International Call to Action
Worldwide we, the wage-related workers, are set in competition to support the additional value production. Regardless where we live, our gender / sex, nationality, we are interwoven in the same fight, if we want to or not. Budget cuts in social services, outsourcing, depressing wages, privatization, increasing costs of living as well as tuition fees and the destruction of natural recourses are just a few of the symptoms of the global economic system.
A system that is based on exploitation and competition leads to commercialization of all aspects of our lives. We suffer from growing pressure to perform, separation, as well as the alienation of our needs and people, which we are working and living with. Be it at the workplace, university or increasingly even during childhood and youth. The logic of the market economy and the corresponding nation-state structures require that adaption to the dictate of competitiveness and the value-added production take priority over the development of emancipatory capabilities.
The introduction of a Universal Basic Income on the global level can be a first emancipatory step in overcoming wage labor relations.
We do not intend to simply disrupt; we seek to overcome.
This year we draw attention to the ecological crisis we all face. A crisis brought about by the endless search for profit margins by capitalist interests.
A crisis which will see wars raging worldwide, making the poorest of us suffer the earliest and most. With the current modes of production and working practices controlled by the capitalist class overcoming this crisis is impossible. The global ecological crisis is an issue for the working class worldwide. There is no Earth 2.0. There is no reset option or escape plan. There is only the future. We have to decide, and it is in our hands as the working class, if that future will be somewhere humans can live or not.
Given the transnational nature of the capitalist system, it is necessary for workers to connect on the global level.
By networking across borders, the global interconnections that shape our local conditions can be made visible. Furthermore it opens up new potentialities and scopes of action within the struggle against exploitation as well as precarious working and living conditions. The bargaining power of workers would increase tremendously, if we were to unite within the same value-added chain.
Especially in times of nationalism and racism, we seek the common struggle and resist being played off against each other.
For a better life for all – across all borders!
Extra note on environmental destruction and class struggle Fossil fuel extraction and exploitation of earth’s natural resources have been instrumental to sustain the frenzy pursuit of endless capitalist growth.
Deforestation, draught, hunger, displacement, disease, poverty, are all consequences of the imperialist and colonial dynamics of land expropriation, prioritising corporation’s interests over people and ecosystems, and a full scale global militarisation for the control of primary resources.
Such devastation is having a detrimental impact on the planet and the lives of millions of workers worldwide.
Thousands of people have lost their ancestral way of living, thousands of workers need to migrate to earn a living in most precarious conditions, and thousands suffer life-long illnesses from mining extractions working conditions and pollution. This has had a most profound effect on the economies of indigenous and agricultural workers in the Global South, with an increased percentage of women affected. Looking at the patriarchal context women lack equal accessibility to resources such as education, land, water and medical care. They are more dependent on natural resources for their survival, and are often responsible to provide food for their families, usually having to walk miles for water having an increased risk on their health and of suffering sexual violence. Capitalism is ruining the planet, our livelihoods, and our means of existence. The neoliberal idea of a New Green Deal of ‘alternative ecologic transitions’ is not based on the fact that resources of the planet are finite. Instead it helps to whitewash the complete economic system.
It is an emergency that requires workers to organise globally and fight the class war against capitalist interests leading this climate crisis. A crisis that impacts discriminatorily socio-economic factors like poverty, and systematic racism, on those most socially and economically disadvantaged, with limited access to resources, communities of colour, immigrants, and low-income workers.
Grassroots and revolutionary unions are instrumental in organising a workers’ based strategy to reduce the negative impact of industries that disproportionately affect working class communities, whom they defend and represent.
To combat the fossil model of economic production it’s a necessity to reclaim the land, our livelihood, and to re-establish a balance between human activity and the natural environment based on a just transition to a zero-carbon future.
Since dependence and scarcity of raw material and energetic resources will inevitably unfold in wars and conflicts, the working class, armed with the power to withdraw their labour and stop production on a global strike, must organise in an internationalist, anti-militarist and class solidarity stance to overcome capitalism and advance collectively towards ensuring climate justice and food sovereignty for all, placing our future and wellbeing in our hands.