For the working class, a class whose consciousness is a vitally important weapon[1], learning from its own experience is of immense importance. Every time it reacts on its own terrain, on a broad scale, united and in solidarity and above all with a revolutionary impetus, it gives rise to important lessons for the future, lessons the class must understand and make use of in future struggles.

This was the case with the Paris Commune of 1871, after which Marx and Engels realised that the working class, in seizing power, could not use the bourgeois state to transform society towards communism. It had to destroy this state and construct a new way of organising society, with elected officials, instantly revocable.

This was also the case with the revolution in Russia in 1905, this year being its 120th anniversary. In this case, there was an even more valuable lesson learnt with the emergence of the mass strike and the creation of its organs of power: the workers' councils (soviets in Russian), which Lenin described as the “finally discovered form of the dictatorship of the proletariat”.

It is to this experience that we want to devote this article, to see how it can help us to understand the current dynamic of class struggle, which the ICC has described as a historic ‘rupture’ with that of the past decades.

January 1905

Before looking at the dynamics of the Russian Revolution of 1905, we need to briefly recall the international and historical context in which this revolution gained momentum. The last decades of the 19th century were characterised by the economic development that was clearly evident throughout Europe. It was against this backdrop that Tsarist Russia, a country whose economy was still marked by considerable backwardness, became the ideal location for the export of large amounts of capital to set up medium and large-scale industries. In the space of a few decades, the economy underwent a profound transformation. In Russia at the end of the 19th century, the growth of capitalism led to a high concentration of Russian workers located in a few large industrial regions. This greatly fostered the search for solidarity and the spreading of its struggle. It was these structural features of the economy which explained the revolutionary vitality of a young proletariat immersed in a deeply backward country where the peasant economy was predominant.

In January 1905, two workers at the Putilov factories in Petersburg were sacked. A wave of solidarity strikes was launched, and a petition for political freedoms, the right to education, the 8-hour day, opposition to taxes, etc., was drawn up to be taken to the Tsar in a mass demonstration. "Thousands of workers - not Social-Democrats, but loyal God-fearing subjects - led by the priest Gapon, streamed from all parts of the capital to its centre, to the square in front of the Winter Palace, to submit a petition to the tsar. The workers carried icons. In a letter to the Tsar, their then leader, Gapon, had guaranteed his personal safety and asked him to appear before the people."[2]

It all came to a head when, on arriving at the Winter Palace with their request to the Tsar, the workers were attacked by the troops who "attacked the crowd with drawn swords. They fired on the unarmed workers, who on their bended knees implored the Cossacks to allow them to go to the Tsar. Over one thousand were killed and over two thousand wounded on that day, according to police reports. The indignation of the workers was indescribable.”[3]

It was this profound indignation of the workers of Petersburg towards the man they called ‘Little Father’, who had responded to their plea with deadly weapons, that gave rise the revolutionary struggles of January. A very rapid change of mood of the proletariat occurred in this period: "A tremendous wave of strikes swept the country from end to end, convulsing the entire body of the nation […] The movement involved something like a million men and women. For almost two months, without any plan, in many cases without advancing any claims, stopping and starting, obedient only to the instinct of solidarity, the strike ruled the land.”[4]

This act of going on strike without any specific demands and in broad solidarity, was both an expression of and an active factor in the maturation, within the Russan proletariat of the time, of the consciousness of being a class and of the need as such to confront its class enemy. The January general strike was followed by a period of continuing struggles for economic demands that came and went across the country. This period was less spectacular but just as important. Bloody clashes broke out in Warsaw, barricades were erected in Lodz and the sailors of the battleship Potemkin in the Black Sea mutinied. This whole period paved the way for the second major period of the revolution.

October 1905

"This second great action of the proletariat already bears a character essentially different from that of the first one in January. The element of political consciousness already plays a much bigger role. Here also, to be sure, the immediate occasion for the outbreak of the mass strike was a subordinate and apparently accidental thing: the conflict of the railwaymen with the management over the pension fund. But the general rising of the industrial proletariat which followed upon it was conducted in accordance with clear political ideas. The prologue of the January strike was a procession to the Tsar to ask for political freedom: the watchword of the October strike ran away with the constitutional comedy of Tsarism! And thanks to the immediate success of the general strike, to the Tsar’s manifesto of October 30, the movement does not flow back on itself, as in January but rushes over outwardly in the eager activity of newly acquired political freedom. Demonstrations, meetings, a young press, public discussions".[5]

A qualitative change occurred in October with the formation of the Petersburg Soviet, which was to become a landmark in the history of the international workers' movement. Following the extension of the typographers' strike to the railways and telegraphs, the workers took the decision in a general assembly to form the Soviet which was to become the nerve centre of the revolution: “The Soviet came into being as a response to an objective need - a need born of the course of events. It was an organisation which was authoritative and yet had no traditions; which could immediately involve a scattered mass of hundreds of thousands of people”.[6]

December 1905

"The fermentation after the brief constitutional period and the gruesome awakening finally leads in December to the outbreak of the third general mass strike throughout the empire. This time its course and its outcome are altogether different from those in the two earlier cases. Political action does not change into economic action as in January, but it no longer achieves a rapid victory as in October. The attempts of the Tsarist camarilla with real political freedom are no longer made, and revolutionary action therewith, for the first time, and along its whole length, knocked against the strong wall of the physical violence of absolutism".[7]

The capitalist bourgeoisie, frightened by the movement of the proletariat, lined up behind the Tsar. The government did not apply the liberal laws it had just granted. The leaders of the Petrograd Soviet were arrested but the struggle continued in Moscow: "The climax of the 1905 Revolution came in the December uprising in Moscow. For nine days a small number of rebels, of organised and armed workers - there were not more than eight thousand - fought against the Tsar’s government, which dared not trust the Moscow garrison. In fact, it had to keep it locked up, and was able to quell the rebellion only by bringing in the Semenovsky Regiment from St. Petersburg.”[8]

So what was the dynamic at work in 1905? That of the mass strike, of that “ocean of phenomena” (Luxemburg) made up of strikes, demonstrations, solidarity, discussions, economic and political demands, in a word all the expressions that characterise the struggle of the working class, manifesting themselves at the same time as the product of a maturation of the consciousness of the workers, a maturation that took place during the events themselves, but also, and above all, the fruit of a subterranean maturation, of an accumulation of experiences and of a deep reflection that at a certain moment became very pertinent. In fact, the events of 1905 did not come out of nowhere, but were the product of the accumulation of a succession of experiences and reflections that had shaken Russia since the end of the nineteenth century. As Rosa Luxemburg stated, "The January mass strike was without doubt carried through under the immediate influence of the gigantic general strike, which in December 1904 broke out in the Caucasus, in Baku, and for a long time kept the whole of Russia in suspense. The events of December in Baku were on their part only the last and powerful ramification of those tremendous mass strikes which, like a periodic earthquake, shook the whole of south Russia, and whose prologue was the mass strike in Batum in the Caucasus in March 1902. This first mass strike movement in the continuous series of present revolutionary eruptions is finally separated by five or six years from the great general strike of the textile workers in St. Petersburg in 1896 and 1897.

The “rupture”, a product of subterranean maturation

This concept of the subterranean maturation of consciousness is found difficult to accept by a large proportion of groups in the proletarian political milieu, but also by a certain number of our contacts or sympathisers. Yet it has its roots in the writings of Marx[9], while Luxemburg referred to the “old mole”, and Lenin did so too,[10] While Trotsky, does not use quite the same vocabulary as the ICC to describe the phenomenon of ‘subterranean maturation’ of consciousness within the proletariat, he makes this very clear in his History of the Russian Revolution and the following passage illustrates this perfectly: "The immediate causes of the events of a revolution are changes in the state-of-mind of the conflicting classes. […]Changes in the collective consciousness have naturally a semi-concealed character. Only when they have attained a certain degree of intensity do the new moods and ideas break to the surface in the form of mass activities".

But, above all, the essence of the processes of subterranean maturation is confirmed in all the important moments in the struggle of the working class. We saw it in 1905, we saw it again in 1917 in Russia, where the October revolution was preceded by strikes against the war, and we have also seen it at work at historic moments closer to home. It was evident in 1980 in Poland with the strike movement that saw “the re-emergance” of the mass strike on the historical stage. The Polish workers had already taken part in important periods of struggle in 1970 and 1976, struggles that had suffered a brutal and bloody repression at the hands of the Stalinist regime. So, armed with these experiences, which contributed to a real subterranean maturation of consciousness, the workers were able in 1980 to launch themselves into a powerful and immediate struggle, whose organisational links and co-ordinating groups across the country provided the basis for the mass strike. Faced with this situation, the authorities were paralysed and were forced to negotiate and grant concessions before then responding with repression when the struggle had subsided.[11]

It is in the tradition of all these experiences of the workers' movement that we interpreted the strikes in Britain in 2022 as the result of a new maturation of class consciousness, not as a random flash in the pan, but as the product of a deep reflection that we see continuing with the return of working class struggle after decades of apathy and lethargy. We have referred to these movements as a ‘rupture’ to emphasise this as a phenomenon of historical and international significance. The major struggles that followed this first manifestation and resurgence of workers' combativity, in France, the United States, elsewhere in the world and most recently in Belgium, confirm that the strikes in Britain were not a local and passing phenomenon but the result of this subterranean maturation that was finally coming to the surface. The various characteristics of the movements that have taken place over the last three years provide confirmation of our analysis:

- The widespread slogan “enough is enough” expressed the long-held feeling that all the promises made in the aftermath of the 2008 ‘financial crisis’ had turned out to be lies and that it was high time workers started making their own demands;

- The slogans ‘we're all in the same boat’ and ‘the working class is back’ expressed a tendency in the working class (still embryonic but real) to rediscover the feeling of being a class with its own collective existence and distinct interests, despite decades of atomisation inflicted by the generalised decomposition of capitalist society and aided by the deliberate  destruction of many traditional industrial sites that employed an experienced working class (mines, steel, etc.).

- In the French movement against the raising of pensionable age to 64, the powerful slogan “you say 64, we give you 68”expressed the reigniting of a collective memory, the memory of the importance of the mass strikes of 1968.

- The international development of minorities tending towards internationalist and communist positions where the majority of these elements and their efforts to unite are less the product of the immediate class struggle and more about raising questions about war, which is proof that the current class movements express something more than just immediate concerns about falling living standards. They express, often in a still confused way, concern about the future offered to us by this system of production, capitalism.

- Finally, further evidence that there is a process of maturation is reflected in the efforts of the bourgeoisie to impose its leadership and sew confusion within the working class through the unions and leftist organisations.  By conveying radical messages to the working class, it aims to subvert its thinking and strengthen its own control.

We are only at the very beginning of this renewal of combativity, of the resumption of the struggles of the class on its own terrain, of an accumulation of new experiences which could lead the class into radicalising its struggles to the point of giving them a more political character, that would call into question the system as such and not just the extent of its attacks and their immediate effects.

This will be a long, difficult process, full of obstacles, because we are no longer in the same situation as 1905 in Russia, when in the space of a year the class could go from a simple petition to the Tsar to an openly insurrectionary phase. The present situation is that of the decomposition of capitalism, the final historical phase of capitalism which is demonstrated not only in the putrefaction of the whole political life of the bourgeoisie, but which also weighs on the working class through phenomena whose effects are ideologically exploited by the ruling class to severely and insidiously undermine workers' consciousness:

“- solidarity and collective action are faced with the atomisation of ‘look out for number one’;

- the need for organisation confronts social decomposition, the disintegration of the relationships which form the basis for all social life;

- the proletariat’s confidence in the future and in its own strength is constantly sapped by the all-pervasive despair and nihilism within society;

- consciousness, lucidity, coherent and unified thought, the taste for theory, have a hard time making headway in the midst of the flight into illusions, drugs, sects, mysticism, the rejection or destruction of thought which are characteristic of our epoch.”[12]

So, we must not be impatient, expecting a confirmation of this process at every moment. Revolutionaries have to intervene inside the class with clarity by taking a long-term view of the struggle and above all in helping minorities to understand what are the stakes of the situation and the alternative and inevitable consequences: either the bourgeoisie's threat to humanity's survival or the possibility for the working class to impose its perspective, that of a society without classes, without exploitation, without war, without the destruction of the planet, in short, a truly communist society.

Helis, 22 June 2025

All over the world, the bourgeoisie is making the proletariat pay for the economic crisis of its system and the expansion of militarism through a deluge of attacks on workers. It is this accumulation of attacks, leading to a process of massive impoverishment, that is now provoking ever-growing anger among the population, particularly the working class, and a determination to fight back and refuse to accept the sacrifices demanded of them.

New attacks on workers are inevitable

In order to survive the economic war in the international arena and to finance its preparations for war, the bourgeoisie has no other solution than to impose increasingly draconian austerity measures on the working class. But far from being a solution to the crisis, these measures only exacerbate the contradictions of the capitalist system. While debts are abysmal and, on the one hand, it is cutting all social budgets, on the other hand, the bourgeoisie is spending astronomical sums on armaments. For all powers, from the smallest to the largest, the logic is the same: to make a historic war effort that the working class must pay for! This orientation is already at work in the industrialised countries of Europe and North America. And let us have no illusions: any return to a more bearable previous situation is out of the question; there is nothing to appease the legitimate anger. Let us judge for ourselves! The most industrialised countries of Europe are at the heart of the turmoil:

In Belgium, since the beginning of 2025, the working class has been mobilising against the federal government's measures to impose 26 billion in budget cuts in order to increase the competitiveness and profitability of the national economy, while spending tens of billions on the purchase of military equipment. This broad austerity programme will have a major impact on the entire working class, with workers in private companies already being laid off en masse, automatic indexation of wages and benefits being eroded, overtime and night work bonuses being reduced, work flexibility being increased, and the right to unemployment benefits being restricted. In addition, deep cuts are being made to pensions and health insurance, the total number of civil servants is being reduced, the tenure of teaching staff is being jeopardised, etc[1].

In Germany, too, the new government plans to save several billion euros on universal income (Bürgergeld) over the next two years. Expenditure is expected to fall by €1.5 billion next year. This saving is expected to reach €3 billion in 2027. At the same time, 10,000 industrial jobs are being destroyed every month and German companies are planning to lay off more than 125,000 workers. In addition, the number of unemployed exceeded 3 million in August and a study by the Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft (IW) proposes reducing the duration of unemployment benefits for senior citizens.

And while a country like Spain appears to be an exception to this general trend, with a GDP growth rate of 2.5% that is the envy of its neighbours, the reality for the Spanish proletariat is less idyllic: economic ‘good health’ is supported by strong downward pressure on wages, by the massive influx of underpaid foreign labour, which pushes average wages down, increasingly decoupled from the increase in the cost of living.

The most recent and ‘spectacular’ case illustrating this situation concerns France, where the proletariat is also going to be hit very hard. On 15 July, Prime Minister Bayrou announced a series of measures to reduce the French economy's colossal public deficit, which do not mince words: the outright elimination of two public holidays for all employees, increased control and surveillance with yet another tightening of the rules on compensation for hundreds of thousands of unemployed people, reduction in the number of civil servants (by not replacing one in three civil servants), a freeze on pensions and social benefits, liberalisation of the labour market... To this must be added all the measures constituting additional obstacles to access to healthcare or sick pay under the pretext of ‘social equity’ and ‘combating abuse’. The unspeakable hypocrisy of their justification is matched only by the violence of these announcements.

No section of the world's proletariat is spared

In countries such as Argentina[2] and the Philippines[3], the bourgeoisie is pushing the conditions of exploitation of the working class to the extreme. In India, the massive ‘reform’ of the Labour Code constitutes a frontal attack on working conditions by weakening or even eliminating all forms of security or legal rights, such as the minimum wage, fixed working hours and job and workplace security. In addition, soaring unemployment following the increase in US tariffs, combined with rising inflation, is having a severe impact on the living conditions of the working class.

The working class in China has not been spared. A wave of bankruptcies in the real estate sector has already led to hundreds of thousands of layoffs, as well as significant wage cuts in construction, property management and supply chain companies. Tech giants such as Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance are announcing significant job cuts. Workers have been deprived of their wages for months. Heavily indebted municipalities are prioritising bond repayments over the payment of civil servants' salaries. Youth unemployment has already reached unprecedented levels, with one in four young Chinese workers unemployed.

Far from being immune to violent economic attacks, the working class in North American countries is directly exposed to all the consequences of economic warfare, growing chaos and the explosive expansion of militarism. In the spring, in the United States, cuts of nearly $1 trillion were decided in social budgets for health care (Medicaid). In concrete terms, this will result in the loss of health coverage for nearly 15 million people. Similar measures were taken against the Food Assistance Programme (SNAP), where cuts of £186 billion will result in the loss of some or all food assistance benefits for 22.3 million people. It has also been announced that around 225,000 federal civil servants will be made redundant, which will undoubtedly be followed by tens of thousands of redundancies in the education sector due to a budget cut of €7 billion, as well as similar budget cuts affecting federal student loans and federal employee pensions.[4]

The global economic crisis and war tensions at the heart of the attacks

How did we get here? Following the banking crisis of 2007-2008 and the sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone in 2010-2012, the bourgeoisie experienced significant difficulties in keeping its economic system afloat. This vulnerability was reflected in its chaotic management of the COVID crisis in 2020 and was illustrated by the outbreak of war in Ukraine and the Middle East. These conflicts led to a huge increase in military production, the shelving of the ‘green economy’ and the destabilisation of commodity markets, industrial targets and trade routes. “The capitalist economy was already in the midst of a slowdown, marked by rising inflation, increasing pressure on the currencies of the major powers and growing financial instability, and the war is now exacerbating the economic crisis at all levels.”[5]

The economic policy of the Trump administration is itself a major factor in global economic instability, particularly due to its protectionist stance (symbolised by its tariff policy), its abandonment of multilateralism and the management of the global economy through international conferences and bodies (WTO, World Bank, GATT treaty, etc.) in favour of bilateral negotiations between states. Such a policy is in total contradiction with the needs of the global capitalist economy.

What we are witnessing is “the USA’s current attempt to dismantle the last political and military vestiges of the world imperialist order established in 1945 (which is) paralleled by measures that clearly threaten all the global institutions set up in the wake of the Great Depression and World War Two to regulate world trade and contain the crisis of overproduction”. [6]The removal of these institutions will have the same effects as the protectionism that followed the 1930 depression and exacerbated the global crisis.

The increasingly violent and uncontrollable upheavals in the economy only serve to expose the insoluble problem facing the bourgeoisie: the global crisis of generalised overproduction of decadent capitalism, which pushes each national capital to exploit the working class more harshly in an attempt to remain competitive in an oversaturated global market. Indeed, the world today is faced, in a generalised and definitive way, with what Marx in the 19th century called “an epidemic which, in any other era, would have seemed absurd: the epidemic of overproduction.” [7]

Overproduction, which was cyclical in the 19th century, has become global and permanent since capitalism entered into decline.

There is no solution to the crisis of capitalism within this decadent and rotten system. Today, the working class is being called upon to tighten its belt; tomorrow it will be called upon to have its skin pierced in the wars of capitalism, as is already the case in various countries. Faced with the lies of the bourgeoisie, which would have us believe that the crisis is the product of greed, of the ‘rich’, or of the stupidity of this or that government, the responsibility of revolutionary organisations is to clearly highlight the historical issues at stake and the need to fight the capitalist system as a whole and the trap of democratic illusions that accompany it by seeking to exonerate it. In short, all the hypocritical and treacherous rhetoric of the bourgeoisie about the need for consultation and possible alternatives to be achieved through democratic representation, which, in one way or another, directs the social movement towards the ballot box. The purpose of this rhetoric is to muddy the waters, to corrupt consciousness and undermine the conditions of the struggle. The fundamental task for which the proletariat must prepare is therefore to respond with an independent struggle, on its own class terrain, to the sabotage of the extension and unification of its struggle by the trade unions and to the mystification of a ‘popular’ government advocated by left-wing politicians, these false friends of the workers who, behind their fallacious rhetoric, are always preparing further rounds of austerity by seeking to disarm the working class.

Stopio, 28 August 2025

On 12 June, Israel launched a massive bombing raid on Iran, which immediately retaliated. Thousands of missiles, rockets and drones lit up the sky. Underneath, homes and hospitals were destroyed. The international press spoke of an extremely serious situation that could plunge the Middle East into chaos.

During the night of 21 June, the United States entered the conflict, dropping 13-tonne penetrating bombs to destroy Iranian nuclear sites. Such powerful weapons had not been used since the Second World War.

It is in this situation of escalating war and barbarism that our organisation decided to organise an international online public meeting. While the aim of this gathering is obviously to discuss, analyse and understand the situation, there is something even more important: to bring together revolutionary forces, isolated from each other in many countries, to assert together the proletarian voice of internationalism.

In this sense, we can say from the outset that this international public meeting was a real success. Organised in just a few days, many comrades responded to the call, denounced the imperialist nature of all sides and all nations involved in the conflict, and forcefully defended the idea that the only future for humanity is the solidarity and unity of workers across borders, racial divisions and religions.

Our only regret is the absence - with the exception of Internationalist Voice - of other revolutionary groups of the Communist Left, whom we had warmly invited. 1 [7]

An extremely serious world situation

All participants affirmed that the current accumulation of wars is the product of the capitalist system and imperialist rivalries between powers, large and small. As one comrade pointed out: “Pandora's box was opened in 1914”. But how can we explain the current rise in tensions? Why are wars beginning to spread again and threaten ever larger regions of the planet? Why is arms production exploding everywhere?

Many comrades highlighted the growing polarisation between the US and China:

– “This is a global struggle between two great powers: China and the United States.”

– “The United States is refocusing its imperialist attention on China, and this has been very clear since the AUKUS agreements with Australia, in particular.”

Other contributions also highlighted the pursuit of economic interests:

– “This conflict is fundamentally linked to trade routes and economic gateways.”

– “These powers are fighting for economic control, trade routes and technological superiority.”

Other speakers emphasised what they saw as the rational and political vision of the bourgeoisie: “[wars] are political tools of the ruling class, used to delay revolutionary movements, exploit societies and guarantee capitalist interests.”

Other comrades, on the contrary, highlighted that the root of the current dynamic was the development of growing chaos. One speaker emphasised this point, pointing to the reality of “fragmentation” and “every man for himself”’, highlighting “the fluctuations in Trump's politics, which reflect the struggles within the bourgeoisie”. We fully agree with this response that emerged in the debate. The dynamic of the discussion then made it possible to begin to address the question behind the whole current global dynamic: are we facing the formation of two new imperialist blocs, as during the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War? In other words, are we heading towards the Third World War? This question is important because such a global conflagration, given the capacity for annihilation of so many powers, would be synonymous with a widespread nuclear holocaust and therefore the end of humanity. The majority response in the debate was NO! One comrade stated very clearly: “We are not heading towards blocs like in the First and Second World Wars, but towards fragmentation, as we are seeing in Ukraine, Africa and the Middle East.” Another added: “As for blocs, I don't see them forming. It's interesting to see the extent to which Netanyahu is acting on his own initiative: it will be interesting to know whether the ICC thinks that the United States is using Israel as an attack dog or whether it is rather a case of Netanyahu following an ‘every man for himself’ policy”. 2 [8]

To fully grasp the significance of the dynamics of chaos, we must start from the historical phase of capitalism: decomposition. It was at the end of this discussion that the ICC intervened to defend this idea, which we believe is essential: "From 1945 to 1990, the world was structured into two blocs with two superpowers [...] In 1989, with the collapse of the USSR, one might have thought that the United States would emerge as the great victor and dominator, but the American bourgeoisie immediately understood the difficulties that would arise. There was the great speech by Bush Senior emphasising the need for a ‘new world order’ and there was the demonstration of military force in the Gulf. […] Why this demonstration? The American bourgeoisie told the world, and in particular its allies, ‘you owe us obedience, we have overwhelming military force’. In the immediate term, the first Gulf War was a huge military victory. But only two years later, Yugoslavia exploded: the former allies (France, Germany, the United States) played their own cards. […] And that blew Yugoslavia apart into four or five countries. That sums up what has been happening for 35 years now. In other words, the United States has increasingly overwhelming military power compared to all its competitors, and it is widening the gap. It invests as much each year as the rest of the world. And they are striking harder and harder. We can see this with Iran. And yet this does not calm all their opponents. On the contrary! It fuels dispersion. It fuels the desire of every imperialist to play their own card. This is the real historical dynamic that will not stop, and that is why what is happening in Iran is extremely serious and historic."

With the observation that Iran is weakening having been acknowledged by several speakers, the discussion was able to go further: "Iran is humiliated and weakened, but the mullahs remain in control. The question is one of destabilisation in the region, the importance of the working class in Iran and the ability of the mullahs to remain in power. Their lack of air power […] emboldens its neighbours."

Ultimately, this new conflict between Israel, Iran and the United States marks a qualitative step in the acceleration of chaos and warlike barbarism. For the first time since 2003, when the United States wanted to strengthen its position in the Pacific, it has once again been forced to intervene militarily, further evidence of the decline of its hegemony. The show of force through bombings, intended to impress China and (in a completely illusory manner) to impose its authority, is a clear sign of this. Furthermore, this new war involves two regional powers, one of which, Iran, is threatening to collapse. The extreme weakening of the mullahs' power is contributing to an unprecedented destabilisation of the entire Middle East and even more broadly of the whole world. 3 [9]

What should be the response of the working class?

Faced with growing barbarism and the threat of widespread war, it was clear that all participants were looking for a forum to defend proletarian internationalism. This was reflected in the following statement: “I am delighted that we are seeking a coherent proletarian internationalist line.” This search made it possible to state clearly that "internationalism is a position we defend. The working class is international, and our strategy and tactics are based on this principle.” The discussion then focused on how to implement this cardinal principle of the workers' movement, which has been stated since the Communist Manifesto of 1848, emphasising that “the proletarians have no country." The shared view was to emphasise, as one comrade put it, that “in the face of the barbarism of imperialist war, we call on the proletariat not to support one country over another. Against war, we call on workers around the world to unite and adopt a class position, not a nationalist position”. Everyone recognised that this was a demanding task, a difficult struggle in the face of intense bourgeois propaganda. The discussion continued, attempting to identify the ideological traps and obstacles set by the bourgeoisie for the working class, denouncing the democratic mystifications and false friends that are the left, the trade unions and particularly the leftists who are currently riding high: “leftism can mobilise to support for nationalism or anti-Trump demonstrations”.

In the face of all this propaganda, the discussion was a source of reflection on how the working class is fighting today and what lessons can be learned:

– The first lesson was the clear recognition that the working class “is not defeated”. This is the context in which the meeting highlighted the need to assess the reality of “a subterranean maturation of consciousness” within the proletariat and a dynamic of “rupture”’ in the face of the stagnation of recent decades. 4 [10]

– The second essential lesson is that the working class does not have the strength to oppose war in the belligerent countries where it is caught in the crossfire and the logic of revenge. Similarly, in the peripheral countries, it remains too marked by democratic mystification and the weight of nationalism. As one comrade points out: “Nationalism is a serious disease that affects the working class and Third Worldism in underdeveloped countries. Look at the illusions, for example, about Nasser, Mugabe, etc. They were brutal oppressors, not defenders of freedom. The scenes of people celebrating Hamas attacks on Israel are a disgrace to the working class.”

– The third lesson is to recognise the importance of the experience of the proletariat in Western countries, the reality of its struggles, even if these do not yet make it possible to oppose the war, let alone stop it: "Faced with the development of wars, we may want there to be a real working-class response that stops the wars. In fact, for the time being, and for a long time to come, this is not possible!"

– The fourth lesson we can draw is that despite its struggles, the weaknesses of the proletariat are still too great for it to develop its consciousness to the point of politicising its struggle. This will be a slow, difficult and very long process, fraught with obstacles and pitfalls.

– The final lesson, in the face of this difficult reality, is that the ICC has insisted on the danger of giving in to impatience. This is indeed a scourge that is the mark of the influence of petty-bourgeois ideology and a vector of opportunism within the workers' movement. As an ICC speaker put it, "Trevor [a participant] said that Marx would understand the need to avoid impatience, and that's true. In the workers' movement, the question of immediacy and impatience has been a real problem. In the Communist League, during the confrontation between Marx and the Willich-Schapper tendency, [...] Willich and Schapper said that the revolution had to be made now. Marx said that this was a dead end, that the proletariat would have to struggle for many decades to be able to confront the bourgeoisie. This was already a problem in the 19th century. Impatience is at the root of opportunism. There is a famous text by Rosa Luxemburg which explains that for many years we went from victory to victory, and then we suffered terrible defeats. Among true revolutionaries, the idea is that we cannot solve problems now. There are many disasters, massacres, barbarism: we cannot prevent that now. This idea must be present in our minds. This is a distinction from leftists: leftists say ‘now’; in 1968, the slogan was ‘revolution now’, a petty-bourgeois idea. We are working for the future, for the long term. After 1968, many disappointed young people who wanted revolution right away were lost to the struggle (there was even talk of suicide among disappointed young people). We must return and fight firmly against immediate action. The workers’ movement has existed for two centuries, we do not know when the revolution will take place, but the only way to prepare the perspective is to prevent the destruction of the potential that exists in a minority of the class; we must say that we need to be patient.”

One of the last interventions insisted that “it is very important that comrades do not become discouraged by the absence of mass strikes in the heart of Europe; it will take a long time. Today, a step forward has been taken: revolutionaries and internationalists have come together to clarify a dimension of the class struggle.” We consider that the concern and spirit expressed in this intervention are important for resistance and struggle.

To conclude this article, we reiterate our call for discussion and encourage all our comrades and readers to come and participate in our next meetings. To do so, simply keep an eye on our website, where we regularly publish the dates and locations of these debates. We also call for the distribution of our recently published leaflets on the question of war, as well as those on the class struggle (which are available on our website in PDF format).

WH, 29 June 2025

 

 

1 [11] We agree with the very accurate remarks of one of the participants: “It is regrettable that no comrades from other organisations of the Communist Left are present. It is important that organisations maintain polemics, discussions and correspondence. Only within the framework of the Communist Left will the working class be victorious.” As we have said, Internationalist Voice was an honourable exception here. See their website for their clear internationalist response to the current war in the Middle East: en.internationalistvoice.org

2 [12] We believe that these two aspects are not contradictory: Biden and then Trump had to deal with the ‘every man for himself’ logic that is inflaming the Middle East, including the Israeli government, which favours its own interests over those of its American ally. In this context, however, the United States has pursued policies that seek to maintain its grip on the situation as best it can.

3 [13] Iran is undermined by the centrifugal forces of its minorities, the Azeris in the north and the Baluchis in the south, and by its religious divisions, not to mention the border powers lying in wait, whose imperialist tensions are sharpening, as illustrated by the tensions between India and Pakistan. These are only initial reflections that will need to be pursued in further discussions in order to better understand the geopolitical context and the chaos in which the proletarian struggle will have to develop.

4 [14] See in particular International Review No. 173, “The historical roots of the ‘rupture’ in the dynamics of the class struggle since 2022 (Part I) [15]” and Part II [16] [16](April,  2025).

 

On 10 June, in Austria, a former pupil living in ‘extreme seclusion’ killed ten people and injured eleven others in a school in Graz. On the same day, a schoolboy murdered a supervisor at Nogent-sur-Marne secondary school in France. He was only 14! Both arrived with weapons: the first with a firearm, killing by shooting ‘indiscriminately’, the second with a kitchen knife in his bag, intent on stabbing someone. That someone was the 31-year-old mother who had decided to work in a secondary school to help young people, to protect them. And that's exactly what she was doing that morning, when the police were searching bags at the school entrance. In recent years, outside the United States, where the phenomenon has become almost commonplace due to the widespread possession of firearms, these horrors have also multiplied in schools and universities across Europe, in Finland, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Serbia and elsewhere.

Everywhere, the same no-future that tortures humanity

Why such acts? Sometimes it's hatred of school, of that institution of the state that sends out the image of ‘no-future’, that makes us feel good for nothing, that crushes us under the weight of despair, fear, withdrawal and humiliation. The murderers are themselves kids crushed from the inside by a violent society that really has no future, a capitalist society that is rotting away. They often can't put into words the rage that burns and consumes them, turning their distress into blind vengeance and people into cold-blooded killers. So they strike back at society: they kill as they are socially crushed, they murder a class sister or brother.

Society is fragmenting and disintegrating. Unemployment, misery, problems with housing, work and healthcare are everywhere. Everywhere, wars are multiplying. Everywhere, the planet is going haywire. Everywhere, the anguish of seeing no future. The absence of perspective is the most profound cause of stress and even profound psychological disorders. For example, in 2025 in France, 25% of teenagers will suffer from generalised anxiety disorders, 40% will have depressive symptoms and 17% will be likely to suffer from moderately severe or even severe psychological disorders[1].  And it's the same in every country in the world. Capitalism is breaking down and dragging all hope and future with it. It is the collapse of capitalism upon itself that is driving this nihilism, across all generations and in all countries.

In Sweden, the number of complaints lodged by teachers about violence against them has doubled in 10 years[2]. In the United Kingdom, dozens of teachers are assaulted by their pupils every year, one of the highest rates in Europe[3].  And stabbings are on the increase everywhere, leading to growing paranoia both inside and outside schools. In 2022, a report by the research arm of the US Department of Education predicted 93 shootings in a year, compared with 10 ten years earlier. In all four corners of the globe, the ‘epidemic’ of violence is raging, affecting younger and younger teenagers.

Everywhere the same responses

And to deal with it, the bourgeoisies are not competing in originality: hand-held cameras and self-defence courses in the United Kingdom, cameras and security gates in the United States, even arming teachers. And politicians are advocating greater judicial ‘firmness’. In France, just after these minutes of horror, Prime Minister François Bayrou proposed security gates, a stronger penal response and a ‘mental health’ plan[4].  Marine Le Pen could think of nothing more original than advocating the condemnation of parents.

Here and elsewhere, the only response that capitalism can provide to the increase in violence is ever more violence and repression. A 14-year-old is locked up without any real psychological help, parents are sentenced without any educational help, teachers are being given guns in response to shootings, and so on.

But to support a developing adult, you need human and financial resources, you need teachers and educational assistants in large numbers, you need doctors, school nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists, you need individual follow-up, you need help for families... Instead, we  see repression and, in the face of the crisis, the reduction in the number of professionals and care facilities.

Only the working class can reverse this phenomenon

These young murderers are not monsters. They are human beings who commit monstrous acts. They have been born into a sick, dying society. Their hatred and murderous intoxication are first internalised under the permanent terror of capitalist social relations, then explode in a series of despicable acts. Whether we are 14, 31 or 70 years old, we are all suffering the effects of the decomposition of capitalist society and its ravages around the world. What young people need is not surveillance cameras, punishment or law reform, but hope. And hope is to be found in the fight for a better future, first and foremost against poverty, job insecurity and the horrors that capitalism inflicts on us, and ultimately in the fight for a new society, without exploitation, crisis or war. And to fight together, across all generations and all trades, against the barbarity of the system. Only the struggle of the working class has a perspective to offer. "Workers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

Manon, 10 July 2025

 

The Bayrou government has fallen and former Defence Minister Lecornu has been appointed in his place. But the attacks will continue! With the next government, whether right-wing, left-wing or populist, redundancies, austerity measures and exploitation will continue to intensify. In France, as everywhere else in the world, the bourgeoisie can only multiply large-scale attacks to make the working class pay the price for the bankruptcy of its system, squeeze our working and living conditions to defend the interests of national capital in the increasingly brutal chaos of international competition, and finance the gigantic growth of its military arsenal.

Brutal attacks and growing anger in the working class

These attacks, unprecedented in decades, are not specific to France. Far from it! All over the world, the bourgeoisie is imposing budget cuts and job insecurity. Driven by deep anger, a sense of injustice and rejection, workers around the world are rejecting austerity: massive demonstrations and strikes in Belgium since January, a ‘historic’ strike against layoffs at Stellantis in Italy last autumn, an ‘illegal’ strike for wage rises  by Air Canada employees' in July, repeated strikes at Boeing since the end of last year, not to mention other movements around the world that confirm that the working class has regained its fighting spirit and is seeking to oppose the attacks of the bourgeoisie.

While Belgium has been one of the European countries most affected by protests against sweeping austerity measures in recent months, it is now France that is seeing a sharp rise in social tension. With or without Bayrou, the planned attacks are particularly violent: health, education, transport, sick leave, unemployment and pension benefits, minimum social benefits... The entire working class is under attack! And the bourgeoisie knows very well that anger is immense and that the working class will not let these serious attacks go unanswered. Discontent has not subsided since the struggle against pension reform two years ago, because the bourgeoisie has failed to instill the idea that we are defeated. The announcement of the Bayrou plan and the brutality of the measures have rekindled this anger. The working class can only fight back.

Faced with this combativeness, the bourgeoisie prepared itself, setting every possible trap and exploiting all the difficulties encountered by the proletariat in developing its struggle and regaining its class identity. In this respect, the struggles underway and to come in France, and the ideological traps set by the bourgeoisie, are rich in lessons for the entire world proletariat.

The trap of ‘popular’ movements

In May, a ‘citizens' collective’ appeared. Originating from far-right or populist groups (around the slogan ‘Nicolas is paying’), it initially rode the wave of populist rejection of trade unions, parties and institutions. This movement of 10 September, which received widespread media coverage, called for the country and its economy to be brought to a standstill, for a boycott of everything and anything: the use of credit cards, bank terminals, shopping in supermarkets, school...

During the summer, the populist component of the collective largely melted away in the face of public outcry and, above all, workers' anger following the announcement of Bayrou's plan of attack. With massive support from left-wing and far-left parties, this movement was relegated to the background, propelling left-wing forces to the forefront, from the Parti Socialiste to La France Insoumise, including the Parti Communiste Français and the Trotskyists of Révolution Permanente (with trade unions more or less distancing themselves), which at the same time led to a significant reorientation of the movement's demands towards a more ‘working-class’ agenda (calls for strikes and demonstrations in particular).

Admittedly, this movement is an expression of anger and militancy. Admittedly, workers are present, undoubtedly in the majority. But what is emerging, at the time of writing, is an inter-classist movement, as we saw in 2018 with the Yellow Vests, a movement in which ‘the people’ rise up against ‘the elites’.

Behind this type of rhetoric lies a real trap. For in this type of movement, the working class, the only force truly capable of shaking the bourgeoisie and opening up the prospect of overthrowing bankrupt capitalism in the future, is reduced to impotence. Why?

By promoting such a movement extensively during the summer, the bourgeoisie sought to dilute the demands of the working class among those of the middle classes. Dissolving the working class into the ‘people’ means removing it from the social scene and hindering the development of its own autonomous struggle. Instead of leading the movement and imposing its own slogans (on wages, working conditions, precariousness, etc.), the 10 September movement is being used to try to drown the working class in demands that are totally foreign to its interests, those of the petty bourgeoisie and small business owners (bakers, artisans, taxi drivers and small farmers) on ‘tax pressure’, ‘excessive charges’, ‘stifling regulations’, etc.

The danger of democratic mystifications

This type of movement also makes the proletariat particularly vulnerable to mystifications about bourgeois ‘democracy’. It is clear that the movement of 10 September did not lose its ‘citizen’ and ‘popular’ component at all during the summer. On the contrary, with the emergence of citizens' assemblies and the persistence of anti-Macron slogans, the left has continued to use this movement to weaken the working class. The left-wing parties are constantly harping on about the prospect of a new Prime Minister and new elections that could bring in a more socially-minded government, enable ‘the rich to pay their fair share’ and ‘redistribute wealth’... as if bankrupt capitalism could reform itself and bring about greater ‘social justice’, as if exploitation in a system that is on its last legs could be more ‘fair’! This was very clear in the citizens' general assemblies, where there was much talk of ‘overthrowing Macron’, ‘direct democracy’, ‘tax fairness’, etc.

And all this, we are told, could be imposed by taking to the streets on 10 September! The bourgeois establishments, left-wing parties and trade unions have been selling us this nonsense for years: Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, PS and LFI in France... behind the rhetoric, it is always austerity that they apply when they are in power!

Leftist groups, particularly Trotskyists, are not to be outdone in spreading the poison of democratism: Révolution Permanente, through the pen of its spokesperson Anasse Kazib, attacked the CGT union federation (which refused to support the 10 September movement): “When the far right, behind slogans such as ‘it’s Nicolas who pays’ and its calls not to strike, openly boycotts 10 September, we must fight hard to convince as many workers as possible by supporting them”. As for Lutte Ouvrière, much more ‘radical’ (and devious!) as usual, it considers the call for 10 September to be “confusing”... without denouncing the democratic campaign and promoting illusions about the ‘fair distribution of wealth’.

Behind the call to ‘block everything’, the trap of isolation

The central slogan of the 10 September movement, “let's block everything”, is also, under the guise of radicalism, a trap set for the working class. The ‘blockade of the economy’ is a weapon constantly used by the trade unions to disarm the proletariat. While workers in struggle need to seek the solidarity of their class brothers, to extend and unify their movements as much as possible, ‘block everything’ means seeking to lock workers into their companies, into their sectors, behind their picket lines. Instead of huge autonomous and sovereign general assemblies, open to all and bringing together proletarians across corporatist divisions, allowing the class to feel its own strength in a vivid way and develop its collective thinking, workers are locked behind the barricades of their companies. This desire to isolate the proletariat has gone as far as calling for ‘generalised self-confinement’, i.e. staying at home, completely atomised!

This is not the first time that the bourgeoisie has put forward such a tactic. In 2010 and 2023, when there were massive movements in France against pension reforms, the trade unions locked refinery workers and railway workers into long blockades, dragging them into exhausting movements, separated from the rest of their class. These movements caused divisions between those who wanted to continue blocking roads and striking, and workers who were forced to return to work and found themselves without petrol or public transport.

The mass strike of 1980 in Poland was very different:  workers used the means of production not to lock themselves in besieged citadels, but to spread the struggle. Trains ran to take strikers en masse to rallying points and mass meetings. Within two months, the country was (in reality, not in fantasy) completely paralysed.

The need for a class response

Anger and the will to fight are present among workers, even if very real weaknesses still appear in terms of recognising their class identity, and the bourgeoisie exploits these weaknesses to divert their militancy towards inter-classism. The working class can counter this diversion by drawing on its historical experience, such as that of Poland in 1980, May 1968 in France, or more recently the movement against the CPE in 2006. The strength of a class movement lies in the ability of workers to take charge of their struggle, to extend it as widely as possible to all sectors, and even to all countries! Sovereign and autonomous general assemblies, mass delegations, and the broadest possible discussions are the best weapons of the workers’ movement. Such weapons are very different from citizens' assemblies, which aim to exert ‘popular pressure’ on the government through street protests. The workers' assembly, by contrast, seeks to develop class struggle and solidarity, the only terrain that can force the state to retreat and, tomorrow, overthrow bankrupt capitalism.

In such a dynamic, workers will inevitably clash with the trade unions, those false friends of the working class, the true state watchdogs of the bourgeoisie. Their role is to control the struggles, divide the workers, sector by sector, company by company, and prevent any takeover or extension of the struggle. Moreover, the trade unions are already planning a series of actions aimed at organising division and ideologically controlling workers' anger. After an inter-union meeting to ‘organise the mobilisation’, and the launch of a collective petition to say ‘no to the Bayrou budget’, a mobilisation is announced for 18 September, with the possibility of a day of protest on 3 October... All this, with the endless and demoralising trade union marches, each behind their own banner, without debate, with loudspeakers blaring to prevent any discussion.

The struggle on a class terrain, using the authentic weapons of the proletariat, cannot simply be decreed. Above all, it requires an immense effort of collective reflection. It is not an easy path, but it is the only one that can offer humanity a future. To do this, wherever the most militant workers can, we must come together, discuss, debate, reclaim the experience of our class and prepare for future struggles.

It is not by trusting the professional saboteurs of struggles, the trade unions, nor by trusting some ‘collective’ aiming to bring all classes together in a call for a ‘boycott’, nor by trusting the bourgeois political parties and their parliament, that the working class will be able to defend its revolutionary perspective. The bourgeoisie knows full well that the world proletariat is regaining its combativeness in the face of attacks and is reacting massively, that minorities of combative workers will emerge from the struggles, will want to discuss how to fight, will understand that the left and the trade unions condemn us to powerlessness. This is what it fears most today and what it is trying to ward off, using France as a testing ground.

TG, 9 September 2025

 

 

 

With the intensification of bombing in Ukraine and Russia, and the new outbreak of barbarism in Potrovsk, the endless policy of terror and destruction continues to rain down on civilian populations. In the Middle East, the Israeli army relentlessly pursues its genocidal bombing and launches a new bloody operation, a vast plan to conquer an already ruined Gaza. The devastated territories and countless victims bear witness everywhere to the exacerbation of imperialist conflicts. Capitalist wars are inexorably bogged down on every continent, caught up in a mad logic of scorched earth, an inexhaustible headlong rush into destruction and the spread of chaos. The resurgence of the nuclear threat and the accompanying verbal escalation are a chilling expression of this.
In this context, the staging of the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska, and the one in Washington with European leaders and Zelensky, offered a spectacle that obviously did nothing to change the horror of war: the divorce between the European powers and Uncle Sam, the unpredictability and discredit of American diplomacy, and the vacuity of the talks only serve to highlight the acceleration of global chaos and the historical impasse represented by the capitalist system. This nightmarish situation fuels fears and serves to justify an arms race that poses even greater threats to humanity.

On all fronts, the bourgeoisie is demonstrating that it has no future to offer other than war, misery and disasters of all kinds. In a totally irresponsible and criminal manner, under the weight of the acute economic crisis, it also shamelessly continues to destroy the environment, exacerbating global warming and a whole series of forms of pollution that directly threaten humanity, and first and foremost the poorest. Every year, the consequences are becoming more and more visible, with this summer's heatwave once again marked by mega-fires across Europe, devastating wide geographical areas, particularly in the Mediterranean arc (Spain, Portugal, Greece, southern France, etc.). This is a grim picture, a striking confirmation of the acceleration of the decomposition of the capitalist system, where all crises and disasters feed off each other in a veritable downward spiral.

Faced with this apocalyptic world, the bourgeoisie, with its back against the wall, has no choice but to launch massive attacks on all fronts, as it does everywhere else. As always, the proletariat must pay for the crisis and the war economy out of its own pocket, with its sweat and even its blood. The ruling class is thus showing that it has no real solution, no way of reversing the course of the tragedy it has created through its plundering and the competitive logic of its dying system.
Is the future then without hope? If we rely on the ruling class, its electoral promises and lies dangling ‘democracy’ and ‘social justice’ before our eyes to better conceal the impasse of its system, we are lost. On the other hand, there is indeed a social force capable of offering a real perspective: the international proletariat.

Capitalism in decline, entangled in its contradictions and generalised competition, no longer has any real reforms to offer the proletariat. It can only attack its living conditions, squeezing it ever harder like a lemon. Our class therefore has absolutely nothing to gain from this system. But because it has no particular interest other than struggle, because it is an exploited class at the heart of global production, it also has the particularity of being a revolutionary class. It alone, through the universal conditions of its exploitation, possesses the weapons to break the chains of capitalism  by abolishing its fundamental social relations, based on the exploitation of man by man.

The history of the labour movement bears witness to the creative power of the working class, the social force of its struggle, and its ability to offer a revolutionary vision for a liberated, classless society. The Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the revolutionary wave of 1917-1923 show that this is not simply the dream of utopians but a real historical movement, the product of material necessity.

Today, after thirty years of stagnation, a decline in its militancy and consciousness, this same proletariat, even if its new generations are less experienced, is back on the path of struggle. During the summer of 2022, the massive movement in Great Britain, dubbed the “Summer of Discontent”, marked the beginning of a real rupture. This is in the sense that there is immense anger and a strong combativeness in struggles all over the world (which the bourgeoisie takes great care to conceal with a huge media blackout): France, the United States, Canada, Korea, Belgium... Through these struggles, described everywhere as ‘historic’, we are witnessing a spectacular return of the combativeness of the proletariat, fuelled by an underground maturation of working-class consciousness. The proletariat is no longer prepared to accept attacks without protest, as demonstrated once again by the struggles in Britain in 2022 and elsewhere thereafter, with the same slogan: “Enough is enough!”

The massive attacks that workers are once again facing must lead them to fight back. The working class has no real choice but to fight. The struggle will be long and difficult, fraught with pitfalls and obstacles erected by the bourgeoisie and the very rottenness of its system. Revolutionaries and the most militant minorities already have a particular role and responsibility in this context: to get involved, to prepare to stimulate the struggles by intervening in them as soon as possible in a decisive manner, to revive the workers' memory, to defend internationalism and class principles. Faced with intense democratic propaganda, particularly from the left and leftists, and faced with the great danger of inter-classism (those struggles in which the demands and means of struggle of the working class are drowned out by the demands of the ‘people,’ small business owners, the petty bourgeoisie, etc.), revolutionary minorities and the working class must defend their autonomy and their methods of struggle, which are the defence of communist and workers' meeting places, general assemblies, strikes and mass street demonstrations. This struggle must be as broad as possible, determined, but also and above all conscious.
WH, 1 September 2025