Vanguard: 2025

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Duterte’s ICC arrest a victory for the Filipino people, but struggle for justice continues

Written by: National Democratic Front of the Philippines International Office on 12 March 2025

The arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte by virtue of a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a victory for the Filipino people, particularly the thousands of victims of his bloody “war on drugs” and his fascist attacks on the revolutionary movement. It affirms what the people have long known – that Duterte is a mass murderer who must be held accountable for his crimes. However, this does not absolve Marcos Jr. of his own blood debts as he continues the reactionary state’s counterrevolutionary war against the Filipino people.

While we welcome the ICC’s move against Duterte, we also reiterate the crimes of the Marcos Jr. administration. The 2024 International People’s Tribunal (IPT) found both Duterte and Marcos Jr., as well as the US government, guilty of grave violations of international humanitarian law. The findings of the IPT reinforce the fact that state terror and impunity persist under Marcos Jr. and that the fight for justice must extend beyond Duterte’s arrest—it must challenge the continuing fascist repression being waged by the current regime.

The ICC warrant focuses on Duterte’s “war on drugs,” but his crimes extend far beyond this. His regime carried out the systematic killing of NDFP peace consultants, aerial bombings of civilian communities, and the torture and execution of captured Red fighters (hors de combat), all in blatant disregard of the laws of war. These war crimes were not just Duterte’s policy—they remain central to the Marcos Jr. regime’s counterrevolutionary war against the Filipino people. Under Marcos Jr., indiscriminate bombings, enforced disappearances, forced evacuations, and extrajudicial killings continue, proving that the reactionary state will stop at nothing to crush the people’s resistance.

Furthermore, Duterte’s crimes were not his alone, nor were they simply the product of local reactionary politics. US imperialism has long propped up Philippine fascist regimes, providing military aid, training and intelligence to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP). The US-funded “counterinsurgency” programs directly contributed to Duterte’s reign of terror. Even now, under Marcos Jr., US-backed military operations continue to target both revolutionary forces and the legal democratic mass movement. The people’s movement must continue to expose and resist the imperialist role in enabling fascist rule up to this day.

We call on the international community to sustain pressure for Duterte’s immediate prosecution. At the same time, the ICC must exert all necessary measures to compel the Marcos Jr. government to surrender Duterte to ICC jurisdiction. The NDFP International Office stands firmly with the Filipino masses in their fight for justice and genuine national and social liberation. Duterte and his cronies must face the full weight of their actions – not just for their past crimes but to end the continuing reign of impunity in the Philippines.

Duterte’s arrest, or even his potential conviction, will not dismantle the semicolonial and semifeudal system that breeds fascist rulers and US puppet regimes. Only through a national democratic revolution with a socialist perspective, led by the working class, can the roots of fascist violence be eradicated.

Sunday, March 9, 2025

Learning from history – workers’ collective action decisive in defeat of imperialist powers

Written by: Ned K. on 10 March 2025

(Above: background image sourced from iai.tv)

Since the election of Trump as US President, the two global powers, USA and China are intensifying their rivalry. The USA, an imperialist power in decline, is fighting to hold off the rising imperialist power of China. At the moment, the main arena of struggle is trade with threat and counter threat since Trump first announced an intended 25% tariff on goods and services imported from China.

This has alarmed some close allies of US imperialism, including Australia. When Trump included Australia on his list of countries regarding tariffs on their imported goods and services to the USA, Prime Minister Albanese was on the phone to Trump pleading for an exemption for Australia and the Defence Minister Marles followed up with a trip to the USA to seek assurance about US imperialism's commitment to nuclear -powered submarines.

At the same time Prime Minster Albanese has stated the importance of Australia's relationship with the rising imperialist power China, especially on the trade front.

Albanese though is locked into loyalty to the declining US imperialism when it comes to the crunch, while Dutton, the so-called " Leader of the Opposition", is an even stronger supporter of US imperialism in its rivalry with rising China.

Neither the Albanese government nor the "Opposition" led by Dutton have a vision of an Australian independence economically, militarily and politically.

The Black Armada

The only class that has the power to lead decisive action in the interests of the Australian people on a consistent basis is the working class.

The difference between the working class and parliamentary party leaders when it comes to decisive action against imperialist powers was demonstrated during and just after the end of the Second World War.

The declining Dutch imperialist power was losing its grip on its East Indies empire due to the rising tide of struggle by Indonesians for a Republic of Indonesia.
In the mid-1940s the Labor government allowed extensive use of Australian ports by the Royal Netherlands Navy and the setting up of a Netherlands Indies Government In Exile The government in exile tried to muster enough support while based in Australia to overthrow the new Republic in Indonesia.

The Labor Curtin Government under Chifley did not know which way to turn with pressure from British imperialism to support the continued Dutch East Indies.
The decisive blow to the declining Dutch East empire over-turning the new Indonesian Republic was the power of the Australian and Indonesian working class.
Indonesian maritime workers went on strike, refused to carry Dutch troops or munitions and were joined by seamen from India, China and Malaya.

Australian maritime workers put black bans on the movement of 36 Dutch merchant ships, passenger liners, troop ships, two tankers and 35 other oil industry craft.

There also black bans on the movement of aircraft and submarines and two vessels of the Royal Netherlands Navy that were built to track down submarines.

The black bans were so extensive and lasted for over 6 months. The workers were able to have such effect because the Dutch empire in the East Indies had become so dependent on Australian ports.

As Rupert Lockwood in his book, Black Armada, explained,

"All delays are dangerous in wars...The first blow for the Republic of Indonesia against the Royal Netherlands armed forces, delivered at Australian wharves, warehouses, military camps, airports, naval depots and shipyards, was one from which the Dutch could not recover."

In 1946, the Communist-led Waterside Workers Federation of Australia commissioned Dutch Communist film-maker Joris Ivens to direct a film of the struggle. The 23-minute Indonesia Calling can be seen on Youtube here (Indonesia Calling )

The decisive collective action of Australian workers saw the defeat of the declining Dutch empire in this part of the world. It occurred as British and French control in South East Asia, India and China was also in decline.

The decisive action by the Australian workers was so strong that Prime Minister Chifley decided the days of the declining Dutch empire to the north of Australia and in Australia had to come to an end if his desire to maintain British and American interests in the region was to be achieved.

However, his support for workers was short-lived, as in the interests of British and US imperialism in Australia in 1949, he turned on the coal miners.

In the coming increased struggle between the declining US imperialism and Chinese imperialism, the current Australian government and previous governments have allowed more than "governments in exile" to operate from Australia. They now allow and support US troops and bases in Australia and US domination of most aspects of the economy, following in the footsteps of Prime Minister Menzies who waved the flag for white Anglo-American "protection" for white Australia from the "yellow hordes " from Asia!

Certainly, the ruling class constantly reviews its tactics in relation to class struggle. Black bans and sympathy strikes were on their hit list, but the great 1969 struggle to defeat the penal powers of the industrial laws, led by our Party vice-Chair and Secretary of the Victorian Tramways Union, Clarrie O’Shea left the employers powerless for more than a decade. They then decided to legislate to make unions the same, legally, as persons and used the civil law of tort to begin prosecutions of unions in disputes like Mudginberri Abattoirs (1984-5) and Dollar Sweets (1985). The Trade Practices Act outlawed secondary boycotts making black bans and sympathy strikes illegal.

The Australian working class, remembering their Black Armada actions of the 1940s against the declining Dutch empire, and determined to restore their democratic right to strike, will be up to the challenge of freeing Australia from the clutches of the declining US imperialism and any of its rivals.

Saturday, March 8, 2025

SA Government Workers in Action in Struggle Against Rising Cost of Living

Written by: Ned K. on 8 March 2025

South Australian Government employed cleaners, food service attendants in public hospitals and disability community and home carers are leading the struggle of public sector "blue collar" workers against the rising cost of living. They imposed work bans which did not interfere with patient care but put the Government on notice they were prepared to escalate their action if necessary to win a decent wage increase.

The Government's initial wage offer of 3% per year triggered the industrial action,

In an interview on ABC radio one of the workers' leaders said that the SA Government's wage offer amount to the miserable sum of just an 83 cents per hour pay rise for most workers. She said that hospital and disability workers were in the lowest paid group within the public sector and workers were taking action to win wage increases that took into account the rising cost of living over the last two or three years.

Negotiations for a new Enterprise Agreement had dragged on since mid-2024. The workers action received a lukewarm response from the Government. What made disability sector workers more determined was the knowledge that some of the major private sector disability providers had agreed to wage increases up to 5% higher than what the Government paid!

The industrial action is sure to escalate until the Government makes an acceptable wage offer to some of the lowest paid workers in the SA public sector workforce.

This is only one headache for the Malinauskas Government on the wages front, as other public sector workers such as Ambulance service Paramedics are also in negotiations this year for new Enterprise Agreements with wage increases and cost of living high on the list of logs of claims.

Rising Cost of Living A Key Issue For Workers On Eve of Federal Election

The industrial action taken by government support services workers is an indication of a rising tide of struggle of workers against the rising cost of living, While the official ACTU election campaign leading up to the federal election is about " Don't Trust Dutton", the resistance of Labor State Government's to wage claims of State Government workers' wage claims has many workers asking themselves -"Can I trust either a Dutton Government or the current Labor Government?"

Friday, March 7, 2025

8th March - International Women’s Day - Salute Women’s Struggle

Written by: Mary P. and Alice M. on 7 March 2025

(Above: artwork by Hollie Moly)

On this International Working Women’s Day the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) extends our warm and militant solidarity to the women of the world in their struggles against oppression, exploitation and imperialist wars. Women of Australia stand in solidarity with our international sisters in our common struggles to end injustices, inequality and the violence of capitalism against women. Like all working women around the world, women in Australia are fighting dual battle in the workplaces and in the social sphere!

The history of IWWD is the history of working women’s liberation movements struggling against capitalist and imperialist exploitation and wars, and in the fight for socialism.

International Working Women’s Day grew out of working class women’s struggles for decent wages and conditions, equality and against exploitation and imperialist war. Its communist roots have been obscured through its more recent appropriation by bourgeois political sectors with their long corporate breakfasts and high teas.

IWWD was first proposed by German Marxist Clara Zetkin at the International Socialist Women’s Conference in 1910, which brought together burgeoning women’s movements from various countries concerned with universal suffrage, women’s labour rights and gender equality in all aspects of life. Later Zetkin and her women comrades, including socialist leaders Rosa Luxemburg in Germany and Sylvia Pankhurst in England, were at the forefront of the fight against the imperialist slaughter of WW1 and its ruthless conscription of young working-class boys and men as cannon fodder.

Capitalism, Exploitation and Oppression of Women

The CPA (ML) views the contemporary oppression of women as stemming from capitalism; its exploitation of all workers for profit, and its requirement that (largely) women perform unpaid labour to sustain the current, and reproduce the future, generation of workers, necessary for continued capitalist exploitation. This means that as well as being exploited in their workplaces, performing some of the lowest paid, insecure work, women labour for the capitalist class for no wages in housekeeping, child-raising, and fulfilling the social needs of family and community, like volunteering. This is the ‘hidden engine’ of capitalism necessary for the creation of profit for the entire capitalist class. To pull off such a swindle as getting women to work for no wages, the capitalist system is constantly generating its ideology, culture and media which serves to reinforce their role in the labour force, social reproduction and the nuclear family, socialising and conditioning women and men to comply with their designated roles as wage slave labourers, creators of surplus value and profits for the capitalist class.

So, when capital demands female and feminised labour it’s all ‘girl power” and when they aren’t required it’s ‘look after your family’. Often, it’s both at the same time. In the process the system exploits women’s genuine love and commitment to their children, partners, their extended families and communities. We recognise that while the family under capitalism is structurally a site of inequality and additional burden carried by women, it is often too a site of refuge and selfless care, nurturing and love in a heartless world.

Despite this, women involved in class struggle in their workplaces and communities, can loosen their chains and overcome the obstacles of capitalist and imperialist oppression. It is in the struggle for socialism that women find the path to women’s liberation, and the liberation of all humanity.

Working women shoulder the heavy costs of capitalist economic crises and imperialist wars

The world today is in deep capitalist economic and social crisis. This crisis is intensifying the economic and political competition between imperialist powers redividing the world amongst themselves. This is leading to military conflicts and wars in all corners of the world. Fascism and state repression by ruling classes is on the rise worldwide.

Throughout history women have always fought and led struggles against the ruling classes shifting the economic crisis onto the shoulders of working people. Women are the nurturers and fighters for life. We are the unacknowledged engine powering the day to day running of society.

Women are always at the forefront of liberation struggles against colonialism, imperialism and imperialist wars. We are indispensable in the fight for socialism and building a socialist society.

Women in Australia

In Australia today economic conditions for working people are deteriorating. The rising cost of living crisis and the struggle to make ends meet is putting extra burdens on working class women juggling family budgets, their jobs and trying to keep their heads above water. Over 50% of working women are in low paid, insecure and part time work. Most single parent women and their children live below the poverty line. The rising prices of food, utilities, healthcare, housing, education, childcare, the basic needs of life, are creating more hardship in the day to day struggle of working class women.

In the family it is more often women who must balance the budget and try to make it stretch to meet everyone’s food, health and educational needs. In a cost-of-living crisis this puts even more strains on women than usual.

Poverty and homelessness amongst working class women, especially amongst elderly single women, makes them the fastest increasing demographic experiencing this.

The housing crisis and housing debt hits women hard.

Exploitation of women in the workplace intensifies.

All workers are exploited in a capitalist society. This exploitation is intensified with women earning 22% less than men annually, including significantly less superannuation. Women earn 78 cents in every dollar men earn overall. In Australia this means on average women earn $28,428 annually less than men. And that’s an overestimated figure for the majority of lowest paid women workers who are the majority of low paid workers. The disparities between the cost of living and lower wages hit women hardest.

First Nations Women

For Australia’s Indigenous women the oppression and exploitation is doubled and far worse. For 237 years, from the first day of brutal colonial occupation, dispossession and racism, Indigenous women have refused to succumb to the devastating effects of colonialism on their people and communities. First nations women are pillars of strength, keeping their communities together, instilling pride in their culture and heritage. The countless deaths in custody of their children, families and community only strengthens their resolve to continue the fight against oppression, racism and for self-determination and sovereignty. A new generation of young Indigenous women are stepping up, leading militant First Peoples struggles, teaching and inspiring the non-Indigenous young people.

Women and imperialist wars

Just as women for centuries have fought against brutal colonial occupations and imperialist wars, today women continue to mobilise and lead the anti-war and anti-imperialist struggles and movements for justice and peace. Globally, women are at the sharp end of the wars mainly generated by imperialist powers, fleeing the devastation, poverty, displacement and persecution to protect their children and families.

As control of Australia’s economy, politics and military is tightened in US hands it is harder for women to fight for higher wages, more social services and a redistribution of wealth.

Australia’s US puppet governments have committed to spend over $400 billion of public funds on AUKUS, the aggressive US-led military pact to contain the rise of China. This money will be spent on 8 US nuclear powered submarines over the next 30 years. That’s more than $30 million a day diverted from the Australian people’s social and economic needs, and the Indigenous people’s sovereignty and land rights, to prepare Australia as a US military base and a proxy in a US- led imperialist war with China.

Meanwhile these $billions are being denied for critically needed funding for women’s health, homelessness, child care, single parents’ payments, women’s workplace rights and women fleeing domestic violence, amongst other urgently required funds to meet human needs in Australia.

Domestic and Social Violence against Women

Despite ideology which claims that women are liberated, capitalism still designates women as inferior to men and commodifies our bodies as sexualised objects for male gratification, control, and profit making. This leads to sexual abuse, harassment, domestic and social violence across the society.

Marxist Feminists argue that violence against women is relatively normalised by the capitalist state, its legal system and commercialised popular culture to subjugate women into accepting their submissive roles.

International Solidarity

On this International Women’s Day we pay tribute to women of Palestine, the Philippines, Myanmar, Rojava, and all other women fighting in their people’s heroic armed struggles for liberation from imperialism, colonial Zionism, capitalism and all reactionary forces. We pay tribute to women in all corners of the world.

We recognise the women tirelessly fighting for reforms within the capitalist system to alleviate the burden of oppression and exploitation it employs. History has taught us that the real and lasting end to the exploitation and oppression of women cannot be achieved without abolishing capitalism and replacing it with a new socialist society where women’s potential is fully liberated.

We fight for:

Funding for decent and secure public housing

Living wages for all

Full and secure employment for all

Properly funded free public health, education and child care

Sovereignty and Liberation of Australia’s First People

Equal pay and end to gender exploitation

Scrap AUKUS and spend $368+billion on people’s needs and the environment

End the US-Australia Alliance

No imperialist war – peace with justice

For an anti-imperialist independent and socialist Australia

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Albanese to weaken environment laws for foreign salmon farmers

Written by: Nick G. on 6 March 2025

(Above: Salmon farms off Bruny Island. Source: Environmental Defenders Office)

In a move that caught environmentalists by surprise, PM Albanese has intervened in a controversy over salmon farming in western Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour by promising to weaken environmental laws to guarantee the future of the industry. Albanese wrote to industry owners in February promising to “introduce legislation to ensure appropriate environmental laws are in place to continue sustainable salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour”.

Last November, Albanese injected a further $28 million into the industry to improve oxygenation levels in the harbour following a request by conservation groups to Environment Minister Plibersek to reassess salmon farming approvals under the Environmental Protection and biodiversity Conservation Act.

Their concern was the future of the endangered Maugean skate – a stingray-like creature whose only known habitat is in the harbour. Studies had shown its numbers were falling due to low oxygen levels in harbour waters caused by the salmon pens. Another $9 million of federal funds is to assist a skate captive breeding program. This money too, should come from the companies threatening the skates’ existence.

Albanese’s intervention has effectively sunk the expected decision by Plibersek’s department to raise the skate’s threatened species level from endangered to critically endangered. Their decision has been postponed until after the federal election.

Public concern over the nature of salmon farming

Concerns over salmon farming – the raising and harvesting of fish from large pens located in open sea water – are as old as the salmon farms, but the publication in 2021 by Penguin Books of respected novelist Richard Flanagan’s Toxic – The Rotting Underbelly of the Tasmanian Salmon Industry gave opponents of the farms the ammunition they needed for a widespread campaign. Some people claimed that Flanagan’s devastating exposé of the industry, with its destructive practices, diseases and fish kills, and use of synthetic chemicals to dye the fish flesh, had put them off eating salmon forever.

The main problem with salmon pens is that they let fish faeces and food waste fall directly onto the ocean floor where the build-up of excess nutrients can destroy marine ecosystems. It can lead to harmful algal blooms that reduce oxygen levels in the water killing fish on the pens and marine life in adjacent waters. Diseases associated with fish in poor health are then treated with hundreds of kilograms of antibiotics which leach into surrounding waters. There they are taken in by wild fish above the allowable level for human consumption. Use of broad-spectrum antibiotics for particular fish diseases, rather than safer vaccines, could lead to antimicrobial resistance beyond the target bacteria. Despite these problems, the Tasmanian government is proposing to increase the area of permitted significant environmental impacts on sea floors under salmon farms from the current 35 metres by an extra 100 metres of legally permitted pollution.

Driven by profits and returns to overseas shareholders, the 3 foreign companies in the industry have been allowed to self-report to the Tasmanian Environmental Protection Authority and have concealed reports on nutrients, fish deaths and fish escapes, diseases and antibiotics. Lack of transparency, of secrecy, is a matter of great concern to Tasmanians.

Multinationals served by government

Tasmanian salmon farming is entirely in the hands of three foreign multinationals. They are Tassal, owned by Canadian company Cooke Inc, since 2022; Huon Aquaculture, owned by notorious Brazilian meat processors JBS, since November 2021; and Petuna Seafoods, 50% owned by Maori nations and 50% by Japanese Nissui.

According to Tax Office data, the companies have paid no tax since 2019.

However, both the Tasmanian and federal governments are bending over backwards to ensure these foreign companies are not placed on an endangered list. From reworking and weakening environmental protection laws, to injecting public funds to save these private companies to have to clean up their own mess, to hiding all of this under a professed concern for jobs – it all comes down to governments in open service to capitalism.

The industry has claimed greater numbers of jobs than really exist. The Australia Institute has criticised the figures based on census data and has been supported by Tasmanian Senator Jaqui Lambi who described industry figures as “bullshit” saying that “It’s all robotics. It’s just feed. They carry on. They overestimate.”

And on the other side of Tasmania…

Just three days after Albanese’s letter of support for the Macquarie Harbour fish farmers, the companies kicked an amazing own goal in south-eastern waters between Bruny Island and regions south of Hobart.

On February 20, masses of salmon carcasses and globules of rotted fish fat washed up on the southern beaches. This was despite large quantities of dead fish taken from pens and dumped in landfill east of Hobart.

Alistair Allan, Greens candidate for Lyons in the forthcoming federal election said, “This is now solid proof that the industry has completely lost control of the disease outbreak that is causing so much death and suffering on these factory fish farms.”

Jacqui Lambie, characteristically, says that she has had a gutful of the salmon industry, and said it must stop its Macquarie Harbour operations and either move further out to sea and transfer to land-based tanks, with the federal funding better spent on supporting the deployment of affected workers.

“You’ve made more than enough money off the arse of Tasmania. Move it on,” she said.

Postscript: Prize Catch

Capitalism’s destructive war on nature, its profit-driven disregard for the environment, its secrecy and corruption were brilliantly captured last year in Alan Carter’s novel Prize Catch, published by Fremantle Press. Needing to facilitate a takeover by a foreign company, a Bruny Island salmon farmer employs SAS war criminals blooded in Afghanistan (under the control of a very Ben Roberts-Smith type leader) to undertake a campaign of murder and intimidation of local environmentalists. Police corruption assists their endeavours. It’s as good as Australian crime fiction gets.

Book Review: Culture and Imperialism

Written by: Duncan B. on 5 March 2025

Culture and Imperialism is a 2024 reprint of a 1993 book by the Palestinian-born literary critic Edward Said.

In this book Said examines the domination by British, French and US imperialism over most of Africa, Asia, and South America, and the resistance to imperialism by the peoples of the countries invaded by imperialism. He does this by examining the culture, in particular the literature of the imperialist countries and of the subject countries.

Marx pointed out in his Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, “In the social production of their existence, men enter into definite, necessary relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production corresponding to a determinate stage of development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which there arises a legal and political superstructure and to which there correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life-process in general.” Culture is a part of the superstructure erected on the economic base, in this case of imperialism.

In looking at the culture of the imperialist countries, Said examines novels by Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, E M Forster, Rudyard Kipling, Albert Camus and others. He also discusses Verdi’s opera Aida. Said shows how these works helped to justify imperialism and make it normal and acceptable to the home audiences in the imperialist countries.

Kipling’s stories and poems in particular, glorified imperialism and denigrated the native peoples of the colonised countries with racist stereotypes. His poem The White Man’s Burden urged the imperialist powers to take more territory from its rightful owners.

In looking at the culture of the countries oppressed by imperialism, Said shows how books such as Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, and the writings of many other Arab, African and Asian writers helped oppressed peoples to raise their self-awareness of their oppressed position, reclaim their national cultures which were dominated by imperialist culture and to mobilise for anti-imperialist resistance and struggle.

Said points out the world-wide spread of US culture, and the stranglehold that US media companies have over the supply of news in the world. This situation is much worse now than when Culture and Imperialism was written, thanks to the spread of social media. US culture dominates our TV shows, streaming services and live and recorded music.

Streaming service Stan, owned by channel 9, commissioned almost half of the new Australian-scripted content in 2024. The federal government had promised to impose local content quotas on the streaming services such as Netflix and Disney by July 1st last year. Hollywood resisted this, claiming that any regulation would be a breach of the Australia - US Free Trade Agreement. The government let this deadline pass.

Now the Trump government has threatened retaliation against countries which attempt to regulate the activities of US companies in their markets, claiming that this a violation of American sovereignty. It is likely that moves towards quotas will remain in limbo for the time being.

Australian culture has a proud history. There have been many writers, poets, artists and musicians who have played a strong role in the struggle for socialism and against capitalism and imperialism. Australians must uphold their struggle and continue the fight against imperialism’s attempts to dominate our culture.

Culture and Imperialism is not an easy book to read or to comprehend. It is well worth persevering with it however, to help us gain a better understanding of the important role which culture plays in anti-imperialist struggle.

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

ICOR strongly condemns the invasion of Congo by Rwandan troops and the blockade of the city of Goma

Written by: ICOR on 5 March 2025

The attack of the Rwandan special forces on the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo was only possible with the support of highly developed equipment supplied by Western powers. The current situation in Eastern Congo is once again leading the region into an unprecedented cycle of violence.

The Congolese masses are caught in a vise and their situation is becoming increasingly untenable. From 25 December 2024, Goma and its population of over one million people has been added to the hundreds of thousands already wandering around in the jungles of the surrounding localities, fleeing bombings and insults from all sides. All supply routes for essential goods have been cut, including the city's water and electricity supply, which is now cut off from the outside world.

The destabilization of Congo, which has been going on for 65 years, is in line with the logic of imperialist exploitation and domination, with destabilization being a means to ensure the orderly plundering of Congo's natural resources. Millions of people were killed and millions more displaced. And Rwanda is playing the role once ascribed to the brokers during the slave trade, namely to serve the imperialist conquest of the Congolese mines..

The Democratic Republic of Congo is rich in natural resources, including gold, copper, tin, uranium and minerals such as coltan, which is used in the production of tantalum for cell phones and computers. In 2016, Rwanda accounted for 50% of global tantalum production, with the majority coming from coltan mines seized in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

(Above: street art protesting Apple'srole in exploiting African labour for coltan supplies)

China now owns most of the cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, having bought out the previous owners from the US, and also controls most of the copper and uranium mines. The Congolese army has protected the Chinese assets.

The ICOR demands the immediate withdrawal of the Rwandan troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The ICOR supports the resistance of the Congolese people against imperialist domination and its Rwandan accomplice.

The ICOR supports the right of the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo to own and control the natural resources of their country.

The ICOR calls for solidarity with the progressive organizations in the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to strengthen the resistance of the Congolese people.

The ICOR calls on all its members to actively oppose the import of Rwandan minerals into the European Union and demands the revocation of the Memorandum of Understanding between the EU and Rwanda from 2024 on the import of “Rwandan” minerals into the EU.

The ICOR demands a ban on the sale of arms to Rwanda.

The ICOR calls on all revolutionary organizations in the Democratic Republic of Congo to intensify their struggle against imperialism and to take a stand for socialism - the true liberation of the Congolese people!

Long live proletarian internationalism in the struggle for national liberation, democracy and socialism!

Status of the signatories 04.03.2025. Further signing possible. Current list of signatories at www.icor.info

1. ORC Organisation Révolutionnaire du Congo (Revolutionary Organization of Congo), Democratic Republic of the Congo

2. CPK Communist Party of Kenya

3. CPSA (ML) Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist)

4. PPDS Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia

5. SPB Socialist Party of Bangladesh

6. NCP (Mashal) Nepal Communist Party (Mashal)

7. RUFN Revolutionary United Front of Nepal

8. CPA/ML Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

9. Krasnyj Klin Аб'яднання беларускіх камуністаў «Чырвоны Клін» (Association of Belarusian Communists «Red Wedge»), Belarus

10. БКП Българска Комунистическа Партия (Bulgarian Communist Party)

11. PR-ByH Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina)

12. MLPD Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany)

13. UPML Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Léniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union), France

14. BP (NK-T) Bolşevik Parti (Kuzey Kürdistan-Türkiye) (Bolshevik Party (North Kurdistan-Turkey))

15. KOL Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg)

16. RM Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands

17. UMLP União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union)

18. RMP Российская маоистская партия (Rossijskaya maoistskaya partiya) (Russian Maoist Party)

19. MLGS Marxistisch-Leninistische Gruppe Schweiz (Marxist-Leninist Group of Switzerland)

20. TKP-ML Türkiye Komünist Partisi – Marksist-Leninist (Communist Party of Turkey – Marxist-Leninist)

21. MLKP Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)

22. KSRD Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine

23. UMU Union of Maoists of the Urals (Union of Maoists of the Urals), Russia

24. PCP (independiente) Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan Communist Party (independent))

25. PC (ML) Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic

26. SUCI (C) Socialist Unity Center of India (Communist)

27. Chinese Communists (MLM) Chinese Communists (Marxist Leninist Maoist)

Monday, March 3, 2025

ICOR call for International Women's Day 2025

Written by: ICOR on 4 March 2025

International Women's Day on 8 March is inextricably linked with the history of socialist women. In 1910, at the Second International Socialist Women's Conference in Copenhagen, the communist Clara Zetkin launched the initiative to establish a Women's Day on which women would take to the streets for their rights and freedom.

This day of struggle for women's equality called for women's suffrage, the right to vote, but also for the introduction of the eight-hour working day, adequate protection for mothers and children, the establishment of minimum wages and equal pay for an equal day's work – all of which were groundbreaking achievements for the masses of women. But the struggle could not be separated from the struggle against imperialist warmongering, which would determine the fate of the world only a few years later.

Socialist women took a clear stand against the policies of the imperialist powers that led to the First World War. Rosa Luxemburg summed up the spirit of the times with the slogan “Socialism or Barbarism”. This warning has lost none of its relevance to this day: we are experiencing a new phase of imperialist wars and reactionary preparations for war, of the willful destruction of nature. On the contrary, the rapid developments of our time make the task of saving humankind and the environment from the destructive power of capitalist profit logic even more urgent.

The danger of a Third World War is currently greater than ever. The theaters of war in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as war preparations in the South China Sea and South America, are harbingers of that war. With his so-called peace negotiations with Putin and threats of forced deportation of Palestinians from Gaza, US president Trump sharpens his imperialist power plans on the backs of the peoples, as well as the rivalry with other powers.

The aggression against the peoples of the region which are supported by the imperialists and the genocide of Israel's reactionary Zionist government towards the Palestinian people show the unprecedented contempt for humanity and the wanton destruction of the imperialist order. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria is also exposed to massive threats from the Turkish state; its revolutionary achievements and advances in the liberation of women must be defended. In the reactionary war in Sudan, which is being waged with the support of various imperialist powers, we experience women committing suicide on a massive scale to escape the sexual aggression of anti-people warmongers.

Today, too, it is the meaningful duty of all militant and socialist women worldwide to resist imperialist warmongering and oppose psychological war preparation and warfare which try to portray these wars as liberation, humanism and defense. Let us put a stop to this! We women will take to the streets on 8 March with a determined and militant anti-war stance!

The living conditions in today's world are particularly painful for women and children. This begins with the low income, lack of child care or, even more intensified in case of flight, hunger, poverty, hardship, violence, misery, also rape and other forms of sexualized violence.

Especially working-class women are suffering from ever-increasing unemployment, inflation and a wave of impoverishment. For example the workers in the gold mines of Mali, agricultural workers in Indonesia, the female industrial workers such as the VW workers in Germany who are confronted with threatening job cuts, and the militant trade-unionists in the Netherlands – they are all doubly exploited. Especially the children of the working class are confronted with great insecurity and fear of the future.

All of this also challenges the fighting spirit of women all over the world. The new US president, too, must and will have to contend with all these women. When the ruling class doubly exploits working women, our conclusion can only be that we must be twice as determined fighting for the socialist revolution. The proletarian women's movement is the backbone of the worldwide militant women's movement. However, with this call, we address all women, all fighters for the liberation of women!

The deep crisis of the bourgeois system also means that patriarchal violence has taken on ever greater proportions. In recent years, brutal femicides in Mexico, Bangladesh, Turkey, India, Kenya and many other countries have led to large mass mobilizations. It is our duty to resist the oppression of women!

On 8 March, we also commemorate the Mirabal sisters, who as communist pioneers stood up against the dictatorship in the Dominican Republic and became a symbol in the fight against patriarchal violence. Today too, as women, together with our class alliance partners, we must fight in the front lines against the increasingly reactionary forms of imperialist capitalism and rising fascism. Trump, Modi, Milei, Orban, Erdogan, they all declare themselves enemies of women with their fascist ideology and behave as such!

All of these are already more than enough reasons to take to the streets on 8 March! We also declare: the oppression of women and their exploitation, in all its facets, are inherent in the capitalist system. In his groundbreaking work, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, Frederick Engels already laid the foundation for this conclusion with his historical-materialistic analysis of the gender relations. We can only achieve a solution through social revolution! Therefore, in the socialist tradition of 8 March, let us continue on the path of great pioneers such as Clara Zetkin, Inessa Armand, Rosa Luxemburg, Alexandra Kollontai, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and many others!

The revolutionary world organization ICOR is resolutely committed to the liberation of women, to the coordination and strengthening of their struggles, to the networking and exchange of their forces.

In close alliance with the worldwide movements for liberation, especially the grassroots women and revolutionary forces, ICOR calls for demonstrations on 8 March and advocates the slogans:

Women against imperialism and fascism!

The road to our liberation is through the struggle for socialism!

Working women, oppressed women of the world, forward in the struggle against im-perialism and for socialism!

Status of the signatories 02.03.2025. Further signing possible. Current list of signatories at www.icor.info: