Zimbabwe: For New October Revolutions!

The following is reprinted from our comrades of the Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe (RWG-ZIM).


This leaflet was distributed at the “Marxism 2017 Conference,
Crisis in Zimbabwe and Global Capitalism One Solution – Revolution
Celebrating 100 years of the Great October 1917 Russian Revolution” held
November 4th in Zimbabwe organized by the International Socialist
Organization – Zimbabwe and other left and radical movements and unions:

For New October Revolutions!

1. World imperialism is facing its terminal crisis of falling profits and climate change. There is no way out for the human race other than the overthrow of global capitalism and creation of world socialism. For that reason workers and oppressed in every country have to subordinate their national struggles to the international workers’ struggle.
2. For imperialism to survive it downloads its crisis onto the semi-colonies and the oppressed people of the earth. All of the hardships faced by the masses are caused by the degeneration of a rotten capitalist system that no longer develops, but rather destroys, the forces of production.
3. Africa demonstrates how the world is being re-partitioned between Chinese imperialists on the rise and the US/EU imperialists on the decline. China (and Russia) are not friends of Africa but the new colonial powers. They prop up the anti-worker regimes as their agents in pumping out raw materials and surplus value from Africa. They send capitalist enterprises to Africa to build
   infrastructure projects primarily to support extraction of raw materials and staff these enterprises with expat construction workers, engineers, doctors and support staff. Promoted as ‘win-win’ deals and in Marxist  terms “Use Value” exchanges the outcome perpetuates the stunted industrialisation and parasitic underdevelopment model western imperialism practices, with a smile.
4. Zimbabwe is one of the most oppressed semi-colonies. Its crisis is the downloading of China’s crisis. It is investing in infrastructure, cancelling loans and bailing out the regime to hold down the people while it extracts minerals (diamonds), crops (tobacco) and cheap labour etc. “At present the only policy document is Zim-Asset, which covers all areas, but without specific
   prioritisation. Zim-Asset requires an estimated US$28 billion, which is not available.” (June 29 2016 The Herald)  In contrast the $4b promise of Chinese FDI will not afford Zimbabwe a
   breakthrough to a “modern development.” It will afford a continuation of the current Chinese extraction model, building infrastructure to aid extraction of resources.  The $4b for Agricultural development is intended to double tobacco exports and replicate the tobacco model to grow soy, cotton, and livestock products for export.  Trading western imperialism for eastern imperialism leaves Africa undeveloped.
5. Workers and the oppressed must organise to fight back and refuse to pay the costs of the imperialists’ crisis. Spontaneous fightbacks must be coordinated and organised by the rank and file in the unions, nationally and regionally, and on the streets and in the schools to defend the masses from economic exploitation and state repression. Workers and the poor masses should
   not wait for elections to be held next year. The issues of factions in the ruling party and coalitions in the opposition are just machinations of imperialism in search of a better way of controlling the masses. For this a mass workers party, and other popular organisations such as
   workers councils and workers self-defence squads are necessary.
6. A mass workers party has to be independent of the imperialists, the compradors and the middle class. It can only do this by building an internationalist revolutionary workers party on the Bolshevik model. 1917 and the lessons of October prove this. Unless workers defeat the class enemy within the workers organisations there can be no class independence. These lessons must be translated to the Southern African situation.
7. The Bolshevik party activates a transitional program that develops revolutionary consciousness by raising immediate demands necessary for living, food, housing, health, education, continuing to advance the struggle for maximum demands for the defeat of imperialism, its comprador client regime in Zimbabwe, and for the formation of a workers’ and small farmers’ Government, i.e. permanent revolution. True national independence can only be achieved by
   the spread of workers revolution across the Southern cone and the formation of a federation of socialist workers states of Southern Africa taking the road of the October revolution.
8. A Workers’ and small farmers’ Government is necessary to socialise the means of production and create a socialist plan to rebuild the economy on the basis of workers democratic control in industry, agriculture, transport, finance etc. Only by this means can the working people take control of and develop the economy to meet their basic needs.
9. Zimbabwe cannot succeed as a socialist republic within one country and must join forces with all Southern African states and a wider union of African socialist republics to create a new division of labour for development. For that reason in every country international solidarity is forged by the formation of a revolutionary international party as the general staff to lead the
   revolution and defeat all the imperialist general staffs.
10. A union of African socialist republics as part of a global federation of socialist republics is necessary to overcome national divisions, to unite and defend the world revolution, end mass poverty, oppression and the collapse of the ecosystem, and to save humanity and nature.

Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe (RWG-ZIM)


Website: www.rwgzimbabwe.wordpress.com


Email: rwg.zimbabwe@gmail.com


02/11/2017