May Day 2020: Unite in Struggle against Capitalist Crisis and State Bonapartism!

Statement by the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 28 April 2020, www.thecommunists.net

May Day 2020 will be exceptional by any accounts. Exceptional in a negative sense. Never before in modern history will there be so few demonstrations and rallies on this traditional day of struggle of the international workers movement!

This is a shame because we are in the midst of an extraordinary historic moment characterized by a Triple Crisis.

1) The Third Depression, i.e. the worst economic slump of the capitalist world economy since 1929;

2) A wave of anti-democratic attacks of a scale which has not been seen in the imperialist countries since 1945 and which triggers a global turn towards chauvinism and state bonapartism;

3) COVID-19, a pandemic which endangers many lives and which is exploited by the ruling classes in order to spread fear in order to deflect attention from the capitalist causes of the economic crisis and to justify the turn towards chauvinist state bonapartism.

Why is it the case that there will be so few May Day demonstrations despite such a historic crisis of capitalism and despite such wide-scale attacks on the popular masses?

There exist basically two reasons which are connected with each other. First, we are in the midst of a global counterrevolutionary offensive where the ruling classes all over the world impose a reactionary lockdown regime against the workers and oppressed. Under the pretext of combating the COVID-19 pandemic, governments suppress the democratic rights to assembly and to demonstrate and force the people to stay home in isolation.

The second reason is that the bureaucratic leaderships of the trade unions, popular organizations and the so-called left, in their vast majority, support the global lockdown. These reformist, populist and centrist forces – all opportunists by profession – repeat the lies of the ruling class that the lockdown would be the most effective way to combat the pandemic. As a matter of truth the countries with the highest number of death per head of population are those with lockdown regimes (e.g. Italy, Spain, France, Belgium). Other countries which have not imposed a draconic lockdown have fared much better until now (e.g. South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, Hong Kong).

The RCIT has emphasized from the beginning of this crisis that the key to fight the pandemic is not repression and isolation but free mass testing, quarantine of those infected and massive expansion of public health service under workers and popular control.

It is highly urgent that authentic revolutionaries unite in this difficult hour to advocate mass struggles against the global counterrevolutionary offensive. Such a struggle can only take place on the basis of 3 NO’s:

* NO to the consequences of the capitalist slump (unemployment, wage cuts, etc.);

* NO to chauvinist state bonapartism (lockdown, suppression of democratic rights, expansion of police and surveillance state, chauvinist hate-mongering, etc.);

* NO to the elitist, incompetent and authoritarian government response to the pandemic.

Naturally, such a struggle against the global counterrevolutionary offensive must go hand in hand with a struggle against the corrupting influence of the Lockdown Left. The workers and oppressed can only fight successfully against the dangerous attacks of the ruling class if they are not politically fettered by the policy of pseudo-left social-bonapartism.

The most important and most effective instrument against any political subordination to bourgeois policy is a strong party representing the independent historic interests of the working class. Such an instrument can only be a World Party of Socialist Revolution! The RCIT calls all revolutionaries to join us in this building such an instrument!

International Secretariat of the RCIT