Workers of the world, unite!

On Sunday, May 1, the International Committee of the Fourth International will hold an international online rally to mark May Day, the historic day of international working class solidarity.

The May Day rally is being called to mobilize workers and young people around the world on the basis of a common struggle against imperialist war and the capitalist system that creates it.

Fifteen years after the United States launched the “war on terror,” the entire world is being dragged into an ever-expanding maelstrom of imperialist violence. The invasions and interventions organized by US imperialism have devastated Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. NATO is engaged in a massive rearmament program in preparation for war with Russia. Africa is the target of relentless US and European neo-colonial machinations. Border disputes between neighboring states are provoking tensions and outright clashes in Eastern Europe, the Trans Caucasus, the Indian subcontinent and South America. In East Asia, the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” is embroiling the entire region in the United States’ confrontation with China. 

The drive to war is accompanied by a ceaseless offensive on democratic rights and the promotion of right-wing, xenophobic political movements. France, the birthplace of bourgeois democracy in Europe, is under a state of emergency, with key constitutional protections suspended. In Germany and throughout Europe, the arrival of refugees fleeing the wars in the Middle East has been used as a pretense for promoting extreme nationalism and militarism. In the United States, a semi-fascist has emerged as the Republican frontrunner for president—an indication of a deeply diseased state of the entire political system.

Among the masses of working people throughout the world, there is an overwhelming desire for peace. There is, as yet, however, no organized international political movement opposing the reckless policies of the imperialist pyromaniacs.

The drive to World War III must be stopped! A new international movement against war, uniting the great mass of working people and youth in opposition to capitalism and imperialism, must be built. The same capitalist crisis that produces the insanity of war also generates the impulse for social revolution. However, the growing anger and opposition of billions of people around the world—to war, social inequality and the assault on democratic rights—must be guided by a new political perspective and program.

This International May Day Online Rally is being called to organize workers all over the world on the basis of the principles outlined in the IC statement, “Socialism and the fight against war”:

• The struggle against war must be based on the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population.
• The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war.
• The new anti-war movement must therefore, of necessity, be completely and unequivocally independent of, and hostile to, all political parties and organizations of the capitalist class.
• The new anti-war movement must, above all, be international, mobilizing the vast power of the working class in a unified global struggle against imperialism. The permanent war of the bourgeoisie must be answered with the perspective of permanent revolution by the working class, the strategic goal of which is the abolition of the nation-state system and the establishment of a world socialist federation. This will make possible the rational, planned development of global resources and, on this basis, the eradication of poverty and the raising of human culture to new heights.

To lead this movement, a political leadership must be built. It is for this reason that the International Committee of the Fourth International has organized the 2016 International May Day Online Rally. Join us on May 1! Take part in the fight to mobilize the working class against imperialist war and the capitalist system!