Revolutionary Organization of Labor-USA
Boxholder, 607 Boylston St., Lower Level Box 464, Boston, MA 02116
MAY DAY GREETINGS — 2022!
Dear Comrades and Friends,
As we honor our most important holiday of the year--- the day of International Working Class Solidarity --- I am pleased to share the positive May Day message from International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties & Organizations (ICOR).
Despite our own significant organizational weaknesses including lack of substantial contact with other ICOR-affiliated as well as most other international anti-imperialist organizations, we remain affiliated with ICOR. And, after some consultation, I have endorsed ICOR’s May Day Greeting on our behalf.
Please share this ICOR statement, where appropriate, with any and all working class fighters, including strikers and union organizers, and anti-imperialists including Black Lives Matter activists, Latino immigrant fighters and others fighting for social justice in
the Belly of the Beast.”
Also, in the spirit of proletarian internationalism, we are including in this mailing the Resolution from Revolutionary Organization of Labor-USA (ROL-USA) we proposed last October to ICOR on the need to “prioritize the building of a new Communist International for our time, guided by the exemplary, outstanding and victorious historical
experience of the Third Communist International.”
The ongoing war in the Ukraine that broke out in late February makes the task of establishing a New Communist International all the more urgent. For, as the enclosed ICOR Resolution correctly states: “Imperialist countries or blocs of Russia or the USA, main warmonger in the world in alliance with NATO, directly confront each other … in abarbarous inter-imperialist war.”
With Communist Greetings,
Ray Light, General Secretary
Revolutionary Organization of Labor-USA
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ICOR call
May Day 2022 and May 8. and 9. – International Days of Struggle for Workers’ Rights, Peace, Freedom, and Socialism!
Active resistance against any imperialist war and the danger of World War!
May Day 2022, as international day of struggle of the working class, is overshadowed by a barbaric invasion of Ukraine by Russian imperialism and a massively intensified general interimperialist danger of war and world war. Imperialist countries or blocs of Russia or the USA, as the main warmonger in the world and in alliance with NATO, directly confront each other in different ways on Ukrainian territory – creating the potential for a Third World War.
May 8/9 stand for the victory of the Allies, above all the Red Army of the socialist Soviet Union over Hitler's fascism in 1945. The masses in Russia and Eastern Europe celebrate this day until today and the ICOR has elevated it to an anti-war day of struggle.
The international working class, especially the international industrial proletariat is challenged to form the decisive backbone in the struggle of the masses, the workers, women, youth, environmentalists, and antifascists against imperialism and today especially against the imminent danger of a nuclear-led III World War.
The interaction between the persisting world economic and financial crisis, the corona pandemic, the arms race now being stepped up worldwide, and the accelerated transition to a global environmental catastrophe has affected the lives of the world’s masses to the point of questioning their foundations of life. Inflation is rising rapidly, making life unaffordable for increasingly growing masses of people. An estimated 17 million people have died from COVID-19. Many of them could still be alive if they had received a vaccination. However, the imperialist countries and monopolies continue to greedily guard their profitable patents at the cost of the lives of millions of people. 160 million persons have additionally been thrust into poverty. In more than 100 countries, hard-won social benefits and health services have been reduced or even entirely revoked during the crisis. Millions of jobs have been destroyed or earmarked for elimination.
The masses are fighting back in demonstrations, resistance actions, strikes, and movements similar to uprisings. In hunger revolts and struggles against inflation and the energy companies’ policy of monopoly prices they defend their existential interests.
ICOR has clearly positioned itself. Now it is necessary to follow words with deeds: May Day is above all the day on which we take stock of the strengthening of ICOR and all our member organizations in order to make the call unmistakable worldwide: forward to socialism and communism! Only with the seizure of power of the proletariat the way is opened that imperialist wars, exploitation and oppression of the workers and the broad masses, environmental destruction, and lack of prospects for the youth belong to the past.
Active resistance:
No to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine!
No to every imperialist policy – Step up the anti-imperialist struggle against the threat of World War – Strengthen the anti-imperialist and antifascist united front!
Fight the shifting of the burdens of war and crises on the backs of the workers and the toiling masses!
For the right of self-determination of nations!
Long live the friendship between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples!
Worldwide struggle for democracy, peace, freedom, and socialism!
Signatories (as of 27 April 2022, further signatories possible):
PCPCI Parti Communiste Proletarien de Côte d'Ivoire (Proletarian Communist Party of Ivory Coast)
UPC-Manidem Union des Populations du Cameroun - Manifeste National pour l’Instauration de la Démocratie (Union of Populations of Cameroon - National Manifesto for the Establishment of Democracy)
MMLPL Moroccan Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Line
CPSA (ML) Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist)
PCT Parti Comuniste du Togo (Communist Party of Togo)
PPDS Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia
CPB Communist Party of Bangladesh
CPI (ML) Red Star Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Red Star
NCP (Mashal) Nepal Communist Party (Mashal)
PPRF Patriotic Peoples Republican Front of Nepal
CPA/ML Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
БКП Българска Комунистическа Партия (Bulgarian Communist Party)
PR-ByH Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina)
MLPD Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany)
UC Unité Communiste (Communist United ), France
UPML Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Léniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union), France
KOL Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg)
RM Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands
UMLP União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union)
RMP Российская маоистская партия (Rossijskaya maoistskaya partiya) (Russian Maoist Party)
MLGS Marxistisch-Leninistische Gruppe Schweiz (Marxist-Leninist Group of Switzerland)
MLKP Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)
KSRD Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine
UoC Union of Cypriots, Cyprus
PCC-M Partido Comunista de Colombia – Maoista (Communist Party of Colombia – Maoist)
OAPCM Organización Apoyante del Partido Comunista de México (Supporting Organization of the Communist Party of Mexico)
PCP (independiente) Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan Communist Party (independent))
PPP Partido Proletario del Perú (Proletarian Party of Peru)
PC (ML) Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic
PCR-U Partido Comunista Revolucionario del Uruguay (Revolutionary Communist Party of Uruguay)
ROL Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA
Revolutionary Organization of Labor-USA
Boxholder, 607 Boylston St., Lower Level Box 464, Boston, MA 02116
ROL-USA Proposed Resolution:
Prioritize Building A New Communist International
Whereas, the International Working Class and the Oppressed Peoples today confront a number of grave global crises simultaneously — all spawned by the moribund system of monopoly capitalism and
imperialism; and this general collapse of the global capitalist system is generating an increasingly powerful fascist motion throughout the world as well as the increasing likelihood of major regional and
ultimately global war; and
Whereas, the U.N.'s Special Reports of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stemming from the 2015 Paris Agreement have continued to document that, under monopoly capitalist and
imperialist domination, virtually all the world's nations have failed to live up to their mutual commitments to a set of environmentally conscious goals; and the unprecedented extreme weather events ever since that have occurred throughout the world have already brought about great mass suffering, with far more calamitous events for humanity on the horizon; and
Whereas, the Corona-virus (COVID19) Pandemic under global imperialist domination has produced both a devastating global health crisis and a prolonged economic crisis: Even with the introduction of
“successful” vaccines their private profit-driven production and distribution has featured the hoarding of vaccine supplies by the rich nations while the peoples in the poorest nations are almost universally
excluded from access to these life-saving medicines, increasing the danger for all humanity of the emergence of more and more virulent variants. All this has dramatically underscored the truth of comrade
Lenin's teaching that the “essence of imperialism” lies in the “fundamental distinction between the oppressing and the oppressed nations;” and
Whereas, global capitalism has spawned rapacious finance capitalists, a ruling class for whom there is no compunction to pay taxes, to support national infrastructure, mass public education, public health services or other national uplift; they are shameless privatizers of all public resources; and
Whereas, this same global capitalist system drives desperate populations of many countries to migrate from one continent to another (Africa to Europe, South America to North America) creating sharp dislocation for vulnerable populations in both the losing countries and the receiving countries and making them ripe for global chauvinist violence largely directed against migrant families and communities, and
Whereas, imperialist wars of plunder and occupation are a continuing prominent feature of imperialist economic policy, devastating vast areas of the globe such as the Obama-led, U.S., Italian and French
imperialist destruction of Libya and much of Northern Africa and the U.S.-led twenty year imperialist war and occupation of Afghanistan; and
Whereas, global individualism promoted by capitalist market forces, now intensified by social media global monopolies like Facebook and Instagram and their algorithms, supplant national cultures with
chauvinist hatred and crass consumerism, while huge populations no longer have collective self-worth based on the work they do, or on their contribution to society or their society's global contributions;
instead, what they own, drive, wear, etc. now determines their identity and makes them more susceptible to fascist appeals and unjust imperialist war, and
Whereas, the moribund system of monopoly capitalism and imperialism now is in perpetual crisis, is alienating billions of people and increasingly resorts to fascist leaders, right-wing “populist” movements of white supremacy, anti-semitism and immigrant-bashing and various anti-democratic attempts to violently seize political power as the ongoing Trump-led motion in the USA, one of the most powerful
imperialist countries, demonstrates so clearly; and whereas, the growing competition between U.S. and
Whereas, under the economic devastation wrought by the ravages of the COVID 19 global pandemic, workers all over the world are increasingly rising in strike struggles for higher wages and organizing
themselves to bring social justice to the workplace and beyond. Examples include: several general strikes in Argentina launched against capitalist austerity, a recent South Korean general strike demanding the nationalization of some basic industry and an end to casualization of labor, powerful rural worker and peasant uprisings in India, South African steelworkers opposing a wage freeze, an upsurge in U.S. industrial strikes and a series of massive protests by the French workers in defense of their pensions; and
Whereas, it is the working class, who has for several years shown signs of waging protests on a global scale and on broad political questions including international working class solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement following the brutal police murder of George Floyd, U.S. airline workers refusal to cooperate with their corporate employers and the U.S. state apparatus in the kidnapping from their families of immigrant Latino children at the U.S.-Mexico border; Google tech workers' global walkout in 2018 from Japan to the USA to Europe in defense of women workers; and worker unrest that helped scuttle Google's project to help U.S. military drone warfare, and, similar worker protests at Amazon against facial recognition projects to assist police agencies resulted in a moratorium on such sales; and
Whereas, today the international working class remains the one socio-economic class whose very strength is realized through its struggle against international capitalism and it is under the leadership of
the global proletariat that other class and national forces can play a positive role in the struggle to overcome the current existential crises brought on by the moribund system of monopoly capitalism and
imperialism; and finally,
Whereas, in the 1930's and 1940's, when the fascist movement was in power — from Italy, Portugal and Spain to Germany and Japan — it was the Soviet Union and the Soviet-led Communist International, the
revolutionary organization of the international working class, that led the working class and oppressed masses in the successful victory over global fascism, including through the skillful use of the United Front
Against Fascism;
Therefore, be it resolved that ICOR and its affiliated organizations as well as associated mass organizations including at the national democratic revolutionary and anti-fascist level be
encouraged to carry out “unity of action” on the grave global crises in the fight for workers power leading to socialism and communism.
Be it further resolved that ICOR and its affiliates prioritize the building of a new Communist International for our time, guided by the exemplary, outstanding and victorious historical experience of the Third Communist International.
SUBMITTED On Behalf of
The Revolutionary Organization of Labor (USA)
by
Ray O. Light
General Secretary
October 2021