Il Partito Comunista 405

Four years ago, we observed that “the election of 2016 represents the true contemporary nature of capitalism” (The Communist Party no. 5). That November night seems much further than four years in the past, after the Muslim ban, the trade war against China, the abduction of migrant children, the threat of war against Iran, the protests for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor; after Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, and Portland. Now, facing the worst months of the worst pandemic in a hundred years, we find that the same thing is true all over again: the election of 2020 represents the true contemporary nature of capitalism.

Every political decision is only a reflection of the prevailing social conditions. At some points in time this becomes especially clear. Now the real magnitude of capitalism’s failure is apparent for all to see in the form of the pandemic, and the techniques of repression developed through imperialist wars are on open display in U.S. cities. The president has publicly mused about a coup. The crisis of capitalism has come home.

Against this backdrop, the political decision itself could not be duller. If only their politics are compared, Donald Trump and Joe Biden might be mistaken for the same person. Both are rightists and imperialists. Both came to political prominence through race-baiting. Both are spineless opportunists, willing to change positions in an instant to promote their own personal interests.

Despite these similarities, the Republican and Democratic parties claim that this election is a matter of life and death. The Republicans say that Trump is the only bulwark against an anarchist cabal, lurking in the shadows behind Biden, who will destroy white America unless the president is re-elected. The Democrats claim that Trump is out to destroy the beauty that is American democracy, and that only voting for Biden will save it.

In truth, there is no decision to be made in this election. The bourgeoisie will win either way – this is true democracy! The real decision in this moment is not between Trump and Biden, but between capitalist exploitation and communist freedom.

The history of the Democrats’ response to the Trump presidency has been one of defeatism and opportunism. The Democrats have latched onto every petty-bourgeois slogan in order to funnel the energies of that threatened faction of the ruling class into that party’s traditional careerist channels. The proletariat has been absent from this particular movement, despite the Democrats’ attempts to use it for their own ends.

Their first promise, immediately after the 2016 election, was to form a “resistance” against Trump. The term referred back to the historical myth of European resistance to fascism. But the resistance of 2016 had less to do with the example of those earlier movements than the sentiment contained in its memory. And sentiment was its only characteristic. The promise to resist meant only through legal and “respectable” means. It dressed the old, oppressive democratic institutions in revolutionary costumes. But the defense of the working class was never really the goal – in fact, what the Democrats’ resistance demanded was a return to “normal,” to an imagined civil past. The resisters’ outrage at the property damage that accompanied early anti-Trump protests (to which they responded with chants of “peaceful protest!”) and their open fraternization with the police were the first indications of their real sympathies.

The emphasis on legal means was a method to channel the energies of the left-leaning part of the petty bourgeoisie, slowly moving further left as its economic status deteriorates, back into institutions controlled by the big bourgeoisie. The Muller investigation and the impeachment were the clearest expressions of this official resistance’s desire to confront Trump only through the bourgeois legal system. These efforts, as we know, amounted to nothing.

The proletariat is the only force that really fought back in the past four years. It is the only force in society that Trump – and Biden – really fear. Now acquitted in his impeachment trial and with the Republican Party completely behind him, he has nothing to fear from any of the bourgeois factions. He understands that their noble speeches mean nothing in practice. By contrast, the uprising in May and June of this year shook the bourgeoisie to its core. The entire ruling class felt the need to respond with a show of force and a crass appeal to religion that embarrassed even the military. The protests compelled it to take a sharp rightward regarding civil liberties, recruiting the Department of Homeland Security as a paramilitary organization. Trump began to publicly muse about postponing the election, and refused, until a few days ago, to acknowledge a future without him in the White House. We can see now that this was all theater from a desperate man and a desperate class, trying without success to rectify disorder of its own creation. The pandemic played a central role in Trump’s calculations: as president, he assumes responsibility for capitalism’s inability to handle the viral threat, so he invented an alternative “anarchist” threat and claimed to have the cure.

The protests that erupted this year are inter-classist, not proletarian. They do, however, have significant proletarian components. We see this in the huge numbers of working-class people, many black but also from other races, who came out to protest despite the pandemic and the real threat of persecution. The rank and file of several trade unions participated, and in some cases they marched as distinct blocs of workers from certain occupations. The proletarian components of the uprising carried out its most effective actions – for example, the Juneteenth walkout of port workers in the International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union, and the Transport Workers Union’s refusal to drive arrested protestors to jail.

Covid-related strikes are a related phenomenon. These had been the most effective measures to protect the workers from the pandemic when all levels of government are unwilling to act. Amazon warehouse workers won higher pay, employer-provided protective equipment, and better cleaning procedures. Agricultural workers in Yakima, Washington, most of them immigrants from Latin America, won higher pay and forced employers to recognize their union, Trabajadores Unidos por la Justicia. Teachers in Chicago prevented the city from resuming in-person classes just by voting to strike. These life-saving victories were won by the workers themselves, against a bourgeoisie and a capitalist state who could not care less about workers’ lives.

Covid-19 has made obvious what was already clear: the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is a life-and-death struggle, a war all the time, and if the proletariat is to survive we must take action in unity as a class. The well-wishes of the bourgeoisie and their political hacks will not save us. This was true before the pandemic and will still be true after.

This election is no different. Trump and Biden represent the interests of the same bourgeois class. Biden has a record of repression and mass murder to rival Trump. During his first decade in the senate, he made a name for himself through his opposition to busing for school integration, the hallmark of racism in the 1970s. He said in 1977 that busing would send white children into a “racial jungle.” He was an enthusiastic supporter of the War in Iraq, using his position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to push through legislation allowing an invasion. At least one million Iraqi people died as a result. During his time as vice president, he was part of an administration that committed a long list of atrocities abroad: the 2013 military coup in Egypt, the violence in Syria and Libya, the partition of Ukraine (while his own son was doing business with Kiev oligarchs), and, most infamous, the murder by violence, disease, and starvation of 250,000 people in Yemen. Joe Biden is personally responsible for conflicts that have killed millions of people. If there were to be a Nuremberg-style trial for American war crimes, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden would stand accused.

Neither has Joe Biden has shown himself to be an enemy of repression within the United States. He supported Patriot Act spying law in 2001, and to establish the Department of Homeland Security (which forms Trump’s secret police) in 2002. We can be sure that the “anti-extremism” initiatives of Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr will continue under a Biden presidency, if for no other reason than to appeal to the right wing of the Democratic Party and to disaffected Republicans. They are already preparing to blame extremists for any electoral difficulties they face on November 3.

So this is the choice democracy presents to the working class, a choice between two killers, two racists, two rich men. For Biden political power led to money; for Trump money led to political power. One is embedded in politics, and the other is embedded in commerce. They represent only one class, the bourgeoisie. They are united in their opposition to workers’ power.

The proletariat cannot come to power democratically. As Marxists, we understand that revolution means an oppressed class becoming the ruling class. This cannot happen without the suppression of the old oppressors, who will inevitably try to regain their lost privileges. In the proletarian revolution, this means the complete exclusion of the bourgeoisie from political activity for as long as they remain a class. To do so is completely undemocratic, because it rejects the abstract equality of all citizens (equality under the law) that forms the basis of democracy. The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot give equal status to the members of the bourgeoisie until their old social class ceases to exist.

In addition to suppressing the old powers, a new ruling class must form its own characteristic forms of government, its own state. In the French Revolution of 1789, the bourgeoisie abandoned the feudal Estates General to form the democratic Constituent Assembly. In the Russian Revolutions of 1917, tsarist absolutism gave way first to the bourgeois Provisional Government and then, in the Bolshevik uprising, to the proletarian rule of the soviets. The communist left recognizes that the soviets (workers’ councils) was the real form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the realization of what Lenin called the commune-state.

The International Communist Party supports nothing less than the formation of a world workers republic, and has no interest in political projects that lack this end goal. The parties of democracy reject this aim and reaffirm their commitment to maintaining the bourgeois state. These are the enemies of the communist party! We have nothing to gain from collaboration with them except an easier path to infiltration and repression. The “leftist” groups who chase after bourgeois democracy are only fraternizing with the enemy. The repression against the Communist Party of America in the late 1940s, following its enthusiastic support for the Democrats during the popular front period, is just one of many examples of this failed strategy.

Now is not a revolutionary moment. The working class is not yet organized in its own political party and class unions. Despite this, communists continue to act outside and against the bourgeois state and its political henchmen. We must tell every class-conscious worker that democracy is a system oriented against our class, that the proletariat has the right to rule, and that in unity it holds the power to do so.

Our party is guided by a single body of theory and practice stretching from the present back to the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848. All of our activity is in agreement with that long political line. This is what we mean when we call our theses invariant.

No one is sure when the results of the 2020 election will become clear. There are already court challenges in the works, not just for the presidential election but also for congressional, state, and local elections, which may drag on into the winter. But whenever the results become clear, whoever wins, we can be certain of what our party will be doing – still fighting for workers’ power, for revolution, for communism.

In the present moment, it is instructive to review past epidemics of the 20th and 21st centuries. Some species of wild animals are vectors of pathogens that can pass to other animals, to livestock on farms and then to humans. Domestic and farm animals share the greatest number of viruses with humans and, like pigs, are carriers of eight times more pathogens than wild mammals. Human activity brings our species into contact with viruses that our immune system is not familiar with. The Ebola, HIV, and Covid-19 viruses thrived in animals before infecting humans.

Influenza is a viral disease transmitted to humans by animals. It mainly infects birds, both wild and domesticated. The passage to humans often occurs through pigs. It is caused by an RNA virus characterized by a significant ability to mutate and to integrate the genetic material of different viruses. Some of the human influenza viruses are derived from mutated viruses, the genes of which are a recombination in pigs and chickens of previous animal viruses. They circulate for a period of time ranging from one year to a decade and then disappear; they can reappear in winter in temperate countries and all year round in tropical and subtropical countries. Influenza, of types A (the most virulent and greatest risk of pandemic), B, C, D, usually causes between 290,000 and 650,000 deaths a year worldwide, mostly children and the elderly suffering from chronic diseases. According to the Pasteur Institute, in France 10,000 to 15,000 deaths are recorded each year due to seasonal flu, with 2-8 million infected and a mortality rate of 0.1%.

Coronaviruses, identified in 1965, are a large family of RNA viruses. With the quills of their crowns, they adhere to cells through a specific receptor to penetrate and multiply. They are widespread in birds and mammals and some can be transmitted to humans, being the third most common cause of upper respiratory tract infection. Some are very common, others very virulent because, like all RNA viruses, they have considerable genetic variability due to mutation and recombination. The more pathogenic variants attack lung cells, compromising the cells of the vessel walls and causing asphyxiation.

The insane population density in the monstrous and unhealthy metropolises of capitalism, the intensive breeding of animals, and the convulsive movement of goods and people imposed by the capitalist system of production are an explosive cocktail for diffusion of these diseases. The Covid-19 virus emerged from China in the context of the explosion of that country’s industrial activities, and of immense urbanization with unhealthy working and housing conditions, just like the other big capitalisms of previous centuries.

Epidemics occurred in England in the eighteenth century, where capitalism first developed. Farmers planted fodder in a monoculture for the breeding of cattle, and cattle imported from continental Europe brought soil diseases with them.

The 1890 epidemic of rinderpest (a viral disease of cattle and buffalo) in Africa originated in Europe, which was then experiencing a great growth in agriculture. The Italians brought it to East Africa; then it spread to South Africa (where it exterminated the herds of the white supremacist Cecil Rhodes). By killing 80-90% of the livestock, it caused unprecedented famine in the predominantly pastoral societies of sub-Saharan Africa. The lack grazing animals created a habitat for the tsetse fly which spreads sleeping sickness, limiting the region’s repopulation.

Lyme disease, caused by a bacterium carried by ticks, had spread in North America before arriving in Europe, where it decimated animals before moving on to humans.

The influenza of 1917-19 was called Spanish Flu because only Spain, a neutral country in World War I, made it public news, while other governments imposed disinformation and military secrecy: it was forbidden to talk about the outbreak and no protective measures were taken. For the safety of world capital not enough proletarians had died on the war fronts!

The “Spanish” flu originated in 1917 in Kansas, where there was intensive pig and poultry farming. Its spread to a third of the world population was accelerated by the war and the movement of troops. It killed at least 40 million people, many in India and China, and mostly young adults. Finally it disappeared, inexplicably. The high mortality rate was also due to malnutrition, the unhealthy living conditions of the soldiers and the population (including secondary bacterial infections) and mainly affected the poorest strata of society. Today we know that most of the deaths were not from the virus but from a bacterial infection, pneumococcal pneumonia, now fought with antibiotics. The virus was finally identified in 1931 in pigs: the A/H1N1 virus, which circulated in humans until 1958.

The 1956-58 ’Asian’ flu pandemic was caused by the recombination of several other flu viruses, including H1N1, in wild ducks in southwestern China. The resulting A/H2N2 virus was responsible for the deaths of over two million people worldwide.

The virus circulated for eleven years, finally leading to the third influenza pandemic of the 20th century: the “Hong Kong” flu, from the summer of 1968 to the spring of 1970. The A/H2N2 virus, which in the meantime had caused seasonal influenza epidemics, was replaced by the A/H3N2 virus. It left central China in February 1968 and spread through air transport, which had become more accessible by that time, causing one million deaths, of which 50,000 in the USA (autumn 1969) and 40,000 (winter 1969-70) in France. Even then the hospitals were overwhelmed. However, the international press remained measured and reassuring; the term “pandemic” was not even used, and it went almost unnoticed by the population.

The practice of mass vaccination then started, and international alert and research networks were strengthened.

It was with the economic crises of 1975-82 and the launch of austerity plans at a global level, which forced the reduction of health care spending in many countries, that we moved from under-information to hyper-information on infectious risks. From the 1980s, after the great economic crisis which convinced the world bourgeoisie to adopt the austerity policies of economic pseudo-liberalism, the dissemination of information on epidemics, such as AIDS and the contaminated blood scandal, also began. The discretion of the media turned into its opposite, denouncing the unfaithful executives; since then experts of all kinds have followed one another on the screens, often quarreling among themselves; continuous hygiene lessons are given. Catastrophism becomes a kind of show that the population grows tired of.

The mad cow disease outbreak in the late 1980-1990s, which began in Great Britain, was caused by ruminants fed on the remains of sick animals. An abnormal protein, called a prion, by simple contact with brain tissues causes irreversible neurological degeneration. Transmission to humans was very low, but the “scandal” highlighted the dark paths of factory meat production.

SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, emerged in 2002-2003 with a new coronavirus. It appeared in China in 1997, originating in bats and then passed on to civets and then to humans. The epidemic hit 30 countries but killed only 800 people, and none in Europe. Then it inexplicably disappeared in August 2003.

Avian influenza H5N1, a variant of flu virus A, infected wild ducks and domestic animals, mainly chickens and pigs, in 2004, but is difficult to transmit to humans. In 1983, that disease raged in Pennsylvania, forcing the slaughter of 17 million chickens. And in 2004 an outbreak in Southeast Asia spread to the rest of the world. The World Health Organization thought it possible that avian flu could cause a human pandemic with up to 100 million deaths. This did not happen.

The influenza pandemic with the A/H1N1 pdm09 virus of 2009 is known as the swine flu. This virus first appeared in Mexico on a farm, an H1N1 variant that brought together viral segments of four viruses of different origins: North American pig, European and Asian pig, avian, and human influenzas. Official publications described the possibility of extreme mortality. Governments ordered widespread vaccination of the population. This flu, which began in the summer, ended suddenly in December with the arrival of the seasonal flu.

We observe here that the seasonal flu of early 2020, with the usual H3N2 and B viruses, did not circulate in the presence of Covid-19.

2014-16 saw an outbreak of the Ebola virus and the resulting hemorrhagic fever. Originating in bats, the virus first infected chimpanzees and then humans. The first human cases appeared in 1976 in Congo, but the epidemic finally occurred in 2014-2016 in Congo and in West Africa in 2018. The death rate was frightening: 50% according to the WHO. In 2015, there were 20,000 infected and 9,000 deaths.

In 2010, a cholera epidemic was brought to Haiti by Nepalese soldiers of the United Nations.

At the end of 2012 there was an outbreak the coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). The disease began in bats in Saudi Arabia, and then transmitted to camels. MERS remained mysteriously localized to the Arabian Peninsula, with an additional minority of cases in South Korea.

In 2013, the new H7N9 virus infected birds and chickens on factory farms. It killed only 250 humans and remained localized in China.

Finally, Covid-19 is still ongoing. As was the case in the Spanish flu, the virus was able to spread rapidly due to the increased circulation of human beings. It appeared in Wuhan, mainland China, in December 2019. The origin is believed to be in the large bat colonies of the region, then passed on to the pangolin, a prized meat in China. Wuhan is a hot and humid region, highly urbanized and industrialized. Agro-industry, with its intensive livestock farming, presses against the crowded city and suburbs; these brought together animals that favor viral mutations and the conditions for their spread to and among humans. Mortality was very high at the beginning of the pandemic because the cases examined were all already very serious; estimates later dropped from 5.6% to 0.5%. The disease has spread to the rest of Asia and the world through the movement of people. In 80% of cases the symptoms are moderate and mortality mainly concerns very elderly people, especially those with underlying conditions or in a state of poverty. The body responds to the disease, which can go unnoticed, especially in young people, with an immune reaction; in some cases this response is disproportionate and targets the cells of the respiratory mucosa that transfer oxygen to the blood. Covid-19 also causes damage to the vascular walls. At this point the disease is no longer viral but autoimmune. But many elements are still incomprehensible. Because epidemics sometimes remain localized, because they cease, there are questions that science has not yet answered.The Road Ahead

The race for profit drives the world dominated by the capitalist mode of production (along with its irrationality), plunging the very intelligence and survival instinct of the species into chaos. This generates the spread – expanded by bourgeois propaganda – of a general distrust of science and openness to irrational and esoteric “new age” ideas. Some prostrate themselves in front of an “anti-science”, opposing to its methods of study and research the lazy ignorance and individualism of the petty bourgeoisie, which flaunts its pessimism – a sense of impotence, uselessness and death, resigned to its next ruin and without a future.

Behind these sentiments, the regime of capital hides its inability to foresee and prepare plans for responding to entirely predictable emergencies. This would cause unnecessary expense!

On the social level, states take advantage of the emergency to prohibit trade union meetings and strikes, but never prohibit work itself in the confined spaces of factories, construction sites, and warehouses.

To all this it must be added that managers, including health care managers, serve the health of capital rather than that of people, thirsty for earnings and now strangled by the economic crisis, of which has been enormously deepened by the collapse of consumption, despite the fact that production continues. The workers must risk their lives, as soldiers at the front, in the merciless economic and commercial war between the various world bourgeoisies.

Because the great fear of the bourgeoisie is not Covid but the revolt of the exploited workers of the world!

Only the world proletariat, armed with its economic organizations and its class party, is able to prepare its dictatorship, which will make possible the destruction of the capitalist mode of production, always deadly and criminal, and give life to communist society – the bases of which have been present for more than a century – with its science, finally free, placed at the service of all humanity.

For the fourth time since the last century, Armenia and Azerbaijan are once again at war with each other over the territory known as Nagorno Kharabakh, or Upper Karabakh Mountains. Considering the war bulletins from both sides, the lives of over 5,000 thousand soldiers have been lost so far. A figure with every probability hyperbolic, especially if we consider only the military, and certainly due to the respective war propaganda apparatuses of both countries. But however we know with certainty that in about ten days of fighting the military and civil victims are already counted in many hundreds.

Let us therefore take a brief look at the history of Nagorno Karabakh. Although almost 90% of the mountainous territory of Karabakh was inhabited by Armenians, the plain saw the prevalence of the Azerbaijani element, so this region was integrated into Soviet Azerbaijan in 1921, while obtaining the status of an autonomous oblast. During the decades of the so-called “communist” and Soviet government in the region, the ethnic Armenian component of the population decreased to about 77%. However, in 1988, the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh declared independence by proclaiming the Republic of Artsakh (the Armenian name for the Karabakh region) and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan centered on this territorial dispute became the first in a series of events leading to the dissolution of the Eastern bloc. The republic obtained no official recognition from any country, not even Armenia, and remained de facto independent at the end of the war in 1994. In 2005, following “ethnic cleansing”, almost all inhabitants of the Artsakh Republic were Armenians.

There are conflicting accounts of who launched the first attack in the current conflict. Regardless of this, both sides have clearly prepared for another war. Some reports point out how members of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) have intervened on the Armenian side and how soldiers of the “Syrian National Army” headed by the Turkish president Erdogan, are lined up on the Azerbaijani side. Although these reports are rejected by Armenian and Azerbaijani officials, it is not difficult to believe that both sides benefit from the hardened mercenaries in their ranks. According to a report by the Syrian Center for Human Rights (an organization whose statements are not always taken literally), Turkey sent 1,200 Syrian fighters to support Azerbaijan’s armed forces. The same source claims that they would receive between 1,500 and 2,000 dollars per month.

In any case, not only has Armenia lost many villages, but both nationally and internationally it is outdated by Azerbaijan. Like his father Nazar Aliyev, who was his predecessor to the office of president, Ilham Aliyev leads Azerbaijan’s totalitarian democracy with the support of a substantial part of the country’s population also thanks to the state’s considerable income from oil revenues. The latter has enabled Azerbaijan to purchase arms in various countries including Turkey and Israel.

Ovo The Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, on the other hand, is brought to power by a popular rebellion and still faces the challenge of the elections, even though for now he seems to enjoy some popular support as well. Although states and organizations such as the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations have called for peace, Aliyev enjoys strong and open support from Turkey and Pakistan, as well as some military support from Israel. This last aspect is presented as an apparent paradox: the Jewish state in anti-Iranian function is on the side of Turkey dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the one to which the Palestinian movement Hamas belongs, which has always been considered by chatter as the worst enemy, or rather it would be better to say as the best enemy. The structure of regional alliances means that Azerbaijan can count on decisive air superiority. Turkish warplanes took part in the aerial duels by shooting down two Armenian Sukhoi-25s, while Turkish and Israeli-made drones help to tip the balance of power in favor of Azerbaijan.

Even France, whose leader, Macron, has expressed criticism of Turkish involvement in the war, does not support Armenia as energetically as Turkey and Pakistan support Azerbaijan. For its part, Russia is traditionally an ally of Armenia, but Pashinian is opposed by Putin, who has no reason to appreciate Pashinian as a pro-Western politician. However, Moscow would certainly not allow a country like Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey, to threaten the existence of Armenia, but it could also allow Azerbaijani forces to advance as much as possible in Nagorno Karabakh.

The two truces reached by the parties in conflict with the Russian mediation did not stop the fighting and bombing even against civilian targets causing numerous casualties. In reality it was only a matter of propaganda diversions to waste time and return to hostilities with renewed vigor.

Regardless of who will be victorious, the proletarians of Armenia and Azerbaijan will still lose because they have nothing to gain from this war. Although it looks like a war between the Armenian and Azerbaijani nations, this is actually a war between the capitalist states for the division of the proletarian class and for dividing up and seizing the markets. Therefore, considered small, it is an imperialist war. The correct proletarian policy in facing such a conflict is to invite the working class soldiers on both sides to transform the imperialist war into a revolutionary civil war. Without this appeal, which can only be launched by a true communist party, the proletarians of the region have no hope of claiming their historic victory which has been lost because of the Stalinist counter-revolution.

At one time, the Caucasus was home to a lively workers’ movement and an established Bolshevik tradition that led to the formation of powerful communist parties. Today, our International Communist Party, heir to the tradition of the Communist International to which these parties belonged, does not exist in the Caucasus. Nevertheless, tomorrow our call for proletarian internationalism and revolutionary defeatism will reach the Caucasus and beyond to spread everywhere.

The riots that rocked Nigeria in October, which resulted in massacres by police forces and sabotage and looting by the dispossessed masses in many cities of the country, began earlier that month with a protest against the violence of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the national police. For many years, the SARS has been responsible for violence and murders against the subordinate strata of the population, and for some time a protest movement has existed to oppose it. The October protests finally compelling the government to dissolve the SARS.

However, within days it was discovered that this measure was limited to changing the name of the department. The a growing mass of proletarians then returned to the public sqares, already exasperated by misery and unemployment.

As has been repeated hundreds of times in countries on the periphery of world capitalism, where the average age of the population is remarkably low, crowds of young people, condemned to a condition of oppression and marginalization, have taken to the streets to express their anger. They met with ruthless police repression, leaving us many dozen dead.

The roots of the discontent of the proletarian youth of Nigeria are all in the bankruptcy budget of this country, which 60 years ago managed to free itself from the yoke of British colonial domination.

Before independence, agriculture was the most important part of the economy. Colonial rule forced the cultivation of crops destined for the world market, such as cocoa, palm oil, and peanuts, which made up 70% of exports, to which were added cotton and gum arabic. However, this never supplanted subsistence crops, which were left to meet 95% of the country’s internal food needs.

In 60 years of political independence, the country’s economic and social imbalance has only amplified. While the population has multiplied by four, reaching about 200 million inhabitants, 60% of the working population is still employed in agriculture, and in the countryside small, inefficient subsistence farms predominate. This inefficiency means that agriculture’s contribution to the national economy does not exceed 40% of the Gross Domestic Product. Despite tens of millions laboring in the fields, Nigeria must import $3 billion in staple foods annually to meet its internal needs.

The government has repeatedly tried to stimulate local production, but without success. To this end, it has tried several times to close the border with neighboring Benin, which sells cheap food products, mainly rice, to Nigeria. However, these still make it into the country through smuggling.

Another source of “distortion” in the country’s economy – which we understand to be the inevitable result of capitalist anarchy, which orients production according to the opportunities for the accumulation of capital, regardless of human needs – is the convulsive history of Nigerian industry. With independence, the local bourgeoisie promised to establish a national manufacturing sector that could replace many imported goods. But this fell by the wayside with the development of oil extraction which, promising large revenues, has channeled the bulk of investments into the petroleum sector. This lack of investment has caused other areas of industry to stagnate, and exports of manufactured goods have now fallen to a third of the maximum reached before the 2008 crisis.

In this depressed economy, both in agriculture and manufacturing, the only relatively prosperous sector is oil. Nigeria, with a daily production of just over two million barrels, is the leading African producer of petroleum. But even in this sector not all is well: today’s daily production is at least 300,000 barrels per day lower than the peak reached in the first decade of this century, when the country’s population counted 50 million fewer. In such a context it is increasingly difficult for the Nigerian ruling class to face the explosions of discontent from a young proletariat which, thanks to its numbers and concentration, will resolutely take the path of class struggle.

A leaflet distributed at strikes in Rome and Milan, by the ICP, Saturday October 24, 2020

The global economic crisis of capitalism, which has been going on for decades, has been accelerated by the COVID crisis and will lead to a serious worsening of the living conditions of the working class.

The only way for workers and all wage-earners to defend themselves is to return to the struggle, with the strike, joining progressively above the divisions between factories, companies, territories and categories, with common actions for their immediate interests: defense of wages, reduction of the day and working life, against the increase in workloads and rhythms, for the raising of the redundancy fund to 100% of wages for all, for full wages for unemployed workers, Italians and immigrants.

In order for this to happen, the role of trade unions is unavoidable. The regime’s trade union confederations (CGIL, CISL, UIL) are collaboratist with the ruling class and its political regime. For this fact they will always oppose the struggle of the working class in a generalized and united way. For example, in these weeks they are conducting negotiations for the renewal of national collective agreements for more than 10 million workers (metalworkers, logistics, procurement, wood industry, agribusiness, entertainment, public employment…) each for themselves.

For A Combative Trade Unionism – the rank and file unions as well as the class opposition in CGIL – were born in the late 1970s in reaction to the definitive class betrayal of CGIL. *But these organizations are lead by opportunist leaders who wage a miserable ongoing war against each other, in separate and competing strikes, hindering the already difficult task of getting the workers’ movement back on its feet.

The fundamental task of the combative proletarians is therefore to fight for the UNITED FRONT OF ALL MILITANT UNIONS AND WORKERS with the goal of forming, to the detriment of the current union leaderships, a UNITED CLASS FRONT.

The Rank and File (COBAS) unions need to organize strikes united on all levels – corporate, territorial, category and inter-category – so they can intervene in a unified manner in the rare strikes proclaimed by the regime trade unionism – such as the one on November 5 by the 3 metal workers’ unions (FIOM, FIM AND UILM) – to show the majority of workers remaining in those unions the methods of struggle and the demands of class unionism.

Only this kind of serious, methodical and lasting action will encourage a rapid return to working class struggle and, when this finally happens, it will make it possible to have trade union organizations less compromised by opportunism, more likely to follow a genuine class union approach and therefore able to decisively strengthen the workers’ movement.

It is necessary to resolutely avoid confusing a needed United Class Union Front and the various attempts at political fronts between political groups which the preferred terrain of opportunist workers’ parties. A tactic which identifies them as such and in which they are left to agitate helplessly.

To confuse political fronts with the Workers’ United Front only condemns any attempt in this sense to the asphyxiated life of a small inter-group monster.

The re-establishment of a strong minority of the working class around revolutionary communism will never take place through mergers between different political groups, which can only occur on the basis of temporary and hypocritical renunciations of important elements of the programs of each organization. On one hand, political unity can only occur on the basis of a return to mass proletarian direct action in defense of immediate needs. On the other a clear, defined and party-based presentation of theory, a program, and a tactical direction of action.

The Communist and Revolutionary Party does not conduct political fronts, an operation that is resolved by proposing so-called “Transitional” political objectives before the conquest of political power by the working class – such as nationalizations – in the frivolous illusion that they bring it closer to revolution, and that they do nothing but reinforce the influence of reformism on it.

The Communist and Revolutionary Party, on the other hand, commits the forces of its militant workers to the reconstruction and strengthening of the labor movement and denounces all the failures of capitalism and its political regime, reaffirming that every step, every transition to socialism, will be possible only after the revolutionary conquest of political power by the working class.

Turchia – La marcia dei minatori

I minatori di Soma, a Manisa – dove nel 2004 in un incidente morirono in 301, secondo le cifre ufficiali – e di Emenek (Karaman) hanno iniziato una marcia verso la capitale Ankara. Sono organizzati nel Sindacato Indipendente dei Lavoratori delle Miniere, un sindacato di base. I lavoratori, memori della grande marcia dei minatori di Zonguldak del 1991, rivendicavano oltre un anno di salari non pagati e migliori condizioni di sicurezza sul lavoro, con riguardo alla epidemia del Coronavirus e in generale. I lavoratori sono stati attaccati più volte dall’esercito ma non hanno desistito.

Nel frattempo uno sciopero alla Şişecam Kromsan ve Salt Enterprise, stabilimenti chimici nelle città meridionali cosmopolite di Adana e Mersin, è stato procrastinato dal presidente Erdoğan in quanto considerato una “minaccia alla salute pubblica e alla sicurezza nazionale”. Questi lavoratori sono organizzati nel Sindacato dei Lavoratori del Petrolio, della Chimica e della Gomma affiliato alla Türk-İş, la maggiore confederazione sindacale di regime del paese. 550 operai si trovano attualmente in congedo non retribuito.

Montreal – Serrata alle Farmacie Jean Coutu

 I 680 lavoratori del centro di distribuzione delle Farmacie Jean Coutu di Varennes, un sobborgo di Montreal, sono senza contratto di lavoro dal 31 dicembre 2019. Lo scorso 24 settembre l’azienda ha deciso di porre termine alle trattative ricorrendo alla serrata. Il sindacato del magazzino, pur condannando questa mossa della direzione, ha rinnovato la disponibilità a negoziare: un atteggiamento molto debole.

I lavoratori sono preoccupati anche per la possibilità che sia subappaltata parte delle attività del magazzino e per il mancato rispetto delle clausole di anzianità.

Nel tempo si sono avute molteplici ristrutturazioni, riduzione dei salari e peggioramenti nelle condizioni di lavoro. La proprietà per controllare i lavoratori ha proposto anche l’utilizzo dei braccialetti elettronici – come in Amazon, dove stanno sperimentando metodi di sfruttamento sempre più sofisticati. Mentre i governi borghesi d’ogni colore propongono interventi legislativi uno dopo l’altro volti a ridurre la libertà di sciopero, i padroni possono sempre, e legalmente, usare la serrata per fiaccare la lotta operaia. Nel 2018, la fonderia di alluminio Bétancour per 18 mesi ha fatto la stessa cosa, schiacciando i lavoratori col ricatto economico.

Come uscire da questa situazione?

Oggi le centrali sindacali sono divenuti sempre più enti di cogestione delle aziende. Li chiamiamo sindacati di regime perché collaborano col padronato per preservare la salute dei profitti aziendali e delle economie nazionali, cioè del capitalismo. Anche quando si manifesta la buona volontà dei gruppi sindacali di fabbrica o territoriali, dei loro dirigenti e delegati nel guidare le lotte, questi si scontrano con una struttura che non vuole la lotta della classe lavoratrice, che l’ha ripudiata per sempre. I lavoratori sono alle prese con l’impalcatura giuridica borghese che cerca di impedire lo sviluppo del movimento di lotta, con i sindacati di regime che coadiuvano governo e padronato in questa opera, e con le divisioni della struttura economica e produttiva capitalista fra aziende e categorie.

La classe operaia è numericamente numerosa e compie il lavoro su cui ruota l’intera società capitalista. Il lavoro di gestione della produzione a fini del profitto è solo parassitario e così la classe sociale che ne trae beneficio e privilegio sociale. I lavoratori, che condividono gli stessi interessi economici e sociali, diametralmente opposti a quelli della borghesia, devono unire le forze solidali. Questo è l’unico modo che hanno per difendere le loro condizioni di vita.

Che si tratti di lavoratori del settore pubblico – insegnanti, infermieri, assistenti all’infanzia – o di impiegati nella piccola e grande distribuzione o di manovali o di magazzinieri come al centro Pharmacie Jean Coutu, la strada da seguire è quella dell’unificazione delle lotte al di sopra delle fabbriche, aziende, categorie e territori.

Lavoratori! Bisogna non restare isolati e non basta fare affidamento sui dirigenti o sui delegati sindacali combattivi per promuovere la lotta. Organizzatevi in comitati di lotta autonomi; cercate il sostegno di altri lavoratori in difficoltà e in lotta; collegatevi ad altri sindacati combattivi o a organizzazioni di lavoratori come il Centro dei Lavoratori Immigrati, che ha recentemente combattuto a fianco dei dipendenti di Dollarama; fate appello anche ai sindacati di lotta come Industrial Workers of the World, che sa come condurre lotte offensive e vittoriose. Sono i numeri e l’unità le vere armi dei lavoratori in lotta.

Ospedalieri canadesi

In risposta alla minaccia di privatizzare 11.000 posti di lavoro negli ospedali dell’Alberta, nel Canada occidentale, lunedì 26 ottobre diverse migliaia di lavoratori sono scesi in sciopero spontaneo in 45 strutture della provincia. I lavoratori sono membri dell’Alberta Union of Public Employees (Aupe): infermieri, tecnici di laboratorio, addetti alle pulizie, alla mensa, inservienti.

Le Infermiere Unite dell’Alberta (Una) sono solidali con lo sciopero: «Incoraggiamo i nostri iscritti a unirsi ai picchetti dei colleghi in sciopero e a non sostituire i lavoratori dell’Aupe in sciopero», ha detto il presidente dell’Una.

Le richieste dei lavoratori comprendono aumento del personale, revoca dei piani di privatizzazione della sanità pubblica e nessuna ritorsione contro gli scioperanti. In risposta allo sciopero il governo, attualmente del Partito Conservatore Unito, ha invocato il licenziamento degli assistenti, degli infermieri e la riduzione degli stipendi dei medici.

La sera stessa dello sciopero il Consiglio per i Rapporti di Lavoro dell’Alberta ha ordinato di interrompere lo sciopero “selvaggio”. I dirigenti dell’Aupe hanno detto che avrebbero notificato ai loro iscritti l’obbligo di obbedire alla direttiva.

Gli scioperi degli ospedalieri dell’Alberta vantano una tradizione combattiva nel Canada occidentale che risale alla One Big Union, ai minatori e ai carpentieri. 

Una organizzazione comune dovrebbe essere intrapresa in Alberta con i sindacati degli insegnanti che stanno affrontando simili minacce di privatizzazione. Anche i sindacati dei lavoratori delle poste e dell’edilizia hanno condotto di recente scioperi senza preavviso.

I lavoratori delle poste si sono organizzati attraverso reti di militanti sia all’interno sia all’esterno del sindacato. Sforzi simili da parte dei militanti sindacali per formare coordinamenti di lavoratori offrirebbero le basi per scioperi più ampi.

L’insegnamento degli scioperi selvaggi dei postini del 2016, che bloccarono le poste canadesi in tutto il paese – coi picchetti di solidarietà per aggirare le leggi che limitano lo sciopero e ne eliminano ogni efficacia – potrebbero essere la base per la crescita di un fronte unico dal basso per difendere gli interessi della classe operaia.

Portogallo – Sciopero delle mense scolastiche 

Con la crisi sanitaria la borghesia è ovunque alla ricerca di ogni opportunità per accrescere lo sfruttamento degli operai.

A Barcelos – cittadina di 120 mila abitanti nel Portogallo settentrionale – martedì 20 ottobre i lavoratori delle mense scolastiche sono scesi in sciopero chiudendo i refettori di sette istituti, due terzi del totale. I lavoratori accusano l’azienda – l’Unicelf – di aver ridotto l’orario di lavoro, e in proporzione il salario, di aver peggiorato i carichi e ritmi.

Infine è aumentata ancor di più l’incertezza dell’impiego. Di solito si lavorava da settembre a giugno con contratti rinnovati di mese in mese. Quest’anno i turni sono solo mattinieri o pomeridiani e la durata del contratto è diventata ancora più precaria, potendo il lavoratore essere lasciato a casa ogni inizio settimana invece che con un contratto di nove mesi. Ai licenziati non viene nemmeno corrisposta la liquidazione.

La quantità di lavoro è aumentata anche in conseguenza della necessità di sanificare gli ambienti e gli utensili. 

Il sindacato ha chiesto che tutti coloro che hanno lavorato nelle mense scolastiche nell’ultimo anno vengano assunti e che l’azienda ristabilisca i loro precedenti diritti: il pagamento del trattamento di fine rapporto dell’anno scorso e la riassunzione con la consueta formula contrattuale.

Si tratta del Sindicato da Hotelaria do Norte, affiliato alla Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores Portugueses – la maggiore confederazione sindacale di regime in Portogallo. A seguito dello sciopero del 20 ottobre ha programmato uno sciopero nazionale per il lunedì 26, ma preavvisando le imprese che hanno potuto così organizzarsi per ridurre gli effetti della giornata di astensione dal lavoro. Lo sciopero per avere maggiore efficacia avrebbe dovuto essere dispiegato senza preavviso, condotto, se possibile, a tempo indeterminato e, se necessario, bloccando l’accesso agli istituti a merce e crumiri.

Lo sciopero ha avuto un buon esito, colpendo 200 istituti scolastici, soprattutto nel centro e nel Nord – mentre il Sud è notoriamente arretrato – e coi picchetti più partecipati a Coimbra e Porto.

Il 5 novembre è stato ingaggiato un altro sciopero nazionale della categoria, in risposta a 122 licenziamenti da parte dell’azienda Eurest. 

Ancora una volta, anche in Portogallo si conferma la necessità di un vero sindacato di classe.