On 28 April last, a giant blackout hit the whole of the Iberian peninsula, suddenly cutting off electricity and paralysing activity for almost eight hours; creating chaos and havoc on the underground, trams and trains as signals broke down; trapping people inside lifts, causing flights to be cancelled at airports; closing shops and creating a real hardship for the whole population

An additional phenomenon...

This spectacular episode is an illustration not only of the fragility of the most powerful states in terms of energy, but also one more symptom of an accumulation of scourges and disasters that are hitting a world that is itself increasingly disordered and chaotic. While this event is ‘unprecedented’ in Spain and Portugal, it is clearly not unique, and we could point out that many other giant power cuts have taken place in different parts of the world before. This was the case, for example, in India in 2012, one of the biggest to date, as was the blackout in parts of the north-east and mid-west of the United States, stretching as far as Ontario, in August 2003.

Although sometimes linked to climatic hazards, such as violent storms, electricity supply problems have often been caused by the failure of outdated or poorly maintained networks suffering from a lack of funding. The deep economic crisis, the lack of investment and growing social unrest, imperialist tensions between states, can only create the conditions for future power cuts with unpredictable but potentially dramatic consequences. Energy, as we can see from the current war between Russia and Ukraine, has become more of a strategic than a commercial issue, a weapon of war in itself[1].

At the time of writing, the causes of the huge blackout in Spain and Portugal (which also partially and temporarily affected France, in the Basque country) have not yet been established. Although network connections have been optimised to regulate electricity distribution, the blackout on the peninsula remains ‘unexplained’ by the authorities. There is no doubt that a cyber attack, even if the hypothesis was quickly ruled out, was a credible possibility given the current deterioration in geopolitical tensions.

In reality, beyond our ignorance of the causes and the need for caution, the ‘technical’ reason for the blackout is less important than outlining a political interpretation of what happened. Taken on its own, the phenomenon of this sudden ‘blackout’ can find a specific explanation. The question that seems most relevant to us is rather to underline the context in which the event occurred, as a phenomenon that sheds light on a system at the end of its tether.

... in the decomposition of capitalism

As with other phenomena that can occur and result in real tragedies, such a blackout must be understood in a context where accidents and disasters are accumulating, and where their rate of appearance, intensity and scale have been steadily increasing for more than thirty years. This is a global situation that Marx could not, of course, have imagined in his time, but which he was nonetheless able to anticipate by revealing the historical dynamics of the capitalist mode of production. In perceiving the internal contradictions of the system and the seeds of its crisis and future decadence, as with any mode of production and exploitation that has become obsolete, Marx noted that capitalism is special in that it gives rise to “an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity”[2]. Of course, the point here is not to attribute the blackout to a purely economic cause. What we want to say here is that the obsolescence of capitalism, a system which has been in decline for over a hundred years because of its chronic economic crisis and, above all, the absence of any prospect other than misery and destruction, is plunging the whole of society into convulsions that are now those of its final phase, its decomposition.

Indeed, “the phase of decomposition appears as the result of an accumulation of all the characteristics of a moribund system, completing the 75-year death agony of a historically condemned mode of production”[3]. With an economic and social crisis plunging proletarians and populations into poverty, heightened war tensions, the multiplication of disasters linked to climate change, industrial accidents and phenomena such as shortages, this power cut remains a symptom which, like others, can only increase dramatically.

That's what we've been pointing out in our articles for over thirty years, when these phenomena were less frequent and more spread out in time and space, allowing the bourgeoisie to better put across its own particular explanations in order to isolate individual cases and exonerate the system as a whole. So, for example, when it came to floods or droughts, the media simply referred to ‘natural disasters’. But as the number of phenomena increased, notably the Covid-19 global disaster, the media were obliged to invoke more clearly the ‘irresponsibility’ of ‘mankind’ or of this or that individual.

These days, apart from laying blame and looking for scapegoats, the bourgeoisie can always come up with a whole host of explanations, as it will probably be able to do at the end of its current investigation into this recent blackout. What it will never be able to tell us, however, is that its system is bankrupt and can only generate new tragedies. The blindness of the bourgeoisie is a reflection of its cynicism and greed, its accelerating descent into barbarity that only the proletariat will be able to overcome by making its revolution.

WH, 30 April 2025

The more time passes, the more atrocities accumulate, the more words fail to describe the open-air death camp that is Gaza. After the carnage carried out by Hamas on 7 October 2023, the Israeli response has exceeded all levels of barbarism. Most of the more than 50,000 deaths caused by the IDF's bombings and raids are civilians, children, defenceless proletarians. The Israeli army deliberately targets groups of civilians and vital infrastructure, including health facilities, forcing the population to migrate from one end of the gigantic prison that is Gaza to the other, abandoning everything they own in a desperate attempt to stay alive. As master of the enclave's borders, Israel cynically starves the population by restricting water and food supplies, prevents the entry of medicines and medical equipment essential for treating tens of thousands of wounded people, and methodically destroys everything that has been built there in an orgy of violence.

The ‘great Western democracies’ are issuing a string of horrified statements in response to the atrocities. They are using increasingly harsh words against the Israeli government, but are taking no action, such as stopping arms and ammunition deliveries, to stop the bloodshed. These are nothing but cries of outrage, and for good reason! From the massacres in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam to the phosphorus bombing of the German cities of Dresden and Hamburg and the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Western countries, like all countries in the world, have never shied away from the most atrocious massacres to further their sordid interests. The anniversary of 8 May 1945, celebrated with great pomp and circumstance as the " victory over Nazi barbarism", expresses all the hypocrisy of the leaders of these democratic powers who are willing to accept the ongoing genocide, always ready to resort to lies and amnesia to hide the fact that their own hands are stained with the blood of the victims of colonial massacres and two world wars.

Behind the genocide in Gaza: the barbarism of capitalism

This barbarism unleashed by both sides, even if they are asymmetrical, can be seen at work all over the world: in Syria and Lebanon, Sudan and Yemen, India and Pakistan, Ukraine and Congo. Admittedly, the massacres in Gaza have their roots in 75 years of confrontation between the Israeli and Palestinian bourgeoisies and imperialist meddling in the Middle East, but they are based on a common origin shared by all conflicts, clearly stated by Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin at the beginning of the 20th century: with the entry of capitalism into its phase of historical decline, the era of “imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism” began. All capitalist states must now defend their interests at the direct expense of their international competitors. No state can escape this logic. Since no state can give up defending its place in the global market, all means are permitted, even the most despicable, barbaric and repugnant. The current period, the final phase of the system's decomposition, is only accentuating the escalation of barbarism. Thirty-five years ago, in our Theses on Decomposition, we already wrote that we are more and more seeing “the development of terrorism, or the seizure of hostages, as methods of warfare between states, to the detriment of the ‘laws’ that capitalism established in the past to ‘regulate’ the conflicts between different ruling class factions”. In Gaza, Hamas is using hostages as human shields to try to stem the Israeli military response, while the Israeli army is using the two million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip as bargaining chips with its Palestinian enemy. Each side is using threats against civilians in its struggle against its enemy.

Due to the growing political fragmentation of the bourgeois factions, a policy geared towards the coherent defence of the interests of the state is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible. This phenomenon, which exists in all countries, is reflected in a general policy of every man for himself pursued by a large part of the bourgeois political apparatus[1]. This every man for himself attitude is reflected in Israel by the fact that, in his desperate struggle for political survival, Netanyahu has become an uncontrolled projectile for the American godfather, at the head of a government that includes irresponsible extreme right-wing Zionist factions that no longer hide their intention to implement a ‘final solution’ to the Palestinian problem, a government that no longer even pretends to take into consideration the lives of hostages held by Hamas or those of Palestinian civilians, in the West Bank as in Gaza. All that remains is a nihilistic rush towards barbarism, which can only end in the physical elimination, through massacre or exile, of all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. This is fundamentally the same logic as that of Hamas, that of all ruling classes, all of whom are the embodiment of repression and militarism: hostages, dead or alive, have never prevented the people of Gaza from suffering atrocious reprisals, nor Hamas from committing crimes and exercising its own repression against Palestinians demonstrating to stop the carnage!

This is clearly the future that capitalism has in store for us: the mass slaughter of civilians in wars that spare no one, the appetite for pure revenge, the extermination of political opponents and enemy factions, the total destruction of entire cities, hospitals and schools, the development of totally irrational ideologies based on religion, conspiracy theories and mistrust of everyone and everything. The end result is the destruction of all organised life for the whole of humanity, and we can already see that this cancer eating away at capitalism has metastasised all over the planet.

The only alternative to this destructive dynamic is the development of the proletarian struggle against the human, economic, social and cultural sacrifices imposed by this decaying society. The proletariat is the only class whose perspective is diametrically opposed to that of the bourgeoisie. More than ever, the only future for humanity lies in the hands of the working class, the only revolutionary class under capitalism. It alone, through its struggle that knows no borders, is capable of defending a potentially redeeming principle: that of proletarian internationalism. In Gaza as elsewhere, in the face of increasingly numerous and bloody imperialist confrontations, there is no camp, no belligerent to support.

HD, 25 May 2025

The ICC has recently published a Manifesto on the ecological crisis, responding to the question “Is it possible to stop the destruction of the planet” from the point of view of the working class and the future of humanity. All the ‘solutions’ to the ecological crisis proposed by the ruling class are futile... 

Capitalism is a system based on the exploitation of both the working class and of nature. From its beginning it has based itself on ravaging and destroying the natural environment, but today it is showing that its very survival is incompatible with the survival of humanity and of nature. Capitalism has been an obsolete, decadent form of society for over a hundred years. This long decline has now reached a terminal phase, a dead-end in which war, crises of overproduction and ecological destruction are acting on each other to produce a terrible whirlwind of destruction. But there is an alternative to the nightmare being realised by capitalism: the international struggle of the exploited class for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a communist society.

To discuss these important issues we are holding an international online public meeting on Saturday 21 June at 14:00-17:00 (BST).  The working language will be English. To participate in this meeting contact [email protected] [3].

The Manifesto has been produced in paper format for distribution at meetings and demonstrations. It can also be found at ICC Online: Manifesto on the ecological crisis [4].

Latest: given the dramatic developments in the international situation (protests in the US, bombing of Iran....) some time will be set aside to discuss these events

The celebrations for the 80th anniversary of “Victory in Europe” on May 8th, from London to Moscow, are always military parades, lest anyone think that World War 2 (like the one in 1914-18) was a war to end all wars…

No, we are told that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance; therefore, we must be armed to the teeth and always be ready to enlist for the national cause.

We are also told that May 1945 was the victory of democracy over fascism, freedom over tyranny and mass murder. It wasn’t yet Victory in Japan though: the democratic allies still had some of their own mass murdering to do in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was to a great extent a warning to yesterday’s ally, soon to be a new totalitarian enemy, the USSR.  Thus World War 2 was immediately succeeded by preparations for World War 3: a “Cold War” which wasn’t so cold for the millions burned and massacred by endless proxy wars between the two imperialist blocs set up in the wake of the war (this was the real nature of the bloody conflicts in China, Korea, Vietnam, Africa, Middle East over the next four decades).

The “Cold War” ended with the collapse of the “eastern bloc”, of course; but, deprived of a unifying enemy, the western alliance also began to unravel right away. Some of its formal institutions, like NATO, still survive. But the new regime in the White House aims to “tell it like it is”: as Lord Palmerston once put it, there are no permanent friends or enemies: only permanent national interests. So it’s now “America First” and Trump and Co. are busy dismantling the last vestiges of the post-war world order.

In line with the recently launched propaganda war against Europe, Trump wants to rename “Victory in Europe day” “Victory Day for World War 2”, while “Armistice Day” is to become “Victory Day for World War 1”. Trump downplays the contribution of the European powers  in defeating Nazi Germany,  insisting that “We won both wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery or military brilliance,” It’s yet another calculated kick in the teeth for the European powers, those “freeloaders”, who  could only be saved by the  benevolence of the Americans in both world wars (Trump doesn’t mention that US assistance wasn’t exactly free: the British, for example, didn’t finish paying its war debts to the US until 2006, and, more importantly, were obliged to give up their empire to make way for  the new world hegemony of the USA).

For those who reject rituals in honour of the nation state, who still adhere to the maxim that the workers have no country, it makes no difference who claims to have made the biggest contribution to the inter-imperialist butchery of the two world wars or the Cold War. For the working class, 1945 did not mark a victory, but perhaps the lowest point in a profound historic defeat. In 1917-18 workers’ revolutions in Russia, Germany and elsewhere put a stop to the war, and for a brief interlude held out the prospect of a world without competing and warring nation states. But the revolution was defeated by the combined efforts of social democracy, fascism and Stalinism.  

By contrast World War 2 ended with both imperialist camps crushing the least threat of working class opposition to the war. Following the mass strikes in the north of Italy, where slogans against the war were voiced, in 1943 the threat was sufficient for Mussolini to be deposed by his fellow fascists, and for Churchill to pause his army’s advance from the South of Italy to “let the Italians stew in their own juice”, which meant allowing Hitler’s forces to carry out the necessary repression against the workers.

Not long afterwards, “the Red Army, which had called for the Poles to rise up against the Nazis, deliberately held its forces on the outskirts of Warsaw during the uprising of August 1944” [1] This manoeuvre led to the massacre of 15,000 insurgents and more than 200,000 Polish civilians, mostly from mass executions. In the end the whole city was razed to the ground.

The proletariat in Germany itself was decimated by the massive Allied -terror bombing strategy, including the use of incendiary bombs from which no escape was possible. The bombing of Hamburg, Dresden and Berlin in particular was meant to snuff out any danger of proletarian revolt in that country.

Today, the divorce between the US and Europe, and the continuing slaughter in Ukraine, are accompanied by new demands from our rulers to be ready to offer life and labour in the interests of national defence. But they are also aware that they need to keep drumming this into our heads precisely because the working class today has shown itself far less willing to make sacrifices which can never be in its own interests; above all, it has shown it in the great international strike waves launched in May-June 1968 in France and Italy in 1969, culminating in Poland in 1980, and in the less spectacular but still profoundly significant class movements which began with the “Summer of Discontent” in Britain in 2022 and are coming into shape around the world today.

Our only victory will be the overturning of world capitalism!

Amos