Korean Revolutionaries join the RCIT!

Statement on the foundation of a Korean section of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency, 27 December 2019, www.thecommunists.net

1.             The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) welcomes a new Korean organization of revolutionary workers as its section. This has been the result of nearly one year of joint discussion and collaboration – a process which was concluded by two visits and a conference organized by the comrades which was also attended by a representative of the RCIT’s international leadership.

2.             The fusion reflects a broad range of theoretical and programmatic agreements. In particular we agree on the analysis of South Korea as an imperialist state as well as on the analysis of the imperialist Great Powers (U.S., China, EU, Russia and Japan). Likewise we share a common understanding of the anti-imperialist task in defending semi-colonial North Korea against any imperialist aggression while, at the same time, calling for a workers’ revolution to bring down the Stalinist-capitalist ruling class. These agreements have been documented in a number of documents. (See numerous documents published on the Korean-language section of the RCIT’s website, https://www.thecommunists.net/home/%ED%95%9C%EA%B5%AD%EC%96%B4/. In particular we refer to our joint statements: Down with the Imperialist Trade War between Japan and South Korea! Down with all chauvinist boycott campaigns! Class War instead of Trade War! 19 July 2019, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/asia/trade-war-between-japan-and-south-korea/; Korea: There Is No Peace Without Overthrowing Imperialism and the Rule of Capital! Peace through the Proletarian Socialist Revolution! 8 March 2019, https://www.thecommunists.net/rcit/joint-statement-on-south-korean-imperialism/; see also our Theses as well as a study on South Korean imperialism, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/nature-of-south-korean-imperialism-and-revolutionary-tactics-theses/ and https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/study-on-south-korea-as-an-imperialist-power/) In addition we share a broad programmatic outlook as reflected in the RCIT’s “Manifesto for Revolutionary Liberation” (https://www.thecommunists.net/rcit-program-2016/).

3.             Our new Korean section brings together a number of comrades with many years of experience in the class struggle. As it is well known South Korea was in the period after the downfall of the military dictatorship on 1987 a country with one of the highest levels of class struggle in the world. Its militant trade union federation KCTU was for a long time a byword for hard class struggle. Likewise, the country had a highly combative students’ movement. However, the creation of a labor aristocracy and the reformist bureaucratization of the KCTU as well as vicious state repression based on various “anti-communist laws” resulted in severe defeats for the workers and student movements and the collapse of several attempts to build a revolutionary workers party (including trials and imprisonment of leading militants). These specific conditions determine the priorities in the process of building the new organization as well as the relevant security concerns which have to be taken into account.

4.             We call upon revolutionaries in Korea and East Asia to join us in our struggle to rebuild a Revolutionary World Party – an international party determined to fight for socialist revolution in East Asia and around the world!