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UID-DER: A Fighting Organisation of the Working Class
Deep rooted!
Association of International Workers’ Solidarity (UID-DER) is a socialist workers’ organization that defends the international struggle of the working class against capitalist exploitation and works in this direction. It was established on June 15-16, 2006 with the participation of workers around many industries, from metal to petro-chemistry, from education to healthcare, from transportation to food industry, families of workers, working youth and working women. As a struggle organization, UID-DER has grown by taking root in the heart of the working class, and it keeps on growing.
UID-DER has a deep-rooted history stretching back into the past. The period between 1960 and 1980 is a very important period in terms of the working class history of Turkey. These years, in which the industry developed by leaps and the working class grew, were also the years when the working class movement was on the rise. In these years, when mass strikes broke out one after another and large mass demonstrations were organized, the workers were gaining political class consciousness and the social struggle against capitalist exploitation was growing. The rising social liberation struggle was also affecting students, intellectuals and artists, drawing them into this struggle. Those who led the establishment of UID-DER are the old generation socialists and combative workers who contributed to this period of ascent in the working class struggle in Turkey.
Socialists and combative workers, who formed the strong roots of UID-DER, continued their struggle against capitalism in the ranks of the working class, despite the military fascist coup of 12 September 1980 and the rough years that followed. After the military coup, they contributed to breaking through and clearing the way and the revival of the working class movement. Workers’ Self-Education Groups were born in the mid-1990s as a product of their long-term efforts. Workers from various sectors, unions, picket lines united under the name Workers’ Self-Education Groups.
These pioneer workers, who gained political class consciousness, discussed the state of the working class, its problems, and ways of organizing. They worked unrelentingly as they organised in their workplaces and mounted solidarity with official and wildcat strikes. They made efforts to revive the tradition of international struggle of the working class, to transfer it to new generations and to attract workers to the struggle. These efforts were crowned with the establishment of UID-DER on the 36th anniversary of the Great Workers’ Resistance of 15-16 June 1970. Of course, this was not a coincidence. It was a sign of the tradition that UID-DER represents, of confidence in the working class, and of persistence and determination in the struggle.
Humanity at a historical crossroads!
In the years when the Workers’ Self-Education Groups were established, the masters of the capitalist world were claiming that the class struggle was over, history came to an end, and the working class was dead. According to them, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, socialism, which represents humanity’s yearning for a world without exploitation, had also collapsed! They claimed that capitalism would bring eternal peace, democracy, civilization and prosperity to humanity. While the world bourgeoisie was stepping up the neo-liberal attacks with these lies, they were giving the message that the struggle against capitalist exploitation would not bring any results, and wanted to wipe out the socialist movement ideologically.
However, the Stalinist despotic-bureaucratic dictatorship in the USSR had nothing to do with socialism. In addition, the collapse of the USSR did not hint the end of history, but the entry of the imperialist-capitalist system into a new chaotic period. As a matter of fact, the problems that had piled up in the heart of the system soon emerged one after the other. With the turn of the year 2000, capitalism entered a historical system crisis. Capitalism, which has completed its historical life as a system, threatens humanity by producing tremendous crises in every field.
Of course, the bloody and chaotic clash that the imperialist powers started in the Balkans after the collapse of the USSR did not stop there. The war in Afghanistan, which the USA started with the slogan of “endless war” in 2001 to stop its hegemony over the imperialist system from being eroded and faltered, and the subsequent invasion of Iraq turned into the Third World War, which spread over a much wider area. Today, it is the Third World War and its tensions that determine all international political relations from the Middle East to Africa, from Ukraine to the Asia Pacific.
Capitalism, which has largely exhausted its potential and reached its historical limits, has sharpened social and environmental problems on a global scale. We are going through a chaotic period in which globalised social contradictions are similarly upsetting the lives of all working people of the world. While social inequality reaches unbelievable proportions, the poverty spiral continues to deepen and widen and pull in more and more people. Expanding imperialist war, increasing authoritarianism, political and economic crises that erupted one after the other, food crisis, ecological crisis, unemployment, poverty, global migration crisis… This picture of the world is a result of the historical crisis of capitalism. To save this rotten order the bourgeoisie resorts to all kinds of means and lies. However, humanity cannot continue with capitalism!
The social contradictions that capitalism has created and left unresolved cause the class struggle to escalate sharply. The year 2000 was also marking a new era in which class contradictions sharpened and labour revolts erupted all over the world. Labour revolts and revolutionary situations took the stage in many parts of the world, especially after the 2008 global crisis. As a matter of fact, the Arab popular revolts that erupted in 2010 were a response to unemployment, poverty and dictatorship regimes. Labour revolts continue in many countries of the world. As no social problem has been resolved and the contradictions have become increasingly unbearable, the revolt is emerging and taking the stage again after a period of retreat. The economic crisis, which the capitalist class tried on a global level to cover up with the pandemic in 2020, sharpened the anger of the workers. Tens of millions of workers over the world are waging struggle against the problems created by capitalism, shouting that they do not want to live in this system that leaves people unemployed and poor, oppresses and humiliates. But the workers’ revolts cannot reach their main goal and put an end to capitalist exploitation before the working class achieves an adequate organisation and a solid leadership!
Outdated and decaying more and more, capitalism is in conflict with the current level of development of humanity, science and technology. Humanity is on the verge of making a great transformation, but the capitalist system is preventing it. The capitalist system of exploitation has created literally hellish conditions for the working masses. With current technology, it is possible to feed more than 10 billion people, provide better living conditions, eradicate hunger and disease from the face of the earth, and reduce the working day to 4 hours and give everyone a job!
There have been many great crisis/depression periods in history. Turbulent and painful periods of crises, in which the old decays and turns into a devastating obstacle in front of the development of society, but the new one cannot be born… It is the characteristic of such historical episodes that the nails of the existing order come out, the existing mode of production and distribution aggravate the social contradictions, and the enormous problems that pile up in every field turn into a tangle. However, historical experience shows that overcoming the chaotic and painful periods of crises and establishing a new order has been possible only with great social transformations, revolutions. It is clear that humanity cannot escape from the deadlock created by capitalism unless it is overthrown this way all over the world.
UID-DER’s goal
Capitalist order means exploitation, war, unemployment, hunger, poverty, violence against women, stealing the future of our children. In an age when we can build a paradise on earth, humanity is suffering greatly. That is why UID-DER, a fighting organisation of workers, defends the struggle of the world working class against capitalism for the social liberation of humanity!
UID-DER fights for a world full of freedom and peace, where people are not slaves to other people, where unemployment, hunger, poverty, exploitation and wars come to an end.
UID-DER fights for a world where women are not oppressed or subjected to violence, where no person is marginalized due to their sexual orientation or preference, where all forms of discrimination are ended, and where children live happily.
UID-DER fights for a world where no people are oppressed due to their ideas, lifestyle, religious belief or non-belief or culture, where no people are under the yoke of another, and where all peoples can live together in peace and brotherhood!
UID-DER fights against individualism, selfishness, nationalism, racism, fascism, prevalence in society of the culture of hatred created by class societies and deepened by capitalism. It spreads the consciousness of internationalism among the working class and fights to grow a culture of solidarity.
UID-DER educates workers against the lies of the bourgeoisie and equips them with class consciousness. In an effort to make workers understand there is no way to escape from the problems that turn into a vicious circle under capitalism, it encourages them to join the struggle. The working class, which is a universal class with a common destiny, problems, aspirations and interests, has no interest in capitalism. When capitalism is thrown away to the dustbin of history and workers’ democracy comes to life, the doors of a classless society will be wide open! In this view, while trying to strengthen the economic and democratic struggle of the workers, UID-DER also makes them realize that the political struggle against capitalism is a necessity. In addition to historical awareness, hope and historical optimism, it also instils the dignity of working to establish a socialist world where people live in harmony with nature, free and happy.
UID-DER works hard to bring workers forward in the struggle and to unite them in every field against the problems caused by capitalism. It is struggling in every field against the division and fragmentation of workers on the basis of religion, language, ethnicity and nationality. It supports the struggles of oppressed nations for liberation and freedom. It works to eradicate the prejudices among workers, to make a genuine international fraternity and solidarity burgeon and gain strength, and to help ferment international unity of struggle of the working class. It continues its efforts to develop international ties with the class organizations and trade unions that are fighting for this cause. It raises the call, “Workers of all countries, unite!” and the flag of internationalism in the ranks of the working class.
Based on the fact that the unity and solidarity of workers can only be forged through struggle, UID-DER supports workers’ coming together in unions and their struggle to advance their economic and democratic rights. It works with all its might to make combative class unionism prevalent against bureaucratic unionism with the work it carries out in the workplaces and rank-and-file of the unions. While it works with patience and discipline to advance the struggle of workers to get organised in factories and workplaces, it also continues educative activities at various levels. It raises solidarity with the workers, who carry out strikes (official or wildcat) in various sectors, and organises campaigns and activities for international solidarity to strengthen the struggles of the working class at the national level.
UID-DER continues its uninterrupted efforts to teach the workers to look at every phenomenon from the perspective of their own class, and to make them understand that our class should take care of all the problems of humanity, from the environmental question to the woman question. It argues that the struggle of the working class covers the demands of all the oppressed, and that this struggle is the platform of all the oppressed and the solution to all problems. In this context, it appeals to all segments of the working class and spends great effort and energy to organise it.
- It shows that the only way out of the spiral of hopelessness, desperation, and sense of having no future, overwhelming the working youth, is to unite in the ranks of the working class. It channels the vibrancy of the youth into the struggle, at a time when it is sought to be pacified.
- It adds strength to the struggle of labour by drawing working women who want to break the chains of double oppression and yearn for freedom and equality to the ranks of the working class.
- It raises the children of worker families as militant workers of the future.
- It calls on the workers who want to protect their living spaces and nature, who want broader democratic rights and freedoms, and who want peace and freedom, to unite in the ranks of the working class.
- The problem of immigration has risen to the level of a global crisis and the capitalist order is responsible for this. From this perspective, UID-DER argues that the main enemy for “native” workers is not immigrant workers but the capitalist class, and it conducts work under the main slogan “migrant workers are not our enemies but our class brothers” to eradicate nationalism and prejudices that develop among workers. It is fighting for migrant workers to be able to organise together with “native” workers under the same trade unions, to work with the same rights and under the same laws.
UID-DER, as a struggle organisation of workers, takes its place in mass rallies with its massiveness, intense participation of youth and women, internationalist slogans against capitalism, order, discipline and red colour. UID-DER carries the manners of the working class, its red colour to mass rallies. From tradition to the future UID-DER advances the struggle for emancipation of humanity in the ranks of the working class.
UID-DER marches forward, struggle grows!
Long live the international unity of struggle of the working class!
Down with the capitalist exploitation system!
