Where To For Russia - 100 Years on From Revolution?

Ned K.

The annual slow-down of capitalism in the 'West' over Christmas and New Year provides a bit of time to read and reflect. 

This Christmas I was a given a book as a present called "Secondhand Time - The Last Of The Soviets" by Svetlana Alexierich. 

Alexierich is Ukrainian-born but has spent considerable time in Russia and Belarus interviewing people of diverse occupations and age groups. She attempts to capture what she describes as 20th Century "Soviet civilization", its collapse and its capitalist aftermath through the day to day experience of its people.

Alexierich is no lover of socialism, and even less a lover of Lenin’s and Stalin's leadership of the Soviet Union. What emerges for the reader is a picture of Russia which has always been an enemy of the West since the Bolshevik led Revolution of 1917 through to the present day as a competing capitalist power.

The book starts off with older-aged Russians criticizing the "free market" ideology of the capitalist restoration in Russia and the attempts by the new gangster capitalist ruling class to obliterate from history the initial successes of building socialism in one country and defeat of Nazi German imperialism in the Second World War.

Alexierich "balances" the older Russians' views on the restoration of capitalism with interviews with people who were in their twenties and thirties in the 1990s who expressed support for the "freedom" of the capitalist market economics.

Alexierich favours "free market" economics, but she is critical of how the gangster capitalists have implemented it and as a Ukrainian, falls firmly on the side of the West against Russia as a rival imperialist power. 

An irony of the book though is that she perhaps unwittingly provides another alternative path that awaits Russia. She interviews an unnamed (for good reasons!) university professor who says: "At the end of the nineties, my students would laugh when I told them stories about the Soviet Union. They were sure that a new future awaited them. Now it's a different story...Today's students have truly seen and felt capitalism: the inequality, the poverty, the shameless wealth. They've witnessed the lives of their parents...and they're oriented toward radicalism. They dream of their own revolution, they wear red T-shirts with pictures of Lenin and Guevara".

Experience is a great teacher and in the year of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, perhaps the seeds of a second revolution are being sown. Trump's alleged desire for closer ties with Russia may be more far sighted than one thinks as the US would no doubt prefer a Russian imperial rival rather than an even more dreaded new socialist rival!

Further reading: http://rbth.com/politics_and_society/2016/11/04/why-more-than-half-of-russians-miss-the-soviet-union_643655  

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/14/unhappy-russians-nostalgic-for-soviet-style-rule-study

Welcome 2017, Centenary Year of the Great Soviet Bolshevik Revolution

Nick G.

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) welcomes the arrival of 2017, the centenary year of the great Soviet Bolshevik revolution.

We extend to all members and friends the compliments of the season in the communist spirit of anticipating further great struggles by the working class for socialism and anti-imperialist independence.

Those struggles will continue to enrich the independent working class agenda and assist all workers to see past the restrictions of reformist bourgeois trade unionism, social democracy and parliamentarism.

Living under the system of imperialism, we continue to be threatened by wars arising from the rivalries between imperialist powers.  US imperialism is creating provocations directed at China and insisting on Australia’s involvement in those provocations. No good will come of this.  It is now more than ever necessary to demand an independent foreign policy, a policy based on a peaceful and independent Australia.

Contradictions embedded domestically and internationally will sharpen and require scientific Marxist analysis to be handled for the benefit of the people.  The core of good, solid members of the CPA (M-L) must be expanded boldly and those interested in joining us in our work encouraged to contact us, personally where possible, or via our contact address (Email: info@cpaml.org ).

Our Party is small but its influence is felt beyond our own circle.

Its further development - organisationally, politically and ideologically – will best be measured in the trust that is conferred on our leadership by workers engaged in struggle.

The thunder of 1917 and the achievements of the Soviet people under Lenin and Stalin were temporarily quietened by the revisionism of Khrushchev in 1956 and the accompanying restoration of capitalism, leading to the formal abolition of the great Soviet Union by Gorbachev and Co.

In welcoming this, the centenary year of the Bolshevik revolution, we affirm our confidence in the socialist road and reflect on the immensity and inevitability of the tasks we undertake in our own country and for our own working class.

For independence and socialism!

Fighting for Communism - The future that works!

Join the CPA (M-L)

An understanding of society (theory) and a way of uniting to change it (organisation) are the two things that we need to make a socialist revolution.

So many problems face this world: environmental catastrophe, poverty, diseases, racism and war. They’ll never be solved while imperialism and capitalism remains, but they could all be sorted if society was set up for the benefit of the majority rather than the private gain of a few billionaires.

Our party is different because we consistently apply Marxist science to all areas of our work, and we’re not scared to tell it how it is. We refuse to be intimidated by the barrage of lying propaganda that fills Australia’s mainstream media. The ruling class of corporate monopoly interests and their collaborators try to ridicule and crush the idea of building a socialist society; it is our job to do it anyway!

Challenge your ideas – challenge their propaganda – seek the truth – serve the people – change the world! 

Contact the CPA (M-L) to find out more
P.O. Box 196, Fitzroy, Victoria, 3065
Email: info@cpaml.org

Marxism Today: Key differences between Marxism and revisionism

Marxism holds a number of key principles that are crucially important.

1.    The working class needs a party of a new type, that is, a Communist Party. The question of the form of such an organisation is vital. A Communist Party is not some amorphous body which anybody can join by filling in a coupon and for any reason whatsoever. It is a well organised and disciplined organisation that is selective about its membership.  This is not about elitism, but about ensuring that Party members are of sufficient quality, in an organisation that places demands on individuals in connection with their activity, a grasp of the Party’s ideology and acceptance of the Party program and preparedness to work and live with the people whose interests they represent.

Every member is required to put ideology in command, belong to a Party organisation and pay Party dues. This is an organisation of activists and not commentators. Although in each country and time there are some unique characteristics, there are some general principles that Lenin elaborated so well in his monumental works What Is To Be Done and One Step Forward and Two Steps Back. Stalin accurately summarised what Lenin had to say under these headings in his Foundations of Leninism.

a.    The Party is the vanguard of the working class
b.    The Party is the organised detachment of the working class
c.    The Party is the highest form of class organisation of the working class
d.    The Party is the embodiment of will, incompatible with the existence of factions
e.    The Party is strengthened by purging itself of opportunist elements

These principles of Communist Party organisation are not based on command from higher up, but on voluntary individual and collective discipline founded on revolutionary understanding, commitment and willingness to serve the working class and people and not one’s self.

Thus there must be a unity between ideology, politics and organisation. Ideology must be in command, the political actions must be in accord with this ideology and organisation must serve ideology and political needs. On this basis, the Party recruits the best of the working class and other social groups. And it does not set up organisation that is separate from those it seeks to serve, but one that is organised amongst the people.

2.    The interests of the working class are irreconcilable with the interests of the capitalist class. Only through a fierce and determined struggle of society, led by the working class, can the common enemy be defeated and fundamental change be brought about. The reason for this is the mode of production under capitalism, namely, the contradiction between the socialised relations of production and the private ownership of the means of production and the commodity. Tied up with this is Marx’s Theory of Value. This explains how profit is extracted from the value created by labour, which is expropriated by the capitalist in the form of profit. If this is true, the interests of one class can only be secured at the cost of the other. Marx also observed that the relations of production in capitalist society determine that there will be cyclical booms and bust phases in the economy.

3.    Capitalism cannot be reformed into socialism. The capitalist class constitutes the ruling class through its economic power. From this stems political power.  The state is a weapon in the hands of the ruling class, used to impose its rule through both deception and violence. Only by the removal of the economic power of the capitalist class and putting an end to its political, administrative and legal structure through the destruction of the capitalist state, is it possible to put an end to this rule and replace it by the rule of the working class and its allies.  This power is exercised this a completely different kind of state, a state based on democratic mass participation in decision making and implementation of these decisions.

4.    In the imperialist era of capitalism, which remains globally dominant, socialist nations are compelled to co-exist with imperialist and other capitalist nations and must therefore strive to achieve a balance between having to deal with them and resisting encroachment and working to build the future. This is achieved on the principles of striving for mutual respect, equality and not interfering in each others internal affairs. There is an element of compromise here, brought about by necessity. This approach is always applied strategically, as a means to strengthen socialism and weaken capitalism. It is not about caving in accepting the demands of capitalism, tying oneself in chains and losing the initiative.

5.    In socialist societies, the leadership of the Communist Party is the highest expression of the organised working class that has established and is asserting its political power. This leadership is essential to maintaining and consolidating the working class as the leading class. What this means is that it is necessary to go about the business of building the new in a long sighted and planned way, to slowly move out of the primal swamp that is capitalism and its ongoing influence. To do this scientific method must be applied to the act of, for the first epoch in human history, unleashing the conscious will of humanity to determine its own future. Part and parcel of moving forward is having the capacity to deal with class enemies and resolve contradictions amongst the people through education, patience and development. 

All of these principles are opposed by revisionism. In summary, these are the counter positions that have consistently been put forward and practiced.

1.    On the question of the Communist Party there are two responses from revisionism. Both repudiate the principles that were developed by Lenin and summarised by Stalin. The foundation of the revisionist position since the time of Bernstein to the modern revisionists is that capitalism has changed since Marx’s time. The argument rests on two propositions. One is that instead of being pushed down, the position of the working class has actually improved over time and that Marx’s prediction of crisis has not been born out by experience. Marx’s Theory of Value has also been disproved by history according to the revisionists. 

The other response is that after achieving universal suffrage, the working class has a say and influence in the political system. Therefore a party of the working class that concerns itself with the smashing of the old state and organised along the principle summarised by Stalin is no longer needed. There is denial of the concepts of the Party being the vanguard, leading detachment of the working class and the highest form of class organisation. 

To counter such a party, the idea of an open party that works comfortably within the system is put forward, to give voice to the working class within the political system that it can now operate in. The Communist Party should be only one of a range of equal entities in a broad front of progress. It should not claim a leadership role, but merely contribute its views, amidst equally valid counter views. In this way, Communist ideology, politics and organisation is subordinated to capitalist ideology, politics and organisation. 

The idea of collective discipline and service to the people is transformed into worship of individualism and service of self. Party work is seen as furthering one’s career. Factionalism is justified as the normal state of affairs. Cleansing the Party of opportunism is seen as tyranny. Leadership is seen as the result of having the numbers, rather than being based on the ideological quality and skills that have been developed and verified by practice. 

A second variant of revisionism suggests that there should be no Communist Party at all, because social democratic organisation already exists. This social democratic organisation is organisation of the working class and already serves the role that the Communist Party is striving to serve. The communists, instead of having separate organisation, should enter the social democratic party in order to move it in a better direction.

2.    Given that capitalism has changed its nature, the working class and capitalist class have interests in common and progress can be made on the basis of pursuing these interests. The greed of some capitalists can be contained on the basis of an alliance with all members of society as equals. This nonsense delivers the working class into the hands of the capitalist class. 

The working class should hold itself back so as not to break this alliance and should not inscribe on its banner the need to put an end to capitalism. It should confine itself to winning some concessions. It is through the winning of these concessions that capitalism will one day turn out to be socialism. Consequently, there is worship of the spontaneous struggle for concessions and a denial of connecting the spontaneous struggle to the struggle for revolutionary change. 

At the core of this denial is a refutation of Marx’s theory of value. It is denied that the capitalists’ profit is derived from the creation of value through the application of labour power. In place of Marxist political economy there is acceptance of various versions of Keynesian economics. The boom/bust economic cycles no longer exist. Capitalism can be managed and the distribution of income can be made fairer and be propelled in the direction of socialism on this basis. Socialism is reduced to state management and a better distribution of income.

Here is a part of what Lenin had to say in relation to the revisionist answer to Marx’s political economy.

“The position of revisionism was even worse as regards the theory of crises and the theory of collapse. Only for a very short time could people, and then only the most short-sighted, think of refashioning the foundations of Marx’s theory under the influence of a few years of industrial boom and prosperity… Realities very soon made it clear to the revisionists that crises were not a thing of the past: prosperity was followed by a crisis. The forms, the sequence, the picture of particular crises changed, but crises remained an inevitable component of the capitalist system. While uniting production, the cartels and trusts at the same time, and in a way that was obvious to all, aggravated the anarchy of production, the insecurity of existence of the proletariat and the oppression of capital, thereby intensifying class antagonisms to an unprecedented degree."

Lenin explained how the winning of concessions on the basis established by revisionism divides, demoralises and disorganises the working class and ties it more securely to the capitalist class.  These are concessions with chains, where victories are turned to defeats in the long run. 

A classical example in Australia was the Prices and Incomes Accord of the 1980’s. It was drawn up by practitioners of revisionism. Its essence was that the working class had to pull back on demands for increased wages and improved conditions, and in return, there will be controls on prices. There would also be an advance in the “social wage.” This means that government would provide more subsidies and services. The accord was enthusiastically taken up by the capitalist class, bringing in a period of serious setback for the working class. Income was re-distributed upwards, real wages and conditions declined, union organisation was decimated in many places and communist organisation declined. The social wage did not advance. 

Parliamentary politics becomes the mainstay of the political struggle. All activity is strictly within the limits imposed by capitalist law. Denial of the class struggle also led to denigration of the leading role of the working class, and in the most developed form of revisionism, raising the concept of social movements in its place. The emphasis was on the environmentalist, women’s liberation, the Indigenous movement and sexual rights as things in themselves, devoid of any class content. But rather than giving strength to these movements, revisionism actually weakens them by sapping them of the strength that a clear working class position provides.

3.    Revisionism preaches that the state is above classes. It does not accept that the capitalist class is the ruling class, imposing its dictatorship through the use of the state and the application of both deception and violence. Consequently, the state is seen as an instrument that can mediate and therefore limit the power of the capitalist class. It is a short step from here to insist that the state can be captured and turned to bring in socialism. With this, it is not surprising that revisionism is infatuated with parliamentary politics.

Revisionism abhors the idea of building an alternative political power in the work place and neighbourhoods. It regards revolutionary struggle with horror and an attack on already existing democracy. Proponents of revolutionary struggle are branded as dictators who are the enemies of society, legitimising the capitalist concept that one must only work through the established channels.

What was Lenin’s response?

“In the sphere of politics, revisionism did really try to revise the foundation of Marxism, namely, the doctrine of the class struggle. Political freedom, democracy and universal suffrage remove the ground for the class struggle—we were told—and render untrue the old proposition of the Communist Manifesto that the working men have no country. For, they said, since the “will of the majority” prevails in a democracy, one must neither regard the state as an organ of class rule, nor reject alliances with the progressive, social-reform bourgeoisie against the reactionaries...”

4.    Revisionism suggests that in the relations between countries peace should be secured at all costs, even if there must be rapprochement between socialism and capitalism. There is no distinction between just and unjust wars in terms of class interests. Those who rise up against their oppressors are often condemned as being violators of the peace.  There is a denial of imperialism as a predatory stage in the development of capitalism and that that this affects all relations between states. Just like in the national arena, in the global context, the struggle for change takes the form of being confined to the evolution of the existing order and not on working to unite all forces against the common enemy. 

International relations depend on maintaining the alignment with the domestic capitalists. The class struggle, which is now far less important, has given way to the national interest in isolation from class interests.  Objectively this means the denial of working class interests and support for capitalist class interests, simply because it is the capitalist class that wields political power.

5.    In conditions of socialism, revisionism continues to be infatuated with the capitalist political system and seeks to impose the same system to socialism. This is equated to democracy. A system under the leadership of the working class acting as the ruling class, dispossessing the capitalist class is seen as a ‘totalitarian dictatorship’. Revisionism demands all individuals are equal in the political process. There is no leading role for the Communist Party. The working class does not need to be in the dominant position. The space should be open to all on an equal footing. The most venomous hatred is reserved for socialist countries that are falsely accused of human rights violations on the terms put forward by the imperialists and capitalist society. Again there is no working class position. Just the acceptance of democracy as being defined by the capitalist parliamentary system and law.  

Of course, revisionism in socialist society has had to operate is a slightly different way, after inheriting the political structures and system of ideas that were built up in the period of socialist construction. If we examine the practice of revisionism in that part of the world, one cannot help but see that step by step it moved in the same way.

Huggies workers strike against crap multinational

Nick G.

Just days after the historic win by CUB workers, another battle has flared up against Depression-style wage cuts.

Fifty-five CUB workers were laid off and then offered their old jobs back at what was effectively a 65% wage cut. For six heroic months, they stood their ground, daring to struggle and, consequently, daring to win – getting their jobs back at the previous wage rate.

Now it is the turn of 150 workers at the Ingleburn, Sydney, plant of US multinational Kimberley Clark, manufacturers of the infant nappy brand Huggies.

Kimberley Clark has introduced to enterprise agreement negotiations with the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union a demand that all new employees start at a rate which is 25% less than the current EA rate.

Workers reacted by declaring an indefinite strike against the company’s plan to create a two-tier workforce.

These tactics of corporate giants like CUB and Kimberley Clark are reminiscent of enforced wage cuts during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

They indicate that capitalism is on shaky ground, and that more and more employers are seeking to shore up their competitive spirit at the expense of Australia’s workers.

We should never overlook the fact that the ruling class continually discusses its tactics against the workers. They are discussed in boardrooms, in industrial relations clubs, in peak employer groups, inside right-wing free market think tanks, with the major mass media and with the leaders of both major political parties.

CUB and Kimberley Clark are the current kite flyers for the ruling class.  If they are defeated by the workers and the workers’ communities, then they move onto a new tactic. They hope giants like CUB and Kimberley Clark will ride out working class resistance, allow industrial precedents to be set and spread elsewhere to the benefit of the capitalist economy.

Workers instinctively know that an attack on one is an attack on all and want to close ranks for their mutual defence.

The Kimberley Clark workers are fighting for all workers.

As our revered, late Party comrade John Cummins stated with great clarity and simplicity, “If workers stand united, sooner or later their success is guaranteed”.

With fists raised in the air, Kimberley Clark workers are poised to do what their comrades at CUB did: struggle and win!

Decline in the Australian economy reflects the long term depression of capitalism globally

Max O.

The recently announced national account figures for the September quarter saw Australia's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) shrink by 0.5 per cent. This is the result of a fall in business investment (of 9.7 percent in the last 12 months), a collapse in effective demand, reduction in government spending and the decline in the building industry.

The annual growth rate fell from 3.1 to 1.8 percent, this at a time when official interests rates are at an all time low of 1.5 percent. Australian capitalism's economic slump is the result of the long term price deterioration in the country's dependency on exporting commodities.

After the last official recession in 1991 the Australian economy has contracted three more times - in 2000 when the GST was introduced, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the 2011 Queensland flood devastation. There is no end in sight for the current economic stagnation because investments by business continue to fall, creating a crisis of confidence in the stability of capitalism.

For Treasurer Morrison and business groups the solution is in the mantra of reducing company tax (from 30% to 25%) and government expenditure in the coming years. All this will achieve is a $50 billion tax reduction for corporations with no guarantee that this boost to their profits will revive investment and increase employment.

Contradicting this bourgeois economists then point out that household consumption has fallen since the beginning of this year in Australia and is the major worry for the faltering economy. Capitalist economies have depended on debt-driven household spending to power their growth. In the decade prior to the 2008 GFC household consumption grew 3.95 percent annually, then after the crash it fell to 2.5 percent.

The chances of the Turnball government turning around the budget deficit (currently at $40 billion) to a surplus, by 2021 are next to nil. The credit ratings agencies and finance capital are now threatening a down grade in Australia's triple A credit rating.

The day of reckoning demands that huge amounts of capital need to be destroyed

Eventually they will demand a day of reckoning and further austerity measures to be implemented of the severity that has been witnessed in Europe. Despite all the ingenious innovations and productive power of capitalism it has a feature that is its undoing: it suffers from recurring economic crises making it an inherently unstable system.  

The world economy is experiencing a long depression due to what Marx explained is the falling rate of profit and a colossal rise in debt. Presently capital is incapable of returning profit rates and has the problem of excess capacity, consequently it cannot get out of this depression. There are essentially two choices for a recovery from the present depression, either through the wiping out of useless investments and assets through bankruptcies, closing down of plants etc to restore the rate of profit which will entail a massive rise in unemployment and misery for those unemployed or by the overthrow of the capitalist system and its replacement by a socialist mode of production (which does not suffer from chronic depressions) whose purpose is to fulfil people's needs.

The current depression which occurred with the GFC in 2008 was detonated by the massive growth of fictitious capital that ultimately disintegrated when the ratio of household prices to household incomes could not sustain real value expansion. However this detonation was not the cause, it was the symptom of the overall cause of the crisis which is the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and accompanied by a crisis of overproduction.

In the history of modern capitalism there have been three depressions. It is important here to make the distinction between recurring recessions or slumps from depressions. 

The first being the Long Depression of 1873-97, the second being the Great Depression of 1929-39, and now arguably the third of 2008-? These depressions all began with major slumps: 1873-6 slump started off the Long Depression; 1929-32 slump started off the Great Depression; and the 2008-9 for the current depression.

Depressions are the result of a combination of descending phases in the cycles of capitalism. Each depression occurs when the cycles of technological innovation have reached their completion and flooded the economy. It occurs when commodity prices and world production slide downwards, going from inflation to deflation. It occurs when the cycle of infrastructure investment and construction has declined. It occurs when the rate of profit falls together with excess capacity of production. The combination of these diverse cycles has a pattern of happening once every seventy years.

Each depression never recovers from the economic devastation it causes

Whilst in each of the 1873-97 Long Depression and the 1929-39 Great depression there were both economic decline and some growth, the recovery was never enough to nullify the devastation of the early slump, and further slumps ensued.

In all likelihood the world is in the early stages of a third depression. Predictions are that it will be a long depression and more difficult than a great depression.  

As Marx said many years ago the problem of capital is with capital itself. Capitalism may well emerge out of its long depression, however the time of its approaching historical extinction is getting closer.

Welcome the liberation of Aleppo

Nick G.
​
The significance of the liberation of Aleppo cannot be underestimated.

It is a major blow for US imperialism’s plans for a “New Middle East”, a Middle East of US client states working in concert to protect US global interests and to shore up the faltering US economy.

Six years ago, a movement for political reform and working class rights developed as Syrian people confronted the Assad government’s deregulation of some key economic areas.

The US saw the opportunity for a Libyan-style regime change, and encouraged armed terrorists aligned with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State to infiltrate the people’s mass movement and turn it from a focus on changing government policy to one of overthrowing the government.

US imperialism supplied weapons to anti-Assad terrorists, in some cases directly, and in other cases to so-called “moderate rebels” who then defected, one after another, with their US weapons to the terrorists.

The US strategy was born of a profound weakness of its ability to continue waging war against peoples and governments willing to defend their sovereignty and independence.

Speaking yesterday, Obama decried the fact that there had been “no public appetite” for a large-scale US military invasion of Syria and that it was “going to be impossible to do this on the cheap”.

Instead, the US had to rely on the only force potentially capable of toppling Assad -  the vicious assassins flying the flag of the Islamic State.

US disinformation on Syria

What it could not control on the ground, the US made sure to control in the realm of public opinion, with a mass media prepared to lend the righteous word “rebels” to the armed fanatics fighting the Syrian Army, and to always describe as “civilians” the casualties amongst the terrorists.

The anti-Assad paradigm framing the bourgeois media’s reporting of events in Syria has Assad as the evil tyrant bent on waging war on his own people and gassing and massacring civilians by the thousands, while the terrorists are “moderates” and “rebels” brought into the conflict as a consequence of the Syrian government’s violent crackdown on a popular movement.

Thus, the chieftain of US imperialism, Barack Obama, is able to keep a straight face as he tells a news conference: "The world as we speak is united in horror at the savage assault by the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies on the city of Aleppo. This blood and these atrocities are on their hands."

So thorough is the US control of international news media that quite a few progressive and humanitarian peoples and organisations are decrying what they are told is Assad’s latest crime – defeating the terrorists who are committing every possible real crime to intimidate government supporters and bring Assad down.

This even extends to some on the so-called “Left”, mainly some of the Trotskyite groups such as those associated with the International Socialist Organisation. In its paper the Socialist Worker, the ISO bemoans the liberation of Aleppo, describing it as a “reconquering” by “ Bashar al-Assad's regime, Russian air power and Iranian-backed Shia death squads”.

In their inverted world-view where black is white and wrong is right, the ISO maintains that Aleppo had been “liberated by the Syrian Revolution” rather than seized by IS and al-Nusra (recently rebadged as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham), and that its liberation from these terrorists is a setback for “the revolution from below”.

Syrian Communists welcome the liberation of Aleppo and the defeat of US-backed terrorists

In direct contrast to the bourgeois and ISO media war on Assad is the view of the Syrian Communist Party (Unified).  In a statement released on December 7, the Party said:

As is well known, our party, along with other progressive and patriotic parties of Syria, is struggling against what is nowadays considered one of most barbarous imperialist aggressions of the period since World War Two, a struggle against the most extremist and fundamentalist radical movements of this century like al-Nusra Front, ISIS and al-Qaeda which have been condemned internationally.

This struggle is the practical embodiment of confrontation against the imperialist projects of domination in the world and in the region – the U.S. drive to create the so-called “New Middle East.”

Tens of thousands of people have been killed, hundreds of thousands others have been wounded, and thousands of families were forced to migrate to more peaceful areas inside and outside Syria. The damages are countless, thousands of workshops and factories of middle and small industries have been destroyed as well as many large industrial structures, infrastructure, schools and hospitals. Archaeological treasures and ancient cities have been crushed. Syrian oil and other wealth of the Syrian people are being stolen and smuggled to Turkey whose regime is allied with terrorist organizations. The value of these damages is estimated at around 200 billion dollars.

The Syrian people, along with the government, Syrian army and progressive political forces of the country, has been bravely resisting this aggression since its beginning in 2011.
Terrorists who fulfill this attack on Syria have come from more than 80 countries, supported by the imperial powers of the world and their allies.

The Party asked the international community to acknowledge the following facts:

1. It is not acceptable to put the offender and the victim on an equal footing.

2. International law does not allow any county to interfere in the internal affairs of any other country, which is what the terrorists and their supporters do in Syria. Demanding President Assad step down is an affair to be decided only by the Syrian people.

3. The aggressors are the only side who carry the full responsibility for the losses and damages in the country.

4. The aggression against Syria is going along with mass media/imperialist campaign, on which billions of dollars are spent by the USA and Saudi Arabia. Through this media facts about events in the country are falsified and this information is spread around the world.

5. Iraq is also under the same aggression and the Iraqi people are resisting it. It is the duty of all progressive forces of the world to supported the brave resistance of the Iraqi and Syrian peoples against the international terrorist aggressors.