Humanity Cannot Breathe Until Capitalism is Overthrown

An ancient Chinese curse says: “May you live in interesting/strange times.” Let’s take these words as an opportunity to think about the time and world we now live in. Aren’t we faced with strangeness and contradictions wherever we turn? Aren’t we living in a time when truth and lies are interchanged, tyrants take on the role of saviours, the innocent are humiliated and oppressed, the mighty are seen rightful, humanitarian values are trampled, and cruelty, selfishness, self-interest and apathy are glorified? We are indeed living in interesting and strange times. Whether we realize it or not, as the working class, we are paying a heavy price for this.

We live in an economic system called capitalism, which has exploitation, inequality, injustice and all sorts of evil in its nature. Capitalism is a system that creates and deepens contradictions, makes irrational “strangeness” a part of daily social life and “normalizes” them. For example, it is normal in this system to have millions of unemployed people on one side and millions suffer under long working hours and heavy workloads on the other. It is normal in this system to have hundreds of millions of hungry people on the one side and a few on touristic space travels on the other. While the working and living conditions, problems and aspirations of all the workers of the world are common, and their needs are unity and solidarity, it is normal in this system that they are provoked by nationalism, set against each other, and even driven into wars...

But there is more: With the 2000s, capitalism, which has reached its historical limits, aged and decayed, is carrying the contradictions to an unsustainable point. It intertwines social problems in the most complex way and escalates them to the level of an insurmountable crisis. It turns life into hell for all the working people of the world with imperialist war, ecological crisis, migration crisis, food crisis, chaotic cities, violence, drugs and many other problems. There is no future for humanity under capitalism! However, capitalists continue to put their own narrow interests before the interests of humanity and implement their sinister plans to keep their oppressive regimes alive at all costs.

This means: Bourgeoisie diversifies and expands the lies and traps it produces to deceive, divide and weaken the working class and broad toiling masses. If lies and traps are not enough, they apply oppression, violence, tyranny and cruelty methods more extensively. Governments apply oppression and tyranny in the most systematic way to prevent the uprising of the working masses. For this purpose, oppressive, authoritarian and fascist regimes are being established in many countries. By these regimes, democratic rights and liberties are being destroyed. All kinds of struggles for rights, protests and demonstrations are declared illegitimate and crushed, and they try to keep society under control under the pretext of national security and existential threats. Working people and youth are being forced to stand still and bow down to capitalism and the evils it creates, as if all hands are tied.

Think about the massacre carried out by Israel and the tens of thousands of women and children it killed in Gaza before the eyes of the whole world. Israeli rulers use the October 7 attack as a pretext and say that they are faced with an “existential problem”. They try to justify their atrocities under the “right to self-defence”. And what happens to the Israeli working people opposing the massacres of the fascist Netanyahu government and saying that they want to live in peace and fraternity as two people? They are labelled as traitors, they are subjected to violence, and they are punished.

The US rulers are warning Israel gently in front of the media, saying, “Israel must prevent civilian harm”. While tens of thousands of civilians, women and children have been killed, they continue to sell arms to Israel, saying, “Israel has not crossed the red line yet.” While the people in Gaza are facing genocide, they are talking about Israel’s “right to exist.” And how are the young people at US universities who are rebelling against this massacre and calling on the government to “stop arming Israel” being treated? They are trampled under police horses, tortured, arrested, and labelled as terrorists and provocateurs. Because Israel’s policies and its strong presence in the Middle East are in line with the interest of US rulers, who want to maintain their position at the top of the imperialist system. In many European countries, especially the UK, working people and youth are taking to the streets to stop the massacre in Gaza. The rulers of these countries also accuse those who say “Stop the Genocide” of being anti-Semitic. They claim that their demands and demonstrations are “appalling.” The rulers of the Arab countries, eager to pose as defenders of the Palestinian cause, still make speeches calling for the necessity of maintaining relations with Israel.

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Turkey’s rulers are not any less than them, going so far as to say, “We condemn the massacre, however in terms of trade, Israel is an important partner”! They label those who say “Stop trade with Israel” as provocative and arrest them. They try to justify their crime by claiming that Turkey, not Israel, benefits from this. They continue the trade, which they say they have already “cut off”, in new ways. They keep putting their own narrow interests above all else and presenting them as the interests of the whole society.

The government in Turkey takes the same position in every field. They make tens of millions of working people pay the heavy price of economic programmes, foreign policy and austerity packages. They provide new profit and enrichment opportunities for the capitalist class. Despite this fact, they claim that the policies they implement are in the interest of the whole society and keep presenting their own survival in power as the survival of Turkey. Under this pretext, they do not hesitate to suppress even a single criticism, to crush and punish the slightest opposition. Workers face repression and violence when they seek their rights, unionise, strike or resist. Elected mayors are arrested and imprisoned, local councils are seized by government-appointed trustees. Opposition journalists, Kurdish politicians, and militant trade unionists face the same sort of repression. However, in a country where such an extraordinary regime rules, where rights and freedoms have no shreds left, where oppression and tyranny are rampant, where society is breathless, the rulers talk about “normalisation” and “softening”! It is obvious that what the rulers mean by normalisation is nothing but making oppression and tyranny normal and ordinary in the eyes of society.

The truth speaks loud and clear: Humanity cannot breathe until capitalism is overthrown! Those who will overthrow capitalism and let humanity breathe are the ones who stand up against oppression. If there is a problem, then there is search for solution, if there is repression, there is outrage, if there is oppression, there is rebellion. If on one side of the coin there are the regime’s repression and its evil plans, on the other side there are workers in many cities, in many industries, fighting for their rights. If on one side there is capitalism that makes humanity breathless and creates evil on the other side there are workers, youth and working women who dream of a world without war and exploitation, and fight for it. Today, the millions of people taking to the streets against the imperialist war from the UK to India, from the USA to Italy, and from Israel to France are proof that we should keep hope and the will to fight alive. The hope of humanity is those who keep to hope instead of darkness, grow the will to fight instead of despair, focus on the brightness of the future instead of the bleakness of today, and keep building solidarity and unity in the ranks of the working class.