Introduction by KX for discussion on 3 July 2008
(write-up of group discussion)

(The title of the meeting should have been ‘struggle’, not ‘work with’.)

This is one of the central questions facing the international working class today and the ability of the proletariat to develop its international unity will be essential to opening up the way towards the revolution. It is thus essential that all those who are seeking to free humanity from the scourge of decaying capital develop their understanding of this question.

The workers of the heartland of capitalism ( Europe, the US, Japan) and those of the developing countries are already struggling together. Over the past five years we have seen a growing international simultaneity of struggle. The extend and breadth of the developing international struggles is incredible: every continent, whether developed or developing has seen important developments in the class struggle.

Egypt

A very important country in the Middle East since the winter of 2006 we have seen wave after wave of strike. this spring important strikes in response to the food crisis.

Dubai

A concentration of workers from across the middle east, Indian Subcontinent, and China have carried out important struggles in 2006 and 2007. In 2007, 4,000 workers took to the streets and brought out 400,000. This experience of a united struggle by workers from some many countries, cannot be underestimated.

Turkey

26,000 Turk Telecom workers struggles the subcontracting of work, this struggle took place at the same time as Turkey was making incursions into North Iraq.

Russia

Strikes by workers in different industries.

China

Many strikes but they are hidden in the Western Media.

Vietnam

Waves of wildcats strikes for the last few years.

Swaziland

This March 15,000 garment workers went on strike.

Peru and Chile

Thousands of workers have been involved in struggles over the last year.

The US

General Motors,

American Axels,

Chrysler.

Britain

The post workers last year,

Grangemouth,

Shell tanker drivers,

Public sector workers.

France

Very important struggles,

CPE

Train drivers October and November ‘07 Assemblies workers and students.

Spain

Vigo,

Delphi.

Germany

Railway workers,

Bochum January ‘08 joined by car workers, miners, engineering workers.

What does all this mean for the international struggle of the proletariat?

Firstly, workers around the world are facing the same crisis, though at different levels:

1. Price rises

2. Layoffs

3. Cost of living

4. housing

These international development of workers struggles has had certain important features:

1. Solidarity between workers from different nationalities, different sectors and ages. This cannot be underestimated in its importance. Still only at the beginning but Dubai, France, Germany, and Britain show the potential;

2. Self organisation: CPE, Railways, Vigo, Dubai, workers in Vietnam;

3. The return of the German proletariat to the centre of the struggles;

4. The entering into the struggle of battalions of the working class that have not done so up until recently: China, Vietnam;

5. A growing questioning of the future that the capitalist system has to offer.

Workers in the developing countries are faced with ever-worsening conditions whilst those in the central countries are seeing all the promises that the system used to hold out: pensions, health care, unemployment pay disappearing.

The combination of these characterises is giving rise to an unprecedented situation of developing struggles, deepening crisis and a growing questioning and disillusionment in capitalism. And the prospect is that these tendencies are going to accelerate and worsening.

These are the conditions that are going to strengthen the proletariat’s ability to struggle together because the only choice that workers have not matter where they are is: either accept worsening living and working conditions or struggle.

Clearly the material conditions that workers struggle in are not the same and nor is their historical experience of struggle.

Workers in China faced appalling working and living conditions, as do those in Bangladesh, Vietnam and the Philippines, whereas the workers in the West have relatively better conditions. However, they all have the same uniting interests.

Thus, the struggles in the centre or on the periphery of capitalism are part of the same struggle, waged by the same class against the same enemy. This is what unites the working class.

This common interest is also expressed at the political level, the political interest of workers whether in Shanghai or Birmingham is the same: to defend their independence as a class i.e., not to get pulled into the struggle between the different fractions of the ruling class, not to fall for the bourgeoisie’s democratic lies or for their talk of the trade unions defending the class.

Whilst having the same interest, there is not the same level of experience of the most sophisticated machinations of the ruling class or of the class struggle against them. Here the workers of the West have a particularly important role to play for their comrades in the rest of the world. Their struggles show that no matter how democratic or free a regime is the working class is still exploited, no matter how free the unions are the workers will always run up against them in their struggles. On the other hand the struggles of the workers in the rest of the world are a direct inspiration for the workers of the West, this is why the ruling class do all they can to hide them.

This common interest and the growing realisation of this throughout the world is also expressed in the emergence of a new generation of workers and others who are calling capitalism into question and seeking a revolution answer. Thus in the last few years we have seen the emergence in Brazil, South Korea, Turkey, the Philippines and countries in Latin America of groups, discussion circles and individuals looking to the internationalist positions of the Communist Left for answers. These groups and individuals have sort to make international contacts: the groups in South Korea interested in the Communist Left called an international conference of revolutionary groups two years ago. These groups have also sort to use the various web forums to establish international contacts. These are expressions of the conscious efforts of the international proletariat to struggle, discuss and organise together.

These tendencies also express the profound importance of the historical period of the class struggle we are entering: that of the perspective of the development of the mass strike. The mass strike is not the general strike called by the unions but the massive struggle of the working class, organised by the working class through its own organisations; this can take many forms and expressions, strikes of the whole class, parts of the class, demonstrations, self-organisation, discussions and other forms we have not seen yet. It is a process where the working class draws together the three levels of its struggle: economic, political and theoretical.

As Rosa Luxemburg said:

The mass strike, as the Russian Revolution shows it to us, is such a changeable phenomenon that it reflects all the phases of the political and economic struggle, all stages and factors of the revolution. Its adaptability, its efficiency, the factors of its origin are constantly changing. It suddenly opens new and wide perspectives of the revolution when it appears to have already arrived in a narrow pass and where it is impossible for anyone to reckon upon it with any degree of certainty. It flows now like a broad billow over the whole kingdom, and now divides into a gigantic network of narrow streams; now it bubbles forth from under the ground like a fresh spring and now is completely lost under the earth. Political and economic strikes, mass strikes and partial strikes, demonstrative strikes and fighting strikes, general strikes of individual branches of industry and general strikes in individual towns, peaceful wage struggles and street massacres, barricade fighting—all these run through one another, run side by side, cross one another, flow in and over one another—it is a ceaselessly moving, changing sea of phenomena. And the law of motion of these phenomena is clear: it does not lie in the mass strike itself nor in its technical details, but in the political and social proportions of the forces of the revolution.

The mass strike will probably break out in one country but the question of its spreading will be posed and it win be a life and death question. If the mass strike remains confined to one country it will be crushed. Thus, the development of the internationalism and international cooperation of the proletariat that is developing in an embryonic form today is essential to the mass strike and thus the revolution. An ideas of national specificities, different task in the centre and periphery, etc that undermine this internationalism are undermining the mass strike, the revolution and thus the liberation of humanity.

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