May Day Greetings from the Revolutionary Socialist Party, Australia
02.05.2010
May 1, 2010
Dear Comrades,
The Revolutionary Socialist Party in Australia sends our warmest May Day greetings to our comrades in LALIT and our solidarity to all those in struggle in Mauritius.
The crises confronting world capitalism - financial, social, environmental - are deeper, more serious than ever before. The recent multiple crises are a fresh reminder of capitalism's inherent and many-sided structural contradictions, which are posing an unprecedented threat to human civilisation and even life on the planet..
For many decades, socialists and others have been warning of the environmental danger that capitalism poses to the Earth. Now this dire threat is widely recognised by all but a few climate sceptics. Climate change, brought about by the capitalists' reckless drive for private profits, has to be reversed, but capitalism cannot do it. Socialism is ever more urgently needed to save the planet. The failure of the Copenhagen talkfest brings this home to more people; more are waking up, and there are increasing exposes of capitalism's contradictions. So the possibility of gaining a wider audience for real solutions, socialist solutions, has increased considerably.
The capitalist economic crisis has brought home to millions that the capitalist system is inherently unstable, that it's not permanent, that perhaps a different way of organising society might be possible. It's capitalism's most serious crisis since the Great Depression. They poured billions into banks, yet cut social services, leading to social crises in countries like Spain, Ireland and Greece. When workers are jolted out of worrying only about their immediate concerns and encouraged to take an international and historical view, the socialist answer will seem much more logical.
Imperialist wars seem never-ending. US imperialism's continuous war in the Middle East and Asia, essentially a war to ensure its control of the dwindling oil supply, is costing a fortune, having a big impact on the US economy, creating millions of angry enemies of imperialism, and impacting on US poor and working class people, who have to fight these wars. Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran - the expanding list further exposes US imperialism and its allies in Europe and Australia. The Diego Garcia military base is an integral part of imperialism's global war machine, and your struggle to end the occupation deserves the full support of progressive forces internationally.
A serious rift with the capitalist system is occurring in Latin America. Cuba has stood fast for 51 years, and now the Venezuelan Revolution has expanded the socialist challenge enormously. The combination of the extensive capitalist crisis and the revolutionary dynamic in Venezuela presents the weakened left in the rest of the world with a responsibility to provide support and solidarity to the revolutionary processes that are occurring, as well as an opportunity to build and renew itself in alliance with the Latin American revolutionary forces.
So it is a very contradictory world situation, with capitalism suffering multiple crises, and increasingly exposed, but a left movement very inadequate to the task of providing direction and leadership to mass movements that could exploit capitalism's weaknesses and contradictions.
Capitalism might be wrecking the environment and threatening life on the planet, but it won't willingly dig its own grave, and certainly won't hand over power without a fight, so we have to organise, and we need a revolutionary party in each country, to provide leadership, and educate and organise the masses of working people to make a revolution.
"Socialism of the 21st century" is a slogan favoured by the Venezuelan revolutionaries, which expresses a healthy desire to combine the best of the old and the new: to respond creatively to new conditions, but avoid the errors of socialism in the 20th century, the betrayals, the bureaucratisation, the rigidity of tactics that were converted into principles; at the same time to retain all the gains, the lessons of successful revolutions, especially the experience of Lenin, and the need for a revolutionary party.
We warmly welcomed the participation of two comrades from LALIT at our founding congress last year. We also warmly welcomed the collaboration with your two comrades at the Fourth International World Congress in February. More such contact and collaboration will benefit both our organisations. So we look forward to attending your Conference in October/November.
So this May Day, our internationalist solidarity is with you, and best wishes for success in the coming struggles, and the success of your Conference, and for the growth of your organisations and the strengthening of the Marxist movement in Mauritius.
US, Australian and other occupiers Out of Iraq and Afghanistan!
Kick the US base out of Diego Garcia!
Let the capitalists pay for their crisis, not the workers!
Long Live the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions!
Long Live Lalit!
Build the international socialist movement!
Workers of the World Unite!
Warmest revolutionary greetings,
John Percy
National Secretary
Revolutionary Socialist Party Australia
