The competing states and their leaders, whether they are presented as ‘authoritarian’ or ‘democratic’, are seeking to impose sacrifices on the proletariat everywhere in the name of the ‘indispensable’ war economy’

Whether it is Putin's Russia, Xi Jinping's China, Trump's United States or Von der Leyen's European Union, “the time has come for rearmament”! The new German Chancellor says: “From now on, the following rule must apply to our defence: whatever the cost!” President Macron wants to “strengthen our armies as quickly as possible”, as does British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has announced military spending “unprecedented since the end of the Cold War.”

Intense warmongering and militaristic propaganda

To impose these colossal sums, in the midst of an economic and financial crisis, against a backdrop of staggering public deficits, the most effective strategy remains manipulation through fear: “Who can believe that today's Russia will stop at Ukraine?” (Macron). Should we not at all costs “deter tyrants like Vladimir Putin?” (Starmer).

In reality, in this obsolete capitalist system, all states are imperialist, small or large, aggressors as well as the aggressed, all defending only the cold-blooded interests of the national capital. All are gangsters, greedy monsters wallowing in a sea of blood, who, when they are not drinking the blood of civilians are preparing the future carnage which they have calculatingly decided upon. And as always, these warmongers take the usual precautions to cynically justify the monstrosity of their barbaric enterprises, always in the name of ‘peace’ and ‘values’! Isn't Putin himself fighting ‘Nazis’? Doesn't the French Minister of the Economy, Eric Lombard, defend a democratic ‘economy of peace’ in order to buy his instruments of death?

Everywhere, the working class is subjected to this intense propaganda, to the media steamroller that tries to persuade us with nauseating speeches that military spending is ‘necessary’ and that arms production must ‘inevitably increase’. All for reasons presented everywhere as ‘ethical’! Polls then flourish, designed to gauge, manipulate and feed the same discourse seeking to persuade us that it is necessary to ‘defend one's homeland’!

But to claim that war and the militarisation of society are a ‘necessary evil’, something obvious, against which nothing can be done unless we want to risk even greater massacres, is an odious lie. Militarisation and war are always the fruits of the barbaric decisions of the ruling class and the very expression of the impasse into which the decomposing capitalist system is sinking more and more. The world wars of the past, like the abominable massacres in the Gaza Strip or in Ukraine today, are not the product of the ‘madness’ of this or that leader, but the expression of the historical dead-end reached by the capitalist system, of its inability to offer anything other than to drag the working class and all of humanity into ever more vast, apocalyptic spirals of destruction. What lies behind all the fine talk of ‘peace’ is nothing less than the transformation of ever larger areas into fields of ruins, into new Ukraines, Syrias or Palestines![1]

More anti-working class attacks

All this belligerent agitation in turn fuels the same arms race, and everywhere the rulers are asking the working class to foot the bill. The planned military budgets in Europe already exceed 2% of current GDP. The European plan ‘ReArm Europe’ envisages releasing 800 billion euros for the purchase of weapons of war. Germany alone plans to commit 1000 billion euros to its defence. The military programming law 2024-2030 in France provides for a sum of 413 billion!

The exploited are starting to feel the effects of all this in terms of attacks on their living conditions. By hammering home the message that we can no longer count on the ‘dividends of peace’, the bourgeoisie is paving the way for the acceptance of sacrifices in the service of mass murder. Blowing hot and cold, coating speeches with a language of ‘truth’, the prospects is one of massive attacks on the social level: health, pensions, education... For NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, “this cannot wait... Countries are investing up to a quarter of their GDP in pensions, health systems or social security. We need a small fraction of that money to strengthen our defence.” What he is careful not to say is that this “small fraction”, taken from systems already bled dry, can only further impoverish millions of people. This is a cynical euphemism that in reality means the axing of social budgets, social security, unemployment or health insurance.

The growth of the war economy is also presented to us as a source of ‘industrial relocation’ to ‘promote employment’. This is also a sinister hypocrisy that aims to justify an intensification of arms production that will only come at the price of a headlong rush into debt, a plunge into global recession, but also an intensification of exploitation and a general deterioration of the living conditions of the proletariat. While arms companies may well reap substantial profits along the way, the economy, from the point of view of global capital, will be weighed down by an immense waste of resources; capital will be sterilised in unproductive arms stocks. At best, these weapons can only rust; at worst, they can kill and destroy, generalising the policy of ‘scorched earth’! In short, this means a greatly increased devaluation of capital, which already generates inflation, attacks and poverty!

Class struggle is a vital necessity

This nightmarish situation must not be accepted by the working class. We, as a class, can only denounce all the preparations for war and all the speeches aimed at mobilising the proletariat and the population behind the ‘nation’ for ‘peace’ and the defence of alleged ‘democratic values’. The working class must be wary of and fight against its false friends on the left and the far left in particular, who are multiplying the most devious speeches. They pile up obstacles to the development of working class consciousness by proposing false alternatives that are ideological traps: either through pacifist mobilisations, thus covering up the responsibility of capitalism, or by openly advocating support for one military camp against the other, justifying the massacre in the name of the ‘lesser evil’. [2] In both cases, the main principles of these ideological poisons are the division of the working class and the defence of capital, and always in the name of ‘democracy’! The traps of ‘defending democracy’ are all the more dangerous as they exploit a real feeling of anger in reaction to the various attacks, such as the numerous demonstrations on 5 April in the United States, channelled into an anti-Trumpist or anti-Musk mobilisations. These same traps are being set with calls to support a series of popular protest movements in many countries such as Turkey, Serbia and South Korea. The aim is to push workers towards the ballot box or bourgeois opposition parties by making them believe that it would be possible to organise capitalist society in a more humane and just way, which is a gross lie: capitalism can no longer be ‘progressive’. Worn down to the bone, it has nothing left to offer! It is indeed bankrupt and increasingly destructive.

The miasma of its decomposition and the social fragmentation it engenders are themselves used for these ideological ends by the ruling class in an attempt to chloroform, to obscure the search for the only viable and possible perspective, the one bequeathed by the experience of the workers’ movement and the class struggle: the perspective of communism.

Clearly, the bourgeoisie is trying to mask the fact that militarisation necessarily goes hand in hand with attacks on the working class. And it is precisely on its own class terrain, in the dynamic of workers' struggles against current and future attacks, that the proletariat will be able to develop its strength and its awareness of the bankruptcy of capitalism. The only way to offer the prospect of a viable alternative society is therefore to refuse and reject the bourgeoisie’s ideological campaigns outright, to fight against the logic imposed against the bloodthirsty monster that is capitalism.

WH, 5 April 2025

[1] China's military manoeuvres and provocations around Taiwan in early April, in response to Trump's irrational decisions and recent provocations over tariffs and his imperialist intentions, are a brutal testament to this.

[2]This is what leads leftists, for example, to openly support the Hamas massacres in Gaza in the name of ‘anti-colonialism’.

In recent months, Trump has been constantly in the spotlight: not a day goes by without him making a statement that confounds the entire planet: his desire to annex Greenland or Panama, his public humiliation of Zelensky, his purge of the administration, the unceremonious dismissal of thousands of federal civil servants, the intimidation of journalists... In just a few weeks, his gangster-like behaviour and brutal exercise of power have made such headlines that the American and world press are now singing their most hypocritical democratic refrains in unison: the ‘greatest democracy in the world’ is supposedly turning into an ‘illiberal regime’ or even a ‘dictatorship’. The bourgeoisie is pushing the envelope very far, as he has already been publicly denounced as a ‘traitor’, a ‘despot’ and a ‘fascist’. Some are even drawing parallels between Trump and Mussolini!

Trump, a fascist?

The more Trump's ineptitude and brutality are exposed, the easier it is for the rest of the bourgeoisie, led by the Democrats, to blame the President and his band of incompetents for the economic and imperialist chaos and the attacks on the working class. The deafening campaign around his 'crazy decisions' and 'authoritarianism' is a classic strategy of the bourgeoisie to make people believe that chaos, barbaric destruction and massacres are the fault of 'irresponsible' or 'delusional' individuals (Trump or Putin today; Hitler, Mussolini or Stalin yesterday...) and not the expression of the historical bankruptcy of the capitalist system.

In reality, the election of Trump in the United States, like that of Milei in Argentina, and the rise of populism almost everywhere in the world, particularly in European countries, are merely the manifestation of the growing difficulty of the various national bourgeoisies to maintain control of their political apparatus under the pressure of rotting capitalism.

The situation today is very different from that of the 1930s. At the end of the First World War, an impressive revolutionary wave swept across Europe. In some countries in particular, Germany, Italy and Russia, the working class was particularly combative and even managed to seize political power in Russia. So much so that after seizing political power in the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, it forced the warmongering bourgeoisies to end the war in order to confront their mortal enemy, not only in Russia, but also and above all in Germany. Unfortunately, this revolutionary wave ended in defeat and led to fierce repression by the bourgeoisie.

In Germany, where the working class suffered more than anywhere else (except Russia) from the consequences of a terrible physical and ideological defeat inflicted by social democracy, Nazism, like fascism in Italy in the 1920s, finally appeared to the German bourgeoisie as the most effective means of completing the crushing of the proletariat and rushing headlong into the extreme militarisation of production necessary for the march towards the Second World War.

In the ‘democratic’ countries, where the bourgeoisie had needed to maintain the weaponry of parliamentary and electoral mystification, it was also engaged in preparing the working class for war and making it accept all the necessary sacrifices,  presenting it with the need to oppose  the threat of fascism and defend democracy: this is the full anti-fascist ideology that traps the working class into supporting struggles that are not on its own terrain and lead it to lining up behind a so-called ‘lesser evil’: the ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie.

Anti-fascism is therefore, just like fascism, a consequence of the physical and ideological crushing of the proletariat. They are part of a period of counter-revolution that leaves the bourgeoisie free to lead the workers into world war.

Is the context comparable with today? Since the end of the counter-revolution, which manifested itself in the events of May 1968 in France and other struggles around the world (from Italy in 1969 to Poland in 1976 and 1980), the working class has not suffered any significant defeats opening the way to a period of counter-revolution. There have been moments of advances in consciousness, periods of stagnation and setbacks of varying degrees, but never a definitive defeat. No comparison can therefore be made with the 1930s, especially since today, breaking with a period of disarray and passivity, a slow revival of militancy and the development of class consciousness has been underway since the end of 2022, manifested in significant struggles on an international scale, in Britain, France and the United States

Populism and anti-fascist campaigns

Unlike fascism, which was a product of the crushing of the proletariat, the current populist wave is an expression of the phase of the decomposition of capitalism. It is no coincidence that populist parties have really developed and achieved such an impact since the beginning of the 21st century. Their development coincides with the expansion of the harmful effects of the decomposition of capitalist society. As the economic crisis intensifies, imperialist confrontations flare up, tensions between factions of the bourgeoisie are exacerbated, rivalries within it become increasingly uncontrollable and, as a result, there is a growing loss of control of the political apparatus. Populist cliques denounce the political elites and dominant factions that monopolise power and propagate thuggish policies that destabilise and that make more irrational the politics of individual states. Populism therefore expresses a reality that is radically different from that of fascism: while it destabilises the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie, it is quite incapable, in the face of a working class that resists attacks, of imposing the sacrifices necessary to prepare for war, let alone a world conflict.

This is why the bourgeoisie uses anti-fascist ideology, through its left-wing factions, to turn populism into a bogeyman, equating it with fascism. The left-wing parties thus aim to divert the momentum of the workers' struggle into an electoral dead end by positioning themselves as the true “bulwark” of democracy and equality, capable of providing an answer to the crisis of capitalism.

The identification of populism with fascism therefore serves above all to enable the left to launch an intense campaign denouncing Trump as the source of economic collapse and warmongering, thus obscuring the historic bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of production. It conceals the harsh truth that attacks on the working class can only multiply.

The trap of demonstrations in defence of the bourgeois state

It is with this in mind that Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Warren, the most ‘radical’ factions of the Democratic Party and the trade unions, have pushed workers to take to the streets en masse in many American cities, rallying them behind the movement organised around the slogan ‘Hands off!’ to denounce Trump's ‘autocracy’. These factions of the bourgeoisie took the lead and channelled the protest as growing working class anger emerged, not only against the dismissal of tens of thousands of civil servants but also against the savage cuts in all social budgets, including education and health services, and the spectacular rise in the cost of living. To make matters worse and further drown out the proletariat's response to these attacks, piecemeal demands were added and juxtaposed, from the LGBT movement to charitable organisations, all of a bourgeois ideological nature, under the banner of defending ‘citizens’ rights’ and ‘democracy.’

The ultimate aim was to divert the workers' combativity, to prevent the working class from mobilising on its own class terrain, where solidarity, collective reflection and the unity of the working class are built. This is also why the trade unions are calling on the dismissed civil servants to mobilise, alone and cut off from the rest of the working class, against Elon Musk, who has been set up as the ‘embodiment of evil’, the source of all ills. The ‘Hands off!’ movement has promised to amplify the ‘response’ on this rotten and prepared ideological terrain in the coming weeks, while Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are stepping up their meetings and rallies.

In opposition to the campaigns to defend the democratic state, the American working class must lead the fight against layoffs in federal agencies and education, as well as in companies, against the reduced pensions indexed to collapsing stock market indices, against the reduction of social assistance and the dismantling of social security on its own class terrain, rejecting divisions between its different sectors. Faced with the intensification of the crisis, the ‘war effort’ and all the attacks imposed by the bourgeoisie, faced with the effects of decomposition, it is essential that the working class, in the United States as elsewhere, develop a united struggle against the attacks and sacrifices that the crisis and war are imposing on it. The capitalist system has nothing to offer it. The empty promises of the bourgeoisie are only there to better shackle it to further exploitation.

Camille, 21 April 2025

While NATO states on its website: “NATO condemns in the strongest terms Russia's war against Ukraine. The Alliance remains resolute in its commitment to support Ukraine and to help it exercise its fundamental right to self-defence,” Trump humiliates and berates the Ukrainian president in front of the world's media, even blaming him for the barbarism in Ukraine, while renewing ties and entering into negotiations with Putin's Russia. These provocative statements publicly and brutally highlighted the ideological and strategic break between Trump's America and the central axis of NATO policy. Furthermore, Trump cast doubt on the solidarity between NATO countries, the quintessence of the Atlantic Alliance: “If they don't pay, I'm not going to defend them”; “My biggest problem with NATO (...) is that if the United States had a problem and we called France or other countries that I won't name and said ‘We have a problem’, do you think they would come and help us, as they are supposed to do? I'm not so sure...” (France 24, 7.3.25). In a matter of weeks, Donald Trump torpedoed the Atlantic Alliance, politically demolishing the collective defence pact that had united the USA and Europe since 1949. America no longer intended to support its allies in the defence of Ukraine, nor did it even guarantee the unconditional solidarity of the United States in the event of an attack on one of its partners.

The definitive end of the imperialist relations established since 1945

These events have profound historical significance, as they mark the open collapse of the imperialist relations between the major powers that have been in place since 1945. In reality, they are the culmination of a whole process initiated by the collapse of the Eastern bloc at the end of 1989, which also marked the beginning of the period of decomposition. At the time, the ICC pointed out that the collapse of the Soviet bloc would be accompanied by the disintegration of the Western bloc: "The differ­ence, in the coming period, will be that these antagonisms which were previously contained and used by the two great imperialist blocs will now come to the fore. The disappearance of the Russian imperialist gendarme, and that to come of the American gendarme as far as its one-time "partners" are concerned, opens the door to the unleashing of a whole series of more local rivalries”. [1]

The disintegration has been gradual since then, with ups and downs, culminating today in the explicit manifestation of the transatlantic divorce. In their attempt to defend their status as the sole superpower governing the world, the United States initially exploited NATO to support them in their role as world policeman and enable them to keep their ‘partners’ of the Western bloc under control (1st Iraq War, 1991, Afghanistan, 2001), to integrate the Eastern European countries of the former Soviet bloc into their sphere of influence and, most recently, to support Ukraine against the Russian attack, which allowed Washington to counter the European countries' desire for independence at the same time. However, these ambitions emerged in the early 1990s with the manoeuvring of France, the United Kingdom and Germany during the war in the former Yugoslavia and became more pronounced with the refusal of the main European countries in 2003 to participate in the second Iraq war under Bush Jr. More generally, the empowerment of European countries (particularly Germany) has been expressed through a significant reduction in their military contributions to NATO and their broad energy and trade openness towards Russia and China.

Faced with its irreversible decline in the face of the explosion of ‘every man for himself’ and the emergence of China as a challenger, the world's leading power now intends to use its military, economic and political power to impose the defence of its interests, by brute force if necessary, on all other countries, both adversaries and allies. Behind Washington's abandonment of Ukraine, the questioning of transatlantic solidarity within NATO and the rapprochement with Russia, it is the very structure of the world since 1945 that is being swept away.

The irreversibility of the Transatlantic divorce

NATO Secretary General Rutte, like certain European military and political circles, still hopes that Trump's thunderous statements are essentially intended to raise the stakes in a ‘transactional’ negotiation on NATO funding, and that the drastic increase in military budgets decided by European countries will calm Trump's anti-European aggression. While the concrete form and speed of the divorce between the ‘long-standing allies’ remain difficult to predict, various factors confirm that the process is irreversible.

1. “But Trump has politically disarmed NATO, he has stripped it of what makes a collective defence alliance strong: reliability.”[2]. The absolute guarantee of military intervention in support of NATO and the American nuclear umbrella is no longer to be counted on. It’s quite to the contrary, as indicated in a recent Pentagon memo, the ‘Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,’ based on guidelines from Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, which the Washington Post (31 March 2025) was able to consult. It specifies that in the event of aggression, Europe will only be able to count on non-essential troop reinforcements against China. Furthermore, Trump continues to claim Greenland from Denmark, as well as the annexation of Canada, both of which are NATO partners. No wonder Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney concluded that the United States was no longer a reliable partner! Whatever the subsequent reversals, doubts have been sown about the indestructibility of the Transatlantic Alliance and American support for Europe.

2. The irreversibility of the divorce is also highlighted on an ideological level. The conclusion of the Transatlantic Pact and the founding of NATO after 1945 were ideologically justified by the defence of ‘Western democracy’. Trump's questioning of unwavering support for Ukraine in favour of a rapprochement with ‘dictator Putin’, and Vice President Vance’s attack at the Munich Forum on the concept of democracy defended by the European bourgeoisie, while the Trump administration continues to support populist and far-right parties in Europe, completely tear apart this common ideological cover. Trump is removing all ideological glue from the Atlantic Alliance.

3. A crucial ally of the United States against the USSR for more than fifty years, Europe has lost its geostrategic importance with the rise of China, becoming above all an economic competitor and a source of dissident countries, even enemies, in armed conflicts. “We are also here today to state clearly and unambiguously an unavoidable strategic reality: the United States can no longer be primarily focused on the security of Europe. The United States faces direct threats to our own homeland. We must — and are — prioritising the security of our own borders. (…) This will require our European allies to fully engage and take responsibility for their own conventional security on the continent."[3] Europe, and therefore the Transatlantic pact, is no longer a priority, or even a necessity, for American imperialism, and the Trump administration is expressing this without diplomatic embellishment.

4. Among European countries, differences are still emerging as to whether Transatlantic ties should be maintained: some, such as Italy's Meloni and Poland's Tusk, hope that substantial arms spending by European countries will preserve the essence of the alliance and calm the Trump administration's anti-European aggression; others, however, see the final breakdown of the Transatlantic link and are pushing for the development of an alternative policy to that of the United States. The latter will undoubtedly exploit the situation by increasing pressure to break up the ‘European pole’. Trump will therefore tend to develop a ‘transactional’ policy that is more favourable to certain countries, such as Poland, and less favourable to others, such as Germany.

5. “Listen, let's be honest, the European Union was designed to screw the United States” (statement by Trump, 26 February 2025). The proliferation of tariffs imposed by the United States on imports from European ‘allies’, accused by Trump of treating the United States much worse than certain ‘enemies’, as well as European ‘retaliation’, will only exacerbate tensions between the two sides of the Atlantic and constitute the economic aspect of the divorce. This trade war clearly illustrates how the European ‘partners’ of yesteryear are now seen as rivals to ‘America First’. The imposition of huge military investment on European countries due to the end of the American military umbrella is aimed in particular at forcing all EU countries to ‘waste’ part of their economic reserves on developing their military capabilities so that they lose their competitive edge vis-à-vis the United States. In addition, changes in customs tariffs are also a potential means of sowing discord between European countries.

The United States at the head of a war of all against all

The questioning of imperialist relations between major powers not only has significant historical significance, but will above all lead to a tremendous acceleration of every man for himself, irrationality and chaos at the global level.

The Trump administration's priority objective, in line with Biden's policy, is to use all economic and military means to prevent China from threatening the declining supremacy of the United States. To this end, Trump is seeking to detach Russia from China and, to do so, he is prepared to sacrifice Ukraine and the stability of Europe, and even the cohesion of the EU. However, while Russia can only welcome the rapprochement initiated by the United States, given its mistrust of China's growing economic stranglehold on Siberia, at the same time, it is wary of the fluctuating nature of Trump's decisions, hence the reluctance of the Putin faction to commit to ending the fighting on the basis of the ‘deal’ proposed by Washington. In fact, Trump is taking a gamble, without being certain of success and without concern for the consequences. In this sense, Trump is a caricature of how the bourgeoisie in decomposition develops its imperialist policy: ‘taking a gamble’ with a short-term vision, without worrying about the longer-term consequences.

One major consequence of the Transatlantic divorce is undoubtedly the widespread explosion of arms spending and, more generally, militarism in Europe. Meetings between major European countries are multiplying to increase military production and ensure support for Ukraine. Across Europe, increases in military budgets for the coming years are being announced: this is the case in Britain, France[4], Germany[5], and the EU is announcing support of 800 billion euros for the next 10 years. Germany has voted to reform its constitution to remove a clause that prohibits it from running public deficits so that it can borrow to increase military spending. However, differences are already emerging between states: there are nuances between France and Great Britain on the one hand and Italy and Poland on the other, for example, on what to do about Ukraine; similarly, what will be the attitude of the other European powers towards Germany, the EU's leading economic force, which also wants to become the EU's main power? In the Netherlands, the prime minister has been outvoted within his own majority on commitments to Ukraine, with populists arguing that money should first be spent on the Dutch people. If strategic rapprochement emerges with the United States and within the EU, the trend is towards the end of stable military alliances, a dynamic that exacerbates the ‘every man for himself’ mentality in the phase of decomposition and is already widely evident in various conflicts around the world.

By abandoning Ukraine, torpedoing the Transatlantic Pact, turning towards Russia, in short, by destroying the last foundations of the international order that had survived the fall of the USSR, the United States will face an imperialist world that will be even more hostile and less controllable, because nothing stable will come out of this ‘upheaval of alliances’ that can never produce lasting ones. In fact, Trump has told the world: the word of the US government is worthless, you cannot trust us. Clearly, he and his clique are not seeking to establish solid international alliances, but rather bilateral ‘deals’ that are valid ‘right now’. Thus, after the successive failures of the American bourgeoisie to impose its order and limit the every man for himself mentality, Trump has acknowledged the impossibility of halting this dynamic, but instead has placed himself at its head by declaring open war of each against all. This is the real vandalistic ‘strategy’ of the new American administration: “The world order has become a weapon used against us. It is once again up to us to create a free world out of chaos. This will require an America (...) that puts its own interests above all else.”[6] From now on, there will be no real turning back.

For the working class, the Transatlantic divorce and the ‘upheaval of alliances’ fundamentally herald two things: a significant intensification of attacks on its living conditions, caused by the exacerbation of militarism, and the multiplication of horrific war confrontations, such as those that massacre thousands of people every month in Ukraine or Palestine. Faced with campaigns aimed at mobilising them in defence of the democratic state, faced with the war of each against all’ workers must instead maintain their unity on their class terrain in order to fight against the attacks of the various bourgeoisies.

R. Havanais / 20.4.2025

The barbaric wars in Ukraine and the Middle East seem to go on endlessly, as do the many wars in Africa, in particular those in Congo and Sudan. Meanwhile, European powers are more or less abandoned by their former US “protector” and demand a significant increase in military spending for their ‘defence’, which will undoubtedly involve increasing attacks on workers’ living standards. Tensions between the US and China continue to sharpen. So the question of war and the struggle against it is posed more and more acutely for all those who aim to defend the international interests of the working class.

However, any attempt to develop a clear position against war today is immediately confronted by a number of obstacles.

On the one hand, there are the sheep in wolves clothing: the organisations of the ‘far left’ of capitalist politics who present themselves as authentic revolutionaries. Foremost among these are the Trotskyist oganisations, and a number of these have been moving even further to the left to soak up any real questioning about the nature of war today[1]. The leftist organisations of the bourgeoisie present themselves today as real defenders of internationalism. But their internationalism is only a cover for their downright chauvinist credentials. Thus some leftist groups (including anarchists) call for support for Ukraine as the ‘lesser evil’ in the fight against Putin’s Russia; others still consider Russia today as some kind of anti-imperialist force, and support its war against NATO, such as the World Socialist Web Site. But a more ‘radical’ Trotskyist group, the Revolutionary Communist Party (formerly International Marxist Tendency) seems to take an internationalist stand:  “We cannot support either side in this war, because it is a reactionary war on both sides. In the final analysis, it is a conflict between two groups of imperialists”.  But towards the war in the Middle East this internationalism of the RCP has completely disappeared: “From day one of this horrific conflict, we have participated in the solidarity movement for Palestinian liberation”. What leftists can never put forward is the conclusion already drawn by Rosa Luxemburg during the First World War: in the decadent period of capitalism, the era of “unbridled imperialism”, all nations and all wars are imperialist. Furthermore, all wars are links in the same chain of destruction: for example, those who support the military forces fighting for “Palestinian liberation” necessarily support the “Axis of Resistance” sustained by Iran, which in turn is a supplier of deadly drones to Russia in its attack on Ukraine.

But there is a whole landscape of political forces which inhabit an area we often refer to as the “swamp”, “that intermediate zone which brings together all those who oscillate between the camp of the proletariat and that of the bourgeoisie, who are constantly on the way to one camp or the other”[2].

Faced with the war in Ukraine, a number of groups, mostly from an anarchist background, defend an unambiguously internationalist position of opposition to both camps, strongly criticising those anarchist groups who have formed ‘autonomous units’ within the Ukrainian army. This internationalist position was the starting point for the Prague ‘anti-war’ conference which we attended last summer[3]. But as we also saw in Prague, anarchism is at odds with a coherent political framework based on the working class as the only historical subject capable of overthrowing capitalism and thus ending all wars. They are often tempted by the search for immediate results based on the activism of small groups (for example, attempt to obstruct or sabotage the production or supply of weapons). And in some cases, this kind of activism spills over into outright leftism, as in the case of the Anarchist Communist Group, which rejected both Israel and Hamas from the beginning of the war but at the same time publicised the activities of “Palestine Action”[4], an ‘action group’ which has clearly chosen its camp.  Revolutionaries need to intervene actively in this landscape, exposing its confusions and pushing forward to a higher level the clarity it has attained. But what about the ‘revolutionary milieu’ itself: the organisations of the only tradition which has maintained a consistent internationalism for the last century or more, the international communist left?

Imperialist war and the tasks of the communist left

 Like the proletariat as a whole, which Marx in "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right" termed “a class of civil society which is not a class of civil society”, revolutionary organisations are an “alien body” inside this system, a living expression of the communist future, and yet they live and breathe inside this system, and this means that they are never immune to inhaling the poison of the dominant ideology.

The disease that this ideology brings with it is known as opportunism – adapting to the underlying assumptions of this system (such as the idea that nations are something eternal and above the division of society into classes) and watering down principles in order to gain an immediate echo within the masses.

Bordigists and the national question

The penetration of opportunism into the existing milieu of the communist left is most obvious when we look at the response of the various Bordigist groups (International Communist Parties) to the war in the Middle East. Having taken a clear position on the Ukraine war, their statements on Gaza and the Palestinian question, like many groups in the swamp, are often highly ambiguous, tending towards support for the struggle of the “Palestinian masses” specifically against the Israeli occupation, or demanding that Israeli workers first mobilise in support of the Palestinians before they can join in a common class battle against the exploiters of in both camps. As we show in a new article in International Review 173, the Bordigists’ confusions on the national question have deep historical roots, reflecting a real difficulty in recognising that capitalism is no longer, and not anywhere, an ascendant system with possibilities of national or bourgeois revolutions as it was in the days of the Communist Manifesto[5].

Concessions to bourgeois ideology and practices, the distinguishing feature of the ‘right wing’ in the workers’ movement, have always been accompanied by sectarianism towards the ‘left wing’ of the movement, towards those whose adherence to principles and capacity to understand the profound changes in the situation of capitalism and the proletariat is an irritant to those who want to carry on with their opportunist schemes. This is clearly the case with the Bordigists, who have almost always made refusal to discuss with other currents of the revolutionary movement a new ‘eternal principle’, one which is totally at odds with the practice of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left in the 1930s, who always argued that the confrontation of political positions was a vital need for the development and ultimate unification of the revolutionary movement.

When the Ukraine war broke out in 2022, the ICC called for a joint declaration in defence of internationalist principles by all the genuine groups of the communist left[6]. This was subsequently followed by other appeals (around the war in the Middle East, the bourgeois campaigns around the ‘defence of democracy’ against the populist right). With some exceptions, whose importance we don’t want to diminish, these appeals have been systematically rejected by the other groups.

The response (or in most cases, the non-response) of the Bordigists was to be expected, since it fits in with their classically sectarian idea that their various organisations have already achieved the exalted position of being the one and only class party. But we must also note that the Internationalist Communist Tendency, whose programmatic positions, especially on the national question, are much closer to ours than the Bordigists, also rejected our appeal, as their predecessors have done at other moments of acute imperialist conflict, such as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the war in ex-Yugoslavia, etc. A joint declaration of the communist left was rejected on various grounds: of being too general and ignoring important differences of analysis, because it was not sent to groups which we define as parasitic but which they want to accept as part of the communist left (eg the IGCL[7]), and above all because their main concern has been to bring together a wider range of internationalist groups and individuals. Hence their No War But the Class War initiative, forming groups on a reduced set of principles in order to carry out propaganda or agitation against imperialist war[8].

For us, this was a new case of sectarianism towards the left accompanied by an opportunist approach to the swamp – the NWBCW initiative was particularly aimed at the anarchist milieu, and prior to the Prague conference was offered as a way forward for all its very heterogeneous components, the majority of whom see opposition to war in completely activist manner. In fact, as we argued in an article looking back at the conference, one of the more positive elements to come out of this gathering was the tentative beginnings of political cooperation between the ICC and the Communist Workers' Organisation (the ICT's affiliate in the UK) in putting forward a critique of individual or small group activism based on a clear recognition that opposition to imperialist war can only grow out of the mass struggle of the proletariat in defence of its own class interests[9].

In our view, this fragile moment of unity between the forces of the communist left (which encountered real hostility on the part of some of the ‘organisers’ of the conference) was a vindication of the approach adopted by the left wing, in particular Lenin and the Bolsheviks, at the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences during the First World War. The Bolsheviks understood the need to participate in these conferences despite the fact that they brought together pacifists and centrists as well as consistent internationalists. The essential issue was to be present to put forward a rigorous critique of pacifism and centrism and to outline a real internationalist position (which at that moment was best expressed by the slogan “turn the imperialist war into a civil war”). The same conclusion can be applied to today: yes, we must go out and encounter all those who want to fight against imperialist war, gather together with them and discuss with them, but without making any concessions to the groups’ confused notion of organisation, their political incoherence and concessions to bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology. To do this, a unified stance by the groups of the communist left is an essential point of departure.

This is not to deny that there are important disagreements among the groups of the communist left, such as whether the current war drive is seeing the reconstitution of imperialist blocs and heading towards a third world war, or whether the dominant tendency is towards an imperialist chaos which is no less dangerous. These are points for discussion which we will return to in a second article, which will focus on the significance of the ‘divorce’ between the USA and Europe. But what Prague showed is that the communist left is really the only current capable of addressing the problem of war from a class perspective. In our view, applying this perspective in today’s conditions leads to the conclusion that the possibility of a mass proletarian opposition to imperialist war will come predominantly from the workers’ struggles against the attacks on their living standards demanded by the economic crisis. The fact that these attacks are more and more being accompanied by calls for sacrifice in order to build up the war economy will certainly be a factor in enabling workers to draw the link between the struggle for economic demands and the question of imperialist war, and ultimately to politicise their struggles, but this remains a long-drawn out process which should not lead to impatient actions which tend to substitute for the necessary mass  struggle of the proletariat. After decades of retreat in the class struggle, the working class can only recover its sense of itself as a class – as a world force which has no homeland to defend – by going through the hard school of the defence of its living standards. The organisations of the communist left will certainly play a key part in the recovery of class identity, and ultimately of the perspective of revolution, but they can only do so as distinct political organisations based on a coherent platform, and not as loose ‘fronts’ which misleadingly appear to offer the possibility of more immediate success in opposing or even stopping war.

D'nA

Since the beginning of the year, the world has seen a spectacular resurgence of demonstrations, often politically motivated. These movements, the likes of which we have not seen in a long time, are an unmistakeable sign of political and social crises in various countries: South Korea, Serbia, Turkey, Israel and, more recenty, the USA[1] But should we necessarily rejoice at seeing these events unfold around the world? Revolutionaries know that “tout ce qui bouge n’est pas rouge” - "not everything that moves is red’"- and it is important to see what lies behind them and analyse the real political source of these movements.

South Korea

In a country with a large working class which has experienced struggles in the past and where there is a group of the Communist Left, President Yoon Suk-yeol's power grab on December 4th led to major demonstrations, with those on one side defending the president's coup and those on the other side supporting his impeachment and arrest. At the head of the demonstrations, MPs from the main parties in the Korean parliament rallied their supporters, awaiting the decision of the Constitutional Court.

It is clear that theses demonstrations have no relevance to working class interests whatsoever and what we see on either side is nothing more than manoeuvres in support of one bourgeois clique against another. This situation is the result of the political deadlock between bourgeois cliques in the parliament, who have been unable to pass a budget due to a lack of a sufficient majority. It was this that led to the president's attempted coup. The resulting political chaos clearly illustrates the situation of the Korean bourgeoisie, which is deeply divided and fragmented with all parties acting in their own interests, as illustrated by the assassination attempt in January 2024 on the main leader of the opposition party and the coup on December 4th.

The radicalisation of right-wing factions towards a Trump-inspired conspiracy ideology, the grotesque episodes that unfolded during the president's arrest by the police, an episode of presidential impeachment that has already occurred three times since 2004, followed by the dismissal of the interim president due to his lack of cooperation with the parliament, show the weight of decomposition on the ruling class of this country.

“Cooperation with the Democratic Party, a faction of the capitalist class, will only bury the workers’ struggle. Proposing a reform of capitalism through ‘social reform’ without fighting the capitalist system itself obscures the fact that the cause of the current crisis and tragedy is the capitalist system and propagates the illusion of a healthier capitalism” (Internationalist Communist Perspective, “The dismissal of Yoon Seok-yeol is the beginning of a class struggle against the capitalist regime and the capitalist system!”, 04.04.2025)[2].

The challenge for the Korean working class is to not let itself be drawn into defending one bourgeois camp or the other, in a country that will inevitably suffer from the impending recession following the measures taken by Trump and his clique, which could have a particularly severe impact on the South Korean economy.

Turkey

The arrest on 19 March of Ekrem Imamoglu, leader of the opposition to President Erdogan’s Republican People's Party (CHP), and until recently mayor of Istanbul, comes as the culmination of a crackdown on the opposition in the run-up to the next presidential election - Imamoglu having been nominated as a candidate for this election by his party, a member of the Socialist International. There was an immediate reaction in the streets with the largest mobilisation since the attempted destruction of Gezi Park in Istanbul in 2013 to make way for property development. But the slogans put forward show that the CHP has control over these demonstrations: they are about “defending Turkish democracy” threatened by an “authoritarian government” that has stage-managed elections in which President Erdogan would choose his opponents after eliminating his most dangerous rivals. They are thus focused on defending the legitimacy of the election process. In response to this, we support the conclusion of Internationalist Voice, a group from the proletarian milieu, which has published a well-documented article on the developments in Turkey: "Only through class struggle, and from the class terrain, can we repel the attacks of the bourgeoisie. We must extend our struggle independently of all bourgeois factions and movements, directly opposing capitalism. Our interest does not lie simply in a change within the ruling class - i.e., in replacing Erdoğan with İmamoğlu - but in the class struggle itself." [3].

Here again, this is a struggle between bourgeois cliques, completely alien to the class interests of the proletariat.  Turkey's catastrophic economic situation is dragging the Turkish working class into a spiral of never-ending poverty, which will in all likelihood be exacerbated by the imperialist conflicts for which the entire Turkish bourgeoisie is preparing: clashes with Israel in Syria, with Russia in the Caucasus and Central Asia, with the Kurds in Iraq and Syria and with Greece in the rivalry for supremacy in the Aegean Sea... The spiral of war in the region and the Turkish bourgeoisie's dependence on its armed forces will not be altered in any way by a democratic change of the faction in power in Turkey; the CHP still sees Kemal Atatürk as its guiding light. So, to fight for one bourgeois clique against another when the capitalist system as a whole is in deep crisis and there is a whirlwind of phenomena linked to the decomposition of the world capitalist order, is to ask the working class to fight over who will lead it into poverty and war!

Serbia

The collapse of the roof of the Novi Sad railway station in Serbia (with 16 dead) on November 1st, a result of major structural defects linked to the corruption that is gripping the country, led to a series of giant demonstrations whose motives were ‘the fight against corruption’ and ‘to live in a country where there is a justice system and it works'. These huge demonstrations, such as the one on 15 March, brought together a large mass of people with diverse political allegiances, ranging from democrats opposed to the authoritarianism of Serbian President Vucic to pro-Russian ultra-nationalists. Farmers even joined the procession with their tractors.

The diverse nature of the participants and the motives behind these protests, as well as the opposition's support for the president's party in the form of actions within Parliament (such as the setting off of smoke bombs in Parliament on March 4th), make it clear that this is not about defending the interests of the working class, which is drowned out by the mass of demonstrators who are in fact defending democracy and demanding a better judicial system for the country. This inter-classist movement at its core is entirely under the control of bourgeois cliques who want to force the president to resign and organise new elections. It is on a terrain that is completely alien and opposed to the struggle of the working class. In a country destabilised by a profound economic crisis and which is the battleground of various imperialist influences - the ultra-nationalists support Russia, the opposition wants to join the European Union, while China is building the new railway line between Belgrade and Budapest - the working class must more than ever defend its own interests, independently of any bourgeois faction. The working class in Serbia will have to break free from this movement as soon as possible: fighting against corruption in the capitalist system means fighting against the side-effects of its bankruptcy, not against the system itself.

The struggles are ahead of us

The proletariat has only its unity and consciousness in the fight against the bourgeoisie. Supporting one bourgeois faction that is more ‘progressive’ than the others was certainly a strategy that Marx and Engels advocated during the 1848 revolution, but the goal at that time was primarily for the national project of the bourgeoisie to be realised and for the working class to develop and unify in a context where capitalism was in its ascendant phase, in its full development. This vision is now completely obsolete in view of the historical bankruptcy of the capitalist system: all factions of the bourgeoisie are now reactionary and the working class has no interest in supporting any one of them against the others. The working class must maintain its political autonomy and defend its own class interests without mixing them up with those of the bourgeois factions whose raison d'être is to prevent any development of the class struggle. In any case, it is illusory to want to fight corruption or demand more ‘democracy’ in a world where the main aim is to maximise profits and where the ruling political power is everywhere a class dictatorship!

In South Korea, Turkey, Serbia and elsewhere, the challenge today is to defend our class interests faced with worsening living and working conditions, redundancies, the drive to re-arm and the ultimate war of each against all. No bourgeois faction is able to defend our interests! The most concentrated and experienced parts of the working class, especially those in western Europe and the USA, must set an example of deciding on our own methods of struggle: uniting around the defence of our living standards and working conditions; fighting against the effects of the economic crisis and the warmongering policies of all the bourgeoisies; organising in demonstrations to build solidarity and engaging in the most widespread strikes possible in order to develop a balance of forces in our favour. Only then will we be able to have a clear understanding of what the stakes really are, who are our friends and enemies, how to be able to push back the state and the ruling class and what are the political perspectives open to the working class. And what is certain is that we will clearly not achieve this by defending the capitalist state and bourgeois democracy!

HG (24 April 2025)