An international debate to understand the global situation and prepare for the future

On 16 November, the ICC held an Online Public Meeting on the theme ‘The Global Implications of the US Elections’.

In addition to ICC militants, several dozen people took part in the discussion, from four continents and around fifteen countries. Simultaneous translation into English, Spanish and French enabled everyone to follow the discussions, which lasted just over three hours.

Obviously, in view of the revolution that needs to be achieved by the entire working class worldwide, this small number may seem insignificant. We still have a long way to go before the proletariat develops a profound consciousness and a vast network of self-organisation. This type of international meeting is precisely a means of advancing along that road. For the moment, revolutionary minorities are still very small, a handful in one town, an individual in another. Gathering together from several countries to discuss, work out and compare arguments, and thus gain a better understanding of the world situation, is a precious opportunity to break down the isolation of each individual, forge links and feel the global nature of the proletarian revolutionary struggle. It's about participating in the effort of our class to create an international vanguard. This type of meeting is thus a milestone which foreshadows the necessary organisation of revolutionaries on a world scale. This regroupment of revolutionary forces is a long process, requiring a conscious and constant effort. It is one of the vital conditions for preparing for the future, for organising ourselves for the decisive revolutionary confrontations to come.

A debate that raises a thousand questions about the state of the world...

The large turnout for our meeting also reveals the concern, even anxiety, aroused by the election of Donald Trump as head of the world's leading power.

All the speakers stressed, along with the ICC, that the victory of this President - who is openly racist, macho, full of hate, vengeful, and who advocates an irrational economic and war policy - will accelerate all the crises ravaging the world and exacerbate all the uncertainties and chaos.

From this common position, many questions and nuances, as well as disagreements, emerged in the course of the discussion:

Is Trump's triumph the result of a deliberate and conscious policy on the part of the American bourgeoisie? Is Trump the best card for the interests of the American bourgeoisie? Are his imperialist choices regarding Iran, Ukraine and China a step towards the Third World War? Is his protectionist policy of raising tariffs a piece in the jigsaw towards war? Are his plans to ferociously attack the working class, especially civil servants, linked to the sacrifices needed to prepare the national economy for this war?

Or, on the contrary, as the ICC and other participants argued, does Trump's arrival at the head of the world's leading power testify to a growing difficulty on the part of the national bourgeoisies to prevent its most obscurantist and irrational fractions from taking power? Is the clique war within the bourgeoisie itself, like the fragmentation of society into Americans/immigrants, men/women, legal/illegal, all of which the Trump clan is aggravating, not a sign of the trend towards disorder and chaos in American society? Doesn't the trade war that Trump wants, by returning to the protectionist measures of the 1920s and 30s, which ruined every country at the time, show the irrationality of his policy precisely from the point of view of the interests of American capital? In the same sense, doesn't the growing uncertainty about the imperialist policy of the new American administration reinforce war tensions between all countries, pushing even more towards unstable and changing alliances, towards every man for himself, towards short-sighted politics, towards the outbreak of wars which engender nothing other than a scorched earth?

For the ICC, answering all these questions means taking a deeper look at the historical period we are going through: decomposition, the final phase of capitalist decline. Because, basically, Trump's victory is not something to be taken in isolation, analysed separately and imprisoned in the immediate term. It is the fruit of a whole global situation, of a historical dynamic, one that sees capitalism rotting on its feet. The victory of Donald Trump in the United States or Javier Milei in Argentina, the hopeless policies of Israel in the Middle East or Russia in Ukraine, the stranglehold of the drug cartels on ever larger swathes of Latin America, of terrorist groups in Africa or warlords in Central Asia, the rise of obscurantism, conspiracy theorists and flat earthers, the outbursts of violence from certain sections of society - all these apparently unrelated phenomena are in fact expressions of the same fundamental dynamic of capitalism  in decomposition.

We'll come back to this subject and all these questions in a later article to develop our response[1].

... and the class struggle

The second part of the discussion, which focused on understanding the current state of the class struggle, followed the same dynamic. Here too, the debate was open, frank and fraternal, and many questions were asked, with nuances and disagreements emerging.

Does Trump's victory mean that the proletariat has been defeated, or at the very least that it too is gangrened by racism and populism? Or, on the other hand, does the rejection of the Democratic Party by the workers lead to an awareness of the real nature of this bourgeois party? Can Trump's appearance as a dictator encourage working-class anger and reaction? Or will the campaign to defend democracy be a death trap for the proletariat? Will the worsening of living and working conditions, carried out in an extremely brutal way by Trump, Musk and their gang, provoke the class struggle? Or will these sacrifices reinforce the search for scapegoats, such as foreigners, illegal immigrants, etc.?

All these contradictory questions are not surprising. The situation is extremely complex, difficult to grasp in its entirety and coherence. And just as in the first part of the discussion, what is lacking is a compass, the compass to consider each question not in isolation, separately from each other, but as a whole and in an international and historical context. It's impossible to think about the world without consciously and systematically referring to the general and profound dynamics of global capitalism: the system is plunging into decay (with all the nauseating stench that emanates from it), but the proletariat is not defeated; indeed, since 2022 and the summer of anger in the United Kingdom, it has been raising its head, finding its way back to the path of struggle and its historic goals.

We can't develop our response any further here; we'll come back to it in our press and at our next meetings[2].

We look forward to the next one!

This debate is just the beginning. We encourage all our readers to come and take part in this effort by our class, in the debates between revolutionaries, in the collective process of clarification. Don't remain isolated! The proletariat needs its minorities to forge links, on an international scale, to organise themselves, to debate, to compare positions, to exchange arguments, to understand as deeply as possible the evolution of the world.

The ICC warmly invites you to come and take part in its various meetings: online and international public meetings, ‘face-to-face’ public meetings in certain towns and cities, and drop-in sessions. All these opportunities to meet and debate are regularly announced here on our website.

In addition to these meetings, we also encourage you to write to us, to react to our articles, ask questions or express your disagreement.

And the columns of our press are open, they belong to the class. We welcome your suggestions for articles.

Debate is an absolute necessity. We are far apart, isolated, often at odds with the ideas developing around us. Gathering together, on an international scale, is vital if we are to prepare for the future. All revolutionary minorities have this responsibility.

ICC

 

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[1] We also advise our readers to discover or rediscover three fundamental texts by the ICC on the subject:

 - Theses on decomposition, International Review 107

 - Update of the Theses on Decomposition (2023) International Review 170

 - Militarism and Decomposition (May 2022), International Review 168

 

[2] In the meantime, our readers can look at our latest article analysing the return of workers' combativity since 2022 and the obstacles standing in the way of the resumption of revolutionary struggles:  After the rupture in the class struggle, the necessity for politicisation International Review 171