The ISL's May Day Statement
Long Live May Day!
Long Live the International Socialist
Revolution!
The revolutions that have taken place during the past few
months in the Arab world are the last nail in the coffin of any claim that the
fall of the Soviet block signaled the final victory of capitalism. The
capitalist apologists and ideologues, whose role during the past two decades
has been to convince the masses that they have no choice but to come to terms
with capitalism, can now only bite their tongues. But, during these same twenty
years, many on the left and even the radical left have also cynically rejected
the possibility that the working class might once again rise up in revolt. The
events of late clearly demonstrate that the ones who were right all along were
precisely those who continued to believe in Socialist Revolution.
The revolutions in the Arab world began in conjunction
with the most recent worldwide capitalist crisis. This timing is not at all
coincidental. These revolutions are an additional stage of this crisis, having
started as one of leadership of the ruling class, and from there having moved
on to attempts by the masses to find alternative leadership for themselves.
Regrettably, they have still not found such leadership; instead, the new rulers
swept into power in the wake of the revolutions quickly set about suppressing
the masses of demonstrators who had expected to see true change after they
toppled the dictators.
In Egypt, the working class fought against Mubarak’s
generation-long, pro-Western regime. At Mahala, the
textile workers conducted a lengthy struggle against privatization and other
economic decrees initiated by their employers. But their struggle did not
deal only with economic issues: quite quickly the workers
understood that in order to fight their employers, they must also fight against
the capitalist system that stands behind them. The workers battled in the
streets against the police and demonstrated against the regime’s collaboration
with the oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza.
The big push that triggered mass struggle in Egypt came
from Tunisia, when the workers there succeeded in toppling the corrupt dictator
Ben-Ali, good friend of the U.S. and Israel. This event led to the formation of
the mass movement that we see today in Egypt, which in turn ignited the entire
Middle East. It appears that there’s no country in the region that this
movement has passed over: similar events have taken place in Morocco, Algeria,
Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen. Indeed, it seems that the only
country in which no mass revolt has broken out is Israel.
The reason for this is clear. Israel is not only a
capitalist country in which the workers are exploited in order to enrich the
bourgeoisie, but also an imperialist state filling a key role in the oppression
of the Middle Eastern masses, in particular those of Palestine. But, in
contrast to the other capitalist countries in the region and other
imperialistic states in the West, Israel is a society of colonialist-settlers
in which all the Jews, including the Jewish working class, are granted
privileges by the regime. These privileges lead most Jewish workers to
identify with the state, instead of identifying with their working class
sisters and brothers struggling today against both imperialism and capitalism.
But even in Israel the capitalists won’t be able to bury
the Socialist Revolution. The hysteria gripping Israel’s ruling class in light
of the accelerating revolutionary movements in the Arab world shows that this
class is truly afraid of the loss of control in the region in general and in
Israel in particular. This state of hysteria exponentially increasing
oppressive measures being taken in Israel by the passing of numerous racist and
reactionary laws, designed to silence any voice that opposes the imperialist-Zionist
oppression.
The task of revolutionaries in the Middle East at this
time is to participate in revolutionary movements and to explain to the workers
the importance of creating their own leadership, leadership that will replace
old dictators and new oppressors. In Israel, the role of revolutionaries is to
mobilize the Palestinian working class for the revolution, but also to attempt
to mobilize as many Jewish workers as possible. To do so, revolutionaries must
explain to the latter that, for them too, Israel is a death trap, and that
their own future lies in a revolutionary, socialist Palestinian state, in which
both Jews and Arabs can live together in equality.
Long live the
Socialist Revolution!
For the
founding of a Revolutionary Party of Workers
Throughout the
Middle East and the Entire World!
For a
Palestinian Workers State from the river to the sea!
For a Socialist Federation of the Middle East!
