For many looking at the world today, political events are cause for shock, chaos, despair and fear. We have every reason to mourn the fact that our time on earth is plagued by war, racism, exploitation and oppression. These issues are nothing new, but for many they have come so much closer to home and illusions in the current system’s ability to provide a future have been shattered. ISA’s message to all anti-capitalists in these tempestuous times is: let’s stand with each other and stand up for international worker solidarity.
An era of conflict, war and chaos
Is Trump a bully? Yes, very much so. But he is not just that. It is not Donald Trump’s personality that is the big problem here. The reason Trump is in the most powerful political position in the world is, ultimately, because he personifies capitalism — a system which contains exploitation, oppression, imperialism and war in its very DNA. Capitalism has in recent years buried the era of neoliberal globalization in favour of a new era of ramped-up nationalism. Two imperialist powers — China and the US — are competing for dominance, but Donald Trump and US capitalism’s hunger for power apparently also includes trampling over their own ‘allied’ nations.
Is Europe better? Fundamentally, no. “It is a historical irony that Europe should be so surprised by the rebirth of colonialism” wrote Professor of Human Ecology Alf Hornborg in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter on 22 February. The origins of capitalism are found in the European continent and were based from the very beginning in colonialism, the slave trade, displacement of people, genocide, witch trials, racism, species extinction and environmental destruction.
But it’s not just the past, it’s the present. Why did up to 50,000 protesters gather outside the EU summit in Gothenburg in 2001? The main slogans were “no to militarization of the EU”, “no to racism and Fortress Europe”, “no to constitutionalizing the neoliberal policies of the EMU”, and “don’t commodify the public sector and the environment”. They targeted EU imperialism, the EU’s ambitions for power both outwardly in competition with the US and the Chinese bloc, and the EU’s building of a fortress inwardly — which is the collaboration of the bourgeoisie against the workers and poor of Europe. That the EU serves precisely this function has been demonstrated many times, most clearly during the financial crisis of 2008/09 when the Union stepped in to save the banks at the expense of welfare and poorer countries like Greece.
How can we fight for peace? First, one must ask whose peace? The word peace was barely used — even treated with suspicion — in the political climate in Sweden during the time of NATO entry, in good company with “anti-racist”, “climate activist” and other beautiful words. Now “peace” has suddenly been re-launched by none other than Donald Trump. He claims to only want peace. Trump has truly helped to show what “peace” means to him by the macabre, bizarre AI video released of Gaza as a vacation paradise for rich white people dancing around a big gold statue of Trump. No other power has bombed and invaded other countries like US imperialism.
But just because the world’s most powerful liar says he wants peace doesn’t mean that those of us who hate everything he stands for should be in favor of war.
Europe rushes toward militarisation
Here we must see the European leaders exposed. Their only answer is mass armament. Now it’s no longer 2% of GDP for the military, they’re aiming for 5% and Starmer and Macron are talking about sending troops to Ukraine. Allegedly, this is for “peacekeeping” — but haven’t all wars been fought in the name of peace? Frantic militarization can never be the path to peace — it is the path to war.
Neither can we trust Ulf Kristersson (Swedish Prime Minister). A government that actively increases class divisions by making the unemployed worse off and cutting taxes for the rich, that deliberately increases carbon emissions and destroys sensitive nature, that brands racism into the structures of the state, can never be an ally of workers, anti-capitalists or socialists. This is the case ‘at home’ — and even more the case on military missions in Ukraine or elsewhere.
Fighting for peace means fighting for socialism
For socialists, the fight for peace must mean drawing a clear class line. We give our support to workers and the oppressed in Palestine, Ukraine and globally. The only lasting peace is one that brings an end to class war and imperialist competition. When a world socialist system is established, based on common ownership and the building of prosperity for all, there will be no new wars.
But how do we stop the threat from Putin and Netanyahu? Workers, the poor and the oppressed can only rely on each other — with solidarity and support for struggle, and massive pressure for the delivery of all necessary supplies, aid and the fight for asylum. The European leaders who now claim to care about Ukraine have never cared about Gaza and the West Bank, refuse to give refugees from Africa protection, make it difficult for Ukrainian refugees, turn their backs on Syria’s Kurds, etc.
We workers in different countries must refuse to go to war with each other. By building a strong labor movement that stands for something fundamentally different, we can reach workers in Russia and Israel. They hold the key to stopping Putin and Netanyahu. It has happened before. It was the workers’ revolution in Russia, which started on March 8, 1917, under the slogan of “peace and bread”, which later led to the first peace treaty in World War I.
Göran Greider (social democratic author) said on Swedish radio on 2 March that he regrets that there was no discussion about NATO entry and complete silence about the DCA (an agreement giving the US the right to 17 military bases on Swedish soil). “What has been lost is a country that is free from military alliances. It is often only seen from a Swedish perspective but not from a world perspective”. But we cannot only mourn, we must also organize a workers’ movement that stands free from the military alliances of any imperialist bloc, in alliance with workers and the poor all over the world, for a different, peaceful socialist society.
