The U.S. ruling class and its politicians are today confronted with the fact that in spite of the immense strains placed on the north Korean economy during the 1990s by the combined blows of a collapse in trade with the former Soviet Union and a succession of natural disasters, the workers state has not fallen to pieces. Nor have workers and farmers gotten down on their knees before the imperialists' demands.

Faced with this failure, the U.S. rulers, driving to reinstate the most brutal forms of capitalist exploitation in north Korea, are increasingly compelled to prepare for military assault.

The tens of thousands of U.S. troops in south Korea have never had a defensive purpose; installed after the defeat of one brutal imperialist assault, they are a reminder of Washington's long-term preparation for another. The same broad conclusions confront the imperialists in their relations with the other workers states.

Bush's sabre-rattling has jeopardized preparations for the resumption of talks between the governments of north and south. Seoul, faced with near-universal support for reunification, had started to renew moves to accept the north's offer of negotiations. The rulers in the south are in a relatively weak position, caught among powerful class forces, among them the south Korean working class. Substantial postwar industrialization has increased the numbers and weight of the southern proletariat. Workers have formed powerful unions over recent years and have used them to fight for wage increases and other rights.

Washington's harsh rhetoric against north Korea is a sign not of strength, but of the fact that it must lash out with military force to try to slow its decline as the world's final empire. The same is true of its attempts to increasingly militarize U.S. society, and of its war on Afghanistan. The imperialist rulers offer humanity no prospect of economic development or peace, but only increasing doses of crisis, brutality, and war.

Whatever its desires for a military "solution," however, Washington knows that it faces a formidable foe in the working people of Korea. Through massive struggles across the peninsula in the decade following World War II, they dealt heavy blows to imperialist domination and capitalist and landlord exploitation. In three years of pitched battle, they handed the mighty U.S. war machine its first big defeat. Without their victory, which weakened Washington and ended the racist illusion of its absolute power, the Vietnamese victory over U.S. imperialism would have been much more difficult and cost an even higher price.

In resisting U.S. imperialism in the past and today, the working people of Korean city and countryside strengthen the struggles of workers and farmers in the United States, and of everyone who faces Washington's brutality. To reinforce our common fight, we should demand: An end to the threats against north Korea! For normalization of U.S.-north Korea relations! All U.S. troops out of Korea!
 
 
Related article:
Behind Washington's hostility toward Korean workers state  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home