TEK YOL DEVRIM!

TEK YOL DEVRIM!

Action Program for Turkey by Sınıf Savaşı (Section of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency in Turkey), October 2016, www.thecommunists.net

Introduction

When we closely examine our world, we see the same problems everywhere. Millions work till their backs break, while a relatively few benefit from their labor. Working families are not able to pay back their debts, while the banks get richer and richer every day. Wars destroy hundred of thousands of lives, while those who sell the weapons turn blood into money. The wealth of the poorer countries continually decreases, while the great powers get richer and more powerful. Democratic rights are taken away from the masses of the people, while the powerful who own the media control the government and are in the bed with the generals. Vast landscapes get undergo the effects of droughts and global warming, while the rich water their golf-courses.

This madness is not our fate, it is man-made. And like every other problem that is made by people, it can be changed by people. In the last decade we have witnessed more than ever that the evil in the world is increasing and it will continue to increase if it is not stopped by the masses of the poor and working people.

Sınıf Savaşı, together with its comrades of the RCIT, is fighting to change the system in which we are living into a system that serves the people. Today we all live under one or another version of capitalism, regardless of the specific color it might paint itself. It doesn’t matter if it wears the mask of “democracy,” secularism, Islamism or even “social democracy.” As long as the masses of the people are not really in power and as long as the economy is not in the hands of the workers, nothing really changes. Capitalism divides our society into classes. On the one side are the capitalists, the owners of the banks, the big corporations and the media – on the other side is the working class, which doesn’t have any ownership of the places in which it works but which is creating nearly all the wealth. The classes in between, the peasantry and the middle class (doctors, lawyers, small shop owners, engineers, etc.) are increasingly eroded and become part of the working class and the huge and growing mass of unemployed and poor. Because of its ability to shut down the economy, because of its centralization both in the cities and in the factories and workplaces, and because they don’t have a field or shop they need to be worried about, the working class is the only class that can be revolutionary.

We are fighting for the overthrow of this system which gives us, the workers and poor, no future worth living. We want to build a system in which those who actually do the work and create the world’s wealth rule, and not those who enrich themselves like parasites exploiting the labor of others. The system we are fighting for is socialism. It will combine all achievements of mankind, and will organize the economy in the interest of the workers and poor and a maximum democratic rights for the oppressed. But socialism will not come about spontaneously. It will not fall into our hands like a ripe apple from a tree; it must be taken! Like every other progress made in the history of mankind, it is not given by the powerful, but it must be fought for by the oppressed! To achieve such a system we need to build an organization that is able to lead the working class to power. Such an organization must understand the contradictory development of our society and the various political forces characterizing it. This organization must be able to develop the right tactics for revolutionaries in every situation and forge a revolutionary party for the struggles ahead. Such an organization will be a force that can withstand every form of repression; that will emerge from the ranks of our class, and that will have a close relationship with the popular masses. Sınıf Savaşı is dedicated to build such a party.

I.             Turkey in the World

We define Turkey as a capitalist country. Its bourgeoisie tries to play the role of a regional power, but its room for maneuvering is limited by the Great Powers — the US, EU, Russia and China — which play a dominant role in the Middle East.

The Turkish ruling class wants to become an accepted regional power, but this project seems more and more improbable given the increasing instability of our region and the whole world. But even if it would be realistic, the workers and oppressed have nothing to gain from such a project with is based on their exploitation and the plundering of smaller nations.

This maneuvering of the ruling class, the efforts of the AKP to establish a dictatorial police state and the instable situation in the neighboring countries will also significantly increase the instability in our country. These developments open big opportunities for revolutionaries, but also for the enemies of the people. The workers and oppressed must fight for a revolution which achieves complete independence from the imperialist great powers. We cannot support or side with one imperialist camp against another. We fight for the complete liberation of all people in the region from foreign domination and oppression. We stand with the famous words of Friedrich Engels who wrote: “A nation cannot be free and at the same time continue to oppress other nations.”

II.            Down with the Capitalists Parties!

The capitalist class is not a completely homogeneous one. It has various wings and political factions whose disagreements with one another are mostly about how they can best exploit the workers. The capitalist parties extend from the most liberal wing, who believes that allowing limited democratic liberties is the best way to pacify the class struggle, down to its open terrorist-fascist wing who just wants to break the will of the people by force. Revolutionaries need to explain the differences between the various factions of the capitalists not because we have sympathy for any one of them, but because we can use the conflicts between them in the interest of the workers, and because doing so we will better understand in which direction the state is heading.

The AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) – Justice and Development Party

The AKP is not an ordinary capitalist party. It is trying to perform a balancing act between various forces and political aims. The AKP is mistrusted by the central groups of Turkish capitalists as well as by US and EU imperialism. This mistrust of the imperialists doesn’t mean that the AKP is playing a progressive role. Rather, they are mistrusted by these powers because they have certain popular support among the population due their persecution in the past by the hated Turkish military, which served as a submissive instrument of NATO imperialism for decades. The AKP utilizes moderately anti-imperialist rhetoric (while at the same time supporting the great imperialist powers and their plans), and they are associated with Turkey’s economic growth in the first decade of the new millennium. We characterize the AKP as a bourgeois-Islamist, reactionary-populist, bonapartist party. Although the AKP has substantial support among the popular masses – particularly with the rural and urban poor – their policy is arch-reactionary. The main aim of Erdoğan is to establish a bonapartist police state. This means that he presents himself to the ruling class as a “savior of the nation,” allowing him to dictatorially balance between the fighting classes and political factions. He also wants to achieve the same on an international level, establishing Turkey as a relative independent regional power balancing between the different imperialist states (the US, EU, Russia and Israel), as well as the regional powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Erdoğan’s pretensions are the main reason for the hostility towards the AKP government by western imperialism and sectors of the NATO generals in the Turkish army. Sınıf Savaşı defends the AKP government against assaults of the great imperialist powers and the collaborating Turkish generals as we did during the failed military coup that take place during the night between the 15^th and 16^th of July 2016. We will fight in the streets alongside the AKP supporters against the military if they try to assault the masses once again. However, at no time have we or will we give any political support to the reactionary policy of the AKP. It is a central task of revolutionaries to break workers and poor away from the political influence of the AKP. Therefore, we must make social and democratic demands on the AKP in order to drive a wedge between the bourgeois leadership of the party and the workers and poor in the AKP rank and file.

Obviously, we must criticize the policy of the AKP, but without falling in line with the sectarian left which simply slanders the AKP as being “fascist.” The AKP and Erdoğan are not fascists. We don’t deny this label out of any political sympathy with them, but because it is ultimately most important to understand our political enemies instead of unjustifiably using the most radical political terms to simply slander them. Fascism is a specific political movement which aims to physically eradicate the vanguard of the workers’ movement and oppressed people, while at the same time destroying all democratic rights. Erdoğan wants to establish a presidential-dictatorial police state, but without building concentration camps.

The CHP and Kemalism

The CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi – Republican People’s Party) is the traditional party of the Turkish capitalists and the NATO generals. We revolutionaries have to launch a political struggle against the arch-reactionary ideology of Kemalism. As an ideology, Kemalism played an ambivalent role during the formation of the Turkish republic, only to eventually become an arch-reactionary one. During the early 1920s, Kemalism organized a bureaucratic-nationalist resistance against the great powers who sought to divide Turkey between them. The Soviet Union and revolutionaries supported this anti-imperialist resistance, along with all progressive reforms launched by Kemal Pasha. At the same time, revolutionaries maintained political independence and attempted to strengthen the forces of consistent anti-imperialism and revolution. During the 1920s, the reactionary side of Kemalism became more visible, manifesting itself in the brutal oppression of national minorities and the persecution of communists. Since then, Kemalism relinquished any opposition to the imperialist great powers and became a loyal watch dog for American imperialism in the region.

The CHP has it strongest support among Turkey’s urban liberal middle class. In contrast to the AKP, the CHP has virtually no organic connections with the masses of the workers and the urban and rural poor. However, when the CHP is in the parliamentary opposition to the government, there is the chance that their supporters participate in legitimate democratic protest movements like the 2013 Gezi protests. In such cases, revolutionaries oppose forming any sort of political bloc with the CHP or Kemalism. Nevertheless, we can still fight in the streets alongside ordinary supporters of the CHP for democratic rights. Revolutionaries defend the CHP against anti-democratic attacks from the AKP, while at the same time stating unequivocally that the CHP is not a party of democracy but one sympathetic to military rule.

We don’t view the CHP’s emphasis on secularism as in any way being progressive. Their secularism has been used as a pretext to humiliate sisters who wear a hijab. The secularism of revolutionaries is always directed against the rich and gives all religions the maximum of freedom, as long any given religion is not attempting to undermine the freedom of other religions.

The MHP (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi) – Nationalist Movement Party

The MHP is a fascist-front party. It represents the angry, reactionary middle class which thinks that Turkey’s oppressed are responsible for their difficulties. Revolutionaries must fight this fascist-front party in the streets, making sure that they have no platform to spread their hatred. We must prepare the workers and oppressed to be able to defend themselves against the fascist gangs of the MHP.

In addition to supporting the AKP government in parliament, the MHP supports the Erdoğan regime in its bonapartist project by clearing the streets for them. In this way they seek to present themselves as a useful attack dog for whichever capitalist party is currently in power.

III.          For a Revolutionary Line – No to Reformism

The main reason the working class, and with it all oppressed and poor people, has not succeed in taking power until now is primarily because our class has been misled by non-revolutionary leaderships. If we want to make a revolution, we need to build a genuine revolutionary organization that understands the various non-revolutionary forces inside our class and their weaknesses.

The HDP (Halkların Demokratik Partisi) – Peoples' Democratic Party

The HDP represents an alliance of various political forces. It can be characterized as a reformist petty-bourgeois populist party. While it also has some Kurdish capitalists in its ranks, the dominant sector of HDP supporters are mostly workers and peasants. But the HDP is an openly reformist party. This means that they don’t fight against capitalism and Turkish militarism in a revolutionary manner, nor do they understand that capitalism and militarism can only be ended by a successful socialist revolution which establishes the rule of the working class in alliance with the poor and oppressed.

While we are strongly critical of the reformist leadership and electoralism of the HDP, we recognize their support among various sectors of the masses; thus it is incumbent that revolutionaries put demands on the leadership of this party in an attempt to draw them into the class struggle and consistently fight for democratic rights, social justice, and the national liberation of the Kurdish people. Revolutionaries have to defend the HDP against every form of oppression from the state; and we have to defend them against the attacks of fascists and Islamists.

But at the same time, we need to politically fight against the party’s pro-imperialist leadership and their willingness to let themselves be integrated into a popular front (i.e., a joint front of workers’ organizations and a wing of the capitalist class, in which the workers organizations become subordinate to the capitalists). If the HDP considers or actually enters a government or forms a bloc with any capitalist party, revolutionaries call upon the HDP to break with such forces – and if strong enough – to take the power based upon mass mobilizations of the workers and oppressed, supported by popular militias. We revolutionaries are prepared to consider critical electoral support for the HDP, but this has to be decided in every concrete situation. Critical electoral support means that we call to vote for the party, but at the same time warn the masses about the treacherous role played by the leadership of a reformist or radical-populist party in the class struggle. We place demands on its leadership designed to push the party to the left. We say to the rank and file: “Test your leaders in power, and you will see that revolution is the only way to liberation – but if you don’t trust us yet, see for yourselves!”

PKK, Guerrillaism and Apoism

The PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê – Kurdistan Workers' Party) is a leftwing-nationalist, petty bourgeois-guerilla party. Revolutionaries in Turkey and Kurdistan support the right of national self-determination for the Kurdish people, including the right to have their own state. Now most of the brave fighters who give their blood and energy for this aim follow the Apoist leaders of the PKK, the PYD (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat – Democratic Union Party), or the PJAK (Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê – Kurdistan Free Life Party). As revolutionaries, we honor all those who gave their live for the liberation of the oppressed, no matter which party or ideology they followed. We respect the sacrifices of the uncounted ordinary Kurdish workers and peasants who are dedicating their live to struggle for the liberation of their people.

However, at the same time we have to oppose the erroneous tactics of the PKK as well as their capitulating reformist leadership. Until 2015, the leadership of the PKK was willing to surrender all weapons to the Turkish state in the framework of a totally rotten compromise. But these weapons are vital to protect the Kurdish people against the Turkish army of occupation and fascist forces. As Marxist revolutionaries we know that the working class plays the central role in society as well as in the struggle for liberation. For this reason, the struggle for liberation of all oppressed peoples must be based primarily in the cities, in the workplaces and neighborhoods, and not in the mountains, far away from the masses of the oppressed. If we want to liberate our class and the oppressed we need to build a new society ruled by democratically-elected workers’ and popular councils in the workplaces, neighborhoods and villages. No party can be a substitute for the working class and its councils. We can achieve liberation only if our class, as a class, foments revolution and takes power.

Such a revolution cannot be isolated to Turkey, but must sooner or later spread to other countries and ultimately throughout the world. Socialism is a system based on the abundance of goods, not on shortages. The economy is only able to produce in abundance on a global scale; therefore trying to build a liberated society in a small part of the world, without energetically spreading it to other parts of the world is a dangerous illusion. We need to have a united struggle for liberation and take up the struggle against injustices committed against other oppressed peoples. National egoism is not revolutionary.

In addition, the leadership of PKK / PYD / PJAK is open to flirtations with imperialism. Not only have they not fired a single shot against the American invaders in Iraq, they have also offered to serve as tools for US-imperialism by destabilizing Iran. Today the PYD and YPG (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel‎ – People's Protection Units) are receiving strong support from US, EU, and Russian imperialism to fight against their various Islamist opponents in Syrian and Iraq. The PYD and YPG are also prepared to provide airfields to the Russian and US armies. With a strategy like this, they are not only incapable of winning any support among the Arab masses; they more and more transform themselves into the foot soldiers of imperialism. Revolutionaries must fight for liberation independent from all imperialist camps; which doesn’t mean that revolutionaries should not take weapons from the imperialists if there are no political conditions attached.

However, despite their shortcomings, revolutionaries must defend the PKK / PYD / PJAK against all reactionary attacks. It matters not if such attacks come from state police, the army, fascists or Islamists. We place demands on the leadership of the PKK, while at the same time advocating the formation of an authentic revolutionary party in Kurdistan. But revolutionaries will nonetheless fight in the streets and on the barricades alongside fighters of the PKK and will try to form united fronts with them, especially in the workplaces and neighborhoods.

Individual Terrorism

We oppose individual terrorism as an impotent and counterproductive tactic in the liberation struggle. Not only do we oppose this tactic, but unequivocally condemn it if it is directed against innocent civilians and not against the repression apparatus (army, police, high officials, etc.). Individual terrorism as exercised by the nationalist TAK or the Stalinists DHKP-C isolates revolutionaries from the masses of the people. We need to fight against the state and their oppression, but this has to be done with means that are understood by at least the vanguard of the workers and oppressed. We have to make sure that our actions (not our political positions) don’t serve to isolate us from our class.

Stalinism

Stalinism is a special form of reformism historically tied to the fate of the existing (degenerated) workers’ states. In the 1917 October Revolution, the workers and peasants in Russia took power into their own hands and fomented the first successful socialist revolution in world history. But because the revolution stayed isolated to Russia and was only able to conquer the workers-fortress in an economically-backward country, a workers’ democracy was not able to prevail. A privileged bureaucracy with its basis in the state and party apparatus eventually came to power, the highest personification of which was Stalin. Stalin erected a dictatorship over the workers and peasants and changed the revolutionary principles of communism in a way that was more compatible with the policy of the bureaucracy. One defeat for the working class after another paved the way for the perversion of the communist policy. The Bolshevik strategy for world revolution was replaced by the Stalin’s doctrine of “socialism in one country,” the strategy for the power of the workers and peasants in poor countries was replaced with the strategy of the national-democratic stage of the revolution, and workers’ democracy was transformed to Stalinist one-party-rule. Tens of thousands of the best revolutionaries were murdered by Stalinists who strove to wipe out any revolutionary opposition to them.

Revolutionary Communists oppose the various shadings of Stalinism. All and any of them are in the end unable to overthrow capitalism and establish the rule of the working class. “At best,” they were able to abolish capitalism under extraordinary circumstances (huge pressure from the left by the masses; assistance by a degenerated workers’ state; massive threats from imperialism), but combined this accomplishment with a bureaucratic police state. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the bureaucratic re-establishment of capitalism in China, it is precluded that any Stalinist party will be able to stand up against the ruling class and imperialism and found a workers’ state (to say nothing about a revolutionary-democratic workers’ state).

Only the principles of Revolutionary Communism which are linked to the legacy of Lenin and Trotsky are able to generate a consistently revolutionary party. Such a party will try to build a council-based democracy in which the workers and poor can exercise their power. While Stalinists are open to forming “popular fronts” with a sector of the capitalist class, the experience of popular fronts, wherever they were built and for whatever reasons, has demonstrated that they are only an excuse to hold back the revolutionary workers. Fighting for socialism is not possible if we subordinate the working class time to the bourgeoisie or a faction of this class.

Like Lenin and Trotsky, we as revolutionary communists do not fight for a “democratic,” “new democratic,” or “national democratic” stage of the revolution. Our class can only consistently solve the revolution’s various democratic and national tasks if the working class is allied with the poor peasants and the urban poor in the taking of power. Fighting for a stage of the revolution which preserves capitalism and allows the capitalists to stay in power is just buying time for them, and is not merely a betrayal of the socialism but also of the national and democratic aspects of the revolution. From the example of South Africa, we see that all capitalism can give the workers if they limit themselves to overthrowing a government without taking power with their councils is a sheet of paper claiming their rights. “Democratic” capitalism was not able to change the social inequality resulting from Apartheid; it was not able to stop the plundering of the mines by multinational companies; it was unwilling to perform a radical land reform; and it could not give the masses far reaching democratic rights. Only the rule of the working class can assure this. This is the logic behind the concept of Permanent Revolution. We will begin by conquering state power, ensuring that democratic issues and national liberation are consistently addressed, while at the same time establishing a socialist economy.

Centrism

By “centrist” we refer to all forces who vacillate between reformism and revolution. Only the building of a consistent revolutionary party can achieve the liberation of our class. History has shown that centrism tends – if it pressured by the masses – to the left, but its inability to take a consistent revolutionary stand is a deception of the masses. The task of revolutionary communists is to show the rank and file of centrist organizations, both in theory and practice, how we are different and why they should fight among our ranks.