1May 2020 - LIS Declaration
To the workers and youth of the world
when it started 2020, the capitalist system was expected to be dragged into a new economic crisis, as a continuation of the great crisis of 2008. The unexpected was the coronavirus pandemic, which has already left hundreds of thousands of deaths and paralyzed the capitalist economy by creating a long effect of general strike worldwide. What happened in this process has surprisingly shown that capitalism is a rotten and irrational system..
Capitalist governments first hid this epidemic, and then they tried to trivialize it... because the capitalist market has to work. While the pandemic requires international planning and coordination, This has never been possible in a world divided by imperialist competition and national states.. Scientists have been warning of such an epidemic for years, but the capitalist system did not take the necessary measures and, as a result, was not fully prepared. The system has focused on the health of the capitalist market instead of prioritizing the health and needs of billions of workers against the pandemic. For this system, Of course, the lives of workers have no importance compared to the profits of companies and the wealth of capitalists. In this system, citizens are seen as customers, the public health system collapses, social security is commercialized, resources obtained from workers are transferred to private insurance companies, private hospitals and pharmaceutical companies… We saw the most painful consequences of this in the United States, Italy, France and Great Britain. The richest capitalist countries have collapsed in the face of the epidemic. The necessary intensive care units were lacking, basic health equipment, life saving devices, like fans. There was also a lack of enough health workers, who were forced to work in those unprepared conditions and thousands of them have lost their lives around the world.
The public health crisis that exposed the failure of capitalism immediately became a major economic crisis. Hundreds of millions of workers have lost their jobs, and hundreds of millions more have been pushed below the threshold of hunger and poverty. But the capitalists continue to get richer, even in this process. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world, sumo $24 billion to his fortune in this process. The company's shares, who benefited from the trillions of dollars that were injected into the market and will be spent largely on speculation, have already offset losses in the stock market. This reveals the parasitic nature of capitalists and how they have different interests than the rest of the world..
Governments have allocated trillions of dollars to save sinking companies, as in the great crisis of 2008. According to bourgeois propaganda, companies should be saved so that workers can be saved. In other words, companies should survive so that some of the employees continue to have jobs. So the priority is always the capitalists. Workers, on the other hand, They have to work harder and get along with the boss to avoid being fired. Even so, those who will lose their jobs will have to take care of themselves. So, What happens to the ruins of these sunken companies? It is intended that the workers carry them. More taxes, more work, social cuts and, Thus, the transfer of resources to capitalists will continue. In other words, They want workers to get poorer and capitalists to get richer..
Crisis 2008 impoverished the working class and exacerbated class struggle. The Occupy Movement, the Tahrir Revolution, the Gezi Uprising, the great struggles of the working class in Greece, France and Latin America, and many more places were configured as a product of the process. But the reaction also manifested itself in this process through civil wars., imperialist interventions, rising fascist movements and right-wing populist governments like Trump's.
In 2020, We are facing a much deeper economic crisis than in 2008. The results can be just as serious. To overcome this difficult process, the capitalist reaction will have various plans to divide the working classes, prevent the development of class consciousness and weaken struggles. But the priority will be in the confrontation of the working classes with the capitalist governments.
In the United States and Great Britain, that set decisive trends in their metropolises, the neo-reformist alternatives of Sanders and Corbyn have fallen before the intense efforts of the bourgeoisie. This means calling workers to the streets and to strike.. While the pandemic has not yet slowed down, workers and activists in Lebanon have taken to the streets again. Let's not forget that 2019 It was a year in which class struggle broke out in many countries, from Iran, Chile and France to Lebanon. So we have to be prepared for the next big challenges as class-conscious workers and youth.. It is possible to get rid of capitalist barbarism. We have to organize for this. It is vital that we support spontaneous social outbreaks in a socialist perspective. We need to be able to convey to millions that our problems come from capitalist functioning as a whole.. If we can achieve this, the future will be ours. In line with this perspective, We invite all workers and young people to contact and join the LIS.
