent and productive life. Capitalism is incapable of averting the looming climate catastrophe that threatens life as we know it; it cannot resolve a crisis of its own making.

 

In the former colonial world, the crisis is extremely acute but even in the US, the richest and most powerful of the capitalist economies, poverty and hunger are rife and millions are without access to decent health care, housing or even safe drinking water.

 

Meanwhile a trio of billionaires, a Canadian, as US American and an Israeli, all of them, investment bankers, speculators, social parasites all three, pay $55 million each for a space ride to a station orbiting the earth, the entire industry a product of public expenditure.

US president “Worker Joe” Biden who opposes canceling US student debt that stands at close to $1.6 trillion, wants to send close to a trillion dollars to Ukraine he cares so much about human suffering barring a few places like Palestine, South America, the Middle East and other places where plunder is abundant and the interests of US corporations are paramount.  He welcomes Ukrainian refugees as he will take measures to block economic refugees from entering the US from its southern borders and those poverty stricken areas where US corporations have ruled through the most violent puppet regimes backed by the US military and economic power.

 

The young Ukrainians and young Russians that are dying are not engaged in a conflict that is of any benefit to them at all; NATO under US leadership does not care about Ukrainian workers any more than Russian gangster capitalism does about theirs. Their lives will only get worse as a result of this latest explosion. Workers throughout the world are also being savaged by the war in Ukraine as inflation tears through their economies and millions are denied basic foodstuffs as world trade is disrupted. This is all a capitalist crisis; we have nothing to do with it, only as victims.

 

In the face of it all, there are no conflicts that the competing imperialist powers are engaged in that are a benefit to the working class and poor people of this planet. In that sense in this latest squabble between western imperial power and Russia, a much weaker one in my view, there is no side workers can support.

 

The missing factor is the voice and power of the working class acting internationally as a class unto itself, with our own distinct interests. I was talking with a Muslim woman from Southern India the other day and I asked her what it was like in her community there. Was there much mixing, socializing, or was there intense sectarian division in her community. She told me she had Christian and Hindu friends and they socialized and immediately blamed politicians for whipping up religious hatred she told me.

 

That could have been the answer from any individual as workers we all know it. We know that division is promoted from without, fostered by that section of society that profits from it, that if we are just left alone and treated equally we get along; but those billionaires that took the sleigh ride to the space station and their class colleagues, they are what they are by ensuring we are in a constant state of competition with our class brothers and sisters; that society remains unequal. We must always see other workers as our enemies in the last analysis.

 

Throughout the world, there is resistance to the horrors of capitalism, from the factories of Bangladesh, to the Brazilian rainforests, resistance never ceases. The Palestinians have fought an heroic, decades old struggle to defend their homes and lands in the face of a colonial settler regime backed by the US. The world is aflame with resistance to capitalism’s violence.

 

In Europe, workers from Russia and Ukraine are dying in a conflict between capitalists. The movie, Joyeux Noel, (Merry Christmas) details the events that took place on the Western Front during World War One when a truce arose and British and German troops left their trenches walked toward each other, fraternized, sang carols and played soccer. The officers that allowed this were punished as this happened on more than one occasion. This is how we stop wars that are not of our own making and that are not in our own interests. The workers of Europe are organized, have a history of organization, socialism and the struggle to change society. Throughout the world workers are in the forefront of the war against capital, the only war that matters to us----the Class War. Warren Buffet is aware of that war and made it clear him and his parasitic clan are winning it.

 

But as with strikes, leadership is crucial, just as they are in any situation. There is a reason the officer class in any country’s military is composed of upper middle-class or bourgeois elements; the ruling class does not trust us in those positions, the links to the troops always makes us suspect. The US ruling class learned many things from their defeat in Vietnam (at our expense) and one of them was not to trust the grunts.

 

I am always reluctant to quote revolutionary figures from 20^th century history as more often than not, the various formations that claim their name are completely isolated and often detached from the working class, from our experiences and our history. But the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky pointed out some 80 years ago that the crisis of the working class is a crisis of leadership. That is the crux of the matter and is as true today, more so, than it was back then.

 

Workers have the numbers, the social power, and the need to transform society from one which is exploitive, oppressive, violent and anti-social to one that is collective, cooperative, and human. This is in our veins as for most of humanity’s existence this is how we have lived and made progress. The capitalist mode of production is in its late stages and has the potential to end life as we know it.

 

Global capitalism is not the answer, global democratic socialism is, a federation of democratic socialist states cooperating in the production of social needs in harmony with nature. We are inherently gregarious collective creatures. That is why there is so much sickness and mental illness as a result of a social system that promotes and rewards individualism, narcissism, selfishness and the strong taking advantage of the weak for personal gain.

 

We have the power but we are not united on a global scale. We have no international organization or political party. We are fragmented, divided along national, religious, racial, gender and tribal lines. Thrown in to a situation where one worker points weapons at another anyone will defend themselves and their homes.  Without the leadership, we will always be victims of these divisions that weaken us. We have no political party here in the US and the heads of organized labor are complicit in their support for the foreign policy of our enemies.

 

When we look at the tremendous global resistance to capitalism’s wars and depravations we can see and feel the power of the working class in action. But we are not organized internationally and a revolutionary leadership is absent; we cannot win without that. We see no way out and close our eyes to it all, hoping for the best and happy that what’s happening to others is not happening to me. But it will. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to not ignore reality, learn from history, from revolutionary struggles and the many times working class and all oppressed people's have attempted to change things for the better. Any advances we benefit from, other people sacrificed for.

 

Given the global power of the working class it is easy to understand why some philosopher/economist who some 170 years ago popularized the phrase, “Workers of the World Unite. You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Chains.”, is so demonized by the ruling classes of the world. It’s a simple solution but terrifying for some.