Against Pension “Reform" in Russia

On September 27, the State Duma approved the law for raising the retirement age1 at its third reading.

Since the government and the Duma do not dare to tax the oligarchs, they could not come up with anything else. Not wanting to introduce a progressive income tax scale, Russian capital made it clear that it would not only not sacrifice any of its economic and political domination as such, but not even a small bit of its income, which it might have thrown in the form of a “bone” to the people. It wants to preserve its position so the oligarchs get fat, buy villas and yachts and preserving their “fish”2 in fashionable style.

The world has become too small for existing national capital. In each country, capital is forced to increase its productivity, that is, to take the exploitation of workers to the extreme, which includes an increase in the retirement age. The bourgeoisie of the old powers are faced with a difficult choice: international rivalry is becoming aggravated, the demographic winter is being felt more and more, and in the struggle for competitiveness, the major powers are looking for ways to reduce the burden of social spending. Russia is also joining this race, hastily preparing for the reform of the pension system.

With the decline of capitalism, humanity survives only at the cost of continuous destruction, by crippling itself. An unprecedented dehumanisation of relations in society, based on the complete lack of prospects for humanity under capitalism, is added to the physiological poverty afflicting Russia.

An alternative today can only be a constant and widespread struggle in the ranks of the organized vanguard of the working class against bourgeois ideologies, their frightening lies and fairy tales. This is a struggle to establish the principles of proletarian internationalism, the struggle for scientific communist consciousness, for the organisation of our class.

In today's conditions, the role of every worker and every student is important. Create workers groups of like-minded people at your place of work to fight for your labour and civil rights! Team up with other workers groups! Join the internationalist workers’ movement!

Self-organization of the class struggle and the exercise of power by the proletariat is the only way to save society from inevitable destruction.

Join the struggles of the working class! Let's get started now! Proletarians of all countries, unite!

The document above was written by the Krasnoyarsk Marxist Workers’ Group, International Proletarian Union, and machine translated by them.
October 6 2018

• 1Since the summer there have been hundreds of protests at this measure across Russia. In July alone 2.25 million took part in demonstrations against the proposal. Most of these demonstrations were organised or dominated by the old Communist Party but many of the slogans were not of their making. Protesting requires some degree of courage in Russia and the combination of state repression and a truly autonomous movement has allowed the State to do as it pleases.
• 2The word “fish” (ryba) here is a pun on the name of Nastya Rybka – sometime “paid” mistress of the pro-Putin oligarch Oleg Deripaska.