League for the Fifth International
2011 was an incredible year of mass protest movements, strikes, uprisings and revolutions. From Tunisia in January to Russia in December, millions of people across the world have taken to the streets and taken strike action in the fight for more control over their lives. No wonder Time magazine made the protester their "person of the year" in 2011 – it showed a desire for people not to quietly accept the designs of the ruling elites and their undemocratic practices. We want to reshape and reorganise society to make it better, to make the world one of freedom, not misery. Very much in the spirit of 1789 it gave voice to the attributed quote from a Chinese political leader in the 1980s that it was 'too soon' to say what the affect of the French revolution was.
And the bosses are afraid that 2012 will be a year of more chaos for the economy. Already as the new year begins there are worrying signs. It maybe the case that a second credit crunch has already happened in early December – by the end of the year several major world banks had their credit rating down graded. Europe is standing on the brink of decade lost to austerity and growing mass poverty. The IMF has announced that they think the world will see another 1930s style economic slump. At the same time the wealth gap is growing – which means some people are getting richer from other peoples misery.
What is clear is that the world will look very different in 2012 to what it looked like in 2011. The collapse of the post-war consensus and the continuing decline of the old imperialist economies is happening against a backdrop of the rise of China which – although it will sooner or later experience its own recession – is emerging as a powerful rival to the western imperial centres.
The year 2012 will be one of struggles, of new rounds of resistance, no doubt with many defeats, but we are also confident of important victories. Building an revolutionary movement globally which can marshall the forces to defeat the plans of the capitalist class remains a central task. This is why we will be actively involved in any movement against cuts – fighting for a world beyond capitalism.
As part of the strategic goal of increasing our theoretical output in 2012, the League will be focussing on issues concerning the growth of China, the possibility of building new anticapitalist organisations and continuing our analysis of imperialism. With the publication of Degenerated Revolution and a number of other books in 2011 we hope to continue getting more of out ideas out into the wider world. Our militants will be central to the kind of strategic debates that will be happening, from the Occupy movements to workers strikes, and we have a clear message of uniting the resistance and radicalising the workers movement.
One thing is fundamental to our struggle, and that is capitalism is not about to improve the lives of millions, but instead will be hell-bent to make us pay for the crisis. The antagonisms within capitalism will not be getting better for many people across the world. It is to those people that socialists must orientate and convince of the need not just for resistance but for revolution.
So if 2011 was a year of "February revolutions" then lets fight to make 2012 a year of October revolutions!