As war and the crisis are plunging more and more people around the world into barbarity, it’s difficult to toast to world peace to ring in the new year.
In Ukraine, the “winter campaign” is underway and the population will again suffer deprivation for months. How many more Russian and Ukrainian soldiers will die or be wounded as they hide out in the trenches of this war, a war where imperialist world powers and Russia continue to fight each other, no matter what the cost to Ukrainians?
And, with the approval and material support offered by those same world powers – above all by the United States – to the State of Israel, it has free rein to continue the massacre in Gaza. Within a few weeks, over 21,000 people have died and Netanyahu says the war will last a long time in order to completely crush the Palestinian population.
On the other side of the Atlantic, tension is rising in the Essequibo region which was attributed to Guyana at the end of the 19th century by colonial powers and neighboring Venezuela has laid claim to it ever since. The Venezuelan government revived its claim to the territory out of political calculation just before the elections of course, but also out of necessity. Indeed, the American oil company Exxon Mobil is turning away from Venezuelan oil and towards the immense oil reserves discovered in Guyana.
Out of respect for the official borders inherited from the division of the world among imperialist powers, the United States has affirmed its support to the government of Guyana and the former British colonial power has sent a warship to patrol along its coasts... They claim they are defending the rights of a small country like Guyana against its neighbor when actually it is all about oil, and big imperialist corporations will continue to grab the lion’s share by imposing their conditions.
Many regions in Africa are being plunged into a bloodbath for the same reasons. There, if you don’t die from a gunshot wound, you risk dying of hunger. This is the case in Sudan where six million people are threatened with famine. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, civil war has been raging in the Kivu region for years over valuable natural resources including coltan. Six million people have died so far because of the war and nearly four million have become refugees. And, as always, behind the local gangs and interventions led by neighboring African states, imperialist powers are at work to ensure the profits of the multinational corporations that need these raw materials. The effects of global warming make the situation even worse for millions of women, men and children who are forced into exile.
The bourgeoisie is unable to control the contradictions of its own system and the fierce trade war going on between the different world powers is leading to an all-out war that could spread around the world. It’s at this cost that the financial markets pop open champagne and toast to the end of the year, a year where the global stock exchange beat a number of records including the one by Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the heir to L'Oréal, crowned the "richest woman in the world", whose personal fortune is now over 100 billion dollars.
Here, workers are not yet losing their lives, but their living conditions are getting worse, their hopes are dwindling, their wages are barely enough to make ends meet and their working conditions are getting harsher.
Macron can keep on trying to sell us the dream of the Olympic Games, but the athlete’s feats won’t fill our fridges and the billion-dollar stadiums built for these money-making games won’t shelter the thousands of children, women and men forced to sleep on the streets.
There are reasons to hope in the future but workers won’t find them in the “French pride” Macron boasts about or in the promises made by his political rivals. They all respect this system led by the capitalists.
Today, just like in the past, the reasons to hope in the future for the oppressed lie in the recognition of their own strength and in their ability to fight against their exploiters.
The working class, whose labor keeps society running, is not condemned to suffer or to see its living conditions deteriorate for the profits of capitalists. It is not condemned to be divided into groups according to status, skin color or nationality. It is not condemned to send its children onto the battlefield to die for the interests of the world’s rich and powerful.
Workers, by becoming aware of their strength, by taking up revolutionary communist ideas, have nothing to lose but their chains and a whole world to gain. These words of Marx are our best prospect for the future.
Nathalie Arthaud