Dear Friends,
After a relatively long period, a new wave of class struggle is emerging. After
the movements of the oppressed in Latin America and the youth and workers'
movements in Europe, the Arab revolution has shaken the planet
This year the workers across the planet will commemorate May Day in one of the
most turbulent and traumatic periods in history. The world is ravaged by wars,
terrorism, bloodshed, economic catastrophe and unprecedented poverty, misery,
disease and destitution. The vast majority of the human race has been plunged
into the abyss of deprivation, hunger and suffering.
After the failure of the Keynesian model in the 1980s, free market enterprise or
the 'trickle down' economy has led to the biggest financial crash in the history
of capitalism. And the exploitation and drudgery of the working classes has
worsened horrendously. The gains of the workers through immense struggles of the
last fifty years are being drastically slashed even in the advanced capitalist
countries.
A new norm has been established. Already the relations between labour and
capital had deteriorated with the policies of privatisation, downsizing,
liberalisation, restructuring and contract labour. Redundancies and layoffs have
become a regular feature of modern capitalism. Social services and the benefits
of the workers have been viciously cut through draconian austerity measures
throughout the capitalist world.
Even during the recession, when the workers had to bear the brunt of the
financial meltdown, the bankers, capitalists and the bosses of the multinational
corporations plundered on and enriched themselves to obscene levels. The gap
between the ruling elites and the toiling masses has widened to unprecedented
levels.
In the largest capitalist country of the world, the US, one percent of the
richest households now own more wealth than the 95 percent of the rest of the
population. The same story is repeated throughout the world. The situation in
countries like China and India is even worse. Out of the 16 members of the
standing committee of the Politbureau of the Communist Party of China, 12 are
billionaires. India has 20 percent of the world's population yet hosts about 40
percent of the world's poverty and yet now there are more billionaires in India
than in Japan. The highest amounts of plundered money stashed away in Swiss
banks belong to Indian capitalists, reportedly 14.7 trillion dollars.
This looting and plundering by the bourgeoisie has ushered in a malaise within
society on a world scale. In his latest book, Reformism and Revolution, the
renowned Marxist theoretician Alan Woods gives a graphic description of this
decline. He writes, "The crisis of the capitalist system is reflected in a
crisis of bourgeois values, morality, religion, politics and philosophy. The
mood of pessimism that afflicts the bourgeoisie and its ideologues in this
period is manifested in the poverty of its thought, the triviality of its art
and the emptiness of its spiritual values. It is expressed in the wretched
philosophy of postmodernism, which imagines itself to be superior to all
previous philosophy, when in reality it is vastly inferior...They talk of the
end of ideology and the end of history in the same breath. They do not believe
in progress because the bourgeoisie has long since ceased to be progressive.
When they talk of the end of history it is because they have ended in an
historical dead-end and can see no way out. When they talk of the end of
ideology it is because they are no longer capable of producing one."
However, after a relatively long period, a new wave of class struggle is
emerging. After the movements of the oppressed in Latin America and the youth
and workers' movements in Europe, the Arab revolution has shaken the planet.
In the context of these stirrings of the working class, May Day 2011 attains an
extraordinary significance. Every year May Day is commemorated in memory of
those workers demanding an eight hour day that were brutally shot and killed by
the police in the American city of Chicago on May 1, 1886. The decision to
commemorate it as a labour day was taken at the congress of the Second
International in July 1889 held in Paris. The leading figure in the meeting of
this international was Fredrick Engels who along with Marx was the founder of
scientific socialism.
The unique feature of May Day is that it is perhaps the only anniversary that is
commemorated all over the world. It cuts across the prejudices of race, colour,
creed, religion, nationality, ethnicity and caste, which are used by the ruling
classes to drive a wedge in the unity of the proletariat. Hence the real message
of May Day is that of proletarian internationalism. It is also the reaffirmation
of the pledge for unity in struggle on a class basis against this system of
exploitation and plunder. Its motto, "An injury to one is an injury to all" and
"workers united can never be defeated". The ultimate victory of this struggle
can only be achieved by the overthrow of capitalism through a socialist
revolution. Anything else attributed to this day is a deceit and distraction for
the workers. In the present epoch, the crisis of capitalism offers no progress
or prosperity to the human race. Rather, with every passing day it is
intensifying exploitation, coercion, death and destruction for the masses. The
spectre of barbarism haunts society shackled by this decaying and moribund
system.
Reforms under capitalism are a thing of the past. Hence reformism or narrow
trade unionism cannot offer any way out of this misery. Most of capitalist
investment today, if any, is not labour intensive in character, but capital
intensive. This means that it will create more unemployment rather than
generating any new jobs. All the technological advances enhance exploitation
rather than alleviating the plight of the workers. Capitalism cannot cope with
the spirit of the new technology to which it has given rise. This has torn
through the national boundaries of the bourgeois state. In the present epoch we
live not only in a world economy, but most social and political relations have
also been moulded by this crushing domination of the world market. That explains
why no proletarian revolution can survive on a national basis for long. The
collapse of the Soviet Union and the capitalist degeneration of the Chinese are
glaring examples of this. But the masses around the world are yearning for
change, for a transformation of this agonising socio-economic system.
Regards
Shoaib Habib Memon
Cell.0314 2090252
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