“The communists have arrived! Forward to the British revolution! A need to go back to Lenin; Communism is the only solution; The building of a new International!.” These are some of the slogans of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) in the campaign for what it calls “a rebirth, a renaissance!” of its organization “by appealing to people on a directly communist basis”.

Following the example of the section in the UK of the IMT, several national sections have changed the name of their organisation and of their paper: references to “socialism” are replaced by “communism”! At an international conference, between 10 and 15 June, the International Marxist Tendency has been renamed the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI).

The immediate reason for this apparently radical change was the expulsion of the Socialist Appeal group from the British Labour Party in November 2022, followed by the expulsion of the PCB-RR[1] from the Brazilian Communist Party in July-August 2023.

For the IMT, this is a glamorously declared farewell to the historic "entryism" strategy of Trotskyism - the end of the policy advocated by Trotsky in the 1930s, when he suggested that the Trotskyist groups should dissolve themselves and join the Socialist Parties as a faction in order to gain influence in them. Today the IMT, probably one of the last organisations still pursuing until now an entryist policy, boasts with the announcement of “a clean break from the so-called ‘Left’. We aim far higher, in words and in practice”[2].

With the present voluminous campaign, the IMT wants to put itself in the limelight as a genuine political organisation of the working class. But the reverse is true. The IMT is no organization of the working class it will never be, and the same goes for all its predecessors since the Second World War: the WIL, the RCP, the RSL, the Militant Tendency, the CWI and the CMI[3].

The betrayal of proletarian internationalism

Ted Grant, the founding father of the IMT, started his political career in the 1930s. He became a member of the British Workers’ International League, the WIL, “the direct and lineal ancestor of the present-day IMT”[4].  This took place at a moment that the groups related to the Trotsky-inspired opposition were still part of the working class, even if they already increasingly embodied important political confusions. at the end of the 1930s, they decided step by step to give their “critical” support to the democratic bourgeoisies in the imperialist war against the fascist regimes in Europe and betrayed the principle of proletarian internationalism that is cardinal for proletarian organisations.

This happened also with the WIL. After the occupation of France by German military forces, the WIL agreed to adopt Trotsky’s “famous ‘Proletarian Military Policy’ (PMP), which was basically an application of the Transitional Programme to a period of universal war and militarism. (…) It centered around the demand for obligatory military training for the working class, overseen by elected officers, in special training schools run by the state, but under the control of working-class institutions like the trade unions. Obviously, no capitalist state could grant such demands to the working class, since this would deny its own existence as a state”[5].

This policy was actually a kind of a remake of the position defended by Trotsky in the early 1920s in revolutionary Russia: the control of the working class through the militarisation of labour under the direction of the trade unions. But the policy of recruitment for the capitalist war machine on a “proletarian” basis in the imperialist war against “Hitlerism” was only an excuse to mobilise a maximum number of workers who were finally conscripted into the structure of the regular bourgeois army. This policy also implied that the workers should not only defend the western democracies, including the US, which is characterized by the IMT as “the most reactionary force on the planet”, but also the Stalinist Soviet Union. The title of an article of Ted Grant in April 1943: “Aid Red Army with Lenin’s Weapon”, did not mince words about the position of the WIL in this imperialist war.

Thus, like the WIL, Trotskyism definitively positioned itself as a radical leftist faction of the ruling class. And since those years Ted Grant and his fellow militants have consistently supported one or another imperialist camp in all the butcheries that have taken place, be it Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola, Iraq, etc.

In the war in the Donbas, in 2014, IMT still took sides with one of the warring camps. It supported the “Peoples’ Republics” against the Ukraine government, claiming that. “The Anti-Maidan movement – the source of popular support for the rebels – had a distinctly more working-class character” and that “the uprising in the Donbas was based largely on the working people of the region “[6]. But in reality, they were only proxies of Russian imperialism, and completely dependent on the military power of the Russian army. Regarding the war that began in February 2022, its position is not as outspoken as with the war in the Donbas. But despite all its internationalist declarations, such as “we cannot support either side in this war, because it is a reactionary war on both sides” and even “a conflict between two groups of imperialists”, its preference is still predominantly for Russia. This can be inferred from an article on the war in Ukraine, which says that communists must fight against

• “NATO, and against American imperialism - the most counter-revolutionary force on the planet”;
• “Americans and NATO (…) the most aggressive and reactionary imperialist forces”;
• “the despicable conduct of the Kiev government, its collaboration with reactionary fascists”[7].

In the case of the present war in the Middle-East, they defend the Palestinian bourgeoisie although, as they write, “we have never supported Hamas. We do not share its ideology, nor do we condone the methods it uses. But our differences with Hamas, though fundamental, are not nearly so fundamental as the differences that separate us from US imperialism (…) and its accomplices in crime, the Israeli ruling class”[8].

All these examples, the older and the more recent, show that the internationalism of the IMT is a fraud, and its slogans that claim to express its support for the revolutionary struggle of the working class are a lie! The IMT is, like all other Trotskyist organisations, an instrument of the counter-revolution, destined to sabotage every working class struggle for the overthrow of capitalism.

The defence of the “lesser evil”

Our predecessors in the Gauche Communiste de France (GCF) already made this point in the years after the Second World War, when they wrote that “The whole history of Trotskyism revolves around the ‘defence’ of something’ in the name of the ‘lesser evil’, this something being anything except the interests of the proletariat.” And “It is starting from the eternal choice of the ‘lesser evil’ that the Trotskyists participated in the imperialist war”[9]. The GCF goes on to say that Trotskyist declarations about war usually start “with a general declaration against the war. But once they have correctly quoted from the litany about ‘revolutionary defeatism’, they get onto the concrete issues, and start making distinctions, start with the ifs and buts which, in practice, leads them to join the existing war fronts and to invite the workers to participate in the imperialist butchery”[10]. This shows that for Trotskyism the political practice is more decisive than its political positions and that its practice is relentlessly geared towards the mobilisation for imperialist war

A fake rebirth

In essence Trotskyism is Stalinism without the state bureaucracy and the gulag archipelago. For the rest there is no fundamental political difference with the Stalinist parties. But it camouflages its bourgeois nature behind the figure of Trotsky, who was a true revolutionary until he was assassinated. Needless to say that it is firmly anchored in capitalist relations and that its whole dynamic is determined by the needs of capital.

Since its betrayal during the Second World War, we have witnessed many “rebirths” within this current but, apart from the attempts of a few militants like Munis, Stinas, etc. to break with Trotskyism, they never resulted in organisations joining the camp of the working class. And the recent change in the policy of the IMT will not bring about a fundamental turnaround either. The reason is the impossibility for bourgeois organisations to become part of the working class. And this is also true for all political organisations that were once part of the working class and have passed to the camp of the bourgeoisie.

The IMT can shout a thousand times that it has undergone a “rebirth”, but this “rebirth” does not go much further than changing the names of the organisation, its papers and its sections. It has distanced itself from the “left”, but it still considers itself part of the same political environment and even continues to call the Labour Party in the UK “reformist”, i.e. a kind of sister organisation making mistakes. We agree with the Communist Workers Organisation (ICT) that the new name of the section of the IMT in the UK, the Revolutionary Communist Party means: “Out with the old, in with the old”[11].

But we must not make the mistake of arguing that it has become “a bankrupt political tendency”, as the CWO wrote in the same article. Trotskyism is and remains an important instrument for the bourgeoisie in controlling and derailing minorities in the class who are radicalising under influence of the workers’ struggle or imperialist war. What we see today is a policy of reviving the IMT as a feigned "internationalist International", so that it can better play its role in obstructing the road towards more massive and politicised class confrontations.

Dennis, 2 July 2024

India's parliamentary elections (Lok Sabha) were held from April to June this year. The proletariat, as elsewhere, had nothing to expect from these elections, whose outcome merely determines which fraction of the bourgeoisie will ensure its domination over society and the workers it exploits. These elections took place against a backdrop in which declining capitalism is plunging humanity further and further into chaos as its social decomposition accelerates, generating multiple crises (war, economic, social, ecological, climatic, etc.) which combine and reinforce each other, fuelling an ever more destructive vortex. In India, as elsewhere, "the ruling class is more and more divided into cliques and clans, each putting their own interests above the needs of the national capital; and this situation is making it increasingly difficult for the bourgeoisie to act as a unified class and maintain overall control of its political apparatus. The rise of populism in the last decade is the clearest product of this tendency: the populist parties are an embodiment of the irrationality and “no future” of capitalism, with their promulgation of the most absurd conspiracy theories and their increasingly violent rhetoric against the established parties. The more “responsible” factions of the ruling class are concerned about the rise of populism because its attitudes and policies are directly at odds with what’s left of the traditional consensus of bourgeois politics."[1]

Weakening of the Indian state

India's elections reflect and confirm these growing difficulties for the ruling class. Indeed, from the outset, Prime Minister Modi’s faction's various mandates reflected the confusion between the interests of the Indian state and those of a handful of oligarchs, mainly from the same region, the state of Gujarat (in the west of the subcontinent). A pusher of Hindu nationalist ideology, Narendra Modi's rhetoric is both martial and messianic, and he remains the bearer of an old tradition that was already fighting against the unitary and territorial vision of the "Indian nation" embodied by Gandhi (who was assassinated in 1948 by a member of this radicalised political and religious Hindu movement). Like Trump, part of Modi's campaign was based on the promise to "restore India's greatness"[2], referring to the supposedly glorious history of Hindu culture before it was colonised and destroyed by Muslim and Christian invaders. According to this narrative, even after India's independence in 1947, the Hindu population had been held back by the "corrupt elites" of the Indian National Congress (INC).

Modi claims that Hindu civilisation is superior to any other civilisation and should have a status more in line with its ambitions in the world. Modi accompanies his political delusions with a real cronyism, and many of those who had an interest in supporting his ideology and his party have lined their pockets, such as the billionaires Akshmi Mittal, Mukesh Ambani or Gautam Adani, who finds himself, for example, at the head of a conglomerate valued on the stock exchange at nearly $240 billion, and whose personal fortune has increased by 230% since Modi came to power in 2014! Naturally, the elections only served to confirm this situation, to the detriment of the interests of the Indian state as a whole.

The results of the parliamentary elections, far from marking a stabilisation of the political apparatus, confirm the growing difficulties and fragility of the government, which is being increasingly discredited. Exit polls predicted a big victory for Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But the opposite happened: the BJP lost 63 seats. However, the BJP-led NDA alliance still won an absolute majority (293 out of 543 seats). As a result, for the first time, Modi will have to govern with a coalition that is proving very complex to implement, as the BJP will now be dependent on its allies, including the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Janata Dal (United) (JDU).[3] The growing weight of every-man-for-himself, ambitious leaders and centrifugal forces will mean that negotiations for future government posts in the coalition are likely to be long and very difficult. Many of the highly controversial measures that the BJP wanted to take, such as the redistribution of parliamentary seats by state, also now look set to be very difficult, with the risk of explosive tensions. Any attempt at conciliation within the coalition will necessarily be to the detriment of another component. Thus, there is a great risk of seeing the affirmation of greater autonomy among the components, particularly on the right, with the paramilitary Hindu nationalist RSS organisation inspired by the violent and radical groupings of the extreme right in Europe.[4]

Thus weakened, at the age of 73, Prime Minister Modi is likely to be exposed to many problems, despite the myth of "invincibility" he had tried to construct and his overweening ambitions. India, like other major countries around the world, is becoming increasingly unstable and difficult to govern.

Democratic mystification and nationalist divisions

While the growing weaknesses of the Indian bourgeoisie are affecting its political game and making it more fragile, this does not mean that the proletariat stands to benefit in any way. In fact, the opposite is true, given the reinforcement of democratic mystifications. The spring 2024 elections were presented by Congress Party president Mallikarjun Kharge as "a victory for the public and a victory for democracy", by Prime Minister Modi as "the victory of the world's largest democracy", by Rahul Gandhi as an extraordinary effort in which "you have all come out to vote in defence of democracy and the constitution", and by the Deccan Chronicle [5] as "a testimony to the resilience of Indian democracy". The entire bourgeoisie is only too happy to promote this democratic mystification against the working class, which is based on the idea that democracy is progressive, that it is a remedy for all misfortunes, claiming that the very poor living conditions of the majority of the Indian population can be improved by electing another government. What's more, this ideology is accompanied by strong nationalist propaganda. Of course, all bourgeois parties promise that things will get better if they are elected, but this is totally impossible under the present historical conditions of capitalism. All promises of prosperity and democratic freedoms are lies designed to conceal the dictatorship of capital and its bankruptcy.

Moreover, despite an average annual economic growth rate of 8%, workers are still suffering from years of exploitation and appalling poverty. Yet the government demands that workers grit their teeth even harder and accept yet more attacks. Modi asks BJP workers to "make sacrifices for the country too". He is also waging a religious crusade, dividing workers and fostering an ethnic divide between Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and Muslims. The latter are portrayed as India's fifth column. Kashmir and Jammu, where mostly Muslims live, are under a kind of martial law. In the rest of the country, Muslims, who make up 15% of the population, are hunted down by Hindu supremacists. From the point of view of the interests of the bourgeoisie as a whole, such a policy is completely irrational, because instead of strengthening the cohesion of the nation, one of the main functions of the state, it weakens it by fuelling murderous disorder.

Unlike someone like Indira Gandhi, who never advanced the project of making India a "Hindu nation", Modi relies on numerous militias to spread terror everywhere. So, not only does his government fail to bring the prosperity and development it promised, it also brings more instability: his policies widen fissures and increase tensions in society. In 2023, 428 incidents were recorded in 23 states, including communal intimidation, violence in defence of sacred cows, and lynchings.[6] The Indian Supreme Court rightly pointed out that violence by Hindu fundamentalists was becoming "the new normal". India is becoming an increasingly dangerous social powder keg, as the Statistical Risk Assessment 2023-24 has affirmed, revealing that India ranks as the fifth most at-risk country for massacres out of 166 listed.

The proletariat: the only real alternative

Faced with this catastrophic situation and the threats posed by growing instability, only workers, who are part of the international working class, are capable of putting forward an alternative. Over the past five years, workers in various sectors have waged a struggle on their own terrain: in the health sector, in transport, in the car industry, in the various agricultural sectors, among public bank employees, as well as textile workers. There have even been three India-wide strikes where Hindu and Muslim workers fought side by side. But the working class in India is isolated and lacks the class consciousness and experience of the working class in Western Europe or the United States. The poison of the ongoing bourgeois ideological campaign hammering home the slogan "Hindus first" (and everyone else afterwards) and the democratic propaganda that accompanies it are an obstacle to the reconquest of its class identity. Nevertheless, Indian workers have shown that they are capable, despite the nauseating bourgeois campaigns, of fighting against the lowering of their incomes, not in terms of religion, caste or ethnicity, but as a class whose interests are everywhere the same: the opposite of those of the exploiting class, and which possesses the capacity to develop its struggles on a global scale for the destruction of the capitalist system.

D/WH 21 July 2024

A few days after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump that claimed the life of one of his supporters, it is still too early to determine the exact motive of the gunman and the reasons for the failure of the service responsible for protecting the former president. However, the attack turned the election campaign upside down, allowing the Republican camp to take another step towards victory. Hit in the ear, his face bloody and his fist raised, almost miraculously, the bravado of Trump's reaction, already the favourite in the polls, contrasts clearly with the increasingly perceptible signs of Joe Biden’s senility.  Be that as it may, this event is yet another manifestation of the growing instability within the American bourgeoisie.

Exacerbation of political violence in the United States

The United States has a long tradition of political assassinations, four of which have reached the highest levels of government. But, after the murder of British MP Jo Cox in the midst of the Brexit campaign in 2016, after the assassination attempt that targeted Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, after the murder of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe in 2022, after the assassination attempt on Slovak prime minister Robert Fico in May 2024, or the attack on Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen in the middle of the street last June, this new attack comes against a backdrop of heightened violence and political tensions around the world. Threats, insults, outright xenophobia, the violence of extreme right-wing groups, the involvement of gangs in electoral processes, settling of scores between bourgeois cliques... this creeping chaos, which until now has been contained to the most fragile countries of Latin America and Africa, is beginning, with all due sense of proportion, to become the norm in the major powers of capitalism.
In the United States, while one of the roles of ‘democratic’ institutions is to guarantee the unity of the state, the growing difficulty of containing and confining the violence of relations between rival bourgeois factions testify to a real sharpening of tensions. The atmosphere of violence is at its height. Ever since he left the White House and encouraged the aborted attempt to storm the Capitol, Trump himself has not stopped throwing fuel on the fire, questioning the results of the elections, refusing to acknowledge his defeat and promising to bring down his vengeful arm on the ‘traitors’, the ‘liars’ and the ‘corrupt’. He has never stopped making ‘public debate’ more and more hysterical, spinning tall tale after tall tale, whipping his supporters into a frenzy... The former president proved to be an essential link in a veritable chain of violence that spills out of every pore of society and ended up turning against him.

Towards ever greater instability

The fact that such an irresponsible and grotesque figure has been able to sweep aside any force within the Republican Party remotely capable of effectively managing the bourgeois state, that he has even been able to run for president without encountering serious difficulties, either political or even legal (despite numerous attempts by his opponents), is in itself a striking sign of the impotence and profound instability into which the American political apparatus is sinking.
But if Trump is indeed the mouthpiece of a whole atmosphere of social and political violence, an active factor in destabilisation, he is merely the caricature of the dynamic at work in the entire ruling class. The Democratic camp, although a little more concerned about putting the brakes on this process, is contributing just as much to global instability.
Admittedly, after the incoherent and unpredictable policies of the Trump administration, Biden has proved more effective in defending the interests of the American bourgeoisie, but at what price? Even though the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which were intended to halt the decline of American leadership by imposing itself as ‘world policeman’, have ended in fiasco and exacerbated chaos in the Middle East and around the world, Biden proceeded to provoke Russia into intervening in Ukraine[1].
This large-scale massacre is getting bogged down week after week and seems to have no end in sight. With inflation soaring and the global crisis deepening, with imperialist tensions rising and the war economy swelling considerably on every continent, the conflict in Ukraine has only led to further destabilisation on an even wider scale, including in the United States.
At the same time, Biden has heightened tensions with China across the Pacific, raising the risk of direct confrontation. The war in Gaza, which the American president has failed to control and contain, has also considerably accentuated the decline of American power, which will sooner or later lead to an even more barbaric reaction from the United States.
And now the occupant of the White House is reduced to pitifully clinging on to power, while a large part of his camp is openly urging him to step down! But who should replace Biden? The Democrats are divided and discredited, barely able to agree on a replacement. Everyone is already ready to fight. Even Vice President Harris, the only one who could impose herself, is very unpopular even within her own camp. Between Trump, Biden, Harris... the American bourgeoisie is left with only bad options, a sign of its great fragility.
In another sign of the extreme tensions between the Republican and Democratic camps, Trump had not even left hospital before they began vehemently accusing each other of being responsible for the attack. Trump and Biden, aware of the explosive situation, momentarily tried to calm the incendiary atmosphere in the name of national unity... before a torrent of fake news and unfounded accusations was unleashed once again.
But the division between the bourgeois parties, the bitter infighting within them, the constant poker games, the rivalries of egos, the back-stabbings, the scorched-earth strategies - all this is far from being the prerogative of the American bourgeoisie alone. The electoral campaign in America of course echoes the situation in many states in Europe and elsewhere, of which France is the latest shining example. Capitalism is rotting on its foundations and this is having consequences at every level (imperialist, social, economic, environmental...), dragging the political apparatuses of the bourgeoisie into a logic of ‘save what you can’’. This is an ineluctable spiral of instability in which each bourgeois clique tries as best it can to pull the wool over its own eyes... even to the detriment of the general interests of the bourgeoisie.

There's nothing to expect from the elections

Despite the growing difficulties of the bourgeoisie in controlling its own political apparatus, it still knows perfectly well how to use the democratic mystification to reduce the working class to impotence. At a time when the proletariat must develop its struggle against the bourgeois state, the bourgeoisie traps us, through the elections, in false dilemmas: which party would be best suited to manage the bourgeois state? While the proletariat should be seeking to organise itself as an autonomous class, elections reduce the workers to the status of citizen-voters, merely able to choose, under the pressure of the propaganda steamroller, which bourgeois clique will be responsible for organising their exploitation.
There is therefore nothing to expect from the forthcoming elections. If Biden (or his replacement) should ultimately win, the warmongering policies of the Biden administration and all the global chaos they have engendered will be further intensified in order to maintain at all costs the United States' standing in the global arena. If Trump were to confirm the predictions of victory in November, the destabilising and erratic policies of his first term would return with greater force and irrationality. His running mate, J.D. Vance, appeals more directly to the working class, and his demagogic exploitation of his own personal story as a forgotten victim of rural and deindustrialised America allows him to strengthen his influence by convincing the ‘undecided’ that he represents a supposedly ‘new way’ alongside his miraculous mentor.
Whether Trump or the Democrats win, the historic crisis of capitalism will not go away, attacks will continue to rain down and indiscriminate violence will continue to be unleashed.
Faced with the decomposition of the capitalist world, the working class and its revolutionary project represent the only real alternative. While wars, disasters and propaganda constantly clash with its struggles and its capacity for thinking clearly, over the last two years the proletariat everywhere has rediscovered its fighting spirit and is gradually beginning to regain an awareness of being one and the same class. Everywhere, small minorities are emerging and reflecting on the nature of capitalism, on the causes of the war and on the revolutionary perspective. With all its elections, the bourgeoisie is trying to break this combativeness and this maturation, it is trying to prevent any politicisation of struggles. Despite the promises (obviously never kept) of a ‘fairer’, ‘greener’, more ‘peaceful’ capitalism, despite the ferocious guilt-tripping of ‘those who don't stand in the way of fascism’ at the ballot box, let's make no mistake: the elections are a trap for the working class!
EG, 19 July 2024.
 

The rise of populism is a direct product of decomposing capitalism and has created deep divisions in the ruling class. In the US, the Democratic Party seems paralysed in its efforts to prevent Trump returning to the presidency, an outcome that would accelerate the slide towards chaos both in the US and internationally. In France and Britain, the story is a bit different, with Macron and the “New Popular Front” combining to block the National Rally coming to power, and Labour crushing a Tory party which has been profoundly gangrened by populism. Despite this, the forces of populism and the far right continue to grow in the soil of a rotting society.

The ICC will be holding an international online public meeting to discuss this situation because we think it is vital to:

• Analyse and understand the conflicts between different factions of the class enemy
• Denounce the main ideological attacks that accompany these events, notably the “defence of democracy against fascism”
• Draw out the real interests of the working class in the face of these mystifications: not to trust in the ballot box or the election to parliament of parties which claim to speak in its name, but to defend itself through a collective, independent struggle, laying the basis for a political confrontation with the whole capitalist system.

The meeting will be held between 2pm and 5pm UK time on Saturday 20 July. If you want to attend, please email us: [email protected] [11].

In Europe, the United States and just about everywhere else in the world, populist or more traditional far-right parties are enjoying electoral successes that seemed inconceivable a decade ago. This was clearly demonstrated during the European elections in June 2024: the Rassemblement National (RN) in France, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD - Alternative for Germany) and Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) achieved impressive scores. In Great Britain, Reform UK led by Nigel Farage (the main promoter of Brexit) could swallow large chunks of the Conservative Party, the oldest and most experienced political party of the bourgeoisie, at the ballot box. In France, Marine Le Pen's RN is expected to come out on top in the next legislative elections decreed in haste by President Macron and could potentially come to power for the first time. And this against a backdrop in which Trump flew through the Republican Party primaries, outclassed an increasingly geriatric Biden in their last debate and is seriously threatening to take back the White House next November...

The bourgeoisie is tending to lose control of its political apparatus

The European elections have confirmed the reality of a process of weakening which is affecting all the political apparatuses of the bourgeoisie throughout the world, not only in the most fragile countries on the periphery of capitalism, in the most prominent Latin American states such as Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, but also in the heart of capitalism, in the major democratic powers of Western Europe and the United States.

After the Second World War and up until the dawn of the 1990s, despite a context of ever deepening economic crisis, the bourgeoisie had maintained a certain stability in the political landscape, dominated most of the time by two-party systems, alternations or solid coalitions, as was the case, for example, in Germany (SPD and CDU), in Great Britain with the Tories and Labour, in the United States with the Democrats and the Republicans, or in France and Spain with the opposition of left-wing and right-wing parties. In Italy, the main political force guaranteeing the stability of the state throughout this period was Christian Democracy. This made it possible to achieve relatively stable parliamentary majorities within an apparently well-oiled institutional framework.

However, by the end of the 1980s, decadent capitalism was gradually entering a new historical phase, the phase of decomposition. The implosion of the "Soviet" bloc and the increasing decay of the system were to sharpen tensions within the various national bourgeoisies and increasingly affect their political apparatus. The deepening of the crisis and the increasingly obvious lack of any perspective, including for certain sectors of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, increasingly eroded the "democratic credibility" of the traditional parties. From the beginning of the twenty-first century, these elements gave rise to populist movements denouncing the "scheming of the ruling elites", combined with a rise in abstention and growing electoral volatility.

Gradually, the bourgeoisie's control over its political system began to show cracks. In France, after the "forced cohabitations", the push by Macron to counter the rise of the RN led to the collapse of the discredited Socialist Party, and the fragmentation of the traditional right-wing party. In the UK, the bourgeoisie tried to recuperate the populist pro-Brexit movement through the Conservative Party, leading to its present fragmentation. In Italy, the Christian Democracy also collapsed, giving way to new formations like Forza Italia (already headed by a populist leader, Berlusconi), and then to a slew of populist and far-right movements at the helm of the state (the 5 Star Movement, Salvini's Lega, Fratelli d'Italia). In the Netherlands, three of the four parties in the parliamentary majority are populist. In the United States, since Bush junior and his administration, populist tendencies have been increasingly undermining the Republican Party (such as the Tea Party, for example) and have led to the populist Trump's takeover of the party.

With the acceleration of decomposition in recent years, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic, the populist wave is forcing more and more states to come to terms with bourgeois factions marked by irrationality, fickleness and unpredictability. Populism is thus the most caricatural expression of the decomposition of the capitalist mode of production.

The rise of populism is not, therefore, the result of a deliberate manoeuvre by the ruling class[1]. The ferment among the most "rational" factions of the bourgeoisie in the face of the populist upsurge expresses their real anxiety. Although populism is fundamentally "one of them" and its xenophobic and retrograde rhetoric is, in truth, a stinking concentrate of the ideology of the bourgeois class (individualism, nationalism, domination by violence...), the access of populist parties and their totally irrational and incompetent leaders to the helm of states can only further complicate the management of the interests of each national capital and aggravate the chaos which is already spreading all over the planet.

Populism, the product and accelerator of chaos and global instability

The rise of populism in several countries confirms what the ICC had already analysed in the Theses devoted to the analysis of the historical period of decomposition, in which we stressed " “the bourgeoisie’s growing difficulty in controlling the evolution of the political situation. Obviously, this is a result of the ruling class’ increasing loss of control over its economic apparatus, the infrastructure of society…The absence of any perspective (other than day-to-day stop-gap measures to prop up the economy) around which it could mobilise as a class, and at the same time the fact that the proletariat does not yet threaten its own survival, creates within the ruling class, and especially within its political apparatus, a growing tendency towards indiscipline and an attitude of “every man for himself”.[2]

This inevitable advance of capitalist decomposition also explains the failure of the measures taken by the traditional parties of the bourgeoisie to halt the rise of populism[3]. For example, the British bourgeoisie tried to redirect the "Brexit" disaster by replacing Boris Johnson and Liz Truss with a more responsible prime minister, Rishi Sunak in 2022. But the "reliable" Sunak responded to defeat in local elections by bringing forward the general election, which many analysts have described as "political suicide" for the Tories, once the emblem of the world's smartest and most experienced bourgeoisie. The same can be said of a Macron, supported for years by all the political forces of the French bourgeoisie (including the left, which voted for him, remember, with a "clothes peg on its nose" to prevent Le Pen coming to power) and who, by hastily dissolving the National Assembly, is potentially paving the way for the RN and, whatever happens, unpredictability and chaos. This scorched-earth policy is completely at odds with the interests of the factions that claim to be the most responsible within the political apparatus, as evidenced by the divisions within the right-wing parties and the hasty formation of a New Popular Front on the left, whose course is uncertain. Finally, in the United States, Trump's ousting in 2020 has not helped the Republican Party to find another, more "predictable" candidate. Nor has the Democratic Party known how to react, and now has to rely on an 81-year-old Biden to stop Trump.

The fact that the leaders of the main capitalist states are playing poker, engaging in irresponsible adventures with unpredictable results, in which the particular interests of each clique, or even of each individual, take precedence over those of the bourgeoisie as a whole and the global interests of each national capital, is revealing of the lack of perspective, of the predominance of "every man for himself".

The consequences of this loss-of-control dynamic are bound to be a major acceleration of global chaos and instability. If Trump's first election had already marked an increase in instability in imperialist relations, his re-election would mean a considerable acceleration of global imperialist chaos by, for example, reconsidering US support for Ukraine or unreservedly backing Netanyahu's scorched earth policy in Gaza. Trump's return to office would further destabilise institutions and, more generally, fragment the fabric of society, as did the assault on the Capitol in January 2021. The economic crisis is also likely to worsen, with increased protectionism not only against China but also against Europe.

This would also have a major impact on the European Union (EU), which is also torn apart by growing tensions over the war in Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza, as can be seen in particular in the row between France and Germany over the sending of troops to Ukraine. These tensions are likely to increase with the rise of populist forces, which tend to be less hostile towards Putin's regime and less inclined to support Ukraine financially and militarily. What's more, the EU's policy of economic austerity (limiting budget deficits and debt, etc.) also clashes with the economic and social protectionism advocated by the populists in the name of "national sovereignty".

The bourgeoisie is trying to turn the effects of its decomposition against the proletariat

Whatever difficulties the various bourgeoisies encounter in maintaining control over their political apparatus, they try by every means to exploit them to block the development of workers' struggles, to counter reflection within the proletariat and thus prevent the development of consciousness within it. To do this, they can count on the left, which deploys its entire ideological arsenal and puts forward false alternatives. In England, the Labour Party is presenting itself as the "responsible" alternative to stem the disorder caused by successive Tory governments' irresponsible handling of Brexit. In France, faced with Macron's unpredictable decision to call elections, the vast majority of bourgeois forces on the traditional and more radical left have united in a "New Popular Front" to oppose the rise of the far right. By exploiting the opposition between sectors of the bourgeoisie in the face of the rise of populism and the far right, it is trying to divert the proletariat from the only struggle that can lead to the liberation of humanity through the overthrow of the capitalist system, and to promote the false perspective of defending democracy. While voting mobilises workers as atomised "citizens", the left presents electoral results as a reflection of the state of class consciousness. The bourgeoisie often displays maps showing the growth of the populist vote in working-class neighbourhoods in order to hammer home the idea that the working class is the cause of the rise of populism, that it is a crowd of ignoramuses with no future. It also sows the seeds of division between workers from ethnic minorities who are allegedly the victims of "privileged, white" workers.

It is therefore clear that the increased political difficulties for the bourgeoisie in no way mean an opportunity for the proletariat to use them to develop its own struggle. This situation will in no way lead to an automatic strengthening of the working class. On the contrary, it is an opportunity used and ideologically exploited by the ruling class.

The proletariat needs to politicise its struggles, but not in the way advocated by the left of capital, by committing itself to the defence of bourgeois "democracy". On the contrary, it must refuse to take part in the the elections and fight on its own class terrain, against all the factions and expressions of the capitalist world which threaten to condemn us to destruction and barbarism.
Valerio, 1 July 2024