Editor’s note: This is our response to the call for solidarity messages to the 63rd International Antiwar Assembly in Japan.
Greetings to the comrades of the 63rd International Antiwar Assembly!
Photo: Susan Van Gelder for News and Letters Committees
We enthusiastically support your call to oppose the ongoing and potential genocidal, imperialist wars by creating class unity that transcends borders—whether that means the genocide in Gaza headed by Netanyahu in conjunction with his country’s fascists and with the support of the U.S. and many other countries, Putin’s war on Ukraine, or other conflicts. We join in your call to fight together and advance together for creating on the earth a world with no war, oppression, poverty or exploitation. As we recently wrote in “Middle East wars versus desire for freedom and peace”:
“The genocidal undertone of anti-immigrant politics, from the U.S. to Iran and from India to Germany, reinforces the alarm bells ringing that Israel’s genocide in Gaza is not some outlandish exception but rather the signal of where this stage of world capitalism is heading, if it is not stopped.”
Against world capitalism’s continuing descent into war, fascism, and genocide, the alternative we need is social revolution. This does not come out of the air but must be based on the joining together of theory and practice, of the power of ideas in the philosophy of revolution with the movements that spring from below, whether that be the actions of Palestinian masses independent of, and in opposition to, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as well as Israel, or the Ukrainian workers and allies fighting against Russia but also independent of Ukraine’s capitalist government. These forces require the deepest solidarity, which will not come from the governments of the world’s state powers but must come from below.
Let us strive together for the social revolution and abolish capitalism and its wars!
For freedom,
Franklin Dmitryev, for News and Letters Committees, July 30, 2025
The fascism of anti-immigrant governments (to the extent of abusing people or letting them die) and the fascism of a government expelling or killing a native population— these two are related, though I have not read anyone linking them before in quite this way. We have to stop them both.
Dear comrades of News and Letters Committees,
Thank you very much for sending your warm message to our International Anti-War Assembly. We all are deeply grateful for your solidarity.
All the messages, 20 or more, we received from overseas, were printed and handed out to students and workers who gathered at the assemblies held in seven cities all over Japan. We hardly had enough time to read them all and needed to select passages to read out on the stage. Your message was read out in full text. When your name and message were
called out, high and warm applause broke out. We greatly appreciate your message.
We agree with your view on today’s situation that world capitalism is continuing descent into war, fascism, and genocide. Now in the world, especially in Europe, it seems to us only arguments are in a lively way being continued among left-wing organisations, saying “Russia or NATO, which one is to blame”, “Whether to oppose European countries’ expansion
of armaments or to support Ukraine”, “the nation’s right to self-determination has gone out of date or not” … We feel that their points of view are very shortsighted and do not see the current situation from a wide perspective.
To add, it seems to us that they hold various kinds of meetings and argue enthusiastically, but are not keen on organising workers’ and people’s movement from below. We think that “theory also becomes a material force once it has gripped the masses”, as Marx said, but feel that they have a quite weak concern for a “united front” and easily split up when meeting opposite opinions. We should say that many of the left in Europe are ideological converts from Stalinism, some are overnight and self-styled Marxists who suddenly appeared after the collapse of “Soviet-type socialism”, and others
are self-proclaimed Trotskyists who do not learn earnestly from Leon Trotsky. That is why they could not grasp the historical meaning of Putin’s “retaliation”, Putin, a descendant of the Stalinists. Then, in the same way as rulers’, they easily fall into a “campist” (this is a word of the Ukrainian left in struggle) way of thinking in disregard of the proletarian people.
Now we actually stand in solidarity with “the Ukrainian workers and allies fighting against Russia but also independent of Ukraine’s capitalist government”, and carry on the struggle. People of Ukraine have experienced for themselves both of the anti-proletarian nature of Stalin’s Russia and miseries of the very dead-end of European capitalism. We believe that precisely for this reason they fight and resolutely refuse to be incorporated into Russia, and at the same time, they are struggling for the realization of “Ukraine without oligarchs and occupiers”.
Those who should lead the struggle to overcome the deep crisis of the contemporary world are after all genuine vanguard units which have denounced not only the evil of imperialism revealing barbarity and antihumanity day by day but also that of Stalinism having controlled people by putting up the false sign of “socialism” although it has left the centre stage of history. In this sense, “our old friends” of you and us, let us strive together in order to “abolish capitalism and its war”, and for “the social revolution” and “freedom”!
Finally, we would like to sincerely apologize for the delay in expressing our gratitude to you. After the assemblies, we are afraid that we have been busily occupied in discussions with anti-war groups around the world about how to respond to the situation of Ukraine amid the rapid changes.
Best wishes,
Japan Revolutionary Communist League (Revolutionary Marxist Faction)
September 2, 2025