To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
January 18, 2022
by Joseph Green, Detroit Workers’ Voice
Below we reprint a solidarity statement with the mass protests in Kazakhstan that was circulated among activists in about three dozen countries over a two-day period. It is an important statement, and deserves to be read carefully and circulated widely. It is important for the radical left to support struggles against dictatorship and in favor of people’s livelihood. The divisions in the militant left over such things as the Kazakhstani uprising show that the state-capitalist countries are not our friends, and the apologists for these countries have done great damage to the left. And statements in favor of the large-scale, heroic mass struggles of our time, statements such as this about struggles such as those in Kazakhstan, may play a valuable role in leading more activists to start thinking about such things.
But the statement itself avoids mentioning that a large section of the supposed left, including many organizations that call themselves communists, support stomping out the mass protests. On one hand, the main significance of this solidarity statement is that it opposes this stand of much of the left; it is a protest largely against other supposed left-wing organizations. But on the other hand, the statement doesn’t directly say this. And so it doesn’t directly refer to why supposed leftists would back the government butchers in this struggle.
In fact, if one isn’t careful, from looking at the list of signatories one might get a wrong idea about how far the left supports the Kazahkstani struggle. Frank García Hernández signed it from Comunistas Cuba blog, but the Cuban Foreign Ministry has brutally denounced the uprising. Another example is that it is signed by two members of Die Linke (a left-wing party with seats in the German parliament), including Thies Gleiss (who is just one of the over 40 members of the Executive Board), but as far as I can tell, it is rather unlikely that Die Linke as a whole sympathizes with the uprising.
The statement makes the point that all the major capitalist powers prioritize stability in Kazakhstan over anything else. It carefully shows that Russia and China want to crush the rebellion, while the US and the EU call for restraint by all sides. The statement characterizes this as the “class solidarity of the capitalist regimes”, but the different stands of the imperialist powers also reflect rivalry among themselves, as shown in increasing international tension among them over one issue after another, although none of them back the oppressed masses. Those supposed leftists who back the bloody repression unleashed by the Kazakhstani government think this rivalry justifies opposing the militant workers of Kazakhstan. The statement implicitly argues against that standpoint by saying that all the major capitalist powers are united, rather than directly saying that differences among the imperialist powers do not justify anyone betraying the masses. This is a minor flaw. But if the crisis in the left is to be overcome, a crisis shown by how many supposed leftists back the suppression of the Kazakhstani workers, it will require speaking more plainly about the deep differences in the left, why they exist, and how to work to overcome them.
Our previous call for solidarity with the workers of Kazakhstan as well as comparison to what happened after an earlier massacre of Kazakhstani oil workers in December 2011 can be found at www.communistvoice.org/DSWV-220113.html.<>
Wednesday 12 January 2022
We, socialists, trade unionists, human rights activists, anti-war activists and organisations have watched the uprising in Kazakhstan since 2 January with a sense of deep solidarity for the working people. The striking oil workers, miners and protesters have faced incredible repression. The full force of the police and army have been unleashed against them, instructed to ‘shoot to kill without warning’. Over 160 protesters have been killed so far and more than 8,000 have been arrested.
We reject the propaganda of the dictatorship that this uprising is a product of “Islamic radicals” or the intervention of US imperialism. There is no evidence of that whatsoever. It is the usual resort of an unpopular regime - to blame ‘outside’ agitators.
Instead, the trigger of the protests was the rise in fuel prices. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, in a country where immense oil wealth exists side by side with terrible poverty and exploitation. It is also the result of the crushing weight of a brutal dictatorship on people’s backs. This regime has liquidated all opposition parties, imprisoned and tortured trade union and human rights activists, and was responsible for a massacre of striking oil workers in Zhanaozen ten years ago.
The position of all the major capitalist powers is clear. Putin stands full square behind the regime. The Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) has sent 3,000 troops to Kazakhstan to intimidate protesters. Chinese President Xi Jinping also announced his support for the Kazakhstan government and claimed the unrest was the deliberate result of "outside forces."
The US administration has called for “restraint by both the authorities and protestors”. The EU has similarly called on protesters to “avoid any incitement to violence” and called on authorities “to respect the fundamental right to peaceful protest and proportionality in the use of force when defending its legitimate security interests”!
Unsurprisingly, they all prioritise ‘stability’ for their oil companies who are benefiting from the exploitation of the natural resources and Kazakh workers.
In response to the class solidarity of the capitalist regimes, we respond with working class solidarity and commit to raise the following demands in our trade unions, parliaments and organisations:
• Solidarity with those rising up against the dictatorship in Kazakhstan
• End the repression of the protests
• Release all the detained protesters and political prisoners
• No to Russian and CSTO intervention - withdraw the troops now
• No to the hypocrisy of the EU and US who equate the revolt of the masses with the brutal violence of the regime
• Down with the dictatorship
• Support the call from oil workers for nationalisation of the oil wealth and major industries under workers’ control
• Support the building of an independent trade union movement and socialist movement in Kazakhstan
The above statement and a list of its signers can be found at
https://www.leftvoice.org/solidarity-with-the-uprising-in-kazakhstan/.
It is also pointed out there that the statement was written by Paul
Murphy. Murphy is a member of the lower house of the Irish parliament,
and at one time a member of the European Parliament. He was a member of
the Socialist Party, but split from it in 2019 to form RISE (which
stands for “Revolutionary, Internationalist, Socialist and
Environmentalist”), which in February 2021 became an internal network
of the People Before Profit party.
The journal International Viewpoint also carried the statement and list of signers, and introduced it as follows: “There has been a rapid and strong response to the circulation of this Kazakhstan solidarity statement. Very close to 200 signatures in almost 40 countries were collected in the space of just two days, with many prominent individuals and organisations.” https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article7477 <>
Picture: a protest rally in Almaty, Kazakhstan, January, 2022
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