Airstrikes Threat On Syria! Third World War? No War But The Class War!

More than 110,000 dead, two million of refugees in nearby countries, more than three million internally displaced, 130,000 arrested or missing, tons of bombs, missiles, shells, cluster bombs… This is the reality of war in Syria since two and a half years!

And as if this materialization of permanent war of capitalism against the proletariat was not enough, the mainstream bourgeois media announced us on August 21st the “ultimate horror”: chemical weapons were used in a suburb of Damascus, killing more than 1,300 people, some 3,600 others were wounded.

The Syrian regime is accused of this, and it’s true that it would not be its first slaughter since it had already proven what it is able to do in terms of repression. Others accuse groups of “rebels”, and more precisely jihadists militarily supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

We, the communists, do not want to enter in any way into this debate, and even less to endorse the ravings of “conspiracy theories”, very fashionable in some “militant” and “ultra-leftist” circles. Because fundamentally, whether it was the capitalist State in Syria represented by the Ba’ath regime who did it or it was done by one of the fighting factions of the bourgeois “opposition” with the support of regional and international powers, it is ultimately State terrorism, the capitalists’ terrorist State, which is responsible for this antihuman and anti-proletarian gassing, as it is responsible for all this war, as for any war…

But today, when capitalism is facing its worst crisis of valorisation since the end of the second world slaughter, its only alternative is once again the mass destruction of surplus productive forces (of commodities, dead labour, but also of labour force commodities, thus of living labour, thus of proletarians!)… The only viable solution for capitalism (to boost subsequently a new cycle of valorisation) is therefore a generalized war, the “third world war”… Its only problem (which is a major problem!) is how to mobilize the proletariat all over the world so to recruit it in whatever ideological campaign to justify the massacres to come.

Present war drum roll announcing a military intervention of some Western powers in Syria partakes in this ideological campaign. Especially since Syria is in the heart of a region which is a geostrategic issue of capitalists’ voracious appetites. Two major constellations of States already share the ground and participate in the reorganization of the region: on one hand Russia, China and Iran, which support the current regime (but to which extent this support won’t threaten the whole of their interests?), and on the other hand the U.S.A., France, Great Britain and their regional allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar…

Threat of military intervention strengthens this polarization and also backs up in their analysis the public opinion, bourgeois propaganda, “experts” of the question, and even groups and organizations which claim social revolution, anti-capitalist struggle, proletarian insurrection, struggle for communism and/or anarchy, all of them continually repeating ad nauseam since over two years that the events in Syria is nothing but a proxy war (between these various State powers), or at least a civil war between two bourgeois camps (with the support of these same State powers): Ba’ath regime against “democratic opposition” (which in some cases is reduced to its simplest jihadist expression)…

However, this version and grasping of history, and therefore of the facts taking place in front of our eyes, although it covers a part of the reality on the ground, purely and simply eliminates another aspect of this social matter in motion, which is essential for us communists: the class struggle which had sparked off what has been going on now. In March 2011, a significant movement of struggle, an uprising of a proletarian nature, against poverty, against the rising of prices, against unemployment, against the drastic austerity measures imposed during the previous decade in Syria, against repression, broke out… Since the beginning proletarians have tried to go beyond spontaneity of the movement, various structuring of struggle have been set up, among others hundreds of coordinating committees (Tansiqyat) that try to respond in the practice to needs of the struggle, its organization on the ground, its coordination, its centralization, its consolidation, its spreading and its self-defence, although they develop very contradictory levels of radicalism as for the perspectives of the struggle. Very quickly also the movement of our class countered State terror with direct action, encouraging defeatism within the central apparatuses of repression…

Because of lack of developing its perspectives, because of lack of revolutionary direction, and under the influence of the direction given by different bourgeois factions, who try to achieve their own interests while taking profit of the proletarian struggle, this class struggle, this class war, partially turned into an inter-bourgeois struggle, into an internal civil war and into a proxy war. This doesn’t in any way detract from the importance of the fundamental proletarian nature of the movement. Always and everywhere in the history where the both antagonistic classes clashed, bourgeois factions either temporarily united against a common enemy or they continued to oppose each other so that only one strong counterrevolutionary pole emerges, able to defeat the class historically determined to put an end to this age-old nightmare that is capitalism and its social relation (as the insurgent proletariat in Commune of Paris, Russia, Germany, Spain… tried to do). Everywhere and always in this same history, “foreign powers” intervened either to directly suppress the movement of our class (operations of international gendarmerie) or to support a bourgeois camp against another (e.g. “Russian Civil War” from 1918 to 1921 during which various Western armies militarily supported the “Whites” against the “Reds”) or even to wage a proxy war (Spain 1936-1939)… And it will be like this in all future conflicts which will set the world of value ablaze till its violent abolition by force of social revolution.

Let’s come back to Syria and recall what we wrote six months ago in another text: “there is no doubt that the bombing of cities and the massacres, the terrible State repression and its militarization, represent a nagging strength that tries to recruit proletarians in struggle (…) for one or the other bourgeois factions opposing each other in the attempt to conquer the power and the management of social antagonism. All the international and regional State powers (…) push the class confrontation to militarization, in order to make it losing its dynamics of subversion of this world of misery, in brief to deprive the proletariat of its class autonomy… The third camp in Syria (that is to say the proletariat opposed to both poles of the counterrevolution) is on the road to ruin and to be recruited if isolation which it is plunged in is not broken, if the universal content of its struggle (which appears in all the struggles of our class) is not put forward, if it doesn’t quickly find an echo to its struggles, if new insurrectional hotbeds don’t develop elsewhere in order to not give a single moment of rest to the voracious bourgeois anymore…”

Every movement of struggle and subversion of social relations in history has its own dynamics, which, if it doesn’t grow, if it doesn’t expand, then fades away and finally withers away. Certainly since two and a half years, the dynamics of the struggle movement of our class in Syria runs out of steam, on one hand because of simultaneous thrusts of bombings, killings, massacres, imprisonments, on the other hand because of the action of various reformist policies that use the proletarians as cannon fodder in their war between bourgeois factions, but also because of the influence of jihadist tendencies that are turning the class war into a sectarian war, despite the strong resistance of the proletariat.

This resistance of the proletariat to the various jihadist factions trying to confiscate our struggle and to force the restoring of law and order (among other things through moral and religious order) in the “liberated zones” still expressed itself these last weeks, through a series of actions that the bourgeois media obviously ignored.

In Raqqa, for example, which was in the grip of hard fighting against the Syrian army, a continuous protest against arrests of proletarians by jihadist group “Jabhat al-Nusra” has been held since June. Women shouted: “Shame on you! You betray us in the name of Islam”. Throughout August, residents of al-Raqqa have been protesting almost daily against the “Islamic State of Iraq and Levant” demanding the release of hundreds of prisoners, abductees and missing persons. Likewise in Aleppo proletarians launched the “Enough is enough!” campaign calling for an end to abuses committed by armed groups. Some of them obviously left our class terrain and no longer fulfil their original purpose of defence and protection of daily protests against the regime and against repression, but came to use violence precisely without any class criteria. Demonstrations were held in front of “Sharia Court” (Islamic Court) in Aleppo after a child was killed for allegedly insulting the Prophet Mahomet. Among the protesters’ mottos, we could hear: “The Sharia Committee has become the Air Force Intelligence!” in reference to the most brutal security branch of the regime, whose torture chambers have welcomed thousands of proletarians. In Idlib, protests against the local “Sharia Committee” also took place…

To all fighting proletarians in Syria!

Finally, we want to warn the proletarians in struggle in Syria who are on their knees while suffering endless bombings and massacres orchestrated by the current regime, and who yet develop illusions about an intervention of the “international community” (which is nothing but a bunch of capitalist gangsters), who call for airstrikes or a “no-fly zone”… There is nothing to expect from any State power, all of them have always fought and suppressed proletarian revolts in history. Whether in Indochina and Algeria during the fifties or in Vietnam later, the French and American armies left the battlefield with piles of corpses… Whether in Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, or very recently in Libya, whether on the pretext of “war on terror” or “humanitarian relief”, the imperialist issues meant nothing but a reorganization of exploitation and the replacement of a dictator by another or by a bunch of more presentable and more “respectable” torturers… No, there is nothing to expect for the development of our struggles while choosing a “lesser evil” against a “worse”…


To all fighting proletarians in Syria!

In the beginning you revolted against misery and repression imposed on you by a particular faction (Ba’ath regime) of ruling class. But too many of you have made yourselves the auxiliaries of another bourgeois faction of managers of capitalism while participating in the war, on the side of the united front of nationalism and sectarianism. You are told, our enemies would like to make you believe, that this war “against Assad” is not like any other one. All representatives and tendencies of “anti-Assad” united front whisper to you to tactically postpone attack against capitalist propertied class, existing social relations and present state of things, until “devilish” Assad is defeated. While accepting this, you don’t side with the proletariat, but against it. Your allies are no longer the proletarians, all exploited, but the bourgeoisie. Supporting united front means to fight for someone else, and being an extreme expression of sectarian and nationalist rivalry.

The perspective of an attack against capitalist misery and bloodshed in this war, which has never been so compelling, depends on the ability to make apparent the frontier that exists between action and need of the proletarian class on one hand and the camp of the bourgeoisie, that of its democratic dictatorship, on the other hand. Not to point out this frontier means to underestimate historical role of the proletariat, but particularly to fail in assuming the important and fundamental role of its vanguard in the struggle. Capitalism is war, war is capitalism. At war as in peace, there is still capitalist profit, exploiters and exploited.

Refuse any united front in favour of one bourgeois faction or another! Stop this war of one bourgeois military apparatus against another. Turn your arms against your “own” officers, political sharks, foreign military advisers and capitalist bosses of your “own” camp. Be vanguard and show to “proletarians in uniforms” in ranks of Assad forces that there’s only one unity, that of exploited beyond the artificial frontiers of capitalism. Spread this method of our class action behind the front of your “enemy” soldiers to join you in executing bourgeois imperialist butchers who are the only to profit from this massacre.

More than ever we reaffirm our support to proletarians in struggle in Syria, as everywhere else in the world, Turkey, Brazil, Egypt, Tunisia, Colombia, Chile…

We call on proletarians to denounce the military intervention in preparation and to strongly oppose it through direct action, sabotage, generalized and insurrectional strike…

Wherever warplanes and warships, missiles and poison gas come from, behind them there are always men and women who have to transport them to their destination, to fuel them… Only proletarians in struggle can and have to prevent the war machine to kill, the production machine to function…

Let’s develop new hotbeds of struggle, let’s consolidate those already existing; let’s apply the strike to armies, factories, mines, offices, schools… anywhere we suffer exploitation from this world of death and misery…

Against our own exploitative bourgeoisie, against our own warmongering State, in the U.S.A., Russia, France, China, Great Britain, Iran, Turkey, Syria, etc., let’s organize and develop revolutionary defeatism.

September 2013

“Kings intoxicated us with smoke,
Peace among us, war on tyrants!
Let’s apply the strike to armies,
Rifle butts raised on high and breaking ranks.
And if they insist, those cannibals,
On making heroes of us,
They’ll soon learn that our bullets
Are for our own generals.”

(The Internationale)

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