Let's raise our voices
Statement by the International Secretariat
"Let's raise our voices" is the main slogan of our current to face the challenges that lie ahead. As of 2022, the websites of La Marx International have been experiencing a sustained growth in visits, readings, messages and interaction with thousands of activists. Since that date, the websites have exceeded half a million visits per year, which is a surprising phenomenon considering that the websites of La Marx International do not have a commercial format as an online bookstore, or media like 99% of the websites of the groups of the world left.
In general, the websites of the left have a business or commercial format, for example Jacobin Magazine, or Haymarket Publishing House, which are the basis of the social democracy of the Progressive International based on the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) of the United States. The same commercial format has other websites such as the NPA Gap in France, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Germany, WSWS in the United States, In Defense of Marxism by Alan Woods, or other websites such as Periodismo de Izquierda or Izquierda Diario de Argentina. All these websites require a strong investment in employees, resources, journalists, web design as well as contracts with companies for better placement and web positioning.
The contrast between all these websites, and the websites of La Marx International is that all these types of websites are run by organizations that have existed for 30 or 40 years, several decades, while La Marx International is an organization that has existed for less than 4 years. The aforementioned websites are being financed with resources based on NGO's, small businesses (SMEs), cooperatives, and funds from capitalist states from trade unions, or parliamentarians, while La Marx International's websites do not sell anything, nor do they involve any commercial investment except the minimum of the contract to be able to publish the website, with very humble resources. In this way, the number of visits does not respond to commercial objectives but to its contents and elaboration, the novel and independent character of La Marx International that is published on the basis of an enormous militant effort.
The growth numbers of La Marx International, although humble in relation to global activism, or comparing it with other websites of older organizations, require an assessment linked to this novel and independent character. La Marx International is a current absolutely unknown to most of global activism, but the growth of visits and readers of our websites is the sign that a small swath of global activism is beginning to know us and show a growing interest in our positions that are opposed to those of the 99% of the world left. This means that Marx International began to transform itself into a small pole for a small sector of activism and the increase indicates that the more activists know us, the moreactive they become and interested in our positions. This places before us the challenge of reaching with our positions to broader swaths of global activism, so that more comrades join us in militating with us.
It is a question of tracing the path of orientation, tasks and steps to be taken to advance in the construction of The Marx International in the midst of the development of the global revolutionary process, and the global process of political revolution that is shaking the world. Our current is in 12 countries and has developed 8 websites that are the basis of our project to build the revolutionary press, about which you can read more by clicking here. This is what has allowed us to position ourselves as a small pole in important sectors of world activism, now we are facing the challenge of "Raising Our Voices" to become known in larger swaths of global activism.
The crisis of global activism
There are two fundamental political processes that are developing in the world class struggle accompanying the world crisis of capitalism. On the one hand, the revolutionary waves and processes that are developing in the 5 continents against capitalist governments, the world process of uprisings, struggles, insurrections that since 2011 has been expressed in 3 revolutionary waves whose firstwave occurred between the years 2010-2015, the second wave between the years 2016- 2021, and the 3rd wave between 2022 and the present. On the other hand, the world process of political revolution means the collapse of the old leaderships and parties that were the leadership of the mass movement both the social democrats, Stalinists, bourgeois nationalists, and former guerrillas throughout the world.
Both phenomena result in the development of a litter of thousands of activists who develop in union, democratic, feminist, racial, climate struggles, for national independence, for sexual oppression, etc. Our policy is towards the great masses, but with it we seek to win over this emerging world activism, and constitutes the vanguard of the revolution against capitalism and capitalism. raw material for the construction of a revolutionary leadership. It is no coincidence that the jump in visits to the websites of La Marx International begins in 2022, when the 3rd revolutionary wave was unleashed.
There is a fundamental shift in the location of activism and the global avant-garde from the 20th to the 21st century. In the 20th century, after the end of the Second World War, the counter-revolutionary apparatuses, Stalinism, social democracy, bourgeois nationalist movements, etc., emerged with great strength.
These leaderships had millions of militants, and the best of the world's vanguard and activism was then to be found within these organizations. In this way there was a great retreat from the subjective point of view, of the consciousness that the great proletariats and the peoples trusted in the treacherous leaderships that had millions of members. Millions believed in Stalin, Mao, Khrushchev, Cárdenas. Gandhi, Perón, Nasser, etc.
As a result of the betrayals that all these directions committed for decades, world activism began to break with all these directions after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The result of this whole process is that in the 21st century the activists who emerge on the 5 continents do not belong to social democracy, or Stalinism, or bourgeois nationalist movements, or guerrilla movements, or anything. He has sympathies for some directions but, with a few exceptions, the bulk of the activists do not feel represented by any of these organizations, do not see them as attractive, nor do they consider them an option to organize. By remaining independent, and outside of all these organizations, the 21st century is the century of political revolution, that is, the century where thousands of activists develop outside the control of the old apparatuses, or even confronting them.
The development of the political revolution has transformed Stalinism, social democracy, guerrilla or bourgeois nationalist movements into empty shells, deserted apparatuses. This means that activism is experiencing a permanent crisis: On the one hand, it breaks and distances itself from the traitorous apparatuses, parties and organizations, but on the other hand, it does not find how, or with whom to organize. There is no world pole that attracts the attention of activism, there is no leadership, party, personalities, that act as a world pole. In the 20th century there were Maos, Che Guevara, Stalin, Mandela, etc., but in the 21st century there is nothing like it, there is a total vacuum of leadership. The crisis of activism is expressed in an enormous state of confusion because it is under the influence of the most absurd theories that are permanently bombarded in its consciousness such as the "Decoupling Theory" or other nonsense, with the aim of diverting and confusing it permanently.
How we work with global activism
That is, when we meet an activist we have to be prepared to hear that "China is going to World War 3 with the United States." "The right wing is advancing all over the world," that "fascism is advancing uncontrollably," that "capitalism is advancing is super strong and indestructible," and all the stupidity and campaigns that the bourgeois parties and capitalist media permanently radiate. Also contributing to this confusion is the global crisis of the left, whose organizations in retreat and decomposition act as a sewer that infuses all these false consciences into global activism. Faced with this panorama, we have to clearly define what our attitude is going to be, starting from a characterization of global activism.
The first thing is to understand that the crisis of activism, and the confusions that it will inevitably express in their consciences, is the product of the fact that they are unaware of most of the things that really happen in the world. The activists don't know that there is a huge crisis of capitalism, they don't know the data, they don't know what's happening, they don't know that there are bailouts, they only perceive the most superficial aspects of the phenomenon such as that there is a lot of hunger, poverty, that the world is bad. The activists do not know that there are revolutions all over the world, they do not know the struggles that are taking place, they do not know that Palestine or Ukraine are wars of national liberation, they only see the dead, the genocide, the bombings and the "pacifist" campaign of imperialism for the "ceasefire". Not to mention if we talk about socialism or Marxism. There the confusion of activism is total. Many honest comrades think they are Marxists, and they think that socialism is Che Guevara, or Cuba, or Zapatismo, a confusion to which the policy of the 99% of the world left contributes decisively.
In the face of all this panorama, we must arm ourselves with patience. The first thing is to be clear that it is not the fault of activism to ignore everything that is happening in the world situation, in reality activists are victims of the leadership vacuum and the betrayals of the 99% of the world left. But there is a deadly struggle for this activism and the only way to win this battle is to wage a deadly fight against all revisionist conceptions, false consciousnesses, and nonsensical theories, a struggle and a battle that we must fight tooth and nail, systematically and permanently. Without a permanent, daily and daily battle we are not going to win any activist, nor are we going to take part of global activism out of the crisis in which it finds itself.
That means that with activism we act in the following way: We are together in the struggle, the mobilizations, but in the midst of it we must be clear that controversy will immediately erupt. Everything we "agreed" on at the time of sharing a cause, or struggle will immediately become "disagreement" when we must specify where the struggle is directed, what the strategy is, and from that moment on the "unity" ends and the "fight" begins, that is, we "fight" with activism. It is not a physical fight, it is political, it is when we must speak clearly to tell them: "You are mistaken", "What you say is not correct". "These ideas that you think are yours, and new, are neither yours nor new, they are the old ideas of reformism," and so even if sometimes our comments are unpleasant to them, if we do not speak to them clearly, frontally, and do not tell them the truth, even if that truth is painful for many honest comrades, we will never win them.
That is to say, we do not seek to "empathize" with activism, but we prepare ourselves to polemicize with them, knowing that they arrive confused, in crisis, and that the only way to get them out of that confusion is to clarify their ideas with political battles that we must fight patiently and systematically, patiently, but firmly. This is how Nahuel Moreno explains how we should act with activism and the avant-garde in "El Morenazo" of 1974: "How do we work on the avant-garde? How do we win it? ... we must win the vanguard by patiently explaining (making politics about it) our policy for the workers' and mass movement ... The guardnever arises with tendencies towards Trotskyist or Bolshevik politics. It arises by expressing the spontaneous tendencies of the struggle ... the first lesson in politics he receives from the reformist parties ... Those are the ideas you first know... To capture the pro-guerrilla vanguard transforming us into pro-guerrillas, or the Stalinist vanguard transforming us into prostalinists, what is the point? Not at all. It is a brutal blow to the possibility of leading the revolution. We'll just be playing into some of the wrong policies... As soon as the Castro or Stalinist strategy fails, our party will sink with it... That party will be built fundamentally by winning the vanguard for that Trotskyist policy... This task is much more difficult and hard... but it is the only fair one." (Nahuel Moreno- El Morenazo 1974)
A roadmap for the global political battle
This battle that lies ahead requires a work plan, which covers 3 areas: 1) Agitation 2) Propaganda 3) Construction.
1) Agitation Plan: To agitate is to launch a few ideas for many people, which means to launch our campaigns and slogans for thousands. What do we shake? Our press. We agitate the articles that we publish on our websites, the articles in which we support revolutions, great workers' and people's struggles, we launch campaigns, documents, and articles with in-depth analysis or books to share for free both by Marxist authors and by our current. 99% of the left-wing currents have the social democratic method of buying services in social media companies such as Facebook, Instagram, X, or Tik Tok, etc. with the aim of having a presence in the electoral campaigns of bourgeois democracy by personalizing the appearance of the organization with the launch of "public figures" created with such an objective that they have their own networks and are also disseminated with web positioning contracts.
The use we make from social networks at La Marx International is completely different. We reach thousands of people by posting in unison the articles on the websites that express our central campaigns, which multiplies the arrival of our proposals and makes us a more well-known current. We use the networks in a militant and centralized way from the organizations, we share the contents approved in the organizations, we share them all simultaneously. At the same time, we divide tasks within the organization and those comrades who like agitation and network management we encourage them to develop these tasks and activities that link us to thousands of comrades from all over the world.
This is how Nahuel Moreno explains in "El Morenazo" of 1974: "What does it mean to win the vanguard for Trotskyist politics? Something very simple: to win it for the agitation, in the movement, of the masses, of the slogans that our party elaborates scientifically at each stage, for the strategy of building a Bolshevik party and for the program of that party." In the organizations we make agitation plans, we vote on which networks we promote, and which comrades like agitation and dedicate themselves to networks to disseminate, in addition to helping other comrades who find it more difficult to manage networks to do so.
2) Propaganda Plan:
We define propaganda as the task in which we disseminate many ideas to a few people. These activities are talks, workshops, meetings, courses, and Marxist training schools. To this end, we designed a plan of talks and courses that we carry out systematically that allows us to bring new comrades closer, and also to carry out the Marxist training of cadres and militants. Our plan is the concentration and grouping of international cadres who are in favor of carrying out a revolutionary project, but it is impossible to build an organization of cadres if there is no Marxist training.
That is why a propaganda plan is essential, this includes the talks that the organizations are launching on the most diverse topics, crisis of capitalism, Venezuela, Palestine, etc. Along with the permanent talks, the Marxism courses in which many comrades from different countries join are also important. It is also essential to have "internal" training activities, only for militants of the organization to advance in the training and knowledge of Marxism that allows the comrades to advance in their development. Also part of the propaganda activities is our journalistic program "Marxist Approach" which allows the dissemination of our positions to larger sectors of activism. The organizations define the responsibilities of those comrades who prepare materials, and give talks, or teach courses, in order to carry out more and better propaganda activities.
3) Construction Plan:
Regarding construction, we organize ourselves into teams as fundamental organisms. In the midst of the process of disintegration that the entire world left is suffering, it is essential that our militants function in regular bodies where politics is debated, tasks are voted on, and activity is permanently balanced. The democratic centralist regime is fundamental for the elaboration of politics, in the framework of a complete abandonment of this method by the 99% of the world left that has adopted the social democratic method of loose functioning, the organization around cooperatives, SMEs and NGOs that transform the regime of organizations into a social democratic regime.
This method of operation is so important that we must define categorically that only those who meet in its organizations are militants of La Marx International. Only in this way can we guarantee the program of our organization for the battle for global activism, against revisionism and the character of the organization for the struggle for power. The battle for revolutionary Marxism takes place from clearly organized organizations, which we call "teams," and in which not only comrades from the same country can be organized, but even comrades from different countries.
This is the plan we propose to carry out collectively. This is the orientation, tasks and steps to be taken to advance the construction of Marx International in the midst of the development of the global revolutionary process, and the global process of political revolution. With these tasks, we propose to continue the battle to position ourselves as a small pole in important sectors of global activism and to advance in the challenge of moving towards more sectors. This is our plan to "Raise Your Voice" to become known in wider swaths of global activism to continue to rally revolutionaries, building orthodox Trotskyism and revolutionary Marxism.
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Let's raise our voices
Statement by the International Secretariat