The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, has given a downbeat assessment of the global economy in her curtain raiser speech for its meetings, held together with the World Bank, this week.
She began by saying that “we should cherish the good news”—that inflation levels were coming down, at least on official figures—because “we haven’t had much of it lately.”
Even this was tempered by the observation that while inflation rates may be falling, the higher prices people feel in their wallets are here to stay and “families are angry, people are hurting.”
In what has become a central preoccupation of the IMF in the recent period, flowing from the rise in global interest rates since 2022, Georgieva directed attention to the rising levels of government debt and the need for action to bring them down.
As always, this was couched in terms of needing to maintain a gradual approach to promote fiscal consolidation and seeking to maintain social safety nets, but words cannot disguise their essential content which is to undertake major attacks on the working class and some of the poorest people in the world.
Georgieva said IMF forecasts pointed to “an unforgiving combination of low growth and high debt—a difficult future.”
The rising levels of borrowing meant that a growing share of government revenue was being used to cover interest payments under conditions of lower growth. The IMF’s Fiscal Monitor Report, a summary of which was released last week, said global government debt was expected to reach $100 trillion by the end of this year. Some $36 trillion of this debt is in the US where one in seven dollars of spending is used just to pay interest bills.
The problem extends across the world as “fiscal space keeps shrinking,” Georgieva said. “Just look at the frightening evolution of interest-to-revenue over time. We can immediately see how the tough spending choices have become tougher with higher debt payments.”
And, she continued, “we live in deeply troubled times” in which military spending may well keep rising “while aid budgets fall further behind the growing needs of developing countries.”
In its report for the meeting, the World Bank warned that global poverty reduction had “slowed to a near standstill” amid economies damaged by the pandemic and war. It noted that poverty levels in low-income countries were “higher than before the pandemic.”
On top of the slowing down of aid, Georgieva noted that major economies, driven by “national security concerns” were “increasingly resorting to industrial policy and protectionism, creating one trade restriction after another.” Trade was not going to be the engine of growth it was before, and the situation was worsening.
In 2019, the number of what the IMF called “harmful new interventions” on trade was below 1000. It has calculated this will rise to more than 3000 in 2024.
Georgieva insisted that budgets had to be consolidated involving “difficult choices” over how to raise revenues and make spending “more efficient”—always a euphemism for cuts—while making sure “policy actions are well explained to earn the trust of the people.”
Under conditions where their living standards have been hard hit by inflation and cuts in governments services and subsidies that have already taken place, that is not going to happen. This is why there is discussion in ruling circles around the world, including in the US and other major economies, about the need for the use of state forces to impose the financial dictates.
So far as “solutions” are concerned, within the framework of the global capitalist economy, the IMF chief pointed to the advances in technology, saying there was much countries could do as members of an integrated economic community. The forces of trade and technology had delivered a “hugely valuable degree of interconnectedness.”
Then, without recognising it, she ran straight into the central contradiction of the present epoch, intensified to an enormous degree over the past four decades by the globalisation of production, between the integrated world economy and the nation-state system of capitalism.
While integration had taken place, she said: “Yet still, we live in a mistrustful world where national security has risen to the top of the list of concerns for many countries. This has happened before—but never in a time of such high economic co-dependence.” [emphasis in original]
The key issue here is not that this “mistrustful world”—more accurately characterised as a world at war and advancing to World War 3—has arisen despite economic co-dependence. Rather, it is a consequence of that very integration under capitalism.
It is the result of the intensification of the contradiction between this historically progressive process with the outmoded nation-state system, which each of the imperialist powers, with the US in the lead, seeks to resolve by means of war.
It cannot be resolved under capitalism unless world war is considered be a “solution,” but only by the advance to a new and higher form of society, international socialism.
Of course, such a perspective, the only rational solution, cannot be advanced by the head of the IMF, one of the chief defenders of the capitalist order and so Georgieva advanced a totally unattainable perspective.
She said the reality of “fragmentation” should not become “an excuse to do nothing to prevent a further fracturing of the global economy” and that her appeal at the meeting would be “to work together, in an enlightened way to lift our collective prospects.”
A similar, equally bankrupt, perspective marked an editorial by the Financial Times(FT) on the IMF-World Bank meeting. Noting the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the two bodies at the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 towards the end of World War 2, it said they had “filled a void where coordination was lacking.”
As the IMF and the World Bank gathered for the annual meeting, they confronted a new set of challenges that risked undoing what has been accomplished.
The conditions of intensifying trade war, a worsening situation in developing countries, problems of climate change, shocks from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and mounting debt problems, the FT said, underscored why global cooperation is such a “precious commodity” and that international problems “require international solutions.”
The world facing the IMF and the World Bank looked very different from today, it concluded, but the “spirit in which they were forged at Bretton Woods remains as important as ever.”
The deepening crisis of global capitalism is not “spiritual.” It is material, rooted in objective structural contradictions deriving from the private ownership of the means of production and the outmoded and reactionary nation-state system. They can only be resolved by the advance to a new and higher form of global society, that is, international socialism.
[This article was originally published here in WSWS on October 20, 2024]
Tamil Nadu’s pro-investor DMK state government is seeking to crush a militant strike by around 1,500 workers at a plant on the outskirts of Chennai owned and operated by global tech manufacturer Samsung.
On Tuesday and Wednesday the government deployed police to attack the workers and their recently established union. Late Tuesday evening, police arbitrarily and illegally arrested ten office bearers in the union, before detaining several striking workers in a separate incident Wednesday. The crackdown came in the wake of demands by India’s national government, led by the Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party or BJP, for the Tamil Nadu state government to swiftly bring the job action to a halt.
The strike is taking place at Samsung India’s Sriperumbutur assembly plant located about 45 km from Chennai, the state capital. The workers have been on strike since September 9 without pay. They are demanding an end to brutal working conditions, a reduction in their long mandatory working hours and higher pay. They are also demanding the official registration of the newly formed Samsung India Workers Union (SIWU) and its recognition by the plant management. Formed by the workers in July of this year, the SIWU has affiliated with the Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the trade union federation led by the Stalinist CPM (Communist Party of India, Marxist) which is a close ally and electoral partner of the pro-business DMK.
Acting in close consort with plant management, the DMK government has refused SIWU registration, since the plant management is adamantly opposed to the presence of a trade union at its plant. This is despite a statutory right to union registration within 45 days and workers enjoying a constitutional right to form their own trade union, which in Tamil Nadu as across India is never or practically never enforced.
In an open act of intimidation by the blatantly pro-Samsung DMK government, police were sent to knock on the doors of the ten union office bearers late Tuesday night, to take them into “preventive custody.” These illegal arrests were made despite the fact that the CITU, which is leading the strike, has meticulously stuck to the most minimal forms of peaceful state-sanctioned protest. It has kept the Samsung workers’ struggle completely isolated by deliberately not mobilizing the many thousands of workers it represents in numerous multinational companies located in the industrial zone where the Samsung plant is situated.
In a separate incident on October 8, a van carrying a group of Samsung workers overturned, with the workers in the van subsequently asserting that it was sabotaged by forces hostile to the strike. Five workers were injured. Instead of coming to the workers’ aid, a police sub-inspector harassed them, with the result that irate workers pushed him to the ground.
Seizing upon this, the police arrested 8 workers and charged them with various criminal offenses, including causing “hurt to deter public servants from carrying on their duty.” After a Habeas Corpus writ was filed by the SIWU President and CITU leader Muthukumar, the police released all the workers, but not without first compelling them to furnish surety bonds. Instead of severely reprimanding the police for their egregious violation of the workers’ right to protection against arrest under false pretenses, the Madras High Court simply closed the case.
The police also set up arbitrary checkpoints to check the identities of striking workers. So high-handed were the police that one of them even boarded a public bus and demanded to see the company identification card from uniform-wearing Samsung workers, outraging other passengers.
Additionally, the police on Wednesday swooped into the protest site, located about 1.5 km from the plant, and violently dismantled the large tent the workers had erected to shelter themselves from heat and rain. The police then arbitrarily detained hundreds of workers present in various wedding halls without any charges and later released them.
These violent actions are in line with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Stalin’s drive attract to foreign capital. Under successive DMK governments, Tamil Nadu has become a choice destination for transnationals such as Samsung, Foxconn and various other global corporations. The state has provided all sorts of benefits to attract these corporations, including generous tax breaks, building infrastructure using public funds and cheap land. Most importantly, however, the state has served as a cheap labour haven for these corporations.
In August, Stalin made a 17-day trip to the United States, where he met with various executives of top transnational corporations. He went there to tout the benefits of Tamil Nadu as a cheap-labour haven and sought to lure them into investing by promising all sorts of financial incentives. He was reportedly able to drum up investment pledges totaling 75 billion Rupees ($893 million).
The strike has caused concern in India’s BJP government, since it is seen as tarnishing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” initiative. It is aimed at making India an alternative manufacturing hub to China by easing business regulations and maintaining low wages through ruthless state repression of workers.
India’s Labour Minister, Mansukh Mandaviya, addressed a letter to Chief Minister Stalin in which he demanded that the Tamil Nadu government intervene in the dispute to force an “early and amicable” resolution, according to Reuters.
Stalin’s ministers have conspired with the autocratic Samsung India management to break the strike. This is underscored by the fawning statement made by an official spokesperson for the company: ‘We are cognizant of the Tamil Nadu government’s efforts to end the illegal strike and are thankful to the authorities for their constant support.”
In contrast, SIWU President and CITU leader Muthukumar stated to the daily Times of India: ‘We held talks with the ministers. But they did not agree to our major demands.”
Various ministers of the DMK government have held several rounds of talks with union and company officials, all with the goals of sabotaging the strike and getting the workers to go back to work. Industry Minister Raja exemplified the hostility of the DMK government towards the workers, recently lecturing them, “Rivals can take advantage of the strike and divert the attention from real issues. The government and the Chief Minister stand by you. Return to work in the interest of jobs for the youth and employment opportunities in the State.”
To split the workers, Samsung Management recently announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with what it termed a “Workers’ Committee,” that is with a small handful of workers it has been able to intimidate or buy off.
The company stated that it would pay a monthly increment of 5,000 rupees ($60) from October 1 to March 2025. It also promised to add more air-conditioned buses for transporting workers and improve the quality of food in the cafeteria. In the case of the death of a worker at the plant, Samsung India would pay a measly Rs. 100,000 ($1190) to the worker’s family.
The plant, which manufactures home appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines, is a critical facility for the company, accounting for 20 percent of its $12 billion revenue last year. The rest of the revenue came from the sale of cell phones, which the company assembles at its plant in Noida, a town in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
The MoU was rejected by the striking workers. At the same time however, the CITU, which is appealing to the pro-business DMK government to be “reasonable,” has indicated that it will call a halt to the strike if the SIWU union is registered and recognized. In other words, the CITU is willing to make some rotten compromise with the plant management about low pay, long hours of work and working conditions. Currently, Samsung workers are compelled to work 11 hours a day for 4 days in a week, with 3 hours paid at double the normal hourly rate.
The position taken by the CITU leaders goes to show that the CITU will function as an entirely pliant agency of management and the state. The CITU has a long history of leading workers’ strikes to defeat, despite workers showing great courage and militancy. For example, in 2010 the CITU made the workers at Foxconn and BYDcompletely surrender to management after the workers had waged a bitter and determined struggle for better wages and working conditions for close to two months.
This is entirely in keeping with the rotten politics of its parent party, the Stalinist CPM, which has long been in a political coalition with the DMK and on the national level is aligned with the Congress Party, for decades the Indian bourgeoisie’s preferred party of government. The CPM along with other left parties, including the Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (Liberation) have long promoted the DMK as a progressive friend of the working class. In reality, Chief Minister Stalin, as shown by his attempt to use police violence to break the strike, is determined to overcome any obstacle that would taint the reputation of Tamil Nadu as a business-friendly state.
[This article was originally published here in WSWS on 11October 2024]
Statement of the Socialist Lead of Sri Lanka and South Asia (SLLA), the Revolutionary Left Faction of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) of Sri Lanka.
In the Presidential Election to be held on September 21, the working class, youth, students, peasants and the oppressed middle class have no choice between any of the capitalist, right-wing and pseudo-left parties that contest the election. The only choice is their own party, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the World Party of Socialist Revolution, that stands alone in this election, advancing a program based on the principles of international socialism: against imperialist war, austerity and for democratic rights. A vote for SEP is an expression of approval to uphold and advance the perspective and program of the ICFI for international socialism, that can genuinely emancipate the working class from the tyranny of capital. SLLA therefore calls upon our class brothers and sisters to vote for SEP in this election.
The global capitalist crisis and its manifestation in Sri Lanka and South Asia
The profound crisis engulfing Sri Lanka or any other country in South Asia is not an isolated phenomenon but a concentrated expression of the global breakdown of capitalism. Decades of neoliberal policies, dictated by imperialist financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and willingly implemented by successive governments, have driven the working masses into an abyss of social misery. The soaring inflation, unemployment, squalid working conditions, inequality and pervasive poverty are not aberrations but the direct consequences of a global system that prioritizes profit over human need.
The capitalist ruling elite in Sri Lanka—whether under the guise of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), or any other bourgeois formation—has no solution to this crisis. They are committed to further austerity measures, deeper cuts to essential social services, and more severe attacks on the living standards of the working people, which President Ranil Wickremasinghe has spearheaded since the suppression and betrayal of the 2022 mass uprising. These parties, regardless of their superficial differences, serve the same class interests: those of the domestic and international bourgeoisie.
The working class in Sri Lanka, as in every other country, is trapped in a system that is both incapable of reform and unwilling to concede even the most basic social rights. It is a system that is inexorably driving humanity towards economic devastation, environmental catastrophe, and the threat of global war. The SEP alone insists that the solution lies not in patchwork reforms or the replacement of one capitalist party with another but in the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system itself.
The Global Escalation of US Imperialism: From Ukraine and Gaza to Asia
The eruption of US-NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine and the genocidal onslaught by Israel in Gaza are not isolated events but integral components of a broader strategy of global domination pursued by American imperialism. These conflicts, along with the escalating tensions in Asia, are driven by the relentless pursuit of the United States to maintain its global hegemony in the face of intensifying economic and geopolitical challenges. The working class in Sri Lanka, like workers around the world, is being dragged into this maelstrom of imperialist violence, which threatens to engulf the entire region in a catastrophic war.
In Ukraine, the US and its NATO allies have provoked and sustained a brutal conflict aimed at weakening Russia, one of the key rivals to US dominance in Eurasia. The war in Ukraine, which has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, is not about defending democracy or Ukrainian sovereignty, as Washington claims, but about advancing American strategic interests by encircling and destabilizing Russia. This conflict is pushing the world toward a nuclear confrontation with incalculable consequences for humanity.
Simultaneously, the genocidal bombardment of Gaza by Israel, fully backed and armed by the United States and other imperialist powers including Germany, is a stark expression of US imperialism’s ruthless determination to secure its dominance in the Middle East. The slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, coupled with Washington’s unwavering support for Israeli apartheid, is a crime of historic proportions, exposing the hypocrisy and barbarism of US foreign policy. The imperialist drive in the Middle East, like in Europe and Asia, is about controlling key resources and strategic territories to bolster hegemony of the Wall Street.
These aggressive moves are part of a broader imperialist strategy that is now rapidly expanding into Asia, where the US is building a vast military alliance aimed at encircling and confronting China. Sri Lanka, situated at a critical juncture in the Indian Ocean, finds itself increasingly caught in the crosshairs of this escalating conflict. As the US intensifies its military preparations against China, compelling its regional allies and partners to fall in line, Sri Lanka is being drawn into the vortex of war. The Colombo government’s increasing alignment with Washington, under immense economic and political pressure, threatens to transform the island into a frontline state in the impending imperialist war in Asia.
These interconnected conflicts—whether in Ukraine, Gaza, or the Indo-Pacific—are all manifestations of the same underlying crisis of global capitalism. The working class in Sri Lanka must recognize that their struggle is inseparably linked to the struggles of the international value producing class against imperialist war. The ICFI has called for the building of a powerful international anti-war movement, led by the working class, to oppose the US-NATO war drive, defend the rights of the oppressed in Gaza, and resist the imperialist encirclement of China. Only through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism can the descent into global war and barbarism be stopped. Only the SEP fights for this program.
The SEP’s Revolutionary Program: For an International Socialist Strategy
The SEP’s program is grounded in the principles of Marxism, as defended and elaborated by the ICFI. It is a program that uncompromisingly opposes all forms of nationalism, opportunism, and reformism, which seek to chain the working class to the capitalist state and its parties. The ICFI fights for the political independence of the working class, based on the understanding that the working class is the only social force capable of leading a revolutionary transformation of society.
Central to the SEP’s program is the principle of internationalism. The global nature of the capitalist crisis demands a global solution. The SEP rejects all nationalist illusions and insists that the struggle for socialist revolution must begin in the national arena, unfold in the international arena and be completed in the world arena. This demands the building of sections of the ICFI in each country of the world. The working class in Sri Lanka must unite with their class brothers and sisters around the world in a common fight against the capitalist system.
The SEP’s program includes:
The Establishment of a Workers’ Government: The SEP calls for the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’ government, committed to the socialist reorganization of society. This government would expropriate the major industries, banks, and financial institutions, placing them under the democratic control of the working class.
A Socialist Planned Economy: The SEP advocates for a planned economy based on social need, not private profit. This includes the nationalization of all major industries and resources, ensuring that the wealth produced by the working class is used to meet the needs of society as a whole.
The Rejection of IMF Austerity: The SEP opposes all austerity measures imposed by the IMF and other imperialist financial institutions. The party demands the repudiation of all foreign debts that have been used to impoverish the masses while enriching the capitalist elite.
Defense of Democratic Rights: The SEP fights for the defense and extension of democratic rights, including the right to strike, protest, and organize independently of the capitalist state and its political apparatus. The party also opposes all forms of ethnic and religious discrimination, recognizing that such divisions serve to weaken the working class and strengthen the ruling elite.
Opposition to Militarism and War: The SEP unequivocally opposes the militarization of society and the drive towards war, whether in Sri Lanka, US or globally. The party stands for the dismantling of the military-industrial complex including the nuclear war-heads and the reallocation of resources to meet pressing social needs.
Solidarity with the international working class: The SEP is committed to building a worldwide movement of the working class against capitalism. The party expresses full solidarity with the independent struggles of workers in every country, from the strikes in Europe and the United States to the mass protests across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Rallying youth and students in the struggle for socialism: The SEP recognizes that youth and students are a vital force in the struggle for socialism. Under capitalism, young people face a future of unemployment, precarious work, and ever-increasing levels of debt. The capitalist system offers them nothing but a life of exploitation and insecurity. The SEP calls upon youth and students to break with the bourgeois parties and movements that seek to trap them in a dead-end of reformism and identity politics, to rally behind the working class and build ICFI’s youth-wing, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE).
The Bankruptcy of the NPP and FSP: No Alternative for the Working Class
In the midst of the deepening social crisis in Sri Lanka, parties like the National People’s Power (NPP) and the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) pose as alternatives to the established bourgeois parties. However, their history, programs and political activities reveal that these organizations are fundamentally opposed to the interests of the working class and serve only to prop up the capitalist order.
The NPP, led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a right-wing party of the capitalist establishment, claims to represent a “progressive” alternative to the traditional parties, yet its entire political orientation is toward the preservation of capitalism. The JVP’s program is rooted in the same nationalist and reformist outlook that has characterized its politics since its inception. The NPP offers no genuine solution to the catastrophic conditions facing the masses. It proposes mild reforms within the framework of capitalism, failing to address the systemic causes of the crisis. The NPP’s calls for anti-corruption measures and a more “efficient” capitalist state are nothing more than attempts to conceal the root causes of the bourgeois crisis and divert the growing anger of the working class into safe channels that do not threaten the existing order.
Moreover, the NPP’s chauvinist history, including its role in supporting the communalist war against the Tamil population, exposes its inability to unite the working class across ethnic lines. Its record demonstrates that it cannot be trusted to defend the democratic rights of all workers. Instead, it seeks to foster illusions in the possibility of a “clean” and “fair” capitalist government, a delusion that only serves to disarm the working class in the face of escalating social attacks. If and when they are in power, the NPP will strengthen the capitalist oppression on the working class, in line with imperialist demands.
The Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), which broke away from the JVP in 2012, similarly fails to provide a revolutionary alternative. While the FSP engages in more radical rhetoric and criticizes the JVP for its “betrayals”, it remains fundamentally committed to a nationalist and populist perspective. The FSP, like the NPP, advocates for reforms within the capitalist system rather than its overthrow. Its program is based on the false premise that the Sri Lankan state can be pressured to act in the interests of the working class if enough “progressive” forces are mobilized.
The FSP’s nationalist orientation also places it in opposition to the internationalist principles that are essential for the liberation of the working class. It seeks to channel workers’ struggles into the dead-end of parliamentary politics, where they can be more easily controlled and dissipated. The FSP’s alliance with trade unions, which are deeply integrated into the state apparatus and function as tools of capitalist control, further underscores its role in maintaining the status quo.
The SEP/ICFI Perspective on the Tamil National Question
SEP- Sri Lanka and the ICFI have a principled and historically grounded perspective on resolving the Tamil national question—one that stands in stark contrast to the bankrupt nationalism of the Tamil bourgeoisie and the chauvinism of the Sinhalese ruling elite. The SEP insists that the democratic rights of the Tamil people can only be secured through the united struggle of the entire working class in Sri Lanka—Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim—based on an internationalist and socialist program.
The roots of the Tamil national question lie in the reactionary partition of British India in 1947, which left behind a series of communal conflicts and unresolved national questions across South Asia. In Sri Lanka, the Sinhala ruling elite has long exploited ethnic divisions to maintain its class rule, systematically discriminating against the Tamil minority to divert social discontent and prevent the unification of the working class. This culminated in the brutal civil war, in which successive governments waged a genocidal campaign against the Tamil population, culminating in the massacre at Mullivaikkal in 2009.
The SEP categorically rejected the separatist perspective of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which sought to establish an independent capitalist statelet in the North and East of Sri Lanka. The LTTE’s program, rooted in Tamil bourgeois nationalism, offered no solution to the oppression of the Tamil masses. Rather, it served to divide the working class and align the Tamil struggle with various imperialist powers. The LTTE’s strategy of appealing to India and imperialist powers for support was fundamentally opposed to the interests of the Tamil people and led to the organization’s eventual defeat.
The SEP, in contrast, upholds the right of the Tamil people to the democratic right to put an end to all forms of national oppression, which is the essential progressive content of the right to national self-determination. However, the SEP insists that the realization of this right cannot be achieved through the formation of a separate capitalist state, which would simply create new forms of capitalist exploitation, class oppression and imperialist domination. Instead, the SEP fights for the unity of the Sinhalese and Tamil working classes in the struggle for the perspective of a United Socialist States of Sri Lanka and Eelam, as part of the broader fight for a Socialist Federation of South Asia and Internationally.
This perspective is based on the understanding that the liberation of the Tamil people, like that of the Sinhalese, can only be achieved through the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. The SEP stands for the abolition of the unitary state constitutional structure imposed by the Sri Lankan bourgeoisie on the working class of all ethnicities and for the establishment of a federation of socialist republics, which would guarantee full equality and democratic rights for all nationalities. This is inseparable from the struggle to build an international socialist movement that unites workers across South Asia and globally against imperialism and capitalism.
The SEP’s program for resolving the Tamil national question is thus fundamentally opposed to all forms of nationalism and chauvinism. It is a perspective that recognizes that the oppression of the Tamil people is not an isolated issue but a manifestation of the broader contradictions of the capitalist system. The SEP fights to unite the working class across ethnic lines, in a common struggle for a socialist future, where the democratic rights of all peoples are fully realized. Only through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism can the historical injustices faced by the Tamil people be rectified, and a lasting solution to the national question be achieved.
Building ICFI Sections across South Asia
The crisis of capitalism is global, and nowhere is this more evident than in South Asia, a region plagued by deep-seated social inequality, ethnic conflicts, and the ever-present threat of imperialist war. The ruling classes across the subcontinent—from India and Pakistan to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka—have proven utterly incapable of resolving these crises. Instead, they have resorted to intensifying exploitation, whipping up nationalist and communal divisions, and suppressing the struggles of the working class. In this context, the necessity of building sections of ICFI in every country in South Asia is not merely an organizational task but a life-and-death question for the working class.
The working class in South Asia, numbering in the hundreds of millions, is the only social force capable of leading the struggle against capitalism and imperialism. However, for this potential to be realized, the working class must be armed with a revolutionary socialist program that transcends national borders and unites workers across the region and globally. The ICFI, with its unbroken continuity of Trotskyism and its principled opposition to all forms of nationalism and opportunism, provides the necessary leadership for this historic task. The building of ICFI sections across South Asia is indispensable for educating advanced sections of the working class and mobilizing them around the perspective of permanent revolution—the understanding that the democratic and social tasks in semi-colonial countries can only be achieved through the socialist revolution, led by the working class and extending internationally.
Mobilizing the Industrial Power of the Working Class
Central to the success of this revolutionary struggle is the mobilization of the immense industrial power of the working class through the methods of class struggle: strikes, factory occupations and general strikes. Across South Asia, workers are engaged in daily battles against brutal exploitation, wage theft, unsafe working conditions, and the dismantling of social protections. Yet, these struggles are repeatedly betrayed by the traditional trade unions, which have long been integrated into the capitalist state and function as instruments of class collaboration. These unions, tied to the ruling parties and nationalist agendas, serve to stifle and divert the militancy of the working class into dead ends, preventing any challenge to the capitalist system.
In response, the ICFI advocates for the establishment of independent action committees, or rank-and-file committees, within every workplace and community. These committees, controlled by workers themselves, must be built outside the bureaucratic grip of the official unions. They are the means through which workers can democratically organize their struggles, link up with other sections of the working class, and prepare for the revolutionary seizure of power. These committees are not simply vehicles for economic demands but are the foundational structures of dual power, laying the groundwork for a workers’ government that would expropriate the capitalists and reorganize society along socialist lines.
Power to the Working Class: The Path Forward
The task of these action committees extends beyond the workplace. They must become centers of political education, training workers in Marxist theory and the lessons of historical struggles, while exposing the reactionary role of all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties. They must also act as conduits for international solidarity, linking the struggles of workers in South Asia with those of their class brothers and sisters worldwide, particularly in the advanced capitalist countries. The International Workers’ Alliance of Rank and File Committees, established by the ICFI has undertaken this task of materializing international working class unity.
The struggle for power must be rooted in the understanding that the working class, led by the revolutionary party, organizing its methods of struggle, is the only force capable of resolving the immense social and democratic issues facing the masses. The action committees must evolve into organs of direct workers’ power, capable of challenging the bourgeois state and establishing a workers’ government based on socialist principles.
In every country of South Asia, the necessity of building sections of the ICFI as the revolutionary leadership of the working class and mobilizing workers through action committees is urgent. The alternative is the continued descent into barbarism—poverty, environmental catastrophe, communal bloodshed, and world war. The ICFI alone offers a way forward, and the necessary leadership, based on the principles of international socialism and the unity of the working class across all national, ethnic, and religious divisions. The ICFI section of the United States contests the upcoming presidential election, against the capitalist Democratic and Republican parties, with the same internationalist and socialist program. The future of South Asia, and indeed the world, depends on the ability of the working class to seize power and reorganize society along socialist lines.
Sri Lanka Speaker, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena last Thursday (01) signed into law the Online Safety Act (No 09 of 2024) (OSA), a piece of legislation long prepared by the ruling class to crack down upon freedom of dissent in the country. The law was approved by the Parliament late January, with a majority of 46 votes, including provisions not in compliance with even the limited amendments proposed by the country’s Supreme Court in its determination on the Bill delivered last October. Subject to such proposals, the Supreme Court found the law, as a whole, constitutional.
This law is patently anti-democratic. It empowers a government body, the Online Safety Commission (OSC), the sole power to determine and declare the “falsity of any statement“, which would be published on an online portal, and thereupon prosecute anybody who makes and communicates a statement contrary to such “truth” declared.
“False statement” is defined as “a statement that is known or believed by its maker to be incorrect or untrue and is made especially with intent to deceive or mislead”. This knowledge or belief is presumed to be shaped by what is declared as false by the OSC, or what the government authorities have claimed to be true.
A person could be prosecuted for the offenses, among others, of “communicating a false statement” online and (a) posing “a threat to national security, public health or public order” or “promoting feelings of ill-will and hostility between different classes of people” (Section 12); (b) where such statement amounts to contempt of court; (c ) giving “provocation to any person or incites any person intending or knowing it to be likely that such provocation or incitement, will cause the offence of rioting to be committed”; (d) voluntarily causing “disturbance to any assembly lawfully engaged in the performance of religious worship or religious ceremonies”; (e) insulting or attempting to insult “the religion or the religious beliefs of that class” with “the deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of persons”; (f) inducing “any other person to commit an offence against the State or against the public tranquility” with “intent to cause any officer, sailor, soldier, or airman in the navy, army or air force of Sri Lanka to mutiny” or with “intent to cause fear or alarm to the public”. A person, “who wilfully makes or communicates a statement”, either true or false, “with intention to cause harassment to another person” (“target person”) by publishing any “private information” of the target person or a related person and causes such person “harassment”, also commits an offence. All such statements are “prohibited statements”.
Attempting, abetting and conspiring to commit these offences are also crimes.
The punishments for these offenses range from three to five to seven years imprisonment and in some instances may be doubled in the event of a subsequent offence, coupled with fines up to one million rupees.
The OSC has sweeping powers to order any internet service provider or internet intermediary (which provide the service of social media platforms) to disable access by end-users to an online location (such as a website, webpage, chatroom or forum), which contains a prohibited statement. It can also order removal of such statements. It can blacklist a website, social media account or a platform as a “declared online location”. The commission is also empowered to seize “property movable, and immovable and to sell, lease, mortgage, exchange, or otherwise dispose of the same”.
Criminalizing “fake news” has been the demand of the ruling class for some time. It was on the agenda of successive governments during the recent past – a draft law was on the table during the former Sirisena-Wickremasinghe government in 2019, following the Easter Sunday bomb attacks, and then under former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was ousted by the mass struggles of April-July 2022, mainly organized through social media. These attempts were defeated temporarily by wider objections raised by civil society groups and international organizations, and right-wing political parties who demanded a social media and internet regulatory law that is in line with the “international standards”.
Presenting the Bill in the Parliament, Public Security Minister Tiran Alles claimed that this law is required to fight online harassment against women and children. This is only a pretext. He also revealed the intention to curb “misinformation” that damaged the reputation of parliamentarians. This is a reference to the extensive social media activism during mass struggles of 2022 that rejected the whole parliament.
Every opposition party in the parliament agrees with the government for a social media regulatory law placed in their hands.
During the parliament debate, National People’s Power (NPP) Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake concurred with Alles declaring that “things that should not happen also are taking place [in social media]”.
Main opposition party Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) member of parliament, Harsha de Silva worried that international tech giants would abandon Sri Lankan online space. His is the concern of the tech profiteer capitalists, whom de Silva wants to confer unbridled freedom to attract investment. Around the world, these companies have already been complicit in government censorship of free speech.
If and when in power, these parties will also ruthlessly employ these laws against the working class and political opponents, particularly from the left, to meet the demands of international financial capital.
Pseudo-left FrontLine Socialist Party (FSP) Education Secretary Pubudu Jayagoda told media, the proposed law is redundant because, “there are already laws to deal with situations of this nature [those covered by the new law]”, and conveyed FSP’s subservience to the oppressive legal system of the bourgeois state and the parliament. Its “People’s Council” programme is an appendage of the parliamentary system.
Another view among the middle class has been vocalized by Gamini Viyangoda, writing in the pseudo-left paper “Anidda” on Sunday (04). Viyangoda says that the Bill is politically maneuvered for the government “to prepare an environment to safely face the upcoming critical elections”. President Ranil Wickremasinghe, who himself knows to have a rare chance for him to gain a presidential election win, is not making these laws for himself, but for the capitalist establishment, all of whom, including NPP and SJB, have affirmed their readiness to go ahead with the austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), on the back of the people. This is the very truth that these radicals conceal from the people.
While OSA is made law, the government placed on the pipeline a new anti-terrorism law, surpassing the powers of arrest, administrative detention or custody and prosecution under the existing draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) of 1979. More than 35 parties challenged the proposed law last month in the country’s Supreme Court. Poet Ahnaf Jazeem, who is a former torture victim of PTA, petitioned the court and submitted that “this authoritarian law… is essentially designed to be used as a weapon of collective punishment against the working class… It is driven by class hate.“
Soon after his appointment as president, Wickremasinghe declared his government’s class war against the working people and the poor, poised to implement harsh austerity measures dictated by the IMF. In this backdrop, these laws are the new arms of Wickremasinghe’s armory to be used against political dissent, especially left-wing political ideas and movements, journalists and activists, to intimidate, harass, question, arrest, and imprison them, and block websites and social media accounts. Sri Lanka police is notorious for employing draconian anti-terrorism, public security and hate speech laws against social media activists, artists, protesters and ethnic-minorities.
Recently, Alles deployed special police forces to “fight drug menace” and arrested over 56,000 since December 17. This operation, falsely named “Yukthiya” (Justice), is intended to terrorize urban and rural impoverished areas, intimidating working people and youth throughout the country. Last month, the government commenced using facial recognition technology, according to Alles, as part of plans to “eradicate” the under-world and drug-trafficking.
Wickremasinghe has come a long way toward a police state, with dictatorial powers conferred to him under the country’s communal constitution. He has deployed tri-forces as strikebreakers and used essential services laws to witch-hunt worker leaders.
The global imperialist crisis, however, has not left Wickremasinghe alone in this onslaught against the masses. Just one month before OSB was tabled in parliament, the United Kingdom passed a similar law targeting social media freedom. In India, websites and social media platforms are now required to remove content about the Union Government, when notified by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) as “fake”.
The trade union leaders have succumbed to Wickremasinghe’s IMF “economic restructuring” plans and have no political programme to fight against austerity, nor to defend democratic rights. It is only the working class, which can and should fight to abolish these repressive laws and defend democratic rights. This requires organizing in their own independent organizations, united across ethnic divisions and industries, to bring about a government of the working people, free the economy from the siege of international financial capital and restructure the economic life on socialist lines.
This week, poet Ahnaf Jazeem, a former victim of Sri Lanka’s draconian terrorism law, filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the government’s proposed new Anti-Terrorism Bill. This new law is to replace the existing Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which, since its enactment in 1979 by former President J.R.Jayawardena government, was extensively used by successive governments against Tamil and Muslim youth and political opponents in the North and South of the country, to kidnap, detain, torture and kill and remand for years without trial.
Jazeem pleads from court a declaration “that the Bill in its entire content, is antidemocratic, infringes the foundational democratic fabric of the society and the democratic aspirations of the Sri Lankan people, and therefore unconstitutional, and lacks fundamental qualities required of a law for the same to be placed for approval by legislators even with a two third majority, and does not meet the threshold of democratic quality required to qualify it to be placed before the people to be approved by the People at a referendum.” The mechanism referred to here is how even “unconstitutional” laws are passed as law under the constitution of the island. Jazeem, contrary to almost all other petitioners, have refused to enforce this anti-democratic procedure.
Jazeem is the eldest son of a Muslim family of five children of a poor farmer and day-labourer, residing in Mannar, some 300Km North to the capital Colombo. He is the author of Tamil poetry anthology, Navarasam [nine moods] published in 2017. After graduation he was employed as a Tamil Language teacher. On May 16, 2020, Jazeem was arrested by the Police Counter-Terrorism and Investigation Division (TID) allegedly on the suspicion of having “published books on and taught his students ‘extremism’ and ‘racism”. He was then wrongfully detained under the orders of ousted President Rajapaksa for thirteen months, during which period he was subjected to severe physical and mental torture including being cuffed to a table day and night continuously for five months, and forced to record a self-incriminating statement.
Incarcerated in remand custody thereafter, Jazeem was granted bail in mid June 2021 on strict conditions. The case against him on a false charge of ‘indoctrinating’ his students under the PTA concluded with Jazeems’s acquittal in December last year, without even requiring to call proof in his defence. His freedom was secured by mass support he gathered from around the world. He is yet arbitrarily listed as a designated person, who the government believes “commit or attempt to commit, participate in or facilitate the commission of, terrorist acts”, by the Ministry of Defence.
The petition states that it is with this personal experience of being a victim of the existing terrorism law that Jazeem is challenging the proposed law. Jazeem was prosecuted as part of the racist anti-Muslim witch-hunt of the then Sirisena-Wickremasinghe government and then of the Rajapaksa government.
The proposed law will apply within or outside the territorial limits of Sri Lanka. The government commits to “protect other sovereign nations and their people from the scourge of acts of terrorism”, which lays down the readiness of the Sri Lankan ruling class to support imperialism and states of the type of Zionist Israel, so that any agitation by the people against such support of war by the government will be declared unlawful and as an act of “terrorism”.
Any person, who commits any act or illegal omission specified in the law, with the intention of (a) “intimidating” the public or a section of the public; (b) wrongfully or unlawfully “compelling” the Government of Sri Lanka, or any other Government, or an international organization, to do or to abstain from doing any act; or (c) propagating war or, “violating” territorial integrity or “infringement” of sovereignty of Sri Lanka or any other sovereign country, commits the offence of “terrorism”. This definition of terrorism is overly broad and could easily be used against political dissent.
Number of other clauses in the Bill that define offences “are overly broad, and draconian and will have ripple and chilling effect on the democratic fabric of the society and upon the democratic rights of the people of the country, especially the working people, the marginalized, ethnic minorities, the political dissidents hostile to government austerity policies and to freedom of expression and journalism,” the petition states.
Punishments for the offences under the law reach upto twenty years of imprisonment to life sentence.
The law also proposes unprecedented powers to the executive President and administrative officers in respect of detention, rehabilitation and laying down regulations in respect of the offences.
Under Clause 31 (1)(b) of the Bill, a detention order sought by the Inspector General of Police (IGP) or any officer not below the rank of a Deputy Inspector General of Police authorised by the IGP could be issued by the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence. Under PTA, it is the Minister who has this power. This removes all authority of a Magistrate to review the justification for the deprivation of liberty, and that too for a minimum period of 2 months, extendable to a maximum period of one year.
The law will alarmingly enable a police officer together with a Deputy IGP to remove a suspect from under judicially supervised custody to executive controlled custody (administrative detention), without establishing the commission of an offence, and in any event, even if an offence had been committed, by merely reporting an allegation.
The law will legitimize an existing practice whereby persons in detention are compelled by the Attorney General (AG) to accept ‘rehabilitation’ which in effect is a form of punishment without finding of guilt. The danger is that an executive office, the AG, is empowered to compel a person into acceptance of or impose a penalty without proving guilt. The President is empowered to specify places of detention.
Under clause 79 of the Bill, the President will be empowered to designate any organization as a proscribed organization, which power could be used against opponent non-governmental organizations, trade unions, action committees, political parties, media institutions and persons.
These egregious provisions of this law will also enable the President, after an application is made to the High Court by the AG and court stamp is obtained, to issue “restriction orders” against a person who has committed or is preparing to commit an offence stipulated in the law. The President, on the recommendation made by the IGP or the Commanders of armed forces may also designate any public place to be a “prohibited place”.
These powers will strengthen the already dictatorial powers of the president and create conditions for a police state.
The capitalist ruling class is amassing its armory against the working class: including the Public Security Ordinance, ICCPR Act, the colonial Penal Code, Establishment Code, Essential Public Services Act, Bureau of Rehabilitation Act and some other laws. Yesterday (24), the Parliament passed another historically unprecedented repressive law, the Online Safety Act (OSA), to block internet freedom, social media activity and largely freedom of expression of any sort. The government is now able to declare, through a commission, what is “true” or “false” on its own and arrest, detain and prosecute anyone who states otherwise.
President Wickremasinghe’s government is committed to implementing harsh austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the shoulders of the working people and the oppressed. His government is extremely discredited, and even has no popular mandate, as his predecessor was ousted by mass struggles in April-July 2022. New laws and repressive measures like “Yukthiya”, a mass intimidation campaign in the guise of “war against drugs”, yet a lighter version of the Duterte-type, are being used against striking workers, demonstrations and student protests.
Wickremasinghe effectively declared war on the working people just as he was parachuted to the presidency in a constitutional coup through the Parliament, an institution utterly hated by the People. The working people are faced with a social counter-revolution. Defending democratic rights and the fight against austerity need the mass mobilization of its class, around their own rank-and-file organizations, across ethnicities and trades, nationally and internationally, to usurp political power to re-arrange the society on socialist lines.
Statement of the WSWS International Editorial Board
We post below the First Part of the Statement of the World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board, published in WSWS.org on January 03, 2024. The statement contains four parts. Please access here Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. We, theSocialist.LK endorse this statement in its entirety and invite our readers to carefully peruse it and grasp it for actions ahead.
1. New Year 2024 begins under conditions of escalating international crisis. At the dawn of the millennium, there were rosy predictions that world capitalism, under the benevolent and “unipolar” rule of the United States, was entering a new epoch of universal peace and prosperity. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the demons of the “short twentieth century”—above all, the specters of Marxism and socialist revolution—had been buried for once and for all. Wall Street cried out to the world: “My name is Capitalism, King of Kings. Look on my works ye Mighty and despair!” But it has taken less than a quarter-century to dissolve that arrogant boast into a colossal wreck. The new century of triumphant capitalism has proven to be the shortest of all. The fundamental contradictions of the world capitalist system that produced the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century have not been resolved and remain the driving forces of the intensifying economic, social and political upheavals that are sweeping across the globe.
2. The horrors produced by the cataclysms of the past century are being reenacted. Genocide is being openly adopted as an instrument of state policy. The attempt by the Israeli regime to exterminate the Palestinian people in Gaza proceeds with the open endorsement of the United States and its imperialist allies, which have repeatedly proclaimed their opposition to a cease-fire. A densely populated urban area is being subjected to a merciless bombardment that has killed more than 25,000 people, mostly women and children, within the first 10 weeks of the war.
3. The fascist prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared in his New Year’s message that the onslaught will continue throughout 2024. Israel could not continue the war another week, let alone a year, without the unlimited financial and military support of the United States and its NATO co-criminals. The US president, secretary of state, countless other high government officials and top Pentagon personnel shuttle back and forth between Washington and Tel Aviv, overseeing the Israeli operations and participating in the selection of bombing targets. It is an open secret that US and NATO personnel are directly involved in murderous actions on the ground within Gaza.
4. The sanctioning of and participation in genocide represent more than the imperialist powers’ usual violations of their invocations of human rights. The Gaza genocide confirms, on a higher level, a tendency first noted by Lenin in the midst of World War I, more than a century ago. He wrote in 1916 that “the difference between the democratic-republican and the reactionary-monarchist imperialist bourgeoisie is obliterated because they are both rotting alive…” Substitute the term “fascist” for “reactionary-monarchist” and Lenin’s analysis is entirely valid as a description of present-day imperialist regimes.
5. The Gaza genocide is not a unique episode, best understood as a product of exceptional circumstances related to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the inherently reactionary character of the Zionist project and its racialist and xenophobic-nationalist ideology. The latter elements play, of course, a significant role in the actions of the Israeli regime. But the unrestrained ferocity of the present war, carried out with the full support of its imperialist paymasters and weapons suppliers, can be understood and explained only in the context of the breakdown of the world imperialist and nation-state system.
6. The fundamental “error” of the strategists of American imperialism in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union was that the event was explained in purely ideological terms, that is, as the triumph of capitalist “free enterprise” over socialist “dictatorship.” But this explanation, based on the false identification of Stalinism with socialism, concealed the real cause of the breakdown of the Soviet Union and its implications for the future development of American and world imperialism.
7. Notwithstanding its tragic consequences, the dissolution of the USSR confirmed the essential Marxist-Trotskyist critique of the Stalinist policy of “socialism in one country.” The reactionary nationalist utopia of an isolated socialist state fell victim, as Trotsky had predicted, to the reality of world economy.
8. The end of the USSR provided the United States a short-term advantage over its rivals, which its propagandists dubbed the “unipolar moment.” But the fundamental contradiction that led to the two world wars of the twentieth century—the conflict between the objective reality of a highly integrated world economy and the persistence of the obsolete nation-state system—had not been resolved by the demise of the USSR and its satellite regimes in Eastern Europe.
9. The United States sought to exploit its geopolitical advantage to achieve a level of global domination that had been denied to it in the aftermath of World War II as a consequence of the decisive role played by the Soviet Union in the defeat of Nazi Germany and the post-World War II wave of anti-colonial mass movements. Washington convinced itself that it could finally reorganize the world economy under its control through its military power. US imperialism’s favorite pundit, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, proclaimed in 1999 that “the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps…”[1]
10. The endless series of wars launched by the United States—in the Balkans, the Middle East and Central Asia—was a desperate attempt to maintain its dominant position, despite its overall economic decline. The International Committee explained the motivation for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and foresaw the failure of its underlying hegemonic project:
The launching of an aggressive war against Iraq represents a final, climactic attempt to resolve, on the basis of imperialism, the world historic problem of the contradiction between the global character of the productive forces and the archaic nation-state system. America proposes to overcome the problem by establishing itself as the super nation-state, functioning as the ultimate arbiter of the world’s fate—deciding how the resources of the world will be allocated, after it has grabbed for itself the lion’s share. But this sort of imperialist solution to the underlying contradictions of world capitalism, which was utterly reactionary in 1914, has not improved with age. Indeed, the sheer scale of world economic development in the course of the twentieth century endows such an imperialist project with an element of madness. Any attempt to establish the supremacy of a single national state is incompatible with the extraordinary level of international economic integration. The profoundly reactionary character of such a project is expressed in the barbaric methods that are required for its realization.[2]
11. The Gaza genocide epitomizes the “barbaric methods” arising from the increasingly desperate and beleaguered effort of the United States and its NATO allies to sustain their dominant position in the face of the challenge posed to their hegemony by China and recalcitrant national states whose interests conflict with Washington’s “rules-based” imperialist order. The slaughter of the Palestinians is unfolding in the midst of the bloody US-NATO proxy war against Russia, which has cost since its outbreak in February 2022 approximately a half-million Ukrainian and, at least, 100,000 Russian lives.
12. As the war in Gaza has normalized genocide as an acceptable instrument of imperialist policy, the relentless escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia has been accompanied by the de facto acceptance of a high level of possibility, even probability, that the conflict may lead to the use of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. The Biden administration regularly sanctions and directs military attacks on Russian assets and territory that would have been ruled out during the Cold War as inciting nuclear retaliation. Repeatedly crossing “red lines,” the Biden administration and its allied NATO governments have asserted that their conduct of military operations will not be constrained by the threat of nuclear war.
13. Despite bleeding Ukraine white, US-NATO imperialism has failed thus far to achieve victory on the battlefield. Its much vaunted “spring offensive” in mid-2023 ended in a debacle. In the final days of 2023, the Ukrainian regime carried out a significant escalation of the war by launching a missile attack on Russian soil, killing at least 22 people in the city of Belgorod. Russia has responded with a new wave of missile attacks on Ukraine, which the Biden administration is exploiting to press its demands for continued unlimited funding of the proxy war.
14. In the final analysis, the US-NATO instigation of the proxy war in Ukraine marks nothing less than preparation for a US war against China, transforming every part of the world into a specific sphere of operations. Nearly 20 years ago, in 2006, the International Committee posed a series of questions related to the global policies of the United States, among which were the following:
Will the United States be prepared to retreat from its hegemonic aspirations and accept a more egalitarian distribution of global power among states? Will it be prepared to yield ground, on the basis of compromise and concessions, to economic and potential military competitors, whether in Europe or in Asia? Will the United States graciously and peacefully accommodate the rising influence of China?[3]
Responding to these questions, the ICFI replied that those who would answer in the affirmative “are placing heavy bets against the lessons of history.”
15. Today, the answers to these questions are not of a speculative character. War between the United States and China is viewed not as a possibility, but as an inevitability. This consensus within Washington’s foreign policy establishment is summed up in an essay published in the new January-February 2024 issue of Foreign Affairs. It is ominously titled, “The Big One: Preparing for a Long War With China.” Its author is Andrew J. Krepinevich, Jr., a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a leading imperialist think tank.
16. The essay assumes that the United States and China will go to war. It is a fact taken for granted, about which one should not waste time debating. The real questions relate to how and where the war will start—in the Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula, along the Sino-Indian border, or in South Asia—and whether the war will go nuclear. Krepinevich states:
Once a war has broken out, both China and the United States would have to confront the dangers posed by their nuclear arsenals. As in peacetime, the two sides would retain a strong interest in avoiding catastrophic escalation. Even so, in the heat of war, such a possibility cannot be eliminated. Both would confront the challenge of finding the sweet spot in which they could employ the force to gain an advantage without causing total war. Consequently, leaders of both great powers would need to exercise a high degree of self-control.
To keep the war limited, both Washington and Beijing would need to recognize each other’s redlines—specific actions viewed as escalatory and that could trigger counterescalations.[4]
17. It is nothing less than delusional to stake one’s hope for an avoidance of nuclear Armageddon on the ability to limit escalation in the midst of an existential conflict upon which the fates of the combatants depend. In any case, the US-NATO proxy war against Russia has already established that US imperialism will not be deterred by the threat of nuclear retaliation and will cross all and every “red line” in order to achieve its objectives.
18. Krepinevich acknowledges that the inevitable US-China war, even without the use of nuclear weapons, will have catastrophic consequences for all of humanity. He writes:
Even if the two sides avoided nuclear catastrophe, and even if the homelands of the United States and its major coalition partners were left partially untouched, the scale and scope of destruction would likely far exceed anything the American people and those of its allies have experienced.[5]
19. The conclusion drawn by Krepinevich is not that the military cataclysm must be prevented at all costs, but that the United States-led coalition’s “ability to sustain popular support for the war effort, along with a willingness to sacrifice, would be crucial to its success.”[6]
20. This nightmarish imperialist scenario of inevitable war must be opposed by the American and international working class. Workers in the imperialist centers of North America, Europe, Asia and Australia and New Zealand have absolutely no interest in defending the global geopolitical and economic interests of their power-mad financial-corporate imperialist ruling class. Nor should the workers of Russia, China and other major capitalist regional powers—Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, the Gulf States, Turkey, Nigeria, South Africa, India, Indonesia, to name only the most significant—attribute any progressive character to the reactionary efforts to reorganize world geopolitics on the basis of the utopian perspective of multi-polarity.
21. The fact that US imperialism instigated the Russia-Ukraine war does not justify, from the standpoint of the interests of the Russian and international working class, the decision of the Putin government to invade Ukraine. The Putin government’s response to the provocations of American and European imperialism was determined not by abstractly defined considerations of “national defense,” but by the class interests of the parasitical oligarchic-capitalist ruling class that emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union and the privatization and outright theft of its nationalized assets.
22. In the years preceding the dissolution of the USSR, the political conflict within the ruling bureaucratic apparatus developed along national and ethnic lines. This reactionary tendency had been prepared and facilitated by Stalin’s repudiation of proletarian internationalism and the promotion of Russian nationalism under the cover of a chauvinistic Soviet patriotism. In the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union, the already existing conflicts between nationalistic bureaucratic cliques—of which the Russian and Ukrainian were the most powerful—evolved rapidly into an open struggle for raw materials, markets, and territorial advantages between the new national capitalist ruling elites. In October 1991, less than three months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the International Committee warned:
In the republics, the nationalists proclaim that the solution to all problems lies in the creation of new “independent” states. Allow us to ask, independent of whom? Declaring “independence” from Moscow, the nationalists can do nothing more than place all the vital decisions relating to the future of their new states in the hands of Germany, Britain, France, Japan and the United States.[7]
23. The ongoing war is a vindication of the warning made 30 years ago by the International Committee. The struggle against the US-NATO war must be conducted not by adapting to the Putin regime, but in implacable opposition to its reactionary nationalist-capitalist agenda. The anti-war policy of Russian and Ukrainian workers must be based on the unity of all sections of the working class of the former Soviet Union against the new capitalist elites. The internationalist policy upheld by Lenin and the Bolsheviks during World War I, of intransigent opposition to the defense of their national capitalist state, must be adopted by the workers of present-day Russia (against the Putin regime) and Ukraine (against the Zelinsky regime).
24. The same fundamental principles of socialist internationalism determine the attitude of the International Committee toward the conflict between US imperialism and China. The United States strives to limit China’s economic development, restrict its access to critical resources and technologies, and block the expansion of its global influence. China attempts to counter the relentless pressure exerted by American imperialism through the restructuring of the prevailing geopolitical and economic institutions in which the US dollar functions as the pillar of world trade and financial transactions. But this policy, notwithstanding China’s attempts to endow it with a progressive and even altruistic veneer (e.g., through the promotion of the “Belt and Road Initiative”), unfolds on a capitalist basis and aims at nothing more than the reorganization of the existing global balance of power.
25. The outbreak of war cannot be averted by counterposing to the hegemony of American imperialism a new multi-polar coalition of capitalist states. The struggle against imperialist war cannot be achieved through a restructuring of the nation-state system, but only on the basis of its destruction. As Rosa Luxemburg insisted on the eve of World War I, the working class “must draw the conclusion that imperialism, war, plundering countries, haggling over peoples, breaking the law, and the policy of violence can only be fought against by fighting capitalism, by setting social revolution against global genocide.”[8]
[1] Thomas L. Friedman, “A Manifesto for the Fast World,” New York Times Magazine, March 28, 1999
[2] A Quarter Century of War: The U.S. Drive for Global Hegemony 1990-2016, by David North (Mehring Books: Oak Park, MI), p. 277
[3] Ibid, pp. 368-69
[4] Foreign Affairs, January-February 2024, pp. 111-12
[5] Ibid, p. 117
[6] Ibid, p. 118
[7] “After the August Putsch: Soviet Union at the Crossroads,” by David North, in The Fourth International, Volume 19, No. 1, Fall-Winter 1992, p. 110.
[8] “Petty-Bourgeois or Proletarian World Policy?” in Discovering Imperialism: Social Democracy to World War I, translated and edited by Richard B. Day and Daniel Gaido (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012), p. 470