RSP Greetings to the 5th Congress of Labour Party Pakistan
Dear Comrades,
The Revolutionary Socialist Party ( Australia ) sends warm greetings to your 5th Party congress.
Revolutionary parties always struggle against seemingly overwhelming odds for the liberation of humanity. Today your deliberations take place at a time when the contradictions of capitalism threaten the very survival of the human species.
As Fidel Castro said a few short weeks ago
“One singular event, the battle over the climate issue that took place at the Copenhagen Summit, has contributed to knowledge of the imminent danger. It is not a matter of a distant threat for the 22nd century, but for the 21st; nor is it just for the latter half of this century, but for the coming decades, in which we will begin to suffer its terrible consequences.
“In Copenhagen, the Cuban delegation, which attended together with others from the ALBA and the Third World, was forced into a fight to the finish in the face of the incredible events that began with the speech of the yanki president, Barack Obama, and of the group of the richest states on the planet, resolved to dismantle the binding commitments of Kyoto — where the thorny problem was discussed more than 12 years ago — and to load the burden of sacrifice onto the emerging and underdeveloped countries, which are the poorest and at the same time the principal suppliers of the planet’s raw materials and non-renewable resources to the most developed and opulent countries.”
Of all human institutions, the one least able to save our environment is the capitalist state, because it has been created and structured to defend the very forces that are responsible for environmental destruction. It is up to working people, who gain nothing and stand to lose everything from environmental destruction, to create the necessary consciousness and the organisations that can stop the capitalists. To save our planet and therefore ourselves, working people will need to create their own state, a revolutionary state that destroys the political power and then the economic power of the capitalists. As was said by Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, in a speech at Copenhagen:
“Socialism, this is the direction, this is the path to save the planet, I don’t have the least doubt. Capitalism is the road to hell, to the destruction of the world.”
Capitalist governments, where they accept, or feel compelled to acknowledge climate change, invoke “market mechanisms” – carbon trading systems – as the only solution to the crisis. That is, they claim that the same mechanism that gave us global warming is the only one that can prevent it. In Australia the Rudd government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is just such a “market mechanism”. But this method has failed and been counterproductive where it has been applied. On a global scale, it would be a disaster. It could allow pollution to actually increase in spite of any supposed target and would prevent the implementation of more straightforward and effective means of reducing emissions. Referring to the First World countries’ push for these false solutions to global warming at the UN’s December 7-18 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed warned Third World governments that they were being pressured to sign a “global suicide pact”.
On September 24 last year at the UN General Assembly, Hugo Chavez pointed to how the world could avoid this “suicide pact”. He pointed out the unsustainability of the global economic system supported and maintained by imperialism: “We are consuming our natural resources — coal, oil — in less than a century and they took centuries to build up … Capitalist economies are very destructive and so it’s very important to … look at some issues of climate change in relation to the economy … We need an economy that supports human beings — that is socialism … It’s not capitalism. Capitalism excludes the majority … And it destroys the world. It destroys human beings”.
On November 24 2008 Bloomberg.com reported that the global financial crisis had wiped out $23 trillion, or 38% of the stock market value of the world’s companies, and brought down three of the biggest Wall Street firms, as well as American International Group, the world’s biggest insurance company. It also reported that the “US government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday.” The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the US in 2007,were intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months previously.
The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $3.18 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s.
The next day, the US government announced a further $800 billion in loan programs, bringing its cumulative financial industry rescue initiatives to $8.5 trillion, equivalent to 60% of the total value of the US GDP in 2007.
These massive loans, and the accompanying partial nationalisations of banks and other financial companies implemented by the US and other governments across the capitalist world, will probably ensure that the capitalist financial system does not experience a 1930s-style collapse, but at the cost of saddling the developed capitalist economies with an even more enormous amount of debt. This in turn will mean that the recovery from the present global economic recession, when it eventually comes, will be slow and anaemic. And the bulk of the suffering will be borne by the working people of every country.
Similarly, the Australian government’s “economic stimulus packages”, worth $52 billion so far, are aimed at protecting the earnings and profits of capitalist businesses, rather than saving workers’ jobs. This is completely consistent with Prime Minister Rudd’s self-proclaimed mission statement, made in the February 2008 edition of The Monthly, “to save capitalism from itself”.
The capitalist economic crisis has brought home to millions that the capitalist system is inherently unstable, that it’s not permanent, that perhaps a different way of organising society might be possible.
US imperialism’s continuous war in the Middle East and Asia , essentially a war to ensure their control of the dwindling oil supply is costing a fortune, having a big impact on the US economy, creating millions of angry enemies of imperialism, and impacting on American poor and working class who have to fight these wars. Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran, and the list expands, and no peace, just further exposure of US imperialism and its allies in Europe, Australia etc.
But a powerful challenge to capitalism is occurring in Latin America . Cuba has stood fast for 51 years, and now the Venezuelan Revolution has opened a new front in working class resistance. Millions in other Latin American countries are radicalising also. Washington is working hard to counter this process – on the ground in Venezuela, the Honduras coup, seven bases in Colombia and two more surrounding Venezuela, overflights of Venezuelan territory.
Chavez’s call for the Fifth Socialist International is a new offensive for progessive forces, advancing left unity and co-ordinating international solidarity, but also recognising that the best defence of revolutionary Venezuela will be further revolutions in other countries.
The RSP, like the LPP welcomes Chavez’ call for a new international. We will be sending representatives to the April Conference and look forward to closer collaboration with revolutionary organizations in the new formation.
Your party is coming out of a long struggle against military dictatorship in which the LPP played a principled and leading role from the day General Musharaf seized power. Despite Musharaf’s rhetoric of ending the corruption of the political parties in government his regime was responsible for corruption on a massive scale. Over 2,576 billion rupees were plundered by, or under the tutelage of, his regime, including 120 billion rupees destined for earthquake victims of 2005. The role of the advocates’ struggle in the last year of Musharaf’s rule and your role of guiding that struggle towards a fight for democracy was an inspiration to us in Australia . Musharaf was never able to recover from the impact of the advocates’ campaign and it played a crucial role in ending his regime and making it more difficult for the military to impose direct rule in the near future.
Despite these victories the working and peasant poor of Pakistan still suffer from the legacy of the Musharaf years as well as from the designs of imperialist powers and the right-wing agenda of religious fundamentalists.
Musharaf’s privatization scheme saw 1550 billion rupees plundered from Pakistan ’s wealth during his regime. Not only did the quality of goods decline and their price increase following the privatization of national assets but at least 600,000 workers lost their jobs at these institutions. The privatization scheme is being continued under the current PPP government.
The US ’ war in Afghanistan has spilled over into Pakistan and the US continually violates Pakistan ’s sovereignty and kills its people. Pakistan has become the new front line in the US ’ so-called ‘war on terror’. Top level US officials have made threats to further escalate their war in Pakistan if the Pakistani state does not assist them on their side of the border. This is what is behind the latest Pakistan military adventures in the Swat valley and Malakand district. The US ’ drone attacks in the North West Frontier Province , and in Waziristan in particular, intensified under the Obama administration (despite his Nobel Peace Prize). Supposedly directed at al-Qaida and the Taliban who fled there from Aghanistan, these drone attacks have killed many innocent civilians. Even the Pakistan government, closely allied to the US , has declared that 80% of the victims of drone attacks are civilian – the US refuses to comment. From 2004 to January 19, 2010 US drone attacks in Pakistan ’s north-west have killed over 880 people, over 600 of them under the Obama administration. Far from weakening the Taliban with these attacks the US is simply producing more embittered youth seeking vengeance for the massacre of their families and others are incensed at the West’s attack on their homeland. This is fertile ground for the religious fundamentalists and they recruit and strengthen from it. The reactionary backlash from these strengthened religious fundamentalists is being felt first and bloodily in Pakistan itself. The strength of religious fundamentalism in Pakistan is not just a result of US imperialism and the support given them by successive Pakistani governments. It is also at heart a result of the failure of Pakistan ’s civilian and military governments to solve any of the basic problems of Pakistan ’s worker and peasant majority.
A continuing series of fundamentalist terror attacks across Pakistan has been intensifying since the assault on the Red Mosque in 2007 and the military offensive in Swat and Malakand in 2009. The RSP mourns the loss of comrades Abdullah Qureshi in 2007 and Master Khudad Khan in 2009 to fundamentalist suicide bombings. Successive civilian and military governments in Pakistan have fostered various fundamentalist groupings to bolster their own position against India or internal opposition, and to have a presence in Afghanistan . With the Pakistan government spending less than 3% on education, religious schools, madrasas, fill the space for poorer Pakistanis and serve as a recruiting ground for religious fundamentalists. The partnership of US imperialism, and Pakistan ’s intelligence agencies, with the fundamentalists ensured their spread, at least until 9/11 when the US began demanding a military solution. Military action against the fundamentalists will have limited success until basic economic, political and social problems of the working majority are solved.
In Australia we struggle against the ongoing retreat of the organised working class. In the face of the serious capitalist economic crisis there is no mass expression of the working class alternative. The class-collaborationist leadership of the trade union movement is unwilling and incapable of challenging the ruling class solutions to the crisis – cutting deals for pay cuts, shorter hours and other solutions demanded by the bosses to supposedly ‘save jobs’.
At the same time we witness recurring outbreaks of mass resistance to ruling class attacks such as outrage at Israel ’s war on Gaza last year, the 2003 US invasion of Iraq , ongoing attacks by the Australian government on refugees, the introduction of WorkChoices which attacked trade union rights and the 1999 massacres in East Timor .
Australian revolutionaries face specific contradictions. We live in a stable imperialist country and our working masses are deliberately kept quiescent by class-collaborationist trade union leaderships and propaganda offensives by the bourgeois media. Yet there is widespread questioning of the system, cynicism about capitalism and all its consequences. Few of those who are questioning can quite see what to do, and so much of the traditional labour movement has become part of the problem – the vanguard must really be a vanguard, especially in the realm of ideas.
In such contradictory struggles it is easy for revolutionary parties to lose confidence in the masses and seek the seemingly easier path of left reformism.
In his call for a Fifth International, Chavez spoke about the history of the socialist internationals, stating “all four Internationals, experiments to unite parties and currents and social movements from around the world, have lost their way along the road for different reasons — some degenerated, lost their force, disappeared soon after their formation. But none of them was able to advance the original aims that they had set themselves”.
Our movement has suffered setbacks, but it has always recovered and as Lenin was fond of saying “defeated armies learn well”. Every setback enables us to learn the lessons. Historically, this is being demonstrated by the experience of 21st century socialism and through the Cuban revolution – which have learnt well the lessons of our movement’s biggest setback in the last century - the degeneration and defeat of the Russian revolution.
Eighteen months ago we were expelled from the DSP after a bitter faction fight about how to build a revolutionary party in Australia . The political issues under debate have been clarified by the recent dissolution of the DSP into the Socialist Alliance. Both politically and organizationally the DSP has liquidated into a left-reformist formation.
By contrast we established the RSP in the tradition of Resistance and the SWP/ DSP a continuum extending back to the Vietnam War in Australia and to Cannon and Lenin internationally.
Our current leadership includes comrades who initiated and led Resistance, the Socialist Workers Party, the Democratic Socialist Party, the Socialist Alliance, Links and Green Left Weekly for many years.
In the decline of the old DSP, our movement suffered real losses. Cadres who had been trained over decades in revolutionary party building conceded defeat to left reformism. We lost the assets that had been built up over decades. But every coin has two sides – the loss of the material resources of the DSP is a reminder that a revolutionary party’s real assets is not buildings or bank accounts: It’s comrades. The heart and soul of revolution.
Our revolutionary program is not just a book, a document to sit on a shelf – brought out for educationals and talks. It’s a program of action – a vision of a new world that is brought to life by activism, by people, by cadre.
It’s harder work with a smaller party. There’s less resources. There’s more pressure on comrades. But that’s a good thing too. Hard work is what a party of struggle is built on. And we’d better get used to it, because it’s never going to let up. As PSUV comrade Heryck reminded us – the revolution doesn’t just take away your afternoons, but your weekends and nights also.
In this we feel a commonality of spirit and purpose not only with the founders of our movement in Australia, but also with the LPP when you began your own party-building project. When you left the PPP in 1992 you had a handful of ambitious and committed cadres- a small force which has grown into one of the largest and most influential left forces in a country dominated by religious fundamentalism, military dictatorship and imperialist aggression.
In the previous 18 months we have published 18 editions of Direct Action, established 5 branches in major cities, recruited new members, organized two national tours by our Indonesian comrades in KPRM-PRD, held our first national Congress and recently held our first Marxist Education conference. We have initiated and involved ourselves in campaigns across the country such as the anti-war military veterans campaign, Stand Fast, Palestine solidarity committees, IWD rallies, environmental campaigns and pro-choice committees.
We look to the revolutions currently underway in Cuba and Venezuela for inspiration and instruction. Consequently we have toured PSUV youth leader Heryck Rangel, involved ourselves in the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network and established Cuba-Venezuela clubs on campuses throughout a number of Australian cities. We know it is young people who have the imagination, the energy and the passion to lead revolutions and so we look to Australia’s campuses for a new generation of revolutionaries.
We resist because we have confidence in working people. We get frustrated, we get tired, we get angry. There’s so much rotten in society to be angry about. But we know that human solidarity will win in the end. There’s a lot of words that capitalism has claimed and tainted, but there’s some that they can’t twist, they can’t contort. Solidarity. Humanity.
There’s the humanity of the struggle itself: of those who put their lives on the line for - the heroes and martyrs of our struggle. And we remember new martyrs: Najma Khanum, Rehana Kausar, Abdul Salam, and Wahid Baluch.
Nothing can match the humanity of a revolution. Nothing that capitalism could offer could even come close to the humanity that is borne of collective struggle and collective victory. And there will be no greater collective victory than a socialist revolution – of building a socialist world.
While we might not live to see it, as James Cannon once pointed out, by doing what we do today, by devoting ourselves to the struggle we do earn ourselves the one privilege that we should not shun – we earn ourselves the right to call ourselves citizens of the socialist future.
In solidarity
Linda Waldron and Raymond Fulcher
On behalf of the RSP
