Joint Statement from the LCFI (Great Britain, Argentina, Brazil) and Classconscios.org (US, Australia)

On this May Day, 2024, imperialism seems like a beast kicking around trying to avoid the march of history. It tries at any cost to avoid its historic defeat in the face of the increasingly broad arc of resistance from the oppressed countries against it and also the massive demonstrations of the oppressed within its own borders, its streets and universities. In decline, imperialism becomes increasingly dangerous, tears up the international conventions it has signed, despises the forums in which it finds itself in the minority, appeals to modern forms of Nazi-fascism, mercenaries, terrorism, the slaughter of entire peoples and threaten the Third World War.

The military forces commanded by the US have been defeated militarily and morally in each and every military battle since Syria (Aleppo, 2016), Afghanistan (2021) and currently in Ukraine and Gaza, by the rebel provinces of Donbass and the Houthi guerrilla government in Yemen.

But, the last and most powerful counterattacks by oppressed peoples and countries, were delivered by Hamas on 10/8/2023 and by Iran on 04/13/2024. They demonstrated the deep vulnerability of imperialism and its “aircraft carrier” in the form of a Zionist entity in Southwest Asia.

In its first direct attack on Israel in history, Iran demonstrated that the impenetrable Iron Dome, Arrow-3 and David’s Sling are nothing more than a sieve in the face of an obsolete part of its weapons. Iran saturated Israel’s defences with 350 cheap drones over Israeli cities. The defence forces of Israel, the USA, Great Britain and Jordan combined did not prevent the  Iranian rain from reaching Zionist soil and at least 9 Iranian ballistic missiles penetrated the Israeli defence network and hit the military bases of Nevatim and Ramon. With cruise missiles, Iran pulverized the Golan Heights Mossad intelligence facility.

NATO’s defeats by Russia in Ukraine, of Israel by the Axis of Resistance in Southwest Asia, followed by the triumphant anti-France struggles in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, exemplary for the rest of the African continent, combined with the unstoppable expansion of China’s new silk route on the world market, force imperialism to retreat to maintain greater control in the Pacific Ocean, Western Europe and, above all, the American continent. Losing ground on the three continents of the old world, the imperialist system led by the USA creates a “western zone” on the so-called continents of the new and brand new world, with its military (NATO, AUKUS), financial and ideological apparatuses, where they are deepening political oppression and the state terror of workers to accentuate their class exploitation, through fascist governments. The organizations that sign this declaration are part of the Marxist resistance to this fascist tendency in this part of the planet.

May Day Reports from the countries where the LCFI and classconscious.org are present:

United States: Imperialist decay, fascist perspectives and popular resistance

In the United States, the heart of the Empire, the decay and crisis of western imperialism is at its most obvious and acute. This decrepitude is represented by its decaying President. Whilst Obama may have been able to save the US ruling class after the crash of 2008 “Genocide Joe” has been far less successful. The ruling class itself is deeply split between continuing to support the failing Democrats or break once and for all with bourgeois democracy and back the open fascist and seditionist Donald Trump.

The consequences for both the US and international working class of the most powerful global empire in history embracing Christian fascism are highly unpredictable. However, the actions of the US working class in the period ahead could have just as much impact. The rapid spread of Palestine Solidarity encampments on US university campuses and the overall militancy of the mostly spontaneous upsurge re Gaza genocide is a direct echo of the George Floyd monster mobilizations against police killings in the summer 2020 against which Trump wanted to use the army. The “no preference” vote in Democratic Party primaries so far relates directly to the genocide in Gaza and overlaps with the street marches and famous encampments which recall Occupy Wall Street in 2011. So, the election year circus will intersect directly with the youth resistance to Genocide Joe. When Trump is elected (by fair means or foul) the likelihood of mass resistance to his attacks Is prefigured by today’s movement which builds on the others like 2020 and 2011.

Great Britain, Advanced state of decay and collapse of Conservatives

British imperialism is today a moth-eaten outpost and vassal of US imperialism, which has been accentuated since it left the European Union in 2021. However, it is conjuncturally slightly out of step with much of the rest of the imperialist world, as the bourgeois imperialist right has been continually in power for 14 years and is in a state of decay and near collapse.

We are likely to see the Zionist, overtly pro-imperialist Labour Party come to power in the next few months. There could be even be a Labour landslide electoral victory, on the scale of 1997, purely by default, because of the advanced state of decay and collapse of the Tories under Sunak. The Tories are desperately trying to use the issue of immigration and asylum to try to generate some element of popular support, with their brutal scheme to deport migrants to Rwanda as a gamble, but this looks to have massively failed. They are hated by most of the population.

Labour’s membership has been massively purged of almost all the left-social-democratic and better elements that joined en masse in a working-class revolt against austerity behind Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership bid in 2015. His leadership was deliberately sabotaged by the neoliberal right wing and their Zionist allies in the period between 2015 and late 2019.  A concentrated campaign of fake accusations of anti-Semitism against the left and manipulation of Brexit – and the tactically malevolent demand for a second referendum – were designed to bring about a large-scale Labour electoral defeat, which they duly did.

However, such was the weak politics of the Corbynites that they cooperated with their own demise. Corbyn repeatedly apologised for virtually non-existent anti-Semitism in the Labour left and threw his own supporters under the bus, and he also allowed Starmer control of Brexit policy giving him free rein to antagonise that layer of the working class that supported Brexit as a misdirected protest against austerity, driving them into the arms of the populist Tory right led by Boris Johnson.

As a result of all this, there is a sizeable leftist layer of ex-Labour people whose antipathy to the overtly Zionist, neoliberal Labour leadership is such that they correctly oppose giving electoral support to the Starmer-dominated Labour Party. The Gaza conflict has exposed the nature of the Zionists who purged Corbyn, as genocidal, murderous racists, and as a result advocating a vote for Labour has become unthinkable among much of the Palestine solidarity movement’s rapidly growing mass base.

The victory of George Galloway in the recent Rochdale by-election was a sign of things to come; there is a mushrooming movement of independent leftist challenges to Labour, so far on a fragmented, local level, that is likely to be an important player in the coming general election. There is even a potentially potent challenge to Starmer himself in his own seat. After the election this is likely to multiply, as the level of leftist antipathy to Starmer is already on a very high level. There is also a strong likelihood that the lackeyism of Labour will give renewed strength to the far right under a Labour government, so struggles against a neoliberal Labour government will go hand in hand with struggles against the far right.

At the time, the trade union bureaucracy is doubling down in its support for Starmer, such as the leader of Britain’s biggest union UNITE, Sharon Graham, who was elected in 2021 with the support of much of the reformist and centrist left despite openly pledging not to oppose Starmer politically. Now she, as the leader of the biggest union in Britain, is openly pro-Starmer and pro-genocide over Gaza, and is actively trying to ban UNITE members from opposing Zionism and exposing the lies directed against the Corbyn movement. Mick Lynch of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union, previously Britain’s most militant and radical union, who put himself at the head of the strike movement against inflation in 2022, has now come out strongly for a vote to Starmer. And the TUC and Labour bureaucracy have shown their cretinous fealty to imperialism by voting at their 2023 Congress to demand increased military spending by Britain as part of the war drive of Britain against Russia and China.

The trade unions, despite a considerable outburst of militancy triggered by high inflation in 2022, have not recovered from the strategic defeat inflicted on them by Thatcher in the 1980s above all with the defeat of the miners. They will continue to fail to do so until the current bureaucracy is replaced by a leadership committed to class struggle and a complete break with support for all neoliberal politicians in Labour. 

The massive growth of the Palestine movement is a sign of things to come. Huge numbers are seeing the barbaric nature of imperialism for the first time because of this genocide. The mass revolt of students in the US is beginning to spread to Britain, Ireland and France. It should be recalled that mass student radicalisation has often been a precursor of mass working class radicalisation further down the line. May 1968 is the best-known example. It looks likely that the pro-imperialist labour bureaucracy will face serious challenges in the next period.

Australia: The Labor Government is a faithful servant of finance capital

In Australia, the increasingly unpopular Albanese Labor Government is massively increasing military spending which it is financing through ongoing austerity and cuts to social services. Its continued failure to demand the release of Julian Assange, signing of AUKUS & its steadfast support for the imperialists proxy wars in West Asia & Ukraine, Labor has sided with the most vicious policies of US imperialism. Its open militarism is fuelling the deepest anti-war movement since the 1970’s, which are taking the form of Pro-Palestinian solidarity protests. Labor has proven itself once again to be a faithful servant of finance capital not just on militarism but through ever expanding fossil fuel projects, doing nothing to address the cost-of-living crisis and allowing Covid19 to spread unchecked in the working class.

The Union bureaucracies are doing their best to keep a lid on the growth of both anti-war and workers struggles to increase their wages. However, as the crisis on all fronts deepens their grip on the working class is weakening. As elsewhere, the class war is heating up. The ruling class knows that both the weak ALP and the far-right Liberal Party will be unable to win the support of the majority and therefore as elsewhere they are preparing in advance through building up the repressive powers of the state to attempt to suppress the working class with an iron fist.

Argentina: Fascism supported by US Imperialism.

In Argentina, the Milei government promotes a brutal adjustment against the working masses and deepening the country’s dependence on imperialism, especially the United States in its different wings, including both Democrats and Republicans. This trend is part of imperialism’s offensive to reinforce its geostrategic control in South America by carrying out a fascist recolonization of the continent in a dynamic where the retreat of imperialism in Asia and Africa forces it to ensure more firmly its control in South America itself. In this context, popular struggles are growing, such as the march in defence of the public university on April 23 and the labour conflicts that are taking place, such as the recent passenger transport strikes and where the CGTI itself calls for a general strike for May 9. Even so, Milei for now is supported by the support of imperialism and the national High Bourgeoisie. It is also sustained by the lack of articulation of the bourgeois opposition, especially Peronist, and its weakness in building a valid alternative and because the workers’ struggles have not yet taken a leap in quality to push back Milei’s offensive. To this we must add the sectarianism of the left, especially the pseudo-Trotskyists, which are not capable of forming consistent political struggles against the offensive of Milei’s own government.

Brazil: To defeat the fascist threat, Lula needs to break with the centre and the bourgousie

In Brazil, the largest working population in Latin America achieved a great victory over fascism, avoiding Bolsonaro’s re-election and electing Lula in 2022. But the “centre-right” Lula government, as the former president of the Workers’ Party, José Dirceu, maintains the economic policy of the coup governments (2016-2022), their neoliberal counter-reforms (labour and social security), privatizations, wage cuts for the poorest sectors of the working class, maintains the tax regime imposed by the 2016 coup, which strangles the State’s public investments with the working population. Under this cursed coup legacy, no social, development or industrializing policy can advance.

In this way, the government strengthens the enemy’s bases and undermines its own social and political base. The government empties demonstrations in protest of the 60th anniversary of the 1964 coup d’état and the CUT empties the May Day events, while Bolsonarism holds demonstrations with tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of fanatics in the country’s main capitals.

The Lula government and the Central Única dos Trabalhadores seem to adopt the same “tactic” against Bolsonarism that the Italian reformists adopted against the fascists, which favoured their “march on Rome”, a tactic harshly criticized by Gramsci, using the metaphor of the “beaver that, followed by hunters who want to tear the testicles from which the medicines are extracted, to save his life, he rips them off himself.” Trying to gain trust from its enemies, the Lula government demobilises the working population, the only instrument capable of avoiding a new coup offensive by imperialism and big capital in Brazil.

Federal public servants in Education staged one of the biggest strikes in recent years (in the strike commands, our party activists also participated in the construction of this movement) because the Lula government insists on not giving adjustments this year. Recently the government negotiated adjustments salaries for all fractions of the federal public service linked to the repressive and fiscal apparatus, but for education workers it maintains a 0% adjustment rate. With this 0% rate, Lula strains the relationship with federal education employees and obliges them. to strike against the government.

Class Conscious – US and Australia

Consistent democrats / LCFI – Great Britain

Bolshevik Militant Tendency (TMB / LCFI – Argentina)

Communist Party (pc / LCFI – Brazil)