The following statement was circulated by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Organisation in light of the escalation of the war against Iran.
As the skies of Iran are filled with the billowing plumes of oil smoke, the ghouls of capital claim that they are unleashing this brutal war in the name of ‘democracy, freedom, and self-defence’. Yet this war is really waged under the watchwords of ‘autocracy, oppression, and profit’. The United States and Israel have entered this war with different aims, but if they defeat the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iranian Army the consequences are clear: Iran will be completely subjugated by American imperialism. If America wins this war, the only ‘freedom’ they will bring to the Iranian working class is the same freedom they brought to Libya and to Syria: the ‘freedom’ of mass graves, the ‘freedom’ of imperialism to loot the country to their hearts content, the ‘freedom’ for parents to sell their children into slavery, and the ‘freedom’ for workers to beg warlords for mercy.
Workers in Australia cannot be neutral in this conflict. We have a side we must choose – against the United States and with the Iranian proletariat. This means taking a firm stand in defence of Iran against the attempts by the US and Israel to topple or subjugate the Iranian state. We lend no support to the Mullah’s butcher regime, their capitalist dictatorship, their religious sectarianism, their racist policies, nor their elitist strategy which has led to this tragedy. But we recognise that the Iranian proletariat’s interests lie not in an American victory, which would only bring the barbarity of warlordism and the strengthening of its imperialist grip on the planet, but in the United States’ defeat. The depravity which Israel wishes to implement via missile in Iran and via tanks in Lebanon will completely cancel the possibility of an independent proletarian movement and a united communist party developing in Iran. Instead, proletarians would be massacred by tinpot warlords, ethnic and sectarian conflicts, and Taliban and Azerbaijani interventionists.
At this stage the war seems likely to only expand, with the American administration publicly discussing deploying marines to invade Iran. The Australian state and Labor government has announced its willingness to join the war drive, issuing military personnel to keep the Gulf open. The Australian Council of Trade Unions has issued a statement not speaking out against the war, but begging for “a fair stake in the massive windfall profits” plundered from abroad. In doing so, they are scabbing on the workers whose interests they claim to represent. Instead, they are serving the interests of Australian capital and its alliance with American imperialism. Australia is not neutral and our government has unambiguously taken a side with America and against workers everywhere. Already we are seeing the economic shockwaves of this war beginning to crest. With international oil and natural gas markets at risk, the knock-on effect has already impacted fuel prices and could impact everything from common supermarket goods, world shipping, and food security.
It is the working class, including in Australia, who will shoulder the greatest burden in this war – whether that is fighting and dying in it or suffering starvation, poverty, and state violence on the homefront. The irrationality of the capitalist economy is revealing itself again in the form of the ‘just in time’ system and the ‘A.I’ bubble. At best, this war will bring unemployment and a worsening cost of living crisis. At worst – and if the ‘A.I.’ bubble pops – the war will bring a social crisis similar in magnitude to the Great Depression. The only question now is this: how much murder and depravity are we willing to suffer before we are ready to break our chains?
Against the anarchy of the market and of global war, we raise the banner of the forceful abolition of classes by the proletariat and of a transition towards an internationally planned economy under the democratic control of the entire human species. A workers’ republic in Australia would unleash the full power of the proletariat to rebuild the continent and the world in our interests.
As revolutionaries, as internationalists, and as communists; we stand proudly for the defeat of our own state in the war. The enemy is not in Tehran; they are at home! To the American and Australian workers who may be sent off to die to line the capitalist’s pockets, we have a very simple message: turn the guns around!
Sections of the left have attempted to retreat into social pacifism with calls for peace and international arbitration. This only follows the footsteps of left Laborite bureaucrats, such as those in the Maritime Union of Australia, whose statement appeals for the Australian government to take a “decisive turn to diplomacy, disarmament and respect for international law”. Communists are not pacifists; when the clarion call of war comes, we are not afraid to fight. We fight for the defeat of our own ruling class, and for the victory of the workers!
However, those who give politically support to the Mullahs cripple the struggle. The reason we stand on the edge of this calamity is because of regime’s categorical failures. Communists must fight for the independent self-organisation of the proletariat across the Middle East. Only this form of struggle can overturn imperialism in any meaningful sense. Kissing the Iranian state’s boot, which has been firmly on the neck of the Iranian worker for decades, does not do this. Similarly, there will be those in Iran and elsewhere who will be drawn to siding with the US’ and Israel’s form of imposed ‘democracy and freedom’. But this ‘democracy and freedom’ is nothing but a cover for their imperialist ambitions. Don’t believe them, and don’t betray the real struggle by the proletariat for democracy and communism. From the masses of Bahrain to Lebanon, from Syria to Egypt, and from Yemen to the UAE; communists must fight together to rouse them into action on their own terms and for their own liberation.
Our task as communists in Australia is to fight the enemy at home. That means taking up the struggle against imperialist war and linking the desire of working people for peace with the need to fight for socialism. It also means raising key demands: the closure of all US bases, the breaking of the US Alliance, and the defeat of US imperialism.
The communist movement in Australia is weak, it is divided and sectarian, but it has the power to be so much more than what it is. We must reject the small-minded parochialism of the sect, and fight for principled internationalist unity. Together a genuine communist party in Australia could fight the US’ lackeys in the labor movement, smash AUKUS, tear up ANZUS, expel every American asset, and transform Australia from a bastion of imperialist oppression in the South Pacific into a burning beacon of freedom, democracy, and communism.
PARTISAN! 
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