At the beginning of June, the heads of state and government of the eight most powerful countries will meet up for a summit in Heiligendamm in Northeastern Germany. Even though these are supposedly the eight most powerful people in the world, they have to meet in a remote luxury hotel to be shielded from protests. Almost 100 million euros will be squandered in order to keep demonstrators away from the summit. The “Group of 8”, G8 for short, is hated, because their summits are a symbol for misery in the world.

I hate war

Every day more than two billion dollars are spent on armaments to secure access to raw materials and markets for corporations. The bloody US occupation of Iraq has, according to estimates, led to the deaths of 650,000 Iraqis. But also the seemingly pacifist EU is increasingly becoming an occupying power: whether in the Balkans, Lebanon, Africa or Central Asia, there are more and more European soldiers who are securing the profits of European companies. The last G8 summit, in 2006 in St. Petersburg, gave political backing for the israeli Invasion of Lebanon.

I hate poverty

The owners of Microsoft, IKEA, ALDI etc. each have wealth with a value of tens of billions of dollars. At the same time, roughly one billion people – a sixth of humanity – must survive on less than one dollar a day. In the poor countries it is not unusual that workers sew for a multinational corporation for 14 hours a day and receive just 10 cents an hour. Debts to the World Bank and the rich countries going into the billions hold the Third World in insurmountable dependence.

I hate exploitation

In the rich countries, as well, exploitation is increasing. Workers are to work more for less money, due to wage cuts, increase in the working week, raising the retirement age, etc. Cuts in unemployment benefits are meant to increase pressure on the (still) employed. Competition between production locations is meant to play off the workers of one countries against the workers of another and spread racism. Education and health care, which are still considered a basic right in many rich countries, are increasingly becoming a privilege that one has to pay a lot for.

I hate racism

The European Union is being developed up into a fortress. Thousands of refugees from Africa arrive every month at the Canary Islands or on the coast of Italy, and most of them are deported again. It is even possible for people from war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan to be deported. At the border between the USA and Mexico, a 700-mile (1,100-kilometer) fence is to be built to keep out immigrants from Mexico Central America. Working immigrants are used as cheap labor – the fear of deportation keeps their wages low and their working conditions poor.

I hate repression

Left-wing organizations that protest against this misery are criminalized all over the world. The left Basque youth organization SEGI was declared a “terrorist organization”; the Communist Union of Youth of the Czech Republic was banned by the Interior Ministry because they demand the abolition of private property of the means of production. The “Black List” of organizations considered classified as terrorist by the EU or the US gets longer and longer. The ruling classes attempt to suffocate the seeds of protest with accusations of “terrorism”.

I hate capitalism!

All this misery is not just a result of “dumb” or “evil” politicians or businessmen. It is a product of a system in which the majority of humanity works to make a minority rich. This system has a name: capitalism. Competition between the different companies and the different states and blocks of states makes occurrences like war and social cuts inevitable.

The G8 summit stands for this system. For this reason, the G8 summits are literally besieged. Ever since the protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 1999 in Seattle, there has been hardly a summit of the states and corporations that was not accompanied by mass protests. At the G8 summit in 2001 in Genoa, over 300.000 people demonstrated and the Italian police shot the young activist Carlo Giuliani. But despite all repression, endless hordes of young people who reject the ruling system come to every summit.

The reformist parties and trade unions, the NGOs and the churches will try to steer the movement against the G8 into channels which are conform with the system, by demanding the reform of the G8 or simply better policies. Our demand for the overthrow of the G8 must be loud. Hate against the G8 must be universal.

But we must transform our individual hate into collective resistance. These protests bring hundreds of thousands of people out onto the streets – especially young people excel as fighters against fences, tear gas, police.

With the big demonstration on June 2, we can show that we who reject this summit are no meaningless fringe group. With blockades at the airport Rostock-Laage we can actually disrupt the run of the summit – this is exactly what happened at the G8 summit in 2003 in Evian, which started six hours too late due to blockades in the city of Geneva.

I love socialist world revolution!

There is an alternative to the misery of capitalism. The fact that the world is run by seven men and a woman (or to put it more precisely: by the institutions behind these eight) probably doesn’t please anyone but the few billionaires.

The alternative consists in the exploited and oppressed, especially the youth amongst them, organizing to smash capitalism. When we take factories, schools, universities, neighborhoods – cities, countries, continents – into our own hands and run them ourselves, we could produce for the needs of all people instead of for the profits of the capitalists. But capitalism will not fall apart because of a big demonstration in Rostock – also not because of effective blockades. Our resistance must go beyond the week of the G8 summit. We can only unhinge the system by winning a majority of the working class – i.e. those who labor day in day out – for a revolution.

For this reason, we build up an independent communist youth organization. Only by building up own organization do we young people learn to intervene in political events. We do not want to divide ourselves from older activists – on the contrary, history shows that the revolutionary youth can play a key role in the creation of revolutionary parties.

In the last five years of the anticapitalist movement, we young people have shown that we can build up a worldwide protest movement. Now we must go further and create a political organization at a worldwide level.

Tear down G8! Build up revolutionary youth international!

iREVOLUTION Coordination, February 7, 2007