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Workers and Peoples of the World, Unite to Fight for Your Rights
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples' Struggle
May 1, 2006
On behalf of the International League of Peoples' Struggle, I wish to convey warmest greetings of solidarity to all workers, genuine unions
and labor organizations on the occasion of the International Workers' Day. We salute and congratulate you for your struggles, sacrifices and
successes against the imperialist bourgeoisie and all its opportunist and barefaced reactionary agents.
Today we celebrate the historical, the international and national achievements of the working class. These continue to inspire us and to
strengthen our conviction that the modern proletariat is the most progressive and productive force capable of leading the peoples of the
world towards liberation from imperialism and reaction, greater democracy, socialism, peace and all-round development.
We also confront the terrible conditions that the working class and the peoples of the world suffer as a result of the betrayal of the working
class by modern revisionism, the full restoration of capitalism in countries where socialism was previously established, and the unbridled ideological,
political, economic and military offensives of imperialism and reaction.
The ideological offensive of the enemy misrepresents imperialism as free enterprise and liberalism and mocks the working class. The political
offensive glosses over the state power of the bourgeoisie and whips up chauvinism, racism and fascism. The economic offensive flies the
piratical banner of "free market" globalization and subjects the working people and entire nations to the worst forms of exploitation and
oppression. The military offensive is a war of terror aimed at satisfying the demands of the military industrial complex and grabbing the natural
resources and the social wealth created by the people.
The crisis of the world capitalist system is chronic. It is ever deepening and worsening in the underdeveloped countries, in the retrogressive
economies of former socialist countries and in the industrial capitalist countries. At the ground level of the real economy, there is a global crisis
of overproduction in all kinds of goods, be they producer or consumer industrial products, low-value added semi-manufactures and raw materials.
This has resulted in the contraction of employment and people's incomes and the constriction of the global market. It has resulted in a grave
financial crisis for the monopoly bourgeoisie and the tendency to opt for fascism and war.
However, the imperialists and the local reactionaries do not run out of ways to claim economic growth in a depressed global economy. Foreign
and local public debts flow into sheer consumption, bureaucratic and military spending and the most nonproductive and counterproductive
activities. These are used to pad the figures for economic growth. But the rate of unemployment is high. A huge proportion of the labor
force goes into permanent cumulative unemployment, ignored in the reckoning of unemployment in official statistics.
The workers of the world must fight for job security and higher wages to keep up with the rising costs of living. They must fight against the
vicious assaults on their trade union and other democratic rights and against the erosion of their hard won social benefits. They must fight
against the neoliberal lie of monopoly capitalism that better wage conditions and more social benefits for the proletarian creators of wealth
are the cause of crisis and that more corporate benefits from public resources and bigger government spending for the military and war generate
economic growth and employment.
The workers and peoples of the world must unite and fight for their democratic rights and for better working and living conditions against the
conditions of exploitation and oppression, topped by imperialist plunder and war. Above all, they must develop the consciousness and strength
to do away with the global and national systems of exploitation and oppression. They must fight for and build a new and better world in which
the working class can fulfill its historic mission of building socialism and the general conditions of democracy, social justice, progress, peace and
international solidarity can be realized. ###
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