The following speech by SHEMAL ALI from the Worker Communist Party of Iraq (WCPI) was presented to the 120 participants at the May Day toast at the Granville Town Hall on May 6, jointly sponsored by the Sydney west branch of the Democratic Socialist Party and the WCPI.
I am proud to be here tonight to celebrate May Day — the workers' international day — with comrades from the Democratic Socialist Party and labour movement activists in Australia.
Here we celebrate another May Day, another day of solidarity among workers all over the world, another occasion for the working class to show its power and will to build a world of equality and freedom.
But as another May Day passes, so too another year passes in the life of capitalism. Billions of human beings have lived another year of injustice, poverty and exploitation. Hundreds of millions of workers have been forced to remain slaves of the wealth that they themselves created. Humanity has been forced to stay chained by this devastating system.
I said they have been forced, and they really were. If not, what logic could explain and have people accept that advancing technology and higher labour productivity should bring more starvation, more unemployment, wars, bloodshed, displacement and absence of basic human rights? If not, why would people tolerate the possibility of millions of African kids starving to death in the remaining months of this year?
What sort of system makes prostitution and child labour major economic resources in south-east Asia, India and Pakistan? Which healthy mind would consider regimes like those in Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq respectable states.
It is obvious that we have reached the point where capitalism is in contradiction with the life of human society.
But humanity is forced to accept this situation — forced by hundreds of lies from a lie-distributor machine called the mass media, force by thousands of suppressive armies, security forces and jails, forced by ideologies of religion, nationalism, racism and so on. By all these, humanity is persuaded that even if salvation from the existing system is just and necessary, it is not possible.
Possibility of socialism
The key question in the 21st century is not the necessity, it is the possibility of socialism; not the possibility of uprising, revolution or even establishing workers' rule, but the possibility of establishing socialism as a society.
The working class has never been as powerful as it is today. The foundation for working-class unity has never been as strong. Despite the censors, the ideas of working-class unity and power can get their reflection in the media.
But what is next? For all struggling workers this is a daily question?
Should we live like this forever, live in struggle, die in struggle, train and teach the next generation to go on? In spite of all the toiling and producing, we still live like we're in a jungle — constantly having to think about the threat of attack from, or standing up to the attack from the wild beast of capitalism. Should this be the permanent destiny of the working class?
Isn't it wiser and more logical to end all this, to destroy the basis of the wage labour system?
But what keeps the workers' struggle from going beyond a daily struggle for mere survival is the absence of the recognition that socialism is possible. Proving that it is possible is not a matter for the future. It is in first place a matter of present-day struggle by socialists and communists.
Communism should mean more freedom, more justice and welfare for today's people. Workers should see communists in the front line in the struggle for reforms, as well as in revolution and radical changes.
And more important, workers should see another example of communists in power again. We in the Worker Communist Party of Iraq and the Worker Communist Party of Iran are working for this. Today, in Iraq and Iran, we have a golden opportunity to take power and rule in those two countries.
Taking power
The Iraqi bourgeois regime is in a very deep political crisis. The Baa'th regime [led by Saddam Hussein] can't rule in Iraq without war and bloodshed. In spite of all that the US is doing to form and present an alternative to the Baa'th regime, the Worker Communist Party of Iraq is the only real and radical opposition that could bring changes in Iraq.
In Kurdistan, where we have forced the bourgeois rulers to accept open communist struggle, the hope of the masses in our party and socialist struggle is growing day by day. Our members are not only able to stand up to the pressure from the nationalists and win political freedoms, we have begun to see positive changes tacking place, changes which has been struggled for by communists for years.
Last month, the PUK [Patriotic Union of Kurdistan] stated that courts in the region controlled by it will stop acting according to article 111 of the Iraqi penal code which considers "honour" killings of women a minor crime. For the first time in Iraqi history, the criminals in honour killings will be punished as murderers.
Also, on May 1, [PUK leader] Jalal Talabani claimed that the PUK will change the Iraqi labour laws, especially Law No. 150 which precludes all workers in state-owned businesses from being covered by labour laws.
So we began to see the results of communist struggle. But no matter how impressive are those victories, the most important is to win the right to be in power. As a workers' party we have the right to struggle for power, and we will get it.
I will use this opportunity to thank all those parties, progressive forces and individuals who supported us in our campaigns against the repression of the Kurdistan nationalist parties and the Baa'th regime. Especially, I would like to say that the Worker Communist Party of Iraq appreciates the role that the Democratic Socialist Party and Green Left Weekly played in our campaign against the PUK.
Long live May Day! Long live workers' international solidarity! Workers of the world unite!