منظمة البديل الشيوعي في العراق تنظيم شيوعي عمالي منهجه الفكري والسياسي ماركسي مستنبط من “البيان الشيوعي”
The fourth anniversary of the uprising of October 1, 2019 is upon us, and the social, political and intellectual scene at the level of society in Iraq appears, on the surface, to be devoid of any trace of the uprising, but this is merely a deceptive appearance, as history does not negate anything unless something new replaces it. The forces that the masses rose against, remain in power, and the struggle continues between the two.
Despite the reactionary efforts of the bourgeois nationalist and neoliberal opposition forces and their international and regional supporters, before and during the uprising and still, to harness the anger and dissatisfaction of the masses with the current situation and with the ruling authorities in Iraq, towards their political and economic interests and geopolitical goals, the overwhelming public outburst in October 2019 did not fail. Not only it was able to defeat these endeavors, but it was also able to occupy an independent place for itself in the history of the social, political, intellectual and cultural conflict in Iraq, as a revolutionary mass uprising par excellence.
The masses of the working class, the toilers, women, the unemployed youth, and the emancipatory individuals launched a revolutionary uprising to get rid of poverty, social misery, and unemployment, in the face of corruption, poor services, the stifling of freedoms, the dominance of nationalist and sectarian reaction over society, and its quota system, and all the tragedies and destruction inflicted by the geopolitical interventions and conflicts of the imperialist countries and the regional poles in Iraq. The uprising raised the slogan of overthrowing the regime.
Today, at a time when the state in Iraq has an explosive budget controlled by the ruling bourgeois Islamic and nationalist regime, the masses and the generation that grew up after the uprising are living in the worst conditions, due to economic misery, unemployment, the high cost of living, and various types of suffering resulting from the meager public health and educational services and poor services. The other necessary factor, which is the result of the prevailing neo-liberal capitalist policy, is the global bourgeois policy represented by the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Hundreds of thousands of workers, employees and their families live in the Kurdistan Region without income, as they have not received their salaries for more than three months, with the increasing economic and social misery of the masses in the region.
As a result of all of this, most of the working masses throughout Iraq lack the most basic means of livelihood, services, safety, and adequate housing. They have become hostages under the hands of the ruling Islamic and nationalist regime, and they are paying the price of the ongoing conflicts between the various institutions, wings, and forces of the regime, including between the governments of the center and the region, at the expense of the deterioration of people’s livelihood, security, and the future of their children.
In view of the overall situation, the various segments of the masses of workers, youth, and women continued to struggle to achieve their economic and social demands, obtain their rights, and impose them on the authorities, in the form of various demonstrations, strikes, protests, and sit-ins in various governorates and the industrial, service, educational, and health sectors.
The labor movement’s demand for an adjustment to the salary scale, and the protests of unemployed graduates and others, the demonstrations of wage laborers and unwaged lecturers, the struggles of industrial sector workers against privatization and layoffs, the movement that defends the demands of workers in the pprecarious labor sector, and others, as a whole constitute a rising labor movement. It expressed its prominent presence on May 1 of this year in Baghdad and other governorates, with what all of this means in terms of the rise of the united and independent class power of workers and toilers. The expansion of this movement to include various segments of the working class in various fields of economic and social life will be the social base and basic building block for any future revolutionary uprising and for building and developing the proletarian socialist political party in the midst of the comprehensive class struggle taking place in society.
What we are witnessing today, with groups after groups of counter-revolutionary forces that previously pretended to be friends of the uprising, joining the ranks of power and holding the governorate council elections, is nothing but a reflection of the sharp, deep and broad class polarization and the class conflict inherent in it that society is currently witnessing.
The rush of these counter-revolutionary forces to participate in the provincial council elections, the leftist reformists’ reneging on their previous promises to leave parliament and the elections, and their current eagerness to participate in the elections is a reflection of that polarization and class struggle, which is taking a position against the independent workers’ struggle, and an effort on their part to strengthen the system through their humble and scandalous support for the regime through participation in the elections.
The specific form that the development of the class struggle in Iraq will take, and any future revolutionary tide, depends on the development of the rising labor movement from a political, organizational, and intellectual standpoint. It is not possible to predict that the form of the next uprising will be a copy of another October uprising. But what is known is that the revolution is still on the agenda of history, not only in Iraq, but in the entire Middle East region, as a result of the exacerbation of deeper and more comprehensive contradictions of the capitalist system and the Islamic, nationalist, and militaristic political systems protecting it in the region.
Independent proletarian class politics,
Is the path to the success of any future revolutionary uprising.
There is no way to get rid of the current situation except to strengthen the various dimensions of the economic, political, intellectual and organizational struggle of the working class and the impoverished and oppressed social strata surrounding it and unite them in an independent class struggle and with a proletarian socialist banner.
The Organization of the Communist Alternative in Iraq fights resolutely and steadfastly in the trenches of this socialist proletarian class struggle, side by side with the workers, the oppressed and the poor, to achieve prosperity for all, and to build a world free of classes in which freedom and equality prevail.
At a time when it commemorates the fourth anniversary of the October Uprising, it affirms that the most sincere loyalty to its victims is the continued struggle to achieve the goals of the uprising.
Long live the October Uprising!
Long live socialism!
The Organization of Communist Alternative in Iraq
September 28, 2023
