ILTT contribution for a Workers Anti War United Front at the International Left conference
October 27, 2022.
This contribution is a summarized version of our analysis of the character of the war and how the working class must fight against it as informed by both the International Left’s resolution and blog statements as well as the work of the ILTT published on its organizations blogs. This dual defeatist statement on the war was signed by the International Left. The International Left and the ILTT also have agreement on the character of Russia and China as imperialist nations.
For a Working Class United Front against the inter-imperialist proxy war in Ukraine
The war in Ukraine is an inter-imperialist proxy war between the decaying hegemonic US/EU/NATO bloc and the rising China/Russia/CSTO/ SCO bloc. It is counter-revolutionary and aimed against the interest of the workers and farmers on both sides! Because the war is reactionary and fought on behalf of imperialism on BOTH SIDES, soldiers and workers must take a dual defeatist attitude toward the war!
The semi-colonial world is in a three way tug of war between the two imperialist blocs trying to redivide the world and the workers and oppressed subject to the consequences of the war in the form of a deepening economic and environmental crisis, disrupted flow of commodities and wasted resources. In the semi-colonial world, even while the competing bloc attempt to redivide the bounty, imperialism is directing its permanent counter-revolution against the workers, small farmers and oppressed whose liberation is bound up with the unfinished tasks of the national democratic revolution.
In Ukraine today the tasks of national independence cannot be won by alliance with either imperialist bloc, those tasks fall to the working class struggling to emerge as a-class-for-itself with socialist revolution that completes the tasks of the national democratic revolution growing over across borders as the permanent revolution.
For both the Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and workers the lesser evil today is served by rejecting “class peace” and national unity, breaking from the bosses and launching class struggles in work places, schools and on the front lines to fight for workers’ power against capitalist rule.
The capitalists have no way out of the inter-imperialist conflict. Negotiated settlements in the morning news are followed by threats of nuclear war in the evening. The imperialist blocs are trapped in a death lock which only the working class can resolve. The imperialists and pacifist’s call for ceasefire negotiations offer only a robber’s pact to divide Ukraine as always theirs is the ‘peace’ of the graveyard. Without the dual defeat nothing can be guaranteed.
This war can only end with permanent revolution during which the victorious workers can guarantee peace and hold bona fide plebiscites. National plebiscites must be the result of workers’ independent organizations defeating both imperialist parties and their national bourgeois proxies.
The worker’s united front must bring to the international working class a program to end the inter-imperialist war and the cause of war.
The organizations of the working class must take up the class struggle against their own ruling class to defeat the imperialist wars.
We call on this conference to develop the demands and program of the United Front and raise the banner of a New Zimmerwald.
The ILTT offers the following:
No to no Fly Zones! EE! UU.- NATO and Russia and their allies Out of Ukraine!
Organize workers self defense against fascists in the rear and imperialist invasions.
Workers of all imperialist countries your main enemy is the imperialist bourgeoisie at home!
Build anti war committees in the factories and workplaces.
For general strikes and mass actions against the imperialist war machines across all of Europe, the US and Russia!
Hot cargo all imperialist belligerents’ freight. For workers’ control of logistics and distribution!
Expropriate the war profiteers and armaments industry under workers control.
Close US/UK and EU foreign and NATO bases!
No to Sanctions, they function as war on working people!
No to No Fly Zones!
For workers self defense militias! For International Workers brigades to defeat the NATO covert and overt military forces and the Russian invasion forces!
No annexations! For an independent Soviet Ukraine! For a Workers’ Russia!
For the self-determination of Ukrainians and Russian-speaking minorities!
Soldiers build a Come Home Now movement!
Soldiers refuse to handle, fire or use nuclear, biological or chemical weapons!
Soldiers in the field mutiny, arrest your officers, elect your own officers, fraternize across front lines and protect civilians!
Defeat the fascist battalions, their militia and their foreign nationalist fighters!
Open the secret pouches of the imperialist belligerents and open the books of the imperialist bourgeoisie and big capitalist enterprises!
No faith in the Hague or UN! For independent workers commissions to investigate and prosecute war crimes.
Free all anti-war protesters! Drop all charges!
Convene a new Zimmerwald conference! For an anti-imperialist workers united front. For “war against war” to “turn inter-imperialist war abroad into class war at home”!
