RI Articles & Statements

On The United Front in Canada

Statement of Revolutionary Initiative

Introduction

If we are to create a new society, we must ask a fundamental question: who are our friends and who are our enemies?.  We must understand which class forces can lead the revolution and which will play a supporting or vacillating role.  We must also identify the class forces that are irredeemably opposed to revolution and will fight tooth and nail to defend the current system of exploitation and domination.  The former must be rallied into a powerful United Front to struggle against the latter and it is critical that we draw the correct the line between the two camps.  Too far to one side would water down the revolutionary movement and create a false unity with forces that are actually opposed to revolution.  Too far to the other would alienate class forces that would have otherwise supported the revolution, strengthening the enemy and weakening the forces for revolution.

What is Canadian Society?

Canadian society has reached the highest stage of development under capitalism, the stage of imperialism.  Capital has been concentrated in the hands of gigantic monopolies that control nearly the entire economy and dominate the political and cultural superstructure of society.  Finance capital is also highly centralized and forms the dominant faction of the monopoly capitalist class and is tightly connected with every other section of the economy.  On the world stage, Canadian imperialism uses the export of capital and political and military intervention to exploit and dominate the semi-colonial Third World nations. Continue reading “On The United Front in Canada”

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A big debate within the Greek Left

Communist Organization of Greece, Statement Nr 7/2009 (24/2/2009)

After the revolt of December in Greece, a big debate develops within the Greek Left concerning the attitude of the communists in front of the bourgeois governments. This heated discussion is part of a greater debate about the tasks, the strategy and the tactics of the left and communist forces in Greece.

The polemical character of the debate is owed to the fact that, during December 2008, the split within the Greek Left became more wide: One part (KOE, the Radical Left Coalition/SYRIZA and the extra-parliamentarian left groups) supported the Revolt. Another part (mostly the Communist Party of Greece/KKE, as well as the right-wingers of the former “euro-communist” current) condemned the movement and labeled it as “violent acts of masked rioters of suspicious origin and of reactionary character”. Thus, indirectly but objectively, aligned themselves with the bourgeois-governmental block of “law and order”. Since January 2009 the debate became very acute, as the KKE leadership attacked repeatedly KOE and SYRIZA with statements and publications in its Press, slandering us as “supporters of the social-democratic PASOK” because of our slogan “Down with this government of murderers!”.

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Afghanistan: The occupiers’ new strategy – intensify the occupation

A World to Win News Service .
The occupiers of Afghanistan, led by the U.S., have announced that they will present their new strategy soon. While they may not reveal all the elements of their strategy, some aspects are apparent in what they are already doing.

For some time now the U.S. has exerted increasing pressure to compel its allies to send more troops, especially into the war zones. This pressure as well as the failure of the U.S. and Nato forces to gain the control of the country gave rise to opposition to the previous American strategy from European countries and in particular the British, who warned that simply increasing the number of invaders on the ground cannot stop the situation from deteriorating. The alternative they presented involves negotiating with the Taleban and other Islamic opposition forces, and strengthening the puppet government and its army. Making use of tribal leaders and their militias has been another important element of discussion among the occupiers for a long time.

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Afghanistan and the occupiers’ dilemma: more troops or a different approach?

A World to Win News Service.
The debate over the need for a new strategy in Afghanistan has reached a fever pitch among imperialist circles. There is rarely a news item about that country that does not at least state the need for a new approach. The occupiers’ think tanks and Afghanistan experts are busy discussing and debating the necessary elements. Barack Obama’s inauguration as U.S. president may provide the occasion for the rollout of a new plan, or at least steps touted as such.

It is now very widely recognized that the approach the U.S. has been using so far has failed. While the U.S., which is leading the imperialists occupying Afghanistan, finds it difficult to openly admit this failure, that judgement is implicit in American officials’ demands that other Nato countries match the U.S. in greatly increasing the number of foreign troops. (See AWTWNS, 2 November 2008)

The U.S., Canada, the British and other imperialists fighting in the war zones tried hard for a long time to pressure other Nato countries to fight alongside them. There has been an alarmist tone to reports from imperialist circles, including military and parliamentary spokespeople and certain humanitarian agencies, highlighting the deteriorating situation, the resurgence of the Taleban and the real possibility that, as they like to put it, "Afghanistan could become a failed state." Most of their reports recommend that other Nato countries take part in the fighting and that they all send more troops, warning that otherwise the result could be complete failure.

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Afghan Maoists: On the military situation of the Taleban & other Islamic anti-gov’t forces

A World to Win News Service.
Following are edited excerpts from issue no. 19 (July 2008) of Shola Jawid, organ of the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan. The explanations in parentheses are by AWTWNS.

The Taleban made little use of guerrilla methods in their war against the "Islamic Interim State of Afghanistan" headed by Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmed Shah Massood (the warlord regime that came to power after the fall of the pro-Soviet regime in 1992 and eventually fell to the Taleban in 1996). For the most part their offensives took the form of conventional warfare.

In their initial confrontation with the U.S. and UK (after the October 2001 invasion), they used the same methods and suffered heavy losses. After two months of putting up more resistance than the invaders expected, they quickly retreated from the regions under their control. At that time they were unable to reorganise their forces to fight guerrilla warfare and continue fighting in the villages or mountains. In addition to these organisational and military questions, other major factors behind their inability to sustain the fighting were the lack of mass support and low morale in their own ranks due to the general assumption that it was impossible to resist the superior military forces led by the U.S. This defeat caused a relatively large section of the Taleban forces to defect and join the puppet regime.

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RI Articles & Statements

As Crisis Advances, So Will Movement for Revolution

Statement of Revolutionary Initiative.

Global capitalism has entered a crisis of historical levels, the worst seen since the financial collapse that lead to the Great Depression. This crisis has already resulted in widespread production slowdowns, a freeze in capital investment, job losses, and an increase in the oppression and exploitation of the proletariat world-wide. What sets this recession apart from the usual cyclical crises produced by capitalism is not only its severity, but it’s origins. Unlike previous bubble collapses such as the dot-com crash of the 1990s this crisis is occurring in the very heart of the imperialist system, within monopoly finance capital. It has begun to spread outward to infect other areas of the economy and will result in widespread destruction of the means of production as plants in various industries scale back production or close shop entirely, as well as an acceleration of the process of capital concentration in the hands of the surviving monopolies.

These developments have proven the correctness of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist understanding of the moribund nature of the capitalist system. Finance capital, the dominant faction of the imperialist ruling class, has used its monopoly position to heavily distort the overall economy, greatly increasing the anarchy of production in the system as a whole. They were able to heavily concentrate capital in their hands, using it to create a speculative bubble detached from the real economy or any legitimate measure of value and drawing capital away from productive sectors of the economy. This reliance on speculative bubbles arises out of the stagnancy of the imperialist system, with rates of profit from productive investment on a continuous decline.

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