In 1905, in Russia, a wave of spontaneous strikes erupted on an unprecedented scale with a spectacular outburst of workers' anger and a heightened class consciousness that heralded a new form of struggle for the proletariat: the mass strike. This upsurge of the masses was a source of inspiration for the revolutionaries of the time, like Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky and Lenin who drew essential lessons for the class struggle from it, in their fierce fight with the reformists.

At a time when the working class had still not regained consciousness of its strength, when it woefully lacked confidence in its abilities and political potential, the 1905 revolution bore witness to its real historical power and its essential creativity: "The sudden general rising of the proletariat in January under the powerful impetus of the St. Petersburg events was outwardly a political act of the revolutionary declaration of war on absolutism. But this first general direct action reacted inwardly all the more powerfully as it for the first time awoke class feeling and class-consciousness in millions upon millions as if by an electric shock. And this awakening of class feeling expressed itself forthwith in the circumstances that the proletarian mass, counted by millions, quite suddenly and sharply came to realise how intolerable was that social and economic existence which they had patiently endured for decades in the chains of capitalism,” (Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass strike, the political party and the trade unions).

This historical experience, although mostly forgotten, remains a reference of the first order for the world proletariat, for its struggles and its revolutionary future. And this is what Lenin had already seen, when, as one of the rare people to have grasped the meaning and significance of the emergence of the first workers' councils in history, he wrote that it was the “finally found form of the dictatorship of the proletariat”. This was no more and no less than a modus operandi for the class struggle initiated at the high point of capitalism, and which would become the modus operandi throughout its phase of decline, right up to the proletarian revolution of the future. An in-depth understanding of the significance of the events of 1905, the prelude to the Red October of 1917, was indeed one of the preconditions for the seizure of power in Russia.

Today, the lack of a wider perspective for the great mass of workers, who are now returning to the struggle after more than three decades of inactivity, tends to limit their actions to their immediate circumstances. In this sense, highlighting the experience of the great struggles of the workers' movement, such as the events of 1905 in Russia, remains vital to the ongoing process of reflection, and to the to the  maturation of its consciousness, in order to connect it once more to a whole historical heritage. 1905 was not like a thunderstorm bursting out from a clear blue sky! The event could only have arisen as a result of a whole body of previous experience, in particular a whole process of subterranean maturation, of political assimilation, of slow and long reflection that followed major struggles, particularly in St Petersburg and elsewhere during the 1890s.

Today, even if the context is radically different, there is also an in-depth reflection tending to develop within the working class. After 1968 and during the various waves of struggles that followed, particularly those of the 1980s, a decisive breakthrough was needed, and unfortunately not taken: the politicisation of struggles. Today, it is in the terribly more difficult context of decomposition that the proletariat is once again engaging in a reflection that must be successful in raising its level of consciousness and its commitment, without which capitalism will engulf the whole of humanity in barbarism and destruction.

The mass strike in 1905 was not an isolated phenomenon. It was accompanied by struggles all over Europe. Today, a new generation of proletarians is also taking up the struggle all over the world, particularly since the strikes of the “Summer of Discontent” in Great Britain in 2022. This generation belongs to the long chain of fighters that has links to the first struggles of our class, with the capability of developing its consciousness and raising it to a higher level. This non-linear process, with phases of development, the ebb and flow, has characterised the struggle since the dawn of the workers' movement. By republishing the International Review's series of articles on the 1905 revolution, together with a new article written in July 2025, we hope to contribute to these efforts, which are currently being led by the working class. We want to encourage the process of in-depth maturation, on a difficult, slow and bumpy road, in the attempt to reconnect with the communist perspective, with the revolutionary struggle against a capitalist world that history has condemned.

- 1905: When the working class in Russia demonstrated its revolutionary nature [1], published by ICConline, July 2025

 - 100 years ago: the 1905 revolution in Russia [2], published in International Review n°120

 - 1905: The soviets open a new period in the history of the class struggle [3], published in  International Review n°122

 - 100 years ago: the Russian revolution of 1905 and the Soviet of workers' deputies [4], published in  International Review n°123
 - The debate in the revolutionary vanguard on the implication of the 1905 revolution [5],  published in  International Review n°125

ICC

On the 80th anniversary of the end of World War 2, we are republishing below two articles from L'Etincelle, the newspaper of the French Fraction of the Communist Left. In 1945, amid nationalist hysteria, when Europe was being ‘liberated’ from Nazism by the Allied forces, a handful of revolutionary militants kept the flame of proletarian internationalism alive by denouncing the imperialist war and all the sides in conflict: the barbarism of Nazism was not a product of ‘human folly’ but of decadent capitalism; the Allies, with their massive bombings and nuclear bombs, were no less barbaric than their adversaries; militarism remained, as it does today, the way of life of decadent capitalism.

Risking their lives, the comrades put up posters, threw leaflets onto trains leaving for the front, and issued appeals to all soldiers and workers, calling on them to show their class solidarity across frontiers, to cease fire and lay down their arms, and to unite against global capitalism.

The Manifesto distributed by the French Fraction of the Communist Left in January 1945 follows on from an extract from a report on the international situation written by the French Fraction’s successor, the Gauche Communiste de France . We first published these texts in our International Review no. 59.

50 years ago: The real causes of the Second World War [6]

The other article by L'Etincelle, dated June 1945, was first published in English in World Revolution 281

Buchenwald, Maidaneck: Macabre demagoguery [7]

We are also republishing an article from our International Review (number 66) which focuses on the many crimes of the democratic allies during the course of this war.

Let Us Remember: The massacres and crimes of the 'Great Democracies' [8]

Presentation of the leaflet on Trump's attack on immigrant workers and the responses

Faced with the round-ups of undocumented immigrants and the deployment of military forces in Los Angeles against those protesting against this new ‘exploit’ of Trump, one of our close supporters living in the United States took the initiative to write a leaflet that he proposed to distribute to those around him. The ICC fully encouraged this initiative. We believe that the document finally drafted by this comrade fully corresponds to the ICC's analysis of these events and to the necessary denunciation of the sordid game being played by the various forces of the bourgeoisie in this situation: both the cynical brutality of the police and military repression and the hypocrisy of those who denounce it in the name of ‘defending democracy’. This document provides a very valid analysis of the historical causes of the Trump administration's policy, a policy that is part of the growing chaos into which a rotten global capitalism is sinking deeper and deeper. The document also clearly highlights that the persecution of immigrants is an attack on the entire proletariat and that only this class can provide an immediate and historic response by mobilising on its own ground against the growing barbarism of the capitalist system. It is for all these reasons that we endorse this document and consider it a first statement by our organisation on the social confrontations currently taking place in Los Angeles and many other cities in the United States. The document rightly points out the current weakness of the proletariat in the United States. This is a reality, but the many strikes and mobilisations that have taken place since 2022 (massive strikes in the automotive sector in 2023; at Boeing factories and among dockworkers in around 40 ports on the East Coast in 2024, etc.)prove that the working class of this country has the capacity to wage large-scale struggles and, when the time comes, to join the struggle of the world proletariat for its emancipation.

ICC

Against Trump’s xenophobic assaults on the working class and the cries to “defend democracy”:

The working class must develop its own struggle!

 

Since assuming office in January, Donald Trump has massively escalated a campaign of terror against some of the most precarious workers in the United States, threatening to rip people away from their families and communities under the pretext of a lack of proper documentation. And he accompanies this with his trademark revolting rhetoric: a constant deluge of lies, conspiracy theories and xenophobia flows from the White House, stoking divisions in the working class whilst ICE agents menace those among us least able to fight back. Divide and rule is the name of his game. But if, as the cliché goes, the US is a “nation of immigrants,” we can add that migration has always been the condition of the working class. Workers have, since the dawn of capitalism, been forced to move from place to place according to the whims of capital - or, as is increasingly the case today, to flee the devastating wars and instability of a system rotting on its feet. So we must be absolutely clear: Trump’s campaign of terror against undocumented workers is nothing less than a direct attack on the US working class – a class of immigrants! According to the historic watchword of the workers’ movement in this country: An injury to one is an injury to all!

Trump’s proposed budget brings a withering assault on the working class

As Trump tries crudely to turn US workers against one another, his proposed budget would take a chainsaw to the class: almost $1 trillion in cuts to medicaid over the next ten years along with similar attacks on SNAP, federal student loans and federal employee pensions. And all this while allocating at least another $350 billion for the military and immigration enforcement.

And the reality is that it will not stop here. Faced with a deepening economic crisis and an ever-weakening position on the world stage, the US bourgeoisie – no matter which party is in charge - can only respond with biting attacks on the working class and increasingly irrational attempts to maintain the global reach and influence of US imperialism. Whether in Europe, the South China Sea, the Middle East or Africa, the future can only bring more and more demands for the class to sacrifice its living standards in the interests of our class enemies.

Defence of democracy and xenophobic populism – twin poisons for the working class

For the more ‘rational’ elements of the US bourgeoisie, Trump’s erratic and unpredictable international maneuverings - which are shaking up alliances once fundamental US imperialist strategy - are a serious concern. The fact that he has been able to secure much greater support from the military and intelligence services threatens two bulwarks against his influence during his first term. Above all however, Trump’s authoritarian tendencies provide the perfect opportunity to suffocate in the noxious fumes of the call to “defend democracy” any independent working class response to his vicious assaults.

On the international level, democracy has long been the cry of US imperialism as justification for any and all adventures – from the First World War to Iraq and Ukraine. And of course, the same Israeli regime that targets hospitals, universities and children in its genocidal campaign in Gaza declares itself the “only democracy in the Middle East” – with the US backing it as such. Similarly, the US portrays its military interventions as having a humanitarian purpose – for instance to protect the rights of Kurds in Iraq, or women in Afghanistan. But for the liberal bourgeoisie this all goes out the window when it comes to the actions of the US or an ally like Israel. Domestically, despite all the false indignation of the Democratic Party, Obama and Biden are only just behind Trump in numbers of people deported – for this faction of the bourgeoisie too, it is important to ensure the constant terrorization of this sector of the population so that it remains most easily exploitable. Hence the Los Angeles mayor exclaiming first of all about the impact of mass deportations on the local economy. Finally, today the Democrats campaign for a “defense of democracy” against the authoritarianism of Trump.

This campaign is tailor-made to ensure that any opposition to Trump’s brutal cuts and militarized immigration enforcement is expressed only by workers as individual citizen voters taking sides in internal conflicts of the ruling class – and not as a class acting independently from, and militantly opposed to, all bourgeois parties. It is illustrative that those leading the charge for the Democrats against Trump are individuals like Gavin Newsom – who seeks the presidency for himself – and those of the ‘socialist’ left wing of the party who claim to ‘represent’ the working class. Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others of their ilk - including those organizations who place themselves even further left: the DSA, PSL, CPUSA, RCA etc., which may claim to oppose this system but in reality present programs for its management and draw workers towards their dead end and sterile actions - are only at the forefront of the drive to smother workers’ struggle in the crib.

The working class should not forget that at the end of the day, although Trump is maybe the most repulsive representative of the bourgeoisie, what even the most left wing elements of the ruling class fear the most is their class enemy. And when the time comes, history shows that they will stand alongside their class brothers and shoot to kill for the sake of this dying system.

Trump is the product of a system rotten to the core

It is more than one hundred years since capitalism fulfilled its goal of dividing up the entire world into national markets and entered into its phase of decline. Ever since then, expansion for one national bourgeoisie can only come at the expense of another. Near constant imperialist war has been the consequence. But after a century of decline, this system and its ruling class are growing increasingly senile. The vile rhetoric of xenophobic nationalism, the demonization of immigrants, racial minorities, gay and trans people – long held tactics of a class determined to survive at all costs by dividing up its class enemy – have taken root with a vengeance across the world. And alongside them the most irrational conspiracy theories have found traction among even the leading representatives of the bourgeoisie. Finally, the world stage, once well policed by the US and USSR, has become highly chaotic. Thus the phenomena that are maybe most apparent in the US are not limited to it. The rise of Trumpist populism is not a blip or the result of the actions of a particularly repulsive individual – Trump is above all the product of a system in decline and a representative of a class unable to offer any perspective for humanity.

Only the working class has an answer!

The present wave of demonstrations sweeping this country have so far taken place on the terrain of the defense of democracy, or with the framing of the specific defense of the Hispanic population – as if the whole working class is not under attack! If things stay how they are, we can only expect the movement to peter out, with all energies funneled towards the political campaigns of the Democratic Party and the organizations of the far-left of the bourgeoisie.

Only the working class, united against all national, racial and gender divisions, is capable of bringing this barbaric system down. That is why, against the crushing attacks of the Trump administration, in the face of this campaign to line up behind the Democrats or their left wing accomplices in order to ‘defend democracy’ against him, and in light of the credible threat that capitalism will – through imperialist war, ecological destruction or social disintegration – destroy humanity, the only way forward is a united response of the working class independent from all bourgeois influences. The working class must fight back on its own terrain - beginning with the struggle for its basic economic interests and the expression of international solidarity with all sections of the class. It has been many years since the class in the US truly flexed its muscles and it will take a long time for it to find its feet. That is why it is essential that individuals who understand this burning necessity today must come together wherever possible, discuss the issues at hand, and integrate the lessons of past combats in order to prepare for these struggles of the future.

For the international development of the class struggle against all false divisions!

Against this rotten system that can only kill and destroy: the working class has another world to offer!

A sympathizer of the International Communist Current (ICC)

June 13th 2025

For information on upcoming online and in person public meetings to discuss these points and more, see the ICC website: en.internationalism.org From the rest of the world use: [email protected] [10]

 

 

On 7 May, apparently in response to an attack that had killed 28 people in Kashmir a few weeks earlier, the Indian army launched an initial attack on Pakistani territory aimed at destroying the bases of the organisations accused of carrying out the attack. The following three days saw a succession of counter-attacks and new waves of bombardments between India and Pakistan, marking the most intense confrontation between the two countries for decades. A new anguish gripped the world's population, adding to the ravages of the war in Ukraine (almost a million soldiers dead and wounded), the appalling massacres in Gaza, and a myriad of conflicts, each more barbaric than the last, in Sudan (more than 9 million displaced), Yemen, Congo, Syria, etc. A new eruption of barbarity in a world plagued by war and carnage!

This military confrontation is all the more devastating in that it involves two overpopulated, over-militarised nations (1.2 million soldiers for India, 500,000 for Pakistan) with lethal arsenals including nuclear weapons on both sides. It is taking place in a region of the world of crucial strategic importance, where the United States is trying to ‘clip the wings’ of its main challenger, China. But even more than the ‘explosive charge’ contained in this conflict, it is the context in which it is taking place that is the most dangerous: that of accelerating imperialist chaos, the rise of warmongering and irrationality, and the accentuation of the tendency towards ‘every man for himself’[1].

A conflict intensified by the explosion of ‘every man for himself’

Pakistan and India certainly have a long history of confrontation, linked to the dissolution of British India, when the two states were born in a bloodbath (war of 1947-1948, millions displaced and 1 million dead). Since then, there has been a succession of wars and skirmishes: in 1965 when Pakistan wanted to precipitate the independence of Kashmir from India, in 1971 when India pushed for the independence of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), in 1999 during the ‘Kargil war’, in 2001 with the assault on the Indian parliament by a Pakistan-sponsored terrorist group, etc.

Initially, the confrontations took place within the framework of the iron discipline imposed by the antagonistic imperialist blocs of the Cold War, the Western bloc and the bloc dominated by the USSR. Since the 1990s, however, we have seen the crumbling of this bloc discipline, with each national bourgeoisie resolving its conflicts with other national bourgeoisies on its own, resorting to increasingly bloody and irrational, and therefore potentially highly dangerous, conflicts. This is particularly true of the current conflict between India and Pakistan:

- Since the early 1990s, India and Pakistan have been developing their nuclear arsenals, with each country now possessing around 170 nuclear warheads.

- In the 21st century, communal and religious tensions have intensified. Bloody massacres perpetrated by radical Pakistani Islamist groups have multiplied against Indian civilians and soldiers (2001 in India, 2019 and 2025 in Kashmir). Modi's nationalist and populist Indian government revoked Kashmir's constitutional autonomy and placed it under the direct authority of the central government. This has resulted in fierce repression of the Kashmiris and heavy pressure on the Muslim minority in India.

- In the recent clashes, unlike previous conflicts which were largely confined to the disputed region of Kashmir, Indian retaliation hit three air bases in the heart of Pakistan (Nur Khan near Rawalpindi, Murid and Rafiqui). Unlike previous bombings of areas harbouring Islamist militias operating in Kashmir, this time they targeted vital centres of the Pakistani army (Nur Khan is home to the Pakistani army headquarters and the nuclear response control centre), using drones, fighter jets and cruise missiles.

The risk of escalation to a level of catastrophic destruction is therefore obvious, as one geostrategic expert in the region points out: “As armies attack a greater number of targets with an ever-expanding arsenal of new weapons, the possibility of catastrophe soars. Whatever the rationality of the Indian and Pakistani leaders, the risk of miscalculation or misunderstanding, in the absence of reliable crisis communication channels, makes any future outbreak of violence more dangerous”[2].

In the current phase of accelerating capitalist decomposition, war is becoming increasingly irrational and barbaric, as the Modi government's intention to use natural resources as a weapon of war further demonstrates: “India has taken the unprecedented step of unilaterally suspending the Indus Treaty, an agreement negotiated by the World Bank in 1960 to manage the flow of water essential for hydropower, irrigation and agriculture in Pakistan. The treaty had withstood several wars and militarised conflicts between the two countries, but not any more”. [3]

In the end, all parties involved will be the losers without any economic or strategic gain or advantage, while the most irresponsible bourgeois factions are strengthened: this war further strengthens the Pakistani generals, who talk of military victory and call for an increasingly aggressive response towards India, while brutally repressing any protest movement. The same is true in India, where Modi is using the conflict with Pakistan as an alibi to revive nationalist hysteria and anti-Muslim propaganda. This situation is not unique. It is the same as what we see with Putin in Russia or with the megalomaniac delusions of the Netanyahu faction in Israel.

Whether the Indian government underestimated Pakistan's capacity to react (increasingly and better armed by China) or whether it wanted to make a show of force to assert its military capabilities in the face of Pakistan, China and the Americans is a matter of conjecture. What we can predict without any doubt, however, is that this macabre game of imperialist ambitions will intensify and that the fragile ceasefire ‘negotiated’ by the US administration (an intervention denied by India) will not withstand the dominant trend towards war and chaos into which capitalism is sinking. For it is not the ruling scoundrels in India and Pakistan who are ultimately responsible for the proliferation and aggravation of imperialist massacres: the primary cause of the massacres underway and still to come is the rotting capitalist ‘order’.

Down with the nationalist campaigns!

The Indian and Pakistani bourgeoisies are calling on workers to rally to the national flag in defence of ‘the outraged honour of the fatherland’. What criminal hypocrisy!

In the war in Ukraine, all the belligerents are sacrificing hundreds of thousands of human beings for the conquest of a few miserable kilometers of land ravaged by fighting. In the Middle East, all the warring factions are using terror to reduce a whole region to ruins and massacre the population in the most barbaric ways.

In Pakistan itself, entire regions are being rendered uninhabitable by internal armed conflicts and massive flooding, while ethnic and religious conflicts are tearing India apart. As capitalism, under the effect of its own contradictions, sinks ineluctably into chaos, all the factions of the exploiting class throughout the world have nothing left to offer but the sacrifice of proletarians to their sordid and barbaric imperialist ambitions. And with the prospect of a confrontation between the atomic powers of India and Pakistan, as well as threats against Iran's nuclear programme or the bombing of the Zaporiya nuclear power station, the risk of a major nuclear accident has considerably increased.

There is only one alternative: the development of proletarian internationalism, the refusal to fight against our class brothers and sisters. All the workers of the world have the same interest. We are the main victims of war, sent to the front as cannon fodder or as hostages overexploited to the point of exhaustion to pay for an arms build-up that is increasing throughout the world.

The proletariat does not yet have the strength to prevent the proliferation of wars, but it can acquire it through its struggles against the capitalist attacks on its living conditions. Such a struggle is taking place in many countries and in these struggles, workers are tending to recognise themselves as a single class. They are gradually realising that they all have the same enemies: the exploiters, whatever their colour, religion or nationality.

 

Valerio, 31 May 2025

 

For several days now, Israel has been waging another deadly offensive against Iran – an offensive that has been met by a deluge of missiles from the Islamic Republic which, despite Israel's military superiority, has caused a great deal of damage and a number of casualties. For the moment, the fog of war propaganda makes it impossible to assess the scale of the massacre, but a real fire storm is raining down from both sides: while Iran is aiming indiscriminately at the cities of the Israeli state and a few symbolic sites,  the IDF seems to have mainly targeted the Iranian nuclear installations likely to produce atomic weapons, but also scientific personnel and those in charge of the nuclear programme, as well as the military and religious leaders likely to oversee the response. This ‘self-defence’ operation (according to Trump) has caused at least several hundred civilian casualties in Iran. The aim of decapitating the Iranian strike force and breaking up its response speaks volumes about Israel's desire to go much further than it did in April 2024 when the IDF targeted the Iranian consulate in Damascus to eliminate several military leaders, and the following September with the assassination of Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah. Netanyahu's government barely conceals its desire to see the collapse of the Mullahs' regime and to plunge its great regional rival into chaos.

Until now, Iran has tried to respond to provocations without really being able to impact Israel directly, but has been increasing the pressure through the terrorist organisations it sponsors (Houthis, Hezbollah, etc.) and by supporting Russia in the Ukrainian conflict. Faced with the risk of destabilisation, or even the collapse of their regime, the “Revolutionary Guards” have no choice but to opt for a headlong flight into chaos and barbarism. Even if it’s unable to defeat the Israeli state, the Islamic Republic undoubtedly has the means to drag the entire region down with it.

The real culprit in wars is capitalism!

This conflict is not an ‘isolated incident’, nor is it the product of the murderous ‘madness’ of the Israeli far right or the ‘fanaticism’ of the Mullahs: it is the expression of a capitalist system at the end of its tether. After each conflict, each massacre, the press and politicians accuse this or that state, this or that leader: ‘it's Putin's madness’,  ‘it's Netanyahu's messianic delusions’, ‘No, the  barbarity of Hamas’, ‘American imperialism’, ‘France's neo-colonialism’, ‘Chinese expansionism’... Admittedly, all these states, large or small, all these leaders, left or right, extremist or ’democratic’, demonstrate boundless barbarity and chilling cynicism. But they are all acting within a system in crisis and without a future, where the competition of each against all is pushing every nation to intervene on the international stage with increasing savagery. Today, with this new open war, we can only note that there has been a very serious additional step, the acceleration of the dynamics of militarism and chaos. A chaos that is increasingly corroding the world, with conflicts that are becoming entrenched, a plunge into endless quagmires, resulting in heaps of dead bodies and large-scale destruction. In the Middle East, Ukraine, Africa and elsewhere, uncontrollable conflicts are multiplying and widening, with no hope of lasting peace, and no belligerent able to impose ‘order’ or even profit from such massacres. In Ukraine, the belligerents are absurdly sacrificing tens of thousands of lives for a square meter of ruins, hoping to appear in a position of strength during hypothetical negotiations. In Sudan, the ‘forgotten’ war remains as devastating as ever, with over 150,000 dead and more than 13 million displaced in just two years. The temporary ceasefire between India and Pakistan following the violent confrontations of recent weeks does little to reassure anyone about the danger of tensions between these two nuclear powers. In Yemen, the war waged by the Houthi rebels on their own soil and in the Red Sea, and the Israeli, Saudi and American responses, have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and a huge humanitarian disaster. The uncontrollable destabilisation of entire regions, which can also be seen in Lebanon, Syria, Libya, throughout sub-Saharan Africa and in the gang wars in Haiti, is getting worse by the day.

The Middle East is caught up in a downward spiral where more and more players are entering the arena to try to impose their sordid interests: on the rotten soil of the historic Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Hamas attack of October 2023 (at the very least supported by Iran, if not directly piloted by it) has spawned a series of conflicts setting more and more countries in the region ablaze: Lebanon, Yemen, a timely attack by Islamist rebels in Syria, operations by Turkey on its border... And now it's Iran's turn, hitherto active behind the scenes, to enter the scene for good!

The IDF has (potentially) succeeded in decapitating Iran's nuclear programme; and many chancelleries, starting with Washington, are congratulating themselves on the success of Operation Rising Lion. But this absurd barbarity of war will ultimately benefit no-one! Israel has pulled off a coup, but at what price? Not only is Netanyahu's irresponsible scorched-earth policy accelerating Israel's discredit and isolation on the international stage, it is also exposing his country to an even more chaotic environment. Iran is obliged to retaliate, even if this exposes it to a militarily superior enemy. This is a very serious situation that could even lead to the military and political collapse of a country that shares borders with Iraq, Kuwait, Pakistan and Afghanistan. With its oil reserves and control over the strategic Strait of Hormuz, Iran is also a major global economic player. And the Islamic Republic will not hesitate to play with all the risks of extending and intensifying the chaos if it feels in danger. What's more, other imperialist sharks such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are not to be outdone, and are also in the front row in this powder keg, trying not to calm the situation but to undermine one competitor or another. Pandora's Box continues to spit out its noxious contents! The war can only drag on and escalate the confrontation to a much higher level, even if Netanyahu's desire to see the collapse of the Mullahs' regime is achieved quickly.

Faced with imperialist war, the only side to choose is the camp of the proletarian revolution!

Pacifist ‘goodwill’ will do nothing: capitalism is war! The bourgeoisie is incapable of stopping this infernal machine. Only the proletarian revolution, by overthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie everywhere on the planet, can free humanity from this increasingly deadly and omnipresent threat.

But the road to revolution is still long, very long indeed. As we have shown in our press since 2022, the proletariat is now regaining its fighting spirit and gradually beginning to recover its strength and class identity. Very small minorities within it are seeking to return to revolutionary positions. But although the proletariat holds the keys to history, it does not yet have the strength or the consciousness to oppose war as a class, to oppose the barbaric war of capitalism with its own perspective of the revolutionary transformation of society.

The bourgeoisie is perfectly aware of these weaknesses and is mobilising its whole ideological arsenal to prevent the maturing of class consciousness. Proletarians the world over must learn to be wary of the rhetoric of the bourgeoisie, in particular its left and extreme left wing(Trotskyists, in particular), designed to legitimise, in a supposedly critical way, the policy of one imperialist camp or the other. This is the meaning of the subtle distinction made by certain varieties of Trotskyism between aggressors and aggressed: “Iran has every right to retaliate against Israel - and we must oppose Israel's brutal attack on the Iranian people”[1]. The same deliberate mystification is reflected in the calls for the leaders of other countries to sever ties with Israel: "Down with Israel's aggression against Iran! [...] Macron, enough hypocrisy! Break all diplomatic, military, economic and commercial ties with Israel immediately"[2]. Behind their supposedly revolutionary language, all these professional mystifiers have been selling us their ideological junk for months with the ‘defence of the Palestinian people’, i.e. support for Palestinian nationalism led by Hamas, a bourgeois clique of the worst kind largely supported and financed by Iran. Now that the Mullahs have to confront Israel more directly, the Trotskyists are plunging a little deeper into the mire (if that were still possible) by calling on the working class to support the Islamic Republic (sorry!... ‘the Iranian people’)!

Faced with the rotting dynamics of capitalism, all nations, whether powerful or weak, have nothing left to offer but war and misery. Whether in the name of ‘international law’, ‘national liberation struggles’ or the ‘fight against imperialism’, all these bourgeois states and parties, which seek to make people believe that a solution of ‘peace’ exists within capitalism, which urge support for the so-called ‘victims of aggression’, are among the most dangerous enemies of the working class whose only aim is to divert it from its historic struggle.

For today, it is through the struggle of the working class against the generalised degradation of its living and working conditions, a consequence of the historic crisis of capitalism and the considerable increase in military budgets, that the working class will be able to develop and politicise its struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a society without nations, without war and without exploitation.

Stopio, 17 June 2025

[1] “Key questions about Israel’s escalation of war in Iran”, Socialist Workers Party (June 2025).

ICC Introduction

We are publishing two contributions from participants in our 5 April 2025 international online public meeting of the ICC, and on the April 26 meeting in London on the same question, on tensions within the American bourgeoisie, both of which aim to continue and deepen the debate initiated at the meetings.

The contribution of MH shows that he agrees with the ICC on a number of points: the different manifestations of decomposition, such as the progressive disintegration of capitalist society, the development of political populism, the erosion of the ability of the bourgeoisie to control the political and social situation, the  re-election of Trump as a powerful factor in the acceleration of capitalism’s trajectory towards full barbarism, and the false bourgeois alternatives of anti-populism, anti-fascism and the defence of democracy.

The comrade has the merit of rightly criticising the formulation “crushing defeat for the American bourgeoisie” in the article “Neither populism nor bourgeois democracy ... The only real alternative is the worldwide development of class struggle against all factions of the bourgeoisie”.  This prompted the ICC to change the phrase to “resounding failure for the more 'responsible' faction of the US bourgeoisie".

This said, in his contribution the comrade emphasises in particular “the effects of the capitalist counter-offensive launched at the start of the 1980s” or that “the American bourgeoisie under Trump has launched a wave of attacks on working class conditions”. What does the comrade want to demonstrate with this? That the bourgeoisie is still firmly in the saddle and that the populist policy does not substantially affect its capacity to maintain power as a ruling class? Or that the proletarian struggle, despite signs of recovery, is still very weak?

Baboon criticises the contribution of MH at the meeting for tending “to underestimate the threat of populism, the tendency to the loss of control of the political apparatus” in the US. And Baboon is right, because the essential question in the life of the US bourgeoisie is indeed the loss of control over its political game, expressed in a revolt against the political elite, in populism more and more dominating and even winning national elections, in a general tendency to look for scapegoats, in the demand for the legalisation of violence against certain minorities, etc.

MH also says that he is not in agreement with the ICC, which tends “to overemphasise the weakness of the bourgeoisie vis-à-vis the working class today”. He writes that in order to make a correct analysis of the strength or weakness of the bourgeoisie we should start from “the key question for marxists [which] is:  how weak or strong is the bourgeoisie relative to the proletariat, ie. what is the balance of power between the classes?”

But the comrade is mistaken here, because when the ICC speaks about a weakening of the bourgeoisie it doesn’t say that its dominance as a ruling class is at stake. When the ICC says that there is a weakening of the bourgeoisie it doesn’t mean a weakness in relation to the proletariat but a weakness in its ability to respond to the needs for the management of its own political system, linked to the rotting of capitalism. In this case the argument does not hold, for even if the working class is weak, this does not exclude the bourgeoisie facing major difficulties in the control of its political apparatus. Moreover, historical experience has shown that even when weakened, the ruling class can effectively gang up against the proletarian struggle, as we saw, for example, during the repression of the Paris Commune in 1871. Thus, a weakness of the bourgeoisie does not necessarily or automatically imply a strengthening of the proletariat.

The conception of the balance of power between the classes is not the same question as the impact of the period of decomposition on the phenomenon of the loss of control by the bourgeoisie, and in this case it leads the comrade to the wrong conclusion that the latter is still strong enough to play out its Machiavellian skills and to “make use of the Trump faction to advance its interests”.  

In his reply Baboon shows why this is not the case, by giving examples of the existing disarray in the ruling class in the US, which does certainly not point to a “use of the Trump fraction to advance its interests”. The possibility of the US bourgeoisie to make use of Trump’s policy is very limited and certainly secondary to the dominant general erosion of its means to exercise its power. As Baboon puts it, “The bewilderment and confusion of the ruling class has been all the more profound” in the US bourgeoisie.

On the international level the US leadership has been in decline for years, not able to counter the growing chaos in the world. This is precisely the reason why Trump has decided to drastically change the US foreign policy, in order to “Make America Great Again”. But Trump will certainly not be able to redress the authority of the US in the world, on the contrary.

On the national level the Trump administration is heading towards a conflict with more and more parts of the state institutions (the educational world, some governors, universities, trade unions, jurisdiction, etc.) while “uncertainty over Trump's tariffs paralyzes U.S. businesses” (New York Times), and twelve U.S. states filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of International Trade, seeking to stop Trump’s tariffs.

All in all, despite some points of agreement with the ICC’s position, MH still underestimates the degree of irrationality that has taken hold of the US bourgeoisie and which is expressed by various measures taken by Donald Trump. Whether in domestic or foreign policy, his approach lacks any consistency and is completely unpredictable, which only increases uncertainty and instability.

The ICC

 

Contribution by MH

A response to disagreements at recent ICC meetings

At recent ICC online meetings some disagreements have been expressed about the extent to which Trump‘s re-election represents a ‘defeat’ for the American bourgeoisie, and what this tells us about the balance of power between the classes today.

At the January meeting, while agreeing with the overall perspectives, I criticised an ICC article that described Trump’s re-election as a “crushing defeat for the American bourgeoisie.” An ICC sympathiser, ‘Baboon’, disagreed, insisting that Trump’s re-election was indeed a “crushing defeat”, and expanded on this view in comments after the March meeting:

“There’s no Machiavellianism here, no strategy or plan from the bourgeoisie as has been suggested in previous meetings and particularly by MH. Machiavelli is out of the window and instead of the strengthening of the state (state capitalism is the direct descendent of Machiavelli), we see the disembowelment of the most powerful state, its pillaging, as the mighty USA and its upper elements resemble a rogue state with elements of a regime like North Korea…”.

Just to be clear, I have never argued that Trump’s re-election was all the result of a Machiavellian plot by the American bourgeoisie, and I don’t think anyone else has either. I stated my own position quite clearly at the January meeting:

“The election of Trump is above all a step in capitalism’s regression into barbarism and it will be used by the American bourgeoisie as part of its continued and increasingly desperate attempt to brutally reassert its global hegemony.

“The growth of political populism today is a proof of the fact that the bourgeoisie has no more realistic options to manage the worsening crisis of its system (…) Populism is an expression of the decomposition of the bourgeois democratic process and of the mystifications around it. Fundamentally this is because, in the absence of a successful proletarian revolution, capitalism’s descent or epoch of decadence has now lasted for more than more than 100 years, and its open crisis for more than 50 years.

“More specifically it is an expression of the destruction of social cohesion, which was deliberately used by the bourgeoisie as a weapon against the working class as part of its counter-offensive from the 1980s (…) Today we are seeing the progressive disintegration of capitalist society, with the growth of authoritarian and even proto-fascist tendencies in the advanced capitalist countries.”

The ability of the bourgeoisie to control the political and social situation is eroding in front of our eyes – even in the most advanced centres of the system; the basic point I was trying to make in my interventions was that the bourgeoisie is still the ruling class, and as such still holds the initiative, which is why Trump’s re-election cannot be described as a “crushing defeat for the American bourgeoisie.”

Perhaps we need to remind ourselves what it means to say the bourgeoisie is a Machiavellian class? Above it is pragmatic; faced with a problem or threat, it will do what it has always done; adapt and manoeuvre, and attempt to direct and control change in such a way as to preserve its hegemony. Today, unable to prevent the rise of political populism due to the decay of its own system, the US bourgeoisie is forced to make use of the Trump faction to advance its interests, while attempting to put into place longer-term political options.

Baboon criticises me for underestimating the political weakness of the bourgeoisie (although he admits this weakness cannot be exploited by the proletariat). This seems a rather odd accusation to make; surely the worst mistake we can make today is to underestimate the strength of the bourgeoisie or the lengths it is prepared to go to preserve its power and privileges? The key question for marxists is: how weak or strong is the bourgeoisie relative to the proletariat; ie. what is the balance of power between the classes? And, as the ICC itself stated at its 23rd Congress, “in the balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, it is always the ruling class that is on the offensive, except in a revolutionary situation”.

In this context, we need to highlight the fact that the American bourgeoisie under Trump has launched a wave of attacks on working class conditions, including the mass firing of federal workers, giving more powers to employers and tightening labour discipline; nor should we ignore the effects of the deliberately provoked climate of fear and repression aimed particularly at immigrant workers (which makes little sense from a capitalist perspective); the promotion and strengthening of racist and far right tendencies and ideologies, and the scapegoating of minorities, which can only make it harder for the proletariat to develop its class solidarity and fight back, while at the same time the bourgeoisie actively peddles its false alternatives of anti-populism, anti-fascism and the defence of democracy…

So where does Baboon’s emphasis on the political weakness of the bourgeoisie today come from? The ICC defends the position that political populism is a product of what it calls ‘decomposition’, which is based on the idea that a “stalemate between the classes” has existed since 1989. Is there something about the logic of this position that apparently leads its defenders to overemphasise the weakness of the bourgeoisie vis-à-vis the working class today? The problem for me is that the ICC’s analysis of a ‘stalemate’ either does not recognise, or underestimates the effects of, the capitalist counter-offensive launched at the start of the 1980s and the serious defeat experienced by the working class as a direct result; and the role of the breakdown of attempts at national autarky in creating a temporary breathing space for the capitalist system from the 1990s.

The ICC does appear to recognise there are issues here, because after my criticism at the March meeting it amended the article in question to read that Trump’s re-election represents a "resounding failure for the more 'responsible' faction of the US bourgeoisie". And in its own introduction to Baboon’s comments, while “fully agreeing” with the comrade’s contribution (!), it does at least warn that “the American bourgeoisie is not merely a victim of decomposition.”   

Today, despite signs of a recovery of class struggle, the proletariat remains in a very difficult and dangerous situation – I think we’re all agreed on that. Due to the weight of the bourgeoisie in the world’s most powerful capitalist state, Trump’s re-election is a powerful factor in the acceleration of capitalism’s trajectory towards full barbarism, which only underlines the fact that time is not on the side of the proletariat. The disagreement here is about the balance of power between the classes in this period – and the method we use to assess it. This discussion should continue, on the basis of views actually expressed.

MH, April 2025

 

Contribution by Baboon

ICC Meeting April 26: Response to the positions of MH on Trump and decomposition

I’d like to make some points around the Trump presidency and the question of decomposition from the positions of a comrade, MH, expressed at the above-mentioned meeting.

Is Trump being used by the bourgeoisie or is his election an expression of the latter’s loss of control?

For the second time in a couple of months comrade MH publicly welcomed what he called the ICC’s modification of its position on the consequences of the Trump presidency. Fundamentally, the ICC sees the latter as an expression of the rise of populism, the loss of control of the bourgeoisie and, because of the central position of US imperialism, a major blow to the global economic, military and social order of capitalism; i.e. a further dramatic twist in its decomposition. I think that MH agrees with the concept of capitalism’s final stage of decomposition but his understanding of the ICC’s position leaves some confusion. For MH the American ruling class, through its innate Machiavellianism, is using the Trump faction in order to reinforce its own position. This immediately tends to underestimate the threat of populism, the tendency to the loss of control of the political apparatus, the weakening of the US state and the further overturning and shattering of the world order therefrom. According to MH the idea of the ICC that Trump’s election was a disaster for the ruling class and capitalist order, has been “modified later to a blow to the intelligent faction”[1]. I don’t really see how this helps MH’s argument but the clear point here is that the ICC has not modified or altered its position one iota. Rather than expressing the “continuity” of Trump with the policies of the ruling class, as some elements of the Communist Left suggest, the ICC insists on the break with “order” that is even more significant and from the same dynamics – capitalist decomposition – that brought down the Eastern Bloc in 1989/90. The greater significance here lies in the weight of the global consequences from the undermining of US imperialism.

Generally speaking the ruling class underestimated Trump and did not believe that his second term would see him pursue his programme which was clearly laid-out in his adoption of the Heritage Foundation’s populist “Project 2025”[2] I clearly remember the disorientation and denial of the ruling class in reaction to the implosion of Russian imperialism in 1989 (until it manoeuvred to turn this into a major weapon against the working class with its campaign around the “death of communism”). Commensurate with the greater consequences to world order from the Trump election, the bewilderment and confusion of the ruling class has been all the more profound.  Typical of this is the Left political commentator Ian Dunt (“I” newspaper, 29.4.25) who initially thought Trump 2 would be just like his first term of office, but is now labelling him a “fascist”  and “imperialist” after initially describing him as an “isolationist”. And like his cohort and the rest of the left, Dunt campaigns for the need to “stand by democracy” in order to thwart Trumpism and the threat of fascism.

“Project 2025”, a programme of economic and political libertarian lunacy, was initially championed by British Prime Minister Liz Truss in her 44-day tenure in September/October 2022. It took dramatic action from the World Bank, the IMF, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the US State Department – what the populists call “the deep state” - to unceremoniously oust her and her clique from power. But Trump is not Truss and although these august organisations have tried to rein in Trump through various mechanisms – and have had some success – Trump controls the State Department and these organs[3] that have served capitalism throughout decadence well have undoubtedly been weakened along with many other institutions for the management of capitalism’s decline.

Trump and his programme does not represent a coherent political response by the bourgeoisie and the latter is not using Trump as his deranged policies have overturned the world order and significantly deepened political and economic chaos at the global level. The (ICC) meeting pointed to the analysis of the Wall Street Journal and its criticism of the Trump regime and we can add other criticisms from respected economists. We haven’t heard much from the intelligence services and we won’t, but these various services must be tearing their hair out. These organs are not just spies but the absolute guardians of national defence, national integrity and national interest. They need solid agreements, protocols and pacts which are clear frameworks to work in including for the sharing of sensitive information. But, like the weakening, undermining and dismantling of the economic structures and bodies built up over decadence in order to cope with the permanent crisis of capitalism, the weakening of the frameworks for the intelligence services represents further problems for the bourgeoisie. These factors also express how the decomposition of capitalism affects and weighs on the structures of state capitalism.

Trump’s continual processes with the US courts, win or lose, will also feed and maintain the “anti-Trump”, “anti-Fascist” movement globally, which is trying to con the working class with their support for nationalism (Canada for example) and democracy supported by the left-wing of capitalism[4].

 

Baboon. 30.4.25

 

ICC footnotes:

The ICC fully supports this statement and appeals for its widest possible discussion and distribution.

 

While the flames of war raged on all fronts, Trump launched his election campaign with great fanfare, dressed in the guise of a peace-seeker. He promised to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, resolve the Gaza massacre, and present himself as a champion of peace. He even claimed he was worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. However, Trump’s return to power did not bring an end to the wars; on the contrary, it escalated military tensions. The war in Ukraine continues unabated, Gaza has become the site of a full-scale genocide, and, simultaneously, military tensions in Africa, conflict between India and Pakistan, and an all-out war between Israel and Iran have all flared up. Today, war is no longer merely a military occurrence; more and more, it reflects the nature of capitalism in its barbaric age and the way of life that flows from it.

The war between Iran and Israel is not the result of decisions made by warmongering leaders but it is the expression of the capitalist system today. Regardless of the political façade a state adopts—be it democratic or dictatorial, peace-seeking or openly militaristic—they all share one fundamental trait: sacrificing the working class as cannon fodder in imperialist wars. Without exception, they are all war criminals.

Contrary to the deceptive narrative of the “democratic” gangsters—who claim that Israel’s “precision” strikes are merely aimed at neutralising Iran’s nuclear programme or eliminating political and military commanders of the Islamic Republic—the reality is quite different. In practice, both sides have targeted civilian infrastructure, including factories, refineries, residential areas, workplaces, and even hospitals. The truth is this: both parties are complicit in committing war crimes.

All the gangster Democrats, led by the criminal Trump, speak with the language of bandits and even boast about their crimes. Trump himself proudly declares: “The United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the world, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come – And they know how to use it.”

During the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg believed that in order to normalise war crimes, actual violence must be accompanied by a kind of savagery in thoughts and feelings—such that not only does a bloodbath become accepted as normal, but it is also regarded as a source of pride. Today, the criminal Trump clearly embodies this historical analysis. He proudly spoke of the greater lethality and destructiveness of American military equipment and emphasised that Friday was a “great day” for Israel because “great American equipment” was used. This warmonger openly stated that he has no concerns about the outbreak of a regional war following Israel’s attacks. In other words, he not only welcomes war but also sees it as a stage to demonstrate America’s technological power and superiority.

Unfortunately, the Israeli working class, compared to their class brothers and sisters in Iran, has been far more deeply influenced by nationalism and toxic religion, which has allowed the Israeli bourgeoisie to easily mobilise the working class for war. In contrast, despite all setbacks, the Iranian working class is in a far stronger position in terms of struggle compared to their counterparts in Israel—especially considering that one of the most militant proletarian battalions in the Middle East belongs to Iran, with a proud record of historic battles. This war could have a negative and destructive impact on the Iranian working class and hinder not only the continuation but also the advancement of their struggles to higher levels.

Capitalism imposes imperialist wars on humanity because it does not face a serious and organised class-based response from the global working class. But this does not eliminate, on the contrary, the responsibility of internationalists and particularly of the communist left to face this reality: to consistently defend proletarian internationalism, to expose the imperialist nature of these wars, and to clarify their material and class foundations in front of the working class.

It must be declared loudly and clearly: all of these conflicts are against the interests of the working class. It must be stated plainly that the consequences of the war between Iran and Israel will not be confined to the Middle East, for capitalism is a global system, and its destructive impact will weigh heavily on the shoulders of workers across the world. Most importantly, it must be emphasised that the real enemy is at home—whether in Tehran, Tel Aviv, Washington, London, Berlin, Paris, or anywhere else where capital, the state, and the military are aligned against the working class.

History has shown that the only force capable of ending the bourgeoisie’s machinery of slaughter—war—is the working class. It was the threat of revolution in Germany during the First World War that compelled the bourgeoisie to sign the armistice. This has always been the case: war criminals retreat only in the shadow of proletarian threat, merely to prepare themselves for the class war against the proletariat. Although the global working class is not currently in such a position, the development of the class struggle can open up that horizon for the proletariat.

War has become a way of life for capitalism in the age of imperialism. Capitalism cannot offer a future; it merely spreads brutality and barbarism to ever more regions. It is an illusion to expect warmongers to bring an end to war. The peace offered by warmongers can only ever be an interlude within a war-driven capitalism. From within capitalist peace, only the flames of future wars can emerge.

Only the class war of the workers can offer an alternative to the barbarism of capitalism—because the proletariat has no nation to defend, and its struggle must transcend national borders and develop on an international scale. Only the global working class, by turning the capitalist war into a war against capitalism and ultimately overthrowing it on a global level, can eliminate the material basis of imperialist wars and bring lasting peace to humanity.

Workers have no country!

Down with the imperialist war!

Long live the war between the classes!

Intransigent defence of internationalism everywhere!

Internationalist Voice

19 June 2025

 

https://www.internationalistvoice.org [12]

 

 

 

“The largest B-2 strike in history”. The words chosen by General Dan Caine, Chief of Staff of the US Armed Forces, to describe the bombing of several Iranian nuclear sites on the night of 21-22 June, show the historic significance of the event. One hundred and twenty-five aircraft were in the air, a submarine and several ships were mobilised, and 75 precision missiles and 14 GBU-57 “bunker-buster” bombs were dropped in a matter of hours. With their Operation Midnight Hammer, the United States has made a dramatic return to war.

It is not yet possible to assess the extent of the damage and the number of casualties in Iran and Israel since the fighting began on 13 June, but the firepower is abundant and destructive. As this leaflet goes to press, we are learning that after Iranian strikes on US military bases, the belligerents have announced a “ceasefire” while missiles were still raining down on both sides.

The Middle East is plunging into barbarism and chaos

According to the war propaganda, the bombing of Iran is a huge success: the mullahs' regime has been permanently weakened and could even disappear, Israel and America have put an end to the nuclear threat, and they will impose peace and security in the Middle East.

All of this is nothing but lies! The Middle East will continue to descend into chaos, chaos that will impact the entire planet. Unable to respond directly, the Islamic Republic, with its back against the wall, will not hesitate to sow barbarism wherever it can, to activate all the armed groups under its control, and even to make massive use of terrorism. The threats Iran is making against the strategic Strait of Hormuz alone symbolise the fact that the global economic crisis will worsen and, with it, inflation.

And if the mullahs' regime of terror does not survive, the aftermath will be just as terrible as their reign: the country will be divided between warlords, there will be a cycle of revenge between the various factions, terrorist groups even more armed and dangerous than Daesh will spring up, and there will be mass exoduses of the population.

This is not an apocalyptic prophecy, but a lesson learned from all the wars of the last twenty years. In 2003, the US invasion of Iraq, which was supposed to deal a fatal blow to the “Axis of Evil” and impose a Pax Americana on the region, turned the country into a field of ruins where armed groups and mafia cliques fought each other non-stop. In 2011, neighbouring Syria descended into civil war, involving armed terrorist groups such as Daesh, regional powers such as Turkey, Iran and Israel, and global powers such as the United States and Russia. In 2014, Yemen joined the macabre dance. The result: hundreds of thousands of deaths and a devastated country. In 2021, Afghanistan fell back into the hands of the Taliban after twenty years of war waged by the United States to... overthrow the Taliban.

At the end of 2023, Hamas launched a terrorist attack of rare barbarity against Israel, in which a large number of civilians were killed. The Israeli army responded with unbridled brutality, launching a campaign of mass destruction in the Gaza Strip that quickly turned into outright genocide. In the months that followed, the chaos spread at an unimaginable pace: facing Hamas' allies, Netanyahu launched a deadly offensive on all fronts in Lebanon, Syria and now Iran. Fundamentally, the same dynamic is at work in Ukraine, Sudan, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The capitalist world is sinking into war-torn chaos: as in Gaza and Lebanon in recent months, any ‘ceasefires’ in Iran will be temporary and precarious, agreed upon to better prepare for the next massacres. The ‘twelve-day war’ (the official name given to this latest episode of the war in Iran) has been going on for almost fifty years and has just worsened considerably for decades to come...

A war with catastrophic global repercussions

The war with Iran will weaken the United States' main adversaries: Russia, which needs Iranian drones in Ukraine, but also China, which needs Iranian oil and access to the Middle East for its ‘New Silk Road’. As for Operation Midnight Hammer, it once again demonstrates the undisputed superiority of the US Army, capable of intervening massively on the other side of the planet and sweeping away all its enemies. These strikes are an explicit message to China, just as the atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 were primarily a warning to Russia.

But this show of force is only a temporary victory that will not resolve any conflicts or calm any of the other imperialist sharks. On the contrary, tensions will rise everywhere, and every state, large or small, every bourgeois clique, will try to take advantage of the chaos to defend its sordid interests, which will further increase global disorder. China, above all, will not take this lying down and will eventually flex its muscles too, in Taiwan or elsewhere.

Once again, these are the lessons we learn from history. Since the fall of the USSR in 1991, the United States has been the sole superpower. There are no longer any blocs within which allied countries must respect a certain form of discipline and order. On the contrary, each country plays its own card, each alliance is increasingly fragile and circumstantial, making the situation more and more chaotic and uncontrollable. The United States immediately understood this new historical dynamic. That is why it launched the Gulf War in 1991, a veritable show of force to send a message to everyone: ‘We are the strongest, you must obey us.’ Bush Sr.'s announcement of a ‘New World Order’ meant nothing less. And yet, two years later, in 1993, France supported Serbia, Germany supported Croatia, and the United States supported Bosnia in a war that would ultimately tear Yugoslavia apart.

The lesson is clear and has remained unchanged for thirty-five years: the more opposition to American supremacy grows, the harder the United States must strike... and the harder it strikes, the more it fuels opposition and every man for himself across the globe. On a regional scale, the same is true for Israel. In other words, with the war in Iran, the development of chaos and disorder through war will accelerate even further. Asia will become the hotspot of global imperialist tensions, caught between China's growing ambitions and the increasingly massive military presence of the United States. The American bourgeoisie knows that this is where it must now concentrate most of its armed forces.

“No King”, “Free Palestine”, “Stop Genocide”: the only future for capitalism is war!

Faced with these unspeakable horrors, faced with large-scale massacres, many people want to react, to shout their anger, to come together, to say “stop”. And this is indeed necessary because if we let it happen, if we do not react, capitalism will drag all of humanity into a huge mass grave, a series of scattered, uncontrollable and increasingly deadly conflicts. Many of those who are willing to react are now taking to the streets in various ‘anti-war’ movements: No Kings, Free Palestine, Stop Genocide, all of which are supported by the forces of the capitalist left.

But the slogans put forward by the left, including those which appear to be most radical, are traps that always come down to attributing the causes of war to this or that leader, to Netanyahu, Hamas, Trump, Putin or Khamenei, and ultimately to choosing one side against another. With their hypocritical rhetoric ‘for peace’, ‘for the defence of democracy’, ‘for the right of peoples to self-determination’, the forces that control capital seek to delude us into believing that capitalism could be less warlike, more humane, that all we need to do is elect the ‘right representatives’ and ‘put pressure on the leaders’ to establish world peace and ‘fairer’ relations between capitalist nations. All this ultimately amounts to exonerating the warlike dynamic into which the entire capitalist system, all nations, all bourgeois cliques are inexorably sinking.

Trump, Netanyahu and Khamenei are undoubtedly bloodthirsty leaders. But the problem we face is not this or that leader: it is capitalism. Regardless of which bourgeois faction is in power, left or right, authoritarian or democratic, all countries are warmongers. This is because capitalism is sinking into a historic crisis that it cannot resolve: competition between nations is only intensifying, becoming more brutal and spiralling out of control. This is what the left is trying to hide. And this is the trap into which those who participate in these rallies fall, thinking they are fighting against war.

Denouncing all these movements as traps may surprise or even anger those who sincerely want to take action in the face of such widespread massacres: ‘So, you think there's nothing we can do?’ ‘You criticise, but something has to be done!’

Yes, something must be done, but what?

To end wars, capitalism must be overthrown

Workers in all countries must refuse to be carried away by nationalist rhetoric. They must refuse to take sides with one bourgeois camp or another, in the Middle East or anywhere else. They must refuse to be fooled by rhetoric that asks them to show ‘solidarity’ with one people or another in order to better indoctrinate them against another ‘people’. Expressions like ‘Martyred Palestinians’, ‘bombed Iranians’, ‘terrorised Israelis’ all serve to lock people into choosing one nation over another. In all wars, on both sides of the border, states always recruit people by making them believe in a struggle between good and evil, between barbarism and civilisation. Lies! Wars are always a clash between competing nations, between rival bourgeoisies. They are always conflicts in which the exploited die for the benefit of their exploiters.

‘Iranians’, ‘Israelis’ or ‘Palestinians’, among all these nationalities there are exploiters and exploited. The solidarity of the proletariat is therefore not with the ‘peoples’, it must be with the exploited of Iran, Israel or Palestine, just as it is with the workers of all other countries of the world. We can’t bring real solidarity to the victims of war by demonstrating for an illusory peaceful capitalism, by choosing to support one camp which is said to be under attack or weaker against another which is said to be the aggressor or stronger. The only solidarity is to denounce all capitalist states, all parties that call for people to rally behind this or that national flag, this or that militaristic cause!

This solidarity requires, above all, the development of our struggles against the capitalist system which is responsible for all wars, a struggle against the national bourgeoisies and their states.

History has shown that the only force that can put an end to capitalist war is the exploited class, the proletariat, the direct enemy of the bourgeois class. This was the case when the workers of Russia overthrew the bourgeois state in October 1917 and when the workers and soldiers of Germany revolted in November 1918: these great movements of struggle by the proletariat forced the governments to sign the armistice.

It was the strength of the revolutionary proletariat that ended the First World War! Real and lasting peace everywhere can only be won by the working class overthrowing capitalism on a global scale.

This long road lies ahead of us, and today it passes through the development of struggles against the increasingly harsh economic attacks being unleashed on us by a system plunged into an insurmountable crisis. By refusing the deterioration of our living and working conditions, by refusing perpetual sacrifices in the name of the competitiveness of the national economy or building up the war effort, we are beginning to stand up against the heart of capitalism: the exploitation of man by man. In these struggles, we stand together, we develop our solidarity, we debate and we become aware of our strength when we are united and organised.

The proletariat began to walk this long road during the ”Summer of Discontent” in the United Kingdom in 2022, during the social movement against pension reform in France in early 2023, during the strikes in the health and automobile sectors in the United States in 2024, and in the strikes and demonstrations that have been going on for months and are continuing even now in Belgium. This international dynamic marks the historic return of workers' militancy, the growing refusal to accept the permanent deterioration of living and working conditions, and the tendency to unite across sectors and generations as workers in struggle, regardless of nationality, ethnic origin or religion.

Some will criticise revolutionaries by claiming: ‘In the face of war, you propose to do nothing, to postpone indefinitely the fight against the massacres taking place before our eyes!’ Today, the struggles of the proletariat do not yet have the strength to stand up directly against war; this is a reality. But there are two possible paths: either we participate in the so-called ‘peace now’ movements and allow ourselves to be disarmed in the struggle for a ‘fairer’, ‘more democratic’ capitalism, and thus buy into the ideologies that contribute to the general development of imperialism by pushing us to support the nation, the camp, the clique described as ‘less bad’ or ‘more progressive’. Or we can patiently participate, through struggles on our class terrain, in rebuilding our solidarity and our identity, working towards a historic movement that is the only one capable of uprooting the roots of war and poverty, nations and exploitation: capitalism. Yes, this struggle is long! Yes, it will require great confidence in the future, an ability to resist the fear and despair that the bourgeoisie wants to instil in us. But it is the only way forward!

To participate in this movement, we must come together, discuss, organise, write and distribute leaflets, defend genuine proletarian internationalism and the revolutionary struggle. Against nationalism, against the wars our exploiters want to drag us into, the old slogans of the workers' movement, those of the Communist Manifesto of 1848, are today more relevant than ever:

"Workers have no country!

Workers of all countries, unite!”

For the development of the class struggle of the international proletariat!

International Communist Current, 24 June 2025

 

The massive bombing by the United States on the night of 21 to 22 June of military targets in Iran constitutes a new stage in the escalation of tensions and the chaos of war, of desolation and relentless barbarism in the region.

Faced with the wide range of different forms of support for one imperialist camp against another, which will dominate the media and social scene, the proletarians of all countries must reject any so-called ‘solution’ to the conflict that aims to chain them to support this or that country, this or that bourgeois faction. Revolutionaries must fight for the only principle worth defending: proletarian internationalism. The only struggle that can deliver humanity from the barbarism of war is the class struggle, for the overthrow of this system undermined by crisis and the needs of the war economy.

Given the gravity of these developments, we will be holding an extra online international public meeting on Saturday 28 June, 2pm to 5pm, UK time. We will make language pads available, so that there should be no obstacles for the participation in whatever language. 

If you want to attend the meeting, please email us: [email protected] [10]