This leaflet was distributed at two demos in March and April 2003. Contact details and a meeting date were also given.
NO WAR BUT CLASS WAR!
The war between the US and UK, and Iraq, has now officially begun. Thousands will be killed, millions will have their homes and communities devastated.
This war has been called a "War for Oil". It has also been characterised as an attempt to re-assert American control over its one-time allies. Both are partially correct. But it is also, more importantly, an attempt to divert the world's working class into the dead-end of supporting their "own" states in the name of "civilisation", the same civilisation that allows 25,000 children to die every day from malnutrition and preventable disease. All countries involved - the US, UK and Iraq, France, Russia and Germany, are attempting to unite their working class in their own national interests.
Bush and Blair are terrorists, butchers and murderers, no less than Saddam. They are all the enemies of working people. As working-class internationalists, we oppose this war and all other imperialist wars, and raise the slogan NO WAR BUT CLASS WAR!
CAPITALISM = CRISIS AND WAR
From the war in Iraq to the September 11 attacks, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, from the Philippines to Palestine, Venezuela, the stand-off between India and Pakistan, Argentina, civil war in Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone & Liberia, the stock market crash - capitalism worldwide is lurching from crisis to disaster.
10 years ago we were promised a 'New World Order', a 'Peace Dividend' at the end of the Cold War. Since then we have had a continuing escalation of war, terrorism and genocide around the globe - from Yugoslavia to Indonesia to Central Africa, the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, in Angola, in Somalia, and right across South America.
At the same time, many of the world's economies have collapsed - the Soviet bloc in the early '90s, the 'Tiger' economies of the Pacific Rim in the late '90s, stagnation in Japan, massive slowdown in Europe and the US and melt-down in Argentina.
War and economic collapse have been accompanied by increasingly extreme weather conditions. The planet is warming up - the only scientists disputing this are those in the pay of the oil and logging companies; floods and droughts are affecting vast areas of the globe; earthquakes are toppling badly constructed buildings killing thousands; poisons are being pumped into the air, water and soil; diseases - many easily preventable - are ravaging both human and animal populations - and capitalism is powerless to help.
CAPITALISM = TERRORISM
The biggest threat to the people of the world is not terrorism, "rogue states" or even weapons of mass destruction; these are merely symptoms of capitalism, which kills millions every year, through war, poverty, malnutrition, disease and neglect. War is capitalism sending the working class to slaughter and be slaughtered in the defence of "national interest".
WAR AND THE WORKING CLASS
We call on all workers throughout the world to reject nationalism - ALL states are rogue states - to unite in their workplaces, to strike in opposition not only to this war but all wars of national or factional interest, and to help bring about the transformation of society from the barbarism of capitalism to a free, just, and equal society. Only the working class has the power to do this, just as the revolutionary action of the world's working class stopped the First World War nearly 100 years ago. The strikes, occupations, formation of soviets or workers' councils - these were the actions the workers took against that war, and they managed to bring the slaughter to a halt.
Capitalism is a system run for the benefit of the few, not the many. Those who collectively produce the wealth of the world - the working class - are exploited by the capitalists who own the means of production - the same capitalist warmongers who are dragging the world into barbarism. Only a society organised on the basis of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" will be able to provide a decent life for every person on the planet. Only by the worldwide overthrow of capitalism can this society be brought about. The world's working class, the class that produces all the world's wealth, is the only class capable of bringing capitalist barbarism to an end, once we throw off the twin yoke of national and religious bigotry which divides worker from worker, and re-discover our own ability to struggle. United internationally, the working class is an unstoppable force.
No War But Class War - Leicester 20/03/03
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