1 Strategy for a global crisis

We are in a global emergency, one that is marked by an insoluble economic and financial crisis, runaway climate change, growing inequality, hunger and poverty as well as the failure of capitalist political systems in every country.

The crises are interconnected. Each feeds the others, reinforcing and deepening the problems facing humanity. Nowhere was this more harshly demonstrated than at the Copenhagen conference in December 2009. World political leaders could not even agree the smallest of cuts in levels of carbon emissions that are the cause of global warming.

While they bailed out the banks in order to prevent the financial system from collapsing altogether, the same leaders were incapable of putting the interests of the planet above profit. Yet it is the unsustainable, profit-driven growth of the last 30 years – the period of corporate-driven, free-market globalisation – that has accelerated global warming.  

No single crisis can be solved in isolation, nor by a country acting alone. International solutions are required. The approach has to be: act globally and start locally to create the conditions for universal solutions.

Poverty and hunger cannot be ended while political systems from Washington to Nairobi are inextricably linked to upholding capitalism. Drastic cuts in overall carbon emissions cannot be achieved within the capitalist model of production The drive to war for resources, or the land grab by richer countries, will not halt until the profit system itself is replaced by co-ownership and production for need.

Revolutionary political organisations of a new type should be built internationally to provide the leadership necessary to facilitate this historic transformation of social relations. They will need to learn from history – from the struggles for democracy, national liberation, self-determination, human rights, against Stalinism, for climate justice and for socialism.

They will have to articulate the needs and aspirations of the powerless majority in creative ways, rejecting dogmatic thinking rooted in the past. For new political organisations to win the support of the mass of ordinary people, they have to develop an ongoing analysis of the contradictions of the new world disorder and develop practices that point to revolutionary change.

The uneven development of capitalism, shown in the doubling of the world’s working class to three billion as a result of Asia’s incorporation into the global economy and the rise of Indian and Chinese capitalism, has weakened the old centres of capital in Europe and the United States.

Switching production to cheaper-labour areas, far from solving capitalism’s problems actually worsened them in the long run. The expansion of production required to overcome falling rates of profit (see section 3) depended upon the formation of an unsustainable international financial system founded on creating and recycling debt. This is the essential contradiction behind the global economic crisis.

The loss of influence and authority of the United States is shown by its disastrous war and occupation in Iraq and its military adventure in Afghanistan-Pakistan to prop up the corrupt and dictatorial Karzai regime. Behind the cover of the “war on terror”, and the “restoration of democracy”, NATO forces are waging an unwinnable war against a people fighting for national self-determination.

Far from defeating terrorism, the policies of US imperialism in particular, especially in relation to Israel’s continuing repression of the Palestinian people, drive young people towards misguided and fruitless individual acts of resistance which more often than not kill innocent local people. 

At the same time, the absence of a secular revolutionary alternative is a factor in the turn of some young Muslims towards terror groups like Al-Qaeda which, paradoxically, have their origins in organisations funded and encouraged by the US during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

While the US and Britain condemn “terrorism”, they themselves practice state terror or endorse the actions of others, in particular those of the Israeli state against the leaders of the Palestinian movement within the Occupied Territories.

What are required are not-for-profit solutions achieved in struggle against capitalist corporations and governments. The aim is to transfer power to the masses out of the hands of the bourgeois classes and their representatives in every country.

In practice, this means expropriating corporate assets and turning them into a collectively owned and controlled commons, along with all natural resources. These would come under the direct management of a network of People’s Assemblies that replace existing state institutions.

Through these solutions we can achieve a real and practical unity between the ordinary working people of the developed economies and those in the developing countries. Only in a world free of exploitation and discrimination, where people are not suffering from starvation, can we put an end to all kinds of terrorism and violence.

The struggle for revolutionary, democratic change to end the rule of global capitalism and its political agencies can only succeed if it is international in scope and appeal. A World to Win in Britain therefore appeals to like-minded individuals, groups and movements throughout the world to work for the building of an international revolutionary alliance.

It will encourage member organisations to consult and collaborate with each other to develop and strengthen the principles and perspectives outlined in the Manifesto of Revolutionary Solutions. Each organisation would develop revolutionary perspectives and policies in line with the concrete conditions in each country, region and continent.

The global crisis of the capitalist system is certain to deepen. It will lead to intensified attacks on the standard of living of workers in the developed economies and super-exploitation of the masses elsewhere. Now that the credit-induced boom has ended, the epoch will once again reveal itself as one of wars and revolutions.

Conditions for revolutionary change are increasingly favourable. Millions of people in every country no longer believe official propaganda about the virtues of free market capitalism. Equal numbers are disillusioned with political systems that are pawns of big business and finance. Leaders who have held sway with rhetoric and nationalism are losing their grip. We have a world to win.

In concert with other countries, a revolutionary government in Britain would pursue policies to further the objectives set out in this Manifesto, including:

• an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and an offer of unconditional economic assistance to democratic governments
• an end to the “war on terror”, torture and state-organised kidnapping
• support for the Palestinians, the Kurds, Tibetans, Chechens and all peoples engaged in struggles for self-determination
• technological and economic assistance to developing economies free from conditions formerly imposed by the IMF/World Bank/World Trade Organisation
• a new United Nations that lives up to its Charter and represents each member state equally as a step towards a world system of government
• support for the governments and people of Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and other countries pursuing alternatives to the market economy
• opposition to the undemocratic, corporate-dominated European Union and support for alternative non-capitalist Europe-wide models
• the unilateral destruction of nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction.

 

 

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