Today, we publish the joint international statement by the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Parties and organizations for the 1st of May, 2023, and the draft joint international statement proposed by the Communist Party in Switzerland.
The Swiss draft statement was written in response to the draft proposed by Maoist Road on the 15th of April, 2023, but was not circulated by the latter to the different Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Parties and organizations, with the result that a proper debate could not be carried out, and the original draft was simply imposed undemocratically, which gives reason to be concerned about hegemonic tendencies in the international communist movement.
In our opinion, the original draft — which in a slightly revised edition became the joint international statement — was characterized by a number of ideological and political problems, linguistic problems, problems of audience, and serious structural problems, all of which made it unsuitable as a manifesto of the international communist movement and as agitational material. For this reason, it was necessary to propose an alternative draft.
We publish our draft to serve the purpose of debate with the aim of promoting the democratization of the international communist movement, the main prospect of which is the creation of the International Communist Forum. At the same time, we also publish the other statement, which was signed by the Communist Party in Switzerland for the purpose of promoting the unity of the movement in spite of the aforementioned hegemonic tendencies. We have corrected the most severe linguistic problems of the statement to make it completely understandable to the reader.
Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!
FIGHT AGAINST CAPITALISM, IMPERIALISM, AND FASCISM! FIGHT FOR THE PROLETARIAN-SOCIALIST WORLD REVOLUTION!
On the 1st of May, the workers of the world aspire to unite as one single international class, taking to the streets and squares of all countries together with the exploited and oppressed people to condemn and fight against global capitalist exploitation.
Today, we Communists expose the imperialist system of capitalist exploitation in the imperialist countries themselves, and of colonial and semi-colonial rule in the Third World. Carrying the Red Flag on the front lines of class struggle, we oppose the class-collaborationist «trade unions» and Social-Democratic and revisionist scabs who seek to impose «labour-peace», that is, the peace of the exploiters, of wage-slavery, of a wretched existence which we workers have to eke out under the heel of the big monopolies while they accumulate untold profits and wealth from our blood, sweat, and tears.
The prices of essential goods are the highest they have been in the last 40 years, while our real wages have sunk even further. Millions of us are unemployed or underemployed in scores of countries, while in other countries, we either have to work three jobs to even afford rent, or we have to do the work of three people while being paid as one. Capital accumulation has reached such extremes that Bernard Arnault, the world’s richest person, now owns as much as the 4’000’000’000 poorest people on Earth combined. In other words, the capitalist crisis is being unloaded on our backs while the capitalists are getting richer than ever before.
As if that wasn’t enough, the profit-driven, capitalist destruction of the Earth’s climate is worse than ever before. 2023 is already seeing the warmest ocean surface temperature in recorded history. Neither the sham climate conferences attended by «our» rulers in their private jets nor the empty (and broken) promises of «Green» parties can stop the insatiable thirst of the capitalist parasites. The betrayal of the struggle at Lüzterath by the German Greens has already proved this to everyone with eyes and ears. The policies of the imperialist governments are leading to more and worse natural disasters all over the world, particularly in the Third World; they are are paying off oppressed countries to do «carbon offsetting» on their behalf; entire nations in the Third World are beeing flooded and will soon cease to exist; and millions of people are already being displaced by climate change today, and billions more will follow in this century, while the imperialists have already begun to shoot, starve, imprison, or drown anyone who dares to approach their fortified borders.
The destruction of us workers and of the climate of our planet is a law of capitalism. Marx pointed out in Capital: «Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth — the soil and the labourer.» The fundamental contradiction in the capitalist mode of production is the contradiction between the private character of ownership and the social nature of production. As long as this fundamental contradiction persists, the accumulation of wealth on fewer and fewer hands on the one hand, and the growing impoverishment of increasing numbers of people on the other hand, is unstoppable; as long as this fundamental contradiction persists, it is impossible to stop the destruction of the climate by the logic of capitalist growth.
The sick logic of capital does not stop at the destruction of humanity and nature. Limited by the natural resources, markets, and workforces of their own countries, the imperialist countries — and principally the imperialist superpowers: the United States, China, and Russia — are driven into conflict with each other over control of the resources, markets, and workforces of the Third World, and even of certain countries in the Second World of the smaller imperialist powers. Driven by their inexorable logic, the imperialists are today preparing a new, imperialist Third World War, for which the western European imperialists, the US imperialists, and the Chinese social-imperialists all state that they want to be ready for by the end of the 2020s or the beginning of the 2030s. The measures for strategic encirclement taken by the western imperialist bloc and the counter-measures taken by the eastern imperialist bloc are all heading in this exact direction.
Russian imperialism, seeing itself encircled by the western imperialist bloc through the expansion of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the construction of US military bases, and the remilitarization of Japanese imperialism, is now seeking to annex its last remaining neutral neighbouring countries using footholds already conquered in Moldova in the 1990s, Georgia in the 2000s, and Ukraine in the 2010s. Russia has now launched a large-scale war of aggression against Ukraine. The Ukrainian national war of resistance against Russian aggression is a just war which is supported by all peace-loving people of the world. Nevertheless, the western imperialist bloc is attempting by every means — sharing intelligence with and sending weapons, ammunition, and mercenaries to Ukraine, stationing troops along the eastern border of the European Union, and expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Finland and Sweden — to transform this just war into an unjust inter-imperialist war. An imperialist proxy war is being fought through the national war of resistance in Ukraine. We must oppose every attempt by our «own» imperialist governments to further this inter-imperialist aspect of the war without forgetting the need to support the Ukrainian people against Russian imperialism, especially the common people engaged in partisan warfare on the ground against the occupiers using whatever they have at hand, and not the high-tech specialized equipment which inevitably passes from Zelenskyj’s hands to those of the Azov Battalion.
Chinese social-imperialism is increasing its threats against Japan, sponsoring military coups in several Pacific nations, increasing its economic control over central Asia, actively preparing to annex Taiwan, and increasing its efforts to annex parts of Philippine national territory. Thus, the second theatre of the coming imperialist world war is being defined.
But not even Earth itself is enough for the imperialists. Spurred on by China’s attempts to expand its monopoly-capitalist companies into space for the purposes of asteroid mining and the conquest of helium on the Moon, US imperialism has massively expanded the budget of both the North Atlantic Space Agency and the US Space Force, planning to annex bodies in Outer Space by the year 2040 using military force if necessary. Just as there are no limits to capitalist greed, there are no limits to the warmongering of the imperialist superpowers.
But not all is dark. Spurred on by the economic crisis, we workers and oppressed people are rising up in large-scale class struggles in different countries. The whole world is seeing the class-conscious, combative movement of the French workers and people against the pension reform of the neo-Bonapartist Macron government, a movement which is seizing the streets of Paris and other French cities. Now that the Supreme Court has backed the pension reform, the powerful class struggles in France will no longer be able to be kept within the bounds of bourgeois democracy — the only way out is revolution and the destruction of the capitalist dictatorship as a whole. In Britain, Germany, and other countries, enormous strikes are ongoing against the neoliberal governments which continue to attempt to make the workers pay the bills for the covid-19 crisis and the energy crisis. Polish truck-drivers, one of the most exploited sections of the European working class, are currently on strike in Germany and its neighbouring countries. In Switzerland, mass mobilization is ongoing for the Feminist Strike on the 14th of June, in which more than 500’000 people out of a population of 8’000’000 participated in 2019, including by stopping work.
These powerful working-class struggles are providing hope for the exploited and oppressed people, even as some of them are being met by massive repression by the capitalist States. In their attempts to prevent these mass movements from being channelled into a revolutionary direction, the capitalist governments are directing their police thugs and intelligence services to repress and criminalize Communists and revolutionaries all over the world, as was most recently shown by the coordinated raids against anti-imperialist revolutionaries in Ireland. But repression breeds resistance. We Communists can and must double our efforts to lead these struggles in the direction of revolution.
The bourgeois-parliamentary system is increasingly losing its credibility for the masses. In most countries of the world, electoral participation is steadily dropping, while the capitalists themselves are searching for new ways to govern, increasingly reminiscent of fascism. However, the mass boycott of the bourgeois elections is neither conscious nor organized — it is a passive boycott. As part of educating the masses in the need for revolution to put an end to capitalism once and for all, we Communists must develop the electoral struggle by organizing the active boycott wherever appropriate, and by utilizing parliament as a tribune for agitation and propaganda wherever appropriate, depending on the concrete conditions in each country.
Violent revolution is the only way out of the Hell of capitalist crisis, climate change, and war. We must seize political power and abolish private property by force. The communist revolution is made necessary by the fundamental contradiction of capitalism itself.
We class-conscious workers must constitute or reconstitute genuine Communist Parties where they do not yet exist, and strengthen them where they do exist, under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. We must build up revolutionary armed forces capable of conducting economic sabotage against the capitalist monopolies behind the crisis, climate change, and wars, and of defending the revolutionary movement against State repression. We must build up a broad anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-fascist united front, increase our anti-militarist agitation and propaganda, and particularly develop large-scale mass work among the soldiers. All of this serves the objective of being able to prevent the imperialist world war by making revolution or to put an end to the imperialist world war by making revolution, all in accordance with the military science of the working class established by Comrade Mao Zedong. The ongoing People’s Wars in India, the Philippines, and other countries are already blazing a trail and setting an example for us Communists in how to carry out this important task, and they deserve our utmost support in words and in deeds.
But it is not enough that the Communists in each country unite in a single Communist Party and lead the workers’ struggle in that country. The Communists must unite on a world level and lead the struggle of the international working class and the oppressed people all over the globe. The Communists of the world can and must unite in a single international organization — the International Communist Forum proposed by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) — and preparations for the International Communist Conference to form such a forum must begin right now! In the face of the threat of the imperialist Third World War, what the movement urgently needs is a NEW ZIMMERWALD CONFERENCE. Recently, some people have attempted to invent a new «basis of unity» for the international communist movement, with the result that they «unified» themselves out of the movement entirely. They did so because they ignored that the movement already has a basis of unity — the statement Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!, in which the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement proclaimed Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to be the ideology of the international communist movement, a statement which in the 30 years since its publication has come to be basically accepted by every Communist Party and organization in the movement.
This year is the 30th anniversary of the adoption of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism by the movement; it is also the 175th anniversary of the publication of the Communist Manifesto, the programme of the world’s first international organization of Communists, the Communist League — let us take this opportunity to reaffirm our ideological basis of unity, to further develop our political basis of unity in the form of this and other joint international statements, campaigns, and days of action, and to prepare the establishment of our organizational basis of unity in an International Communist Forum, as a step in the direction of a reconstituted Communist International as an international federation of genuine Communist Parties waging revolutionary struggle under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism — no more and no less.
Today, as part of this struggle for the reunification of the movement in a single international organization, we Communists must take concrete steps in the direction of acting as a united current. At the very minimum, this must involve carrying out the following policies as one single, international, proletarian army. We must:
- Set an example of internationalist unity and struggle against the preparations for a new, imperialist Third World War!
- Unite and coordinate our efforts in all countries to promote the struggle against the deployment of troops, weapons, and ammunition for imperialist, reactionary, and unjust wars!
- Carry out mass work among the soldiers, both among the recruits and among those who «volunteer» out of economic desperation or who are coerced into enlisting by the reactionary States!
- Form a broad united front with all revolutionary, progressive, democratic, and genuinely patriotic forces against capitalist crisis, climate change, and war!
- Expose and fight the reformists, opportunists, Social-Democrats, and revisionists who support one or the other imperialist bloc, both of which are enemies to the death of the oppressed people!
- Build class-conscious, combative trade unions wherever they do not yet exist, and strengthen them wherever they do exist, for the purpose of organizing the labour struggles in the enterprises with the highest degrees of capitalist exploitation, including the service sector and various precarious forms of «gig-economy» work, as well as in the factories!
- Build up the movement of the workers and the semi-proletarian masses in the poor and working neighbourhoods where gentrification is increasingly concentrating them, so as to prepare the ground for these neighbourhoods to become future Red bastions of the revolution!
- Support the struggle of the peasantry in the semi-feudal countries for land to the tillers!
- Support the struggle of the slaves in the United States, the Gulf States, and other countries against the brutal exploitation by the capitalist slave-masters!
- Develop work among the poor farmers and farm workers in the capitalist countries who suffer under severe impoverishment, rural decay, semi-feudal leasing of means of production, seed-patents by imperialist monopolies, new forms of indentured servitude to the big banks, and monopoly agro-businesses destroying the environment!
- Develop the women’s movement under the guidance of proletarian feminism against the double exploitation and oppression of women, including unpaid labour and childcare, unequal wages, discrimination, femicide, prostitution, rape, and the ongoing massive assault against the right to abortion in the United States and other countries!
- Wrest away the queer movement from bourgeois liberal and post-modernist leadership by providing a concrete answer to the burning problems of queer (LGBT+) people, such as enormous rates of unemployment and homelessness, bans on transgender healthcare and attacks on their democratic rights, the still ongoing AIDS pandemic, and pogromist violence!
- Fight for the rights of children, who across the Third World in particular are used for cheap labour in sweatshops, mines, and other dangerous enterprises, who in the capitalist countries themselves are being forced back into the labour-market by new legislation, and who in several capitalist countries suffer under semi-feudal apprenticeship systems to this very day!
- Intensify the militant struggle against the racist oppression of migrants and refugees, who suffer under Apartheid-style disenfranchisement, are imprisoned in concentration camps all over the imperialist countries (and increasingly in the Third World to which they are exported), or are massacred at sea and on land by the reactionary border guards, and fight for their right to asylum, work, housing, freedom of movement, freedom of religion, and democratic rights!
- Organize the youth to break the vicious cycle of depolitization and individualization they suffer under in capitalist society, fight against the prevalence of hard drugs in youth culture, fight for democracy in places of education, educational reform, and democratic rights for the youth, and harness their rebellious spirit to make the youth movement into the front line in the revolutionary struggle!
- Fight for the release of all Communist, revolutionary, progressive, democratic, and genuinely patriotic political prisoners and prisoners of war, such as G.N. Saibaba in India, Kevin «Rashid» Johnson» in the United States, the thousands of revolutionary Turkish and Kurdish prisoners, the arrested and disappearead in Iran, the hundreds of Maoists and thousands of Uyghur and Tibetan national-liberation fighters disappeared by the fascist Chinese State, Palestinian political prisoners like Georges Ibrahim Abdallah and Ahmad Sa’adat, the thousands of prisoners of war taken by the Peruvian State in the course of the People’s War in Peru, and Kampuchean Communists and revolutionaries like Khieu Samphan who have been falsely imprisoned under charges of «genocide», while Yankee mass-murderers like Henry Kissinger continue to walk free; and fight for the release of all those working and poor people everywhere who are in prison because they could not afford to pay their debts, bills, fines, bail, or had to commit minor crimes to survive in this hellish economic system!
- Fight against the growing fascist danger in countries like the United States, the reactionization of the bourgeois States in countries like France and Italy, and the already existing corporate government systems in countries like India, Switzerland, and China — not to defend bourgeois democracy but to put the proletarian revolution on the agenda!
These policies must necessarily be applied creatively by Communists in different countries. In some countries, the new-democratic revolution is on the agenda; in others, the socialist revolution is on the agenda. We Communists must master the use of both clandestine and open forms of organization, both legal and illegal forms of struggle, both open and secret forms of work, both the electoral boycott and the use of parliament as a tribune, all depending on the concrete strategic and tactical situation.
But we Communists must always remember that neither New Democracy nor socialism is our final objective. They are means to an end, and we must not allow them to become ends in themselves. We must never lose sight of our irreplaceable goal: the worldwide realization of a society without classes, patriarchy, or States, without exploitation and oppression, without crises and wars, without climate change, where everyone gets what they need and contributes what they can — communism.
On this 1st of May, the International Workers’ Day of Struggle, we, the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Communist Parties and organizations of the whole world, declare:
Communist Party in Switzerland 