From A World To Win News Service

Revolutionary Communist Manifesto Group (Europe):
Migrant Crisis: Humanity Needs Communist Revolution!

October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

28 September 2015. A World to Win News Service. The following is by the Revolutionary Communist Manifesto Group (Europe). A leaflet based on this article, prepared for mass distribution by the RCMG, is included after it.

In order for the waves of the Mediterranean Sea and perilous paths to not swallow up war-ridden, miserable and oppressed masses, in order for the migrants who have survived the road to not be welcomed by police batons, barbed wire, prisons and camps, in order for thousands upon thousands of immigrant women to not become victims of international sex slavery networks, in order for the homes, jobs, existence and future of the people to not be burned in the fire of imperialist, national and religious wars, the capitalist system must be destroyed, in its totality, with all its exploitative relations of production and oppressive social relations, with all its old and reactionary institutions and thinking. To clear the face of the earth of all this darkness and garbage there is no other way but a forcible social revolution. It is only on the debris of this world that a new one can be built, with the participation of billions of toiling and oppressed women and men. A new world where people are not forced to defy the anger of seas and the fire of deserts in order to satisfy their mental and material needs.

(Adapted from the statement by the Communist Party of Iran [Marxist-Leninist-Maoist] on 29 August 2015)

A major crisis is shaking Europe, the very birthplace of capitalism and imperialism, as tens of thousands of refugees stream into it from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere where the very workings of the world imperialist system have made life intolerable. The direct results of the injustices, spiraling wars and invasions, of exploitation and the open wounds of colonialism, of the ever more obscene inequalities and the dashed hopes of so many millions are showing up on the very doorstep of Europe. The tip of an iceberg of tears of both suffering and anger, normally hidden away from the view of European polite society, is emerging and, in so doing, is seriously shaking the politics and institutions of the existing order, and even rattling its very legitimacy.

It is not that the magnitude of the human tragedy whose epicentre is now in Syria was unknown. Four million people have been forced to flee Syria and seven million more have been displaced within the country itself—astounding numbers, and even more so when we consider that the country’s population is about 20 million. Millions are crowded into camps, cynically manipulated by the Turkish authorities or stocked in impoverished Jordan, and a million more are in tiny Lebanon, itself never fully recovered from years of war and strife. Millions have been violently displaced in Congo, Mali and Afghanistan. Even many who have benefited from higher education or have a slightly better position in life from countries like Tunisia and Pakistan are losing hope in maintaining a semblance of normalcy.

The present horrors of the world have their main origin and source of fuel in the system of capitalist exploitation. All this represents not only the brutal legacy of past crimes such as colonialism and the slave trade, however deep and fresh these wounds may be. The breakneck penetration of capitalism over the past few decades under the signboard of globalization has further intensified the glaring inequalities in the world and further ripped apart the existing social fabric without offering a viable and desirable alternative. But today, thanks to television and the Internet, this growing and vicious inequality is flaunted in the face of people even in the most remote village while the supposed superiority of Western civilization is proclaimed in a thousand ways.

Nor has this “capitalism on steroids” done anything to end or soften other horrors that are wrapping themselves in the cloak of tradition and superstitious belief. Many of the West’s most important leaders are themselves promoters of anti-scientific nonsense and/or have no hesitancy to ally with and prop up the most backward, reactionary forces such as the rulers of Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, the very process of churning up the fields for further capitalist exploitation produces new batches of embittered and disoriented people susceptible to other forms of reactionary ideology, including Islamic fundamentalism, as well as Europe’s own home-grown fascists.

Even the most cursory look at the Middle East over the last period shows that the West has not brought Enlightenment but only helped aggravate the conditions for an ever darker obscurity. The workings of modern capitalist penetration have given rise to a perverse religious fundamentalist reaction, while the people suffer as these two forces increasingly collide in bloody antagonism, or collude when they find it expedient. Each new war or political intervention, large or small, has not only created new refugees, but also swelled the ranks of the jihadis. Even the economic development that has taken place has done so under conditions which are rapidly destroying the precious resources of the planet and leading to even more misery and dislocation.

No, the crisis in Europe has not been caused by the sudden realization of the depth of people’s terror and desperation, but by the inescapable reality that it will be impossible to forever wall off Europe from the ever increasing sea of misery and violent storms surrounding it. Thus the authorities of Europe, the political parties, the different institutions can no longer play deaf and blind, and are all being forced to take a position. For a week or two Germany was heralded for its “conscience” and “compassion”, before the re-introduction of border controls and the controversy over the suspension of the Schengen agreement reminded everyone of the underlying reality of fortress Europe.

In the midst of this hypocrisy, a virulent and growing fascist current is arising that demands the full mobilization of society against what it perceives as foreign hordes, and non-Christian to boot. While official society is sharply divided between reaction and worse reaction, there are also millions of people who are disgusted by all this and want to welcome the refugees, who proclaim a common humanity and sense some sort of intertwining of interests and destiny. But for the most part this sentiment has been confined and stifled by the inability to even imagine a real solution to the system that is ripping so much of the world apart. This is why it is possible for people who know better to suspend disbelief and put their hopes in people like Angela Merkel [Chancellor of Germany] or institutions like the British Labour Party.

The truth is that it is impossible for a handful of wealthy countries to benefit from and enforce the backwardness and poverty in so much of the world without having to confront the consequences of that domination. No Europe which rests upon the foundation of capitalism can escape the fate and the need to be a “fortress Europe” that is protected and armed against the humanity on which it has preyed. This reality is just as true for Francois Hollande [President of France] and Merkel or Jeremy Corbyn, the British Labour Party’s new face, as it is for the openly cruel Victor Orban of Hungary or the many neo-fascist parties waiting in the wings in Western Europe. They are using the present crisis to intensify their demagogic appeals and offering to solve the hypocrisy of European leaders and institutions by openly appealing to racism and chauvinism and rejecting even the capitalists’ own motto, “liberté, égalité, fraternité”.

The usual unquestioning assumption of the permanency of the prevailing order and values in Europe is eroding. Why do some people have rights to a cushion against the sharpest edge of exploitation while others have only the “right” to a speedy deportation? The guiding principles and norms of the West are revealed to be the protection of privilege and inequality at the expense of the great bulk of humanity. Discourse legitimizing the present order, the domination of the planet by capitalism, is losing its usual hold on many people, who are now declaring their support of migrants: “They are here because we were (and are) there”, or “Open the borders so we can breathe”. These beginning cracks in the ideology and justification of the capitalist order need to be burst open into full-scale rejection. People need to be won clearly to see the need and the possibility for a radically different socio-economic system, a different political order, a different culture, and emancipating morals and values in keeping with people’s highest aspirations and true potential.

People do need to be outraged, express their common humanity, fight against the cold-heartedness and hypocrisy of Europe’s leaders. We do need revolution, and nothing deserves the name of revolution that does not have as a central motor addressing and ultimately overcoming the contradictions between a handful of wealthy countries and the hundreds of millions who have suffered at their hands. Any revolution in Europe must have an internationalist, not a “European” perspective.

The political power in every European state rests upon and protects a whole socio-economic system of exploitation whose tentacles reach throughout the world. Globalization has only made this exploitation more pervasive, more brutal and more disruptive of the existing social fabric. Every government of these states is required to enforce and facilitate this process. Even the pathetic Tsipras of Greece is now explaining how these bitter realities cannot possibly be avoided.

Belief in the possibility of a welcoming, inclusive but still imperialist Europe is worse than just an illusion. It hides the present and past reality of what Western capitalist democracy and its value system perpetuates on the world; it cannot possibly be implemented regardless of who is elected; and it is incapable of standing up to the reactionary attacks from either the howling fascist forces or the Islamists who pretend to offer an alternative moral and social order in opposition to the “decadence and misery” dished out by the West. Indeed, war in the Middle East is spreading; even more refugees will take even more desperate measures to escape the horrors of all sorts that will only intensify; and women, half of humanity, will continue to face old and new forms of oppression and degradation. Obscene inequality, virtual slavery in the sex trade or sweatshops, vast populations condemned to disease and squalor, children and youth whose future is stolen from them—capitalism needs all this to thrive.

Millions in Europe have been moved and outraged by the razor wire on the frontiers, the deportations at gunpoint, the squalid camps and threats of worse. This is a very important and overdue development that can and must be developed into an uncompromising struggle to beat back the reactionary response and to extend a real welcome and solidarity to the sisters and brothers arriving in Europe as well as the many more trapped in hellish conditions abroad. Through this process people need to confront what can and needs to be done to overthrow this system and build a completely different kind of society, including the fact that this can only be brought about through communist revolution.

Overcoming the horrors of capitalism and imperialism has been undertaken before. Indeed tremendous and inspiring things were accomplished in the socialist revolutions of the 20th century, in the Soviet Union and even more so with the Chinese revolution. These revolutions were ultimately defeated by a new capitalist class of exploiters in those countries. As a result, capitalists the world over have triumphantly declared the permanence of their system and the futility of any effort at real social transformation. Today’s refugee crisis is one more evidence and a wake-up call that the world needs a completely and radically different social order, without exploitation and oppression, one based on the collective conscious cooperation of all of humanity and the collective and judicious management of the world’s resources and habitat for the benefit of all of the people of the earth and for the protection of the planet. Revolutionary communists today have a deeper, re-envisioned and more scientific understanding of both what society requires and the complex processes needed to achieve this world historic transformation. Bob Avakian has developed a new synthesis of communism based on deeply learning from the great achievements as well as the significant shortcomings of the previous efforts at proletarian revolution while incorporating knowledge obtained from other fields of human activity.

The immigration crisis profoundly reveals the conditions of humanity today and the need for a deep-going revolutionary change. Glimmers of humanity reaching for genuine emancipation can be seen in both the determination of refugees not to be deterred and the welcome many are offering. The political turmoil is setting enemies of the people and guardians of the old order at each other’s throats and creating openings for bringing forward something really new. But to confront the complexities of the developing Europe-wide political crisis, to be able to withstand the reactionary onslaughts likely to come down, to be able to build upon the positive stirrings and sentiments that are emerging but also in danger of being smothered once again by ruling class hypocrisy and cynical manipulations, people need a rigorous and scientific understanding and outlook that correctly explains the world and shows what we can do about it.

The current crisis is full of real and serious dangers, not only for the refugees but for everyone. But these same explosive conditions also bring real opportunities to begin to carve out a different type of future. No more pining over the broken promises of an increasingly bankrupt European social democracy! Rather we need to look beyond the horizons of the present system and begin to construct the kind of movement that not only fights to beat back the reactionary onslaught but can also lead towards the only real solution, communist revolution.

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A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine, a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.

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