The Socialist Party is part of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), which organises across the world, fighting for socialist change. This summer, dozens of Socialist Party activists will be attending the ‘CWI School’ in Berlin, to discuss with scores of other CWI members. The Socialist Party is campaigning to raise £10,000 to contribute to the financial appeal at that international meeting. Sean Figg, a member of the CWI International Secretariat, explains why that money is needed.
Worldwide, the capitalist profit-system means disaster for the working-class and poor masses. The result is multiple and convergent political, economic, social, environmental and health crises. Economic crises recur again and again, casting a permanent shadow of uncertainty over the lives of billions, hammering living standards and dragging them backwards. Major regional wars, civil wars and military coups are taking place as the capitalist ruling classes and their different factions vie for influence, power and wealth. Military spending has reached record levels. A second Trump presidency is a real possibility and will add further fuel to the fires of global instability.
The interconnectedness of the world is repeatedly hammered home in this era of capitalist crisis. Wars spill over borders, spark refugee crises and drive mass migrations. The Covid-19 pandemic was a global disaster, as was the cost of living crisis that followed in its wake, and the ongoing environmental emergency. The idea that international solutions are need to the problems facing the working class, young people and the poor worldwide can be quickly grasped.
On every continent and in every country, people are compelled to fight back. In recent weeks alone, Kenya and Bangladesh have erupted in major anti-government protests. They are added to the roll-call of neo-colonial revolts in the recent period – Chile, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Iraq and Myanmar. These have taken place alongside important strike waves in Europe and North America. More mass movements and mass struggles, rebellions, revolts and uprisings lie ahead. Increasingly, groups of workers and youth, and other working-class organisations will search for the ideas that the CWI defends and develops. We need to be ready to meet this demand.
The resources of the CWI need to be built to increase our ability to intervene in the escalating class struggle the crisis of world capitalism is provoking, and win the best activists among the working class, the youth and the poor masses to revolutionary socialist internationalism. The CWI has built experience over fifty years on all continents. Our sections and members have a proud record of participating in and leading struggle. Whilst the first capitalist trillionaire is expected soon, the CWI can only rely on its members and sympathisers for financial support.
But this is just one aspect of the crucial work done by the CWI International Centre, based in London. Alongside efforts to reach activists in new countries is the important task of political support to the existing sections of the CWI. This is crucial to maintaining the CWI as a unified revolutionary socialist international based on a common method and orientation to the working class – the only social force that can carry through the socialist revolution worldwide.
Under the pressure of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis – which has increased air fares substantially – vital regular political visits have not been as frequent as in the past. This year, the International Centre has strived to change this. So far, visits by members of the CWI’s International Secretariat have been funded to Chile and Malaysia. Before the end of the year, we are planning at least three more visits to support the work of CWI members in key countries.
Alongside this is the need to maintain and look towards expanding the resources of the International Centre, including full-time workers. All of this is a necessary foundation to develop and promote the CWI’s Marxist analysis of the class struggle globally.
The Socialist Party, the CWI in England and Wales, is campaigning to raise £10,000 to support the political work of the CWI over the remainder of 2024.
If you can, donate via www.socialistparty.org.uk/donations/cwi-appeal and make it clear you are donating to the ‘CWI appeal’
