Our organisation, the International Communist Current, was founded in January 1975, just over half a century ago. Since then, the world has undergone major upheavals, and it is our responsibility to present the proletariat with an assessment of this period in order to determine what future lies in store for humanity. The prospects are particularly bleak. This current grim state of affairs is leading to widespread suffering across the world population, which explains in particular the steady increase in the consumption of drugs of all kinds and the rise in suicides, including among children. Even the supreme authorities of the global bourgeoisie, from the United Nations to the Davos Forum, which every January brings together the world's leading economic figures, are forced to admit the seriousness of the scourges that are being afflicted on humanity and increasingly threaten its future.
The 2020s have seen a brutal acceleration in the deterioration of the world situation, with an accumulation of disasters - floods and fires linked to climate change and an acceleration in the destruction of life, with a pandemic that has killed more than 20 million human beings and the outbreak of new and increasingly deadly wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Africa, particularly in Sudan, Congo and Ethiopia. This global chaos reached a new stage in January 2025 with the return to power of a sinister showman, Donald Trump, whose ambition is to play with the world like Charlie Chaplin playing with an Earth-shaped balloon in his film The Great Dictator.
Therefore, this Manifesto is justified not only with our organisation having now existed for a half-century, but also because we are facing an extremely serious historical situation: the capitalist system that dominates the planet is inexorably leading human society towards its destruction. Faced with this unthinkable prospect, it is up to those who are fighting for the revolutionary overthrow of this system, the communists, to put forward historical, political and theoretical arguments in order to arm the only force in society capable of carrying out this revolution: the world proletariat. Because, yes, another society is possible!
World communist revolution or the destruction of humanity
The end of the world! This fear was present during the four decades of the ‘Cold War’ between the United States and the ‘Soviet’ Union and their respective allies. These two major powers had accumulated enough nuclear weapons to destroy all human life on Earth several times over, and their constant conflicts through their vassal states raised fears that these conflicts would lead to a direct confrontation between the two giants, ultimately resulting in the use of these terrifying weapons. To convey this threat of death hanging over the whole of humanity, in 1947 the University of Chicago created an Apocalypse Clock on which midnight represents the end of the world.
But after 1989, which saw the collapse of one of the two blocs, one of which called itself ‘socialist’, we saw a profusion of talk about ‘peace’ and ‘prosperity’ from world leaders, journalists and ‘experts’ who were appearing on television every night to share their prejudices, incompetence and lies. The then US President George Bush Sr., as chief liar, even promised in 1990 an era of peace based on a “new world order, where the rule of law would replace the law of the jungle and where the strong will respect the rights of the weak”. (Speech to the United States Congress, 11 September 1990).
Today, these same figures are giving us very different speeches, aware that they would make themselves look completely ridiculous if they continued to display the optimism of previous decades. For it is no longer a secret that the world is in a very bad state, and the realisation that it is heading towards destruction is once again becoming increasingly prevalent in society, particularly among the younger generations. The primary cause of this anxiety is, of course, the degradation of the environment, which is not a future prospect but already a reality today. This destruction does not only take the form of the climate crisis with its ‘extreme events’ such as floods, storms, heatwaves, droughts leading to desertification and fires on an unprecedented scale. It is also living organisms that are threatened with extinction, with the accelerated disappearance of species, particularly plants and animals. It is the poisoning of the air, water and food, and the growing threat of pandemics resulting from the destruction of natural environments, pandemics that could make the Covid pandemic of the early 2020s seem a minor issue in comparison. And, as if these disasters were not enough to cause enough anxiety, we now have the proliferation of increasingly deadly wars, with horrific scenes of battlefield devastation and emaciated children in Gaza and Sudan. These images will remind older people of the terrible famine that struck Biafra during the war there in the late 1960s, which claimed two million lives.
The end of the Cold War four decades ago did not mean the end of wars. On the contrary, the collapse of the discipline imposed on their vassals by the two superpowers opened the door to a proliferation of particularly deadly conflicts (several hundred thousand deaths in Iraq during the wars of 1991 and 2003, for example). However, these conflicts were no longer part of the antagonism between the Eastern and Western blocs, and for much of this period there was a significant reduction in military spending, particularly by the major powers. This is no longer the case today: even though we have not seen the formation of new blocs which could be a prelude to a third world war, military spending has risen dramatically. And the weapons that are once again being stockpiled are made to be used, as we are seeing right now in Ukraine, Lebanon, Gaza and Iran. The well-known saying, ‘If you want peace, prepare for war’, which world leaders insistently repeat to us today, has always proved to be false. The more weapons there are, the more deadly the wars that are inevitable in a capitalist system in crisis will be, spreading misery, destruction, famine and death on an ever-increasing scale. And one of the characteristics of the global situation since the early 2020s is that the calamities befalling the world tend to coalesce more and more, feeding and stimulating each other in a kind of infernal vortex.
For example, the melting of ice caps resulting from global warming further accentuates this warming, since this large body of ice has served to reflect the sun’s rays back rather than converting them into heat.
Similarly, climate change and wars are causing more and more famines, leading to increasing emigration to the most developed countries. And this immigration is fuelling the rise of xenophobic populism in these countries and the rise to power of political forces that can only make the situation worse. This is particularly true in economic terms, as can be seen with Trump's measures on trade, in which the imposed tariffs are further exacerbating the instability of the global market and the capitalist economy as a whole, including in the United States. We could review all the crises and disasters that are befalling the world to see how they are all different manifestations of a generalised chaos that is increasingly beyond the control of the world's leaders and is leading humanity towards destruction. Since 28 January 2025, the Doomsday Clock in Chicago has been set at 23:58 hrs,:31 secs, the closest it has ever been to midnight.
Faced with the unfolding catastrophe and the growing threat of humanity's destruction, many people, particularly the young, are refusing to give in to the general despair that is sweeping through society. We regularly see protests against climate change, against environmental destruction and against war, but it is clear that world leaders, even when they make environmentalist or pacifist speeches, have no real concern in preventing these disasters. What we are seeing today, on the contrary, is a general reappraisal of the small ‘green’ measures announced by yesterday's leaders, while their commitments to peace are being discredited day after day. And it is not a question of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ intentions on the part of these leaders. Some of them openly and cynically embrace their criminal intent: Putin and Netanyahu obscenely justify their bombing of civilian populations, while Trump, in word and deed, advocates the destruction of the environment. That said, it is all governments, regardless of their rhetoric and political leanings, that are implementing a massive increase in armaments and repeatedly cutting back on environmental protection policies, in addition to attacking workers' living standards. And this is for very simple reasons. Firstly, in the face of the growing breakdown of the capitalist economy, competition between states can only intensify, and they have no other recourse, apart from reducing the cost of labour, than to abandon environmental protection policies in order to be more competitive on the world market. Secondly, as has always been the case in the past, the deepening economic contradictions of capitalism are leading to an escalation of military antagonisms.
In fact, while the demonstrations by young people against environmental destruction and war reveal a deep concern for fundamental issues, they do not carry any real weight in confrontation with the bourgeoisie that rules the world, because they do not comprise a frontal attack on the ruling class by the proletariat, the only class that can threaten it. As a result, they are easy prey for the demagogic campaigns of the bourgeois parties, whose clear aim is to divert the working class from its fundamental struggle against capitalism. And that lies at the very heart of the historical situation.
In reality, the capitalist system is doomed by history, just as the slave system of antiquity and the feudal system of the Middle Ages were in their time. Like feudal society and, before it, slave society, capitalist society has entered its period of decadence. This decadence began at the start of the 20th century and saw its first major manifestation in the First World War. This was proof that the economic laws of the capitalist system, which had enabled considerable progress in material production during the 19th century, had now become serious impediments, expressed in the growing convulsions such as the First World War and the crisis of 1929. This decline continued throughout the 20th century, notably with the Second World War, which stemmed from this crisis. And while the post-war years brought a period of prosperity coinciding with reconstruction, the economic contradictions of the capitalist system re-emerged at the end of the 1960s, plunging the world into increasing turmoil, with a succession of economic, military, political and climate crises. And these crises cannot be resolved, because they result from the insurmountable contradictions that affect the economic laws of capitalism. Thus, the world situation can only worsen, with increasing chaos and ever more horrifying barbarism. This is the only future that the capitalist system can offer us.
Should we conclude that there is no hope, that nothing, no force in society will be able to oppose this course towards the destruction of humanity? One conclusion is becoming increasingly clear among those who are aware of the gravity of the situation: there is no solution within the capitalist system that dominates the world. But then how can we escape this system? How can we overthrow the power of those who run it? How can we forge a path towards a society that would no longer know the barbarism of today's world, where the immense advances in science and technology would no longer be used to manufacture ever more terrifying instruments of death or to make the earth increasingly uninhabitable, but would, on the contrary be put in the service of human fulfilment? A society where wars, injustice, poverty, exploitation and oppression would be abolished. A society where all human beings could live in harmony and solidarity, rather than competition and violence. A society that would no longer pit humans against nature, but would instead restore humans to being part of nature.
When we consider the possibility of such a society, there is no shortage of ‘realists’ who shrug their shoulders and try to ridicule such thoughts: ‘these are pipe dreams, fairy tales, utopias’. Of course, it is in the privileged sectors of society and among those who slavishly defend them that we find the most fanatical spokespeople and their contempt for ‘utopian ideas’, but we must recognise that their opinions influence the vast majority of society.
To answer all these questions about the future, we must first look back to the struggles of the past.
Recalling the memories of our past struggles to prepare for the struggles ahead
Dreams of an ideal society where injustices would be abolished and humans would live in harmony have existed for a very long time. They can be found in early Christianity, in the Peasants' War in Germany in the 16th century (the Anabaptists around the monk Thomas Müntzer), in the English Revolution of the 17th century (the ‘Diggers’ or ‘True Levellers’) and in the French Revolution of the late 18th century (Babeuf and the ‘Conspiracy of Equals’). These dreams were utopian, it is true. They could not be realised because, at that time, the material conditions for their realisation did not exist. It was the development of the working class alongside the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century that laid the foundations for a communist society on solid material bases.
These foundations were, on the one hand, the enormous abundance of wealth made possible by the laws of capitalism, an abundance that potentially allowed for the full satisfaction of human needs, and, on the other hand, the tremendous growth of the class that produced most of this wealth, the modern proletariat. Indeed, only the working class is capable of bringing about the enormous transformation represented by the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of communism. It alone in society has a real interest in radically uprooting the foundations of capitalism and, first and foremost, commodity production, which lies at the heart of the crisis of this system. For it is precisely the market, the domination of commodities in capitalist production, that is at the root of the exploitation of wage earners. The distinctive feature of the working class, unlike other categories of producers such as agricultural smallholders or artisans, is that it is deprived of the means of production and is forced, in order to live, to sell its labour power to the owners of these means of production: private capitalists or the state. It is because, in the capitalist system, labour power itself has become a commodity, and indeed the principal commodity of all, that the proletariat is exploited. That is why the struggle of the proletariat against capitalist exploitation carries within it the abolition of wage labour and, consequently, the abolition of all forms of commodities. Moreover, this class already produces most of society's wealth. It does so collectively, thanks to the associated labour developed by capitalism itself. But this system has been unable to complete the socialisation of production that it undertook at the expense of small-scale individual production.
This is one of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism: under its rule, production has become global, but the means of production remain scattered among multiple owners, private bosses or nation states, who sell and buy the goods produced and compete with each other. The abolition of the market therefore requires the expropriation of all capitalists and the collective takeover of all means of production by society. This task can only be accomplished by the class that possesses no means of production, when it acts collectively to do this.
1917: the revolution in Russia
To those who continue to claim that this revolutionary struggle of the proletariat is nothing more than a ‘sweet dream’, we need only recall historical reality. Indeed, in the mid-19th century, notably with the Chartist movement in England, the June 1848 uprising in Paris, the founding in 1864 in London of the International Workingmen's Association (which quickly became a ‘power’ in Europe) and the Commune of 1871, the proletariat began to prove that it was a real threat to the capitalist class. And this threat was then fully confirmed with the revolution of 1917 in Russia and 1918-23 in Germany.
These revolutions were a striking confirmation of the perspective of the Communist Manifesto adopted by the Communist League in 1848 and written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This fundamental document concluded as follows: “Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can only be achieved through the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution! The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win”’
And indeed, from 1917 onwards, the ruling classes, and particularly the bourgeoisie, began to tremble. The power of the international revolutionary wave, culminating in Russia and Germany, was such that it forced governments to end the war. The workers then became aware of their power, organised themselves as a class, met up in permanent general assemblies, organised themselves into soviets (the Russian for ‘councils’), discussed, decided and acted together. They saw the dawn of another possible world unfolding before their eyes.
1920-1930-1940-1950: the counter-revolution
For the bourgeoisie, faced with the real possibility of seeing their system of exploitation overthrown and thus losing their privileges, there was fear and fury. In 1871, when the Paris proletariat had been in power for two months, the French bourgeoisie, with the complicity of the Prussian troops still occupying France, unleashed a terrible repression against the ‘Communards’, a ‘bloody week’ that left 20,000 dead. Faced with the revolutionary wave of 1917, it was the global bourgeoisie, and not just that of one or two countries, that unleashed its rage and barbarity. Unanimously, the leaders of all countries, even the most ‘democratic’ ones, gave their support to the White armies led by officers of the fallen Tsarist regime, one of the most reactionary in the world. Worse still, the ‘Socialist’ parties, which had already betrayed the essential proletarian principle of internationalism by actively participating in the World War, reached the depths of ignominy by leading the repression of the revolution in Germany, causing thousands of deaths and ordering the cold-blooded assassination of the two most luminous figures of the proletarian struggle: Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. ‘“Someone must play the bloodhound. I am not afraid of the responsibility” declared Gustav Noske, one of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Minister of Defence.
In Russia, the White armies were finally defeated by the Red Army. But in Germany, the bourgeoisie managed to crush the attempts at workers' insurrection in 1919, 1921 and 1923. The Russian revolution found itself isolated, paving the way for the counter-revolution.
This was the scene of the greatest drama of the 20th century: in Russia, the counter-revolution did not triumph from ‘outside’, through the guns of a foreign army, but rather from ‘within’, corrupting, crushing, deporting and murdering while claiming to be and masquerading as the communist revolution. It was in fact the state that had emerged after the overthrow of the bourgeois state that brought about the counter-revolution. This state ceased to serve the proletariat in Russia and the rest of the world and became the defender of the new state bourgeoisie that had succeeded the classical bourgeoisie and now had the task of continuing the exploitation of the working class. This was further confirmation of the perspective put forward by revolutionaries in the mid-19th century: the communist revolution can only be global. This perspective was clearly stated in Engels' text ‘The Principles of Communism’, which prepared the ground for the Communist Manifesto: “The communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries (…). It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world, and will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to now, while greatly stepping up its pace. It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.” This principle was vigorously defended by all revolutionaries of the 20th century, notably by Lenin, to whom we owe this crystal-clear statement:
"The Russian revolution is only a detachment of the world socialist army, and the success and triumph of the revolution we have accomplished depend on the action of that army. This is a fact that none of us forgets (...). The Russian proletariat is conscious of its revolutionary isolation, and it clearly sees that the united intervention of the workers of the whole world is an indispensable condition and fundamental premise for its victory." (23 July 1918)
This is why the idea of “Socialism in One Country”, put forward by Stalin from 1924 onwards, reveals his betrayal and that of the Bolshevik Party, of which he had become the leader. This betrayal was the first act of the terrible counter-revolution that befell the proletariat in Russia and internationally. In Russia, we saw Stalin and his accomplices eliminate one by one the best fighters of the 1917 revolution, notably during the sinister ‘Moscow trials’ in 1936-38, where the defendants, broken by torture and threats against their families, accused themselves of the worst crimes before being shot in the back of the neck. At the same time, millions of workers were murdered or deported to concentration camps without any reason in order to maintain a climate of terror among the population. Outside Russia, the Stalinised ‘Communist’ parties found themselves at the forefront of sabotaging and even repressing workers' struggles, as was the case in Barcelona in May 1937, when the proletariat of that city rose in revolt against the increasing subjugation imposed on them by the Stalinists.
In Germany, the most important part of defending the capitalist regime had been assumed by the ‘democratic’ parties of the Weimar Republic, and particularly by the Social Democratic Party, but it was necessary for the bourgeoisie to inflict a ‘punishment’ of unprecedented violence on the proletarians of that country in order to permanently remove any urge to rise up against the capitalist order. And it was the Nazi Party that took on this vile task with the monstrous cruelty we all know about.
As for the ‘democratic’ factions of the bourgeoisie, particularly those that dominated in France, the United Kingdom and the United States, they played their part in the counter-revolution in a less spectacular but equally effective manner. These factions were not just content with supporting the repression of the revolutionary proletariat in Russia and Germany (for example, France, which defeated Germany in 1918, returned 16,000 machine guns to it to murder the insurgent workers). It was the ‘democratic’ institutions that served as a stepping stone for Hitler to come to power, and it was the very democratic England that favoured the victory of Hitler and Mussolini's ally in Spain, Franco. It was also during the 1930s that the ‘democracies’ lent respectability to the Stalinist regime by accepting it into the League of Nations in September 1934, a bourgeois organisation that Lenin had described as a “den of thieves” when it was created in 1919. This respectability was reinforced by the signing in May 1935 of the Franco-Soviet Mutual Assistance Treaty (known as the Laval-Stalin Pact).
Thus, the horrific barbarism that developed during the 1930s under the Stalinist and Hitlerite regimes, with the complicity of the ‘democratic’ regimes, warns us of the bloodthirsty fury that seizes the exploiting class when its privileges and power over society are threatened.
But during the 1930s, the proletariat, and global society as a whole, had not yet hit rock bottom. These years were marked by the collapse of the world economy with terrible attacks on the working class, but the latter, due to the depth of its defeat, was unable to respond to these attacks by taking the path of revolution once again. On the contrary, these years led to the greatest tragedy ever experienced by human society: the Second World War, with its 60 million dead, mostly civilians, massacred in Nazi concentration camps or under the carpet bombing of cities on both sides. There is no need to go into the details of this tragedy here, eight decades later. There are still many books, articles and television programmes that provide us with accounts of this. Just recently, a successful film, Oppenheimer, recalled a particularly atrocious episode of this period: the atomic bombs dropped on Japan by the ‘great American democracy’ in August 1945.
One of the most terrible aspects of this war is that it did not provoke a response from the proletariat, as was the case during the First World War. Quite the opposite, the Allied victory in 1945, presented as the triumph of civilisation over barbarism, of ‘democracy’ over fascism, reinforced the illusions that the bourgeoisie maintains within the working class in the major countries, particularly those about ‘democracy’ as the ideal form of social organisation, an organisation which, beyond the rhetoric of its defenders, in reality perpetuates the exploitation of workers, injustice, oppression and wars.
Thus, after the Second World War, the ruling class resumed the methods that had enabled it to immobilise the proletariat and conscript it into imperialist slaughter during the 1930s. Before and after the war, one of the main deceptions served up by the bourgeoisie to the proletariat was to present their defeats as victories. It was undoubtedly the fraudulent myth of the ‘socialist state’ that emerged from the revolution in Russia and was presented as a bastion of the proletariat, when in fact it had become nothing more than the defender of nationalised capital, that constituted the essential weapon for both conscripting and demoralising the proletariat. The proletarians of the whole world, in whom the upheaval of 1917 had given rise to immense hope, were now invited to submit their struggles unconditionally to the defence of the ‘socialist homeland’, and where there were those who were beginning to suspect its anti-working class nature, bourgeois ideology was able to instil the idea that the revolution could have no other outcome than that which it had had in Russia: the emergence of a new society of exploitation and oppression even worse than capitalist society.
In fact, the world that emerged from the Second World War saw a strengthening of the counter-revolution, no longer mainly in the form of terror, assassinations of proletarians, and concentration camps, now reserved for ‘socialist’ states (as in the bloody repressions in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Poland in 1970), but in the much more insidious form of the bourgeoisie's ideological hold over the exploited, a hold favoured by the temporary improvement in the economic situation during post-war reconstruction.
But as the song La semaine sanglante (The Bloody Week), written after the repression of the Paris Commune by the Communard Jean-Baptiste Clément (also author of ‘Temps des cerises’ (Time of Cherries), says: “Les mauvais jours finiront” (The bad days will end). And the ‘bad days’ of the bourgeoisie's total ideological domination came to an end in May 1968.
1968: the resumption of the proletarian struggle
The huge strike of May 68 in France (then the largest strike in the history of the world proletariat) signalled the resumption of workers' struggles and the end of the counter-revolution. For May 68 was not a ‘French affair’; it was the first major response by the world proletariat to the attacks of the bourgeoisie, which was facing an economic crisis that marked the end of the post-war boom. The Manifesto adopted at our first congress states:
“Today, the proletarian flame is again alight throughout the world. In an often confused and hesitant way, but with jolts which sometimes even astonish revolutionaries, the proletarian giant has raised its head and returned to make the aged capitalist structure shake. From Paris to Cordoba [in Argentina], from Turin to Gdansk, from Lisbon to Shanghai, from Cairo to Barcelona; workers' struggles have again become a nightmare for the capitalists. Simultaneously, as part of the general resurgence of the class, revolutionary groups and currents have reappeared, burdened with the enormous task of remaking, both theoretically and practically, one of the most important tools of the proletariat: its class party.”
A new generation was emerging, a generation that had not suffered the counter-revolution, a generation that was confronting the return of the economic crisis by expressing a whole potential for struggle and reflection. The whole social atmosphere was changing: after the lean years, workers were now eager to discuss, to ‘make the world anew’, particularly among the younger generations. The word ‘revolution’ was heard everywhere. The writings of Marx, Lenin and Luxemburg were circulating and provoking endless debate. The working class was striving to recover its history and past experiences.
But one of the most fundamental aspects of this wave of workers' struggles was that it meant that the bourgeoisie did not have a free hand to respond to the crisis of its economic system. For communists, but also for the vast majority of historians, it is clear that the Second World War was the result of the general economic crisis that began in 1929. This war required a profound defeat of the working class, the only force capable of opposing the outbreak of war, as we saw in 1917 in Russia and in 1918 in Germany. But the ability of the world proletariat to react massively and determinedly to the first attacks of the crisis from 1968 onwards meant that its main sectors were not prepared to be drafted into the ‘defence of the Fatherland’, unlike what had happened in the 1930s. And even if it was not a direct result of workers' struggles, the withdrawal of the United States from Vietnam in 1973 proved that the bourgeoisie of the world's leading power was no longer able to mobilise its working-class youth for war, since so many young people refused to go and get themselves killed or to kill Vietnamese in the name of ‘defending the free world’.
It is fundamentally for this reason that the development of the contradictions in the global capitalist economy did not lead to a generalised confrontation between the two blocs, to a third world war.
Another essential aspect of this resumption of class struggle was that it has not only brought the idea of revolution back into the consciousness of many workers, but had also led to the development of small minorities claiming allegiance to the Communist Left, a current which had been fighting since the early 1920s, both within and outside the communist parties that had gone over to the enemy, against the degeneration of these parties and then against the conscription of the proletariat into the Second World War.
As we wrote in the Manifesto of the ICC’s First Congress: “For many years the different fractions, most particularly the German, Dutch, and especially the Italian Left, maintained a remarkable level of activity both in terms of theoretical clarification and denunciation of the betrayals of those parties that continued to call themselves proletarian. But the counter-revolution was too deep and too long to allow the survival of these fractions. Hard hit by the Second World War and by the fact that it did not provoke any resurgence of the class, the last fractions which had survived until then gradually disappeared or entered into a process of degeneration, sclerosis or regression.”
And indeed, in the wake of the workers' struggles beginning in May 1968, we saw the emergence of a whole series of groups and discussion circles that set out to rediscover the Communist Left, engaged in discussions among themselves, and, after several international conferences in 1973-74, participated in the founding of the International Communist Current in January 1975.
1970s, 1980s: two decades of struggle
The first wave of struggles that began in May 1968 was undoubtedly the most spectacular: the ‘Italian Hot Autumn’ in 1969 (also called ‘Rampant May’) the violent uprising in Cordoba, Argentina, in May of the same year, and the huge strike in Poland during the winter of 1970, as well as significant movements in Spain and Great Britain in 1972. In Spain in particular, workers began to organise themselves through mass assemblies, even while Franco's regime was still in place, a process that reached its peak in Vitoria in 1976. The international dimension of the wave of struggles echoed as far afield as Israel (1969 and 1972) and Egypt (1972), a region dominated by war and nationalism.
In part, the momentum of this wave of struggles can be explained by the surprise that struck the global bourgeoisie in 1968. After decades of counter-revolution and ideological and political domination over the proletariat, this class had come to believe the rhetoric of those who proclaimed the disappearance of any revolutionary perspective, even the end of class struggle. But the ruling class quickly recovered from its state of surprise and launched a counter-offensive to channel workers' anger towards bourgeois objectives. Thus, following a series of strikes in March 1974 in the United Kingdom, the oldest and most experienced bourgeoisie in the world replaced the Conservative Prime Minister with Harold Wilson, leader of the Labour Party, which presented itself as the defender of workers' interests, particularly because of its close ties to the trade unions. In this country, as in many others, the exploited were then called upon to abandon their struggles so as not to hinder the left-wing governments supposedly defending their interests or to help them to win the elections.
This policy of the bourgeoisie in the main developed countries succeeded in temporarily calming the workers' militancy, but from 1974 onwards the considerable worsening of the capitalist crisis and the attacks on the proletariat led to a significant resurgence of this militancy: strikes by Iranian oil workers, steelworkers in France in 1978, the “Winter of Discontent” of 1978-79 in Britain, dockworkers in Rotterdam (led by an independent strike committee), and steelworkers in Brazil in 1979 (who also challenged the control of the trade unions). This wave of struggles culminated in the mass strike in Poland in August 1980, led by an independent cross-industry strike committee (the MKS), certainly the most important episode in the class struggle since 1968. And although the severe repression of the Polish workers in December 1981 brought this wave to a halt, it did not take long for workers' militancy to re-emerge with the struggles in Belgium in 1983 and 1986, the general strike in Denmark in 1985, the miners' strike in England in 1984-85, the struggles of railway and health workers in France in 1986 and 1988, and the movement of education workers in Italy in 1987. The struggles in France and Italy in particular, like the mass strike in Poland, demonstrated a real capacity for self-organisation with general assemblies and strike committees.
This is not just a list of strikes. This wave of struggles did not go round in circles, but made real advances in class consciousness. This advance gave rise to ‘co-ordinations’ which, in several countries, notably France and Italy, began to compete with the official trade unions, whose role as fire-fighters in the service of the bourgeois state became increasingly apparent during the struggles. These co-ordinations, which often had a corporatist character, were an attempt by the trade union apparatus and far-left organisations to perpetuate, in new forms, the trade unions' hold over workers in order to prevent the politicisation of their struggles, which would mean the recognition of these struggles not only as a form of resistance to capitalist attacks but also as preparations for the eventual struggle against the capitalist system.
1990s: Decomposition
In reality, the 1980s were already beginning to reveal the difficulties of the working class in developing its struggle further and carrying out its revolutionary project.
The mass strike in Poland in 1980 was extraordinary in its scale and in the workers' ability to self-organise in the struggle. But it also showed that, in the eastern bloc countries, illusions in western ‘democracy’ were immense. Even more seriously, in the face of the repression that fell upon the workers of Poland in December 1981, the solidarity of the proletariat in the western countries was reduced to platonic declarations, unable to see that, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, it was in fact one and the same struggle of the working class against capitalism. This was the first sign of the proletariat's inability to politicise its struggle and further develop its revolutionary consciousness.
But these difficulties encountered by the working class were exacerbated by the new policy implemented by the dominant sectors of the bourgeoisie. In most countries, the ‘left-wing alternative’ in power gave way to another formula for confronting the working class. The right wing returns to power and launches unprecedented violent attacks against workers, while the left wing in opposition sabotages the struggles from within. Thus, in 1981, US President Ronald Reagan fired 11,000 air traffic controllers on the grounds that their strike was illegal. In 1984, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher went even further than her friend Reagan. At that time, the working class in Britain was the most militant in the world, setting new records for the number of strike days year after year. For the bourgeoisie of this country, and also of other countries, it was necessary to break their backs. In March 1984, the ‘Iron Lady’ provoked the miners by announcing the closure of numerous pits and, hand in hand with the trade unions, isolated them from the rest of their class brothers. For a year, the miners fought alone, until they were exhausted (Thatcher and her government had prepared their move by secretly stockpiling coal). The demonstrations were brutally suppressed (three dead, 20,000 injured, 11,300 arrests). It took four decades for British workers to overcome the demoralisation and paralysis caused by this defeat. It demonstrated the ability of the bourgeoisie, in Britain and elsewhere in the world, to react intelligently and effectively against the development of workers' struggles, to prevent them from leading to the politicisation of the proletariat and even, in a number of countries, to strip it of its sense of class identity, notably by destroying its fighting spirit in symbolic sectors such as mining, shipbuilding, steel and automobiles.
A short sentence from one of our articles in 1988 sums up the crucial problem facing the working class at the time: “Perhaps it is less easy to talk about revolution in 1988 than it was in 1968.”
This temporary lack of perspective began to affect society as a whole. Nihilism spread. Two little words from a song by the punk band the Sex Pistols were spray-painted on walls across London: “No future”.
It was in this context, with the exhaustion of the 1968 generation and the decay of society beginning to show, that a terrible blow was dealt to our class: the collapse of the eastern bloc and then of the ‘Soviet’ Union in 1989-91 triggered a deafening campaign on ‘the death of communism’. The great lie that ‘Stalinism = communism’ was once again exploited to the full; all the abominable crimes of this regime, which was in reality capitalist, were attributed to the working class and ‘its’ system. Worse still, it was trumpeted day and night: “This is where the workers' struggle leads: to barbarism and bankruptcy! This is where the dream of revolution leads: to a nightmare!” In September 1989, we wrote: “Even in its death throes, Stalinism is rendering a last service to the domination of capital; in decomposing, its cadaver continues to pollute the atmosphere that the proletariat breathes.” (“Theses on the economic and political crisis in the eastern countries”, International Review No. 60) And this has been dramatically confirmed. This major historical change in the world situation exacerbated a phenomenon that began to develop during the 1980s and contributed to the collapse of the Stalinist regimes: the general decomposition of capitalist society. Decomposition is not a passing and superficial moment; it is a profound dynamic that leaves its mark on the whole of society. It is the final phase of the decadence of capitalism, a phase of agony that will end in the destruction of humanity or in world communist revolution. As we wrote in 1990: “... the present crisis has developed at a time when the working class is no longer weighed down by the counter-revolution. With its historic resurgence from 1968 onwards, the class has proven that the bourgeoisie did not have its hands free to unleash a Third World War. At the same time, although the proletariat has been strong enough to prevent this from happening, it is still unable to overthrow capitalism, (...). In this situation, where society’s two decisive - and antagonistic - classes confront each other without either being able to impose its own definitive response, history nonetheless does not just come to a stop. Still less for capitalism than for preceding social forms, is a ‘freeze’ or a ‘stagnation’ of social life possible. As a crisis-ridden capitalism’s contradictions can only get deeper, the bourgeoisie’s inability to offer the slightest perspective for society as a whole, and the proletariat’s inability, for the moment, openly to set forward its own can only lead to a situation of generalised decomposition. Capitalism is rotting on its feet.” (“Theses on Decomposition, the Final Phase of Capitalist Decadence”, Point 4)
This putrefaction affects society at all levels and acts like a poison: a rise in individualism, irrationality, violence, self-destruction, etc. Fear and hatred are gradually taking over. Drug cartels develop in Latin America, racism everywhere... Thought is marked by the impossibility of projecting oneself into the future, by a short-sighted and narrow-minded vision; the politics of the bourgeoisie find themselves increasingly limited to a piecemeal approach. This daily immersion inevitably permeates the proletariat. Atomised, reduced to individual citizens, they bear the brunt of the decay of society.
2000s, 2010s: attempts at struggle hampered by the loss of class identity
The years 2000-2010 saw a succession of attempts at struggle, all of which were confronted with the fact that the working class no longer knew it existed, that the bourgeoisie had succeeded in making it forget that it was the driving social force of society and the future.
On 15 February 2003, a global demonstration took place against the looming war in Iraq (which would actually break out in March, under the pretext of ‘fighting terrorism’, last eight years and claim one million lives). This movement rejected war, whereas the successive wars of the 1990s had not provoked any resistance. But it was above all a movement confined to the civic and pacifist sphere; it was not the working class that was fighting against the warlike tendencies of its respective state, but a collection of citizens demanding a policy of peace from their governments.
In May-June 2003, in France, there were numerous demonstrations against pension reforms. A strike broke out in the national education sector, and the threat of a ‘general strike’ loomed, but in the end it did not happen and the teachers remained isolated. This sectoral confinement was obviously the result of a deliberate policy of division on the part of the trade unions, but this sabotage was successful because it was based on a very great weakness in the class: teachers considered themselves to be apart, they did not feel like members of the working class. At the time, the very notion of the working class was still lost in limbo, rejected, outdated, shameful.
In 2006, students in France mobilised en masse against a precarious contract specifically for young people: the CPE (Contrat Première Embauche, or First Employment Contract). This movement revealed a paradox: the working class was continuing to reflect on its situation, but it was unaware of this. The students rediscovered a form of struggle that was authentically working class: general assemblies. These assemblies were the venue for genuine discussions and were open to workers, the unemployed and pensioners. They fostered the development of working-class solidarity between generations and between sectors. This movement shows the emergence of a new generation ready to refuse the sacrifices imposed on them and to fight back. However, this generation also grew up in the 1990s and was thus strongly marked by the apparent absence of the working class and the disappearance of its project and experience. This new generation was therefore not mobilising as an exploited class but diluting itself into the mass of ‘citizens’.
The ‘occupy’ movement that spread across much of the globe in 2011 was marked by the same strengths and weaknesses. Here too, combativeness was developing, as was reflection, but without reference to the working class and its history. For the Indignados in Spain or Occupy in the United States, Israel and the United Kingdom, the tendency to see themselves as ‘citizens’ rather than proletarians made the whole movement vulnerable to democratic ideology. As a result, "Democracia Real Ya!” (Real Democracy Now!) became the movement's slogan. And bourgeois parties such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain could thus present themselves as the true heirs of these revolts. In other words, workers and children of workers, mobilised as ‘citizens’ among other angry sections of society, small business owners, impoverished shopkeepers and artisans, peasants, etc., cannot develop their struggles against exploitation and therefore against capitalism; on the contrary, they find themselves under the banner of demands for a fairer, more humane, better-managed capitalism, for better leaders.
The period 2003-2011 thus represents a whole series of efforts by our class to fight against the continuing deterioration of living and working conditions under capitalism in crisis, but, deprived of its class identity, it ended up (temporarily) in a greater slump.
And the worsening of decomposition in the 2010s further exacerbated these difficulties: the rise of populism, with all the irrationality and hatred that this bourgeois political current contains, the international proliferation of terrorist attacks, the seizure of power over entire regions by drug traffickers in Latin America and by warlords in the Middle East, Africa and the Caucasus, huge waves of migrants fleeing the horrors of hunger, war, barbarism and desertification linked to global warming... the Mediterranean has become a watery grave for thousands.
This rotten and deadly dynamic tends to reinforce nationalism and reliance on state ‘protection’, and to be influenced by the false critiques of the system offered by populism (and, for a minority, by jihadism). The lack of class identity is aggravated by the tendency towards fragmentation into racial, sexual and other specific categories, which in turn reinforces exclusion and division, whereas only the proletarian struggle can bring about the unity of all sectors of society that are victims of the barbarism of capitalism. And this is for the fundamental reason that it is the only struggle that can abolish this system.
2020: the return of workers' militancy
But the current situation cannot be reduced to this decomposition of society. Forces other than those of destruction and barbarism are also at work: the economic crisis continues to worsen and every day drives the need for struggle; the horror of everyday life constantly raises questions that workers cannot help but think about; the struggles of recent years have begun to provide some answers, and these experiences are making their mark without us even realising it. In the words of Marx: “we recognise our brave friend, ... the old mole that can work in the earth so fast, that worthy pioneer.”
In 2019, a social movement against a new pension reform developed in France. Even more significant than the militancy, which was very marked, was the tendency towards solidarity between generations that was expressed in the marches: many workers in their sixties – and therefore not directly affected by the reform – went on strike and demonstrated so that young workers would not suffer this attack from the bourgeoisie.
The outbreak of war in Ukraine in February 2022 caused consternation; there was fear among the working class that the conflict would spread and escalate. But at the same time, the war significantly worsened inflation. Already facing the disastrous effects of Brexit, Britain was the hardest hit. Faced with this deterioration in living and working conditions, strikes broke out in many sectors (health, education, transport, etc.): this is what the media called “the Summer of Discontent”, in reference to ‘the Winter of Discontent’ of 1978-79!
By drawing this parallel between these two major movements separated by 43 years, journalists, often unintentionally, highlighted a fundamental reality: behind this expression of “discontent” lay an extremely profound movement. Two expressions were heard at picket lines across the country: “Enough is enough” and “We are the workers.” In other words, if British workers are standing up to inflation, it is not only because it is intolerable. It is also because consciousness has matured in the minds of workers, because the mole has been digging for decades and is now poking its nose out: the proletariat is beginning to regain its class identity, to feel more confident, to feel like a social and collective force. The struggles of the working class in Britain in 2022 have an importance and significance that extend far beyond the borders of that country. On the one hand, they were being waged in a country of prime importance in the world, economically, financially and politically, particularly because of the dominance of the English language and the vestiges of the British Empire from the heyday of capitalism. On the other hand, it is the oldest proletariat in the world that we have seen at work, a proletariat which, during the 1970s, had shown exceptional militancy but which then, during the Thatcher years, suffered a major defeat that paralysed it for decades despite massive attacks by the bourgeoisie. The spectacular reawakening of this proletariat is indicative of a profound change in the mindset and consciousness of the entire global proletariat.
In France, a new mobilisation was developing and, there too, demonstrators began emphasising their identification with the workers' camp and took up the slogan “Enough is enough”, translating it as “C’est assez!”. In the marches, references to the great strike of May 1968 are appearing. We were therefore right to write in 2020: "The gains of the struggles of the 1968-89 period have not been lost, even if they may have been forgotten by many workers (and revolutionaries): the fight for self-organisation and the extension of struggles; the beginnings of an understanding of the anti-working role of the unions and the parties of the capitalist left; resistance to being dragooned into war; distrust towards the electoral and parliamentary game, etc. Future struggles will have to be based on the critical assimilation of these gains, taking them further, and certainly not denying or forgetting them." (International Review 164).
The working class must set out to reclaim its own history. In concrete terms, the generations that experienced 1968 and the confrontation with the trade unions in the 1970s and 1980s are still alive today. The young people of the 2006 and 2011 assemblies must also share their experiences with today's youth. This new generation of the 2020s has not suffered the defeats of the 1980s (notably under Thatcher and Reagan), nor the lie of 1990 about the ‘death of communism’ and the ‘end of the class struggle’, nor the hard years that followed. It has grown up in a permanent economic crisis and a world in decline; which is why it still has its fighting spirit intact. This new generation can lead all the others, while listening to them and learning from their experiences, both their victories and their defeats. Past, present and future can once again come together in the consciousness of the proletariat.
Faced with the devastating effects of decomposition, the proletariat will have to politicise its struggles
As we have seen, the 2020s have opened up the prospect of unprecedented upheavals throughout the world, leading ultimately to the destruction of humanity.
More than ever, the working class is therefore faced with a major challenge: to develop its revolutionary project and thus offer the only other possible perspective: communism. To do this, it must first resist all the centrifugal forces that are constantly at work against it. It must be able to avoid being caught up in the social fragmentation that leads to racism, confrontation between rival gangs, withdrawal and fear. It must be able to resist the siren calls of nationalism and war (whether presented as ‘humanitarian’, ‘anti-terrorist’, ‘resistance’, etc.). The various bourgeoisies always accuse the enemy of ‘barbarism’ to justify their own barbarism. Resisting all this rot that is gradually infecting society as a whole and succeeding in developing its struggle and its perspective necessarily implies that the entire working class must raise its level of consciousness and organisation, succeed in politicising its struggles, and create spaces for debate, elaboration and the taking of control of strikes by workers themselves. Because the struggle of the proletariat against capitalism is:
Revolutionaries of the world
This brief overview of decades of workers' struggles brings out an essential idea: the historic struggle of our class to overthrow capitalism will still be a long one. Along the way, there will be a succession of pitfalls, traps and defeats. To be ultimately victorious, this revolutionary struggle will require a general increase of consciousness and organisation of the entire working class, on a global level. For this general increase to take place, the proletariat will have to confront all the traps set by the bourgeoisie in the struggle and, at the same time, reclaim its past, its experience accumulated over two centuries.
When the International Workingmen's Association (IWA) was founded in London on 28 September 1864, this organisation became the embodiment of the global nature of the proletarian struggle, a condition for the triumph of the world revolution. It was the source of inspiration for the poem written in 1871 by the Communard Eugène Pottier, which became a revolutionary song passed down from generation to generation of proletarians in struggle, in almost every language on the planet. The lyrics of The Internationale emphasise how this solidarity of the global proletariat is not a thing of the past but points to the future:
Let us unite, and tomorrow,
The Internationale,
Will be the human race
It is up to organised militant minorities to carry out this international regrouping of revolutionary forces. Indeed, while the masses of the working class engage in this effort of reflection and self-organisation mainly during periods of open struggle, a minority has always been committed, throughout history, to the ongoing struggle for revolution. These minorities embody and defend the perseverance and historical continuity of the revolutionary project of the proletariat, which has produced them for this purpose. To quote the Communist Manifesto of 1848: "In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole. The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.”
It is this minority that bears the primary responsibility for organising, debating, clarifying all issues, learning from past failures and bringing accumulated experience to life. Today, this minority, which is extremely small and fragmented into many small organisations, must come together to confront different positions and analyses, reclaim the lessons bequeathed to us by the fractions of the Communist Left, and prepare for the future. To carry out the global revolutionary project, the overthrow of capitalism across the planet, the proletariat must equip itself with one of its most valuable weapons, the lack of which has cost it so dearly in the past: its global revolutionary party. Thus, in October 1917, the Bolshevik Party played an essential role in the overthrow of the bourgeois state in Russia. Conversely, one of the causes of the defeat of the proletariat in Germany was the unpreparedness of the Communist Party in that country, which was only founded during the revolution itself. Its inexperience led it to make mistakes that contributed to the final defeat of the revolution in Germany and, consequently, in the rest of the world.
AND NOW?
The situation of the proletarian struggle has changed considerably over the last half-century. As we have seen, the obstacles encountered by the working class on its path to revolution have proved to be much greater than could have been suspected when our organisation was founded. However, the words that appeared in the Manifesto adopted by the First Congress of the ICC remain entirely relevant today: "With its still modest means, the International Communist Current has committed itself to the long and difficult task of regrouping revolutionaries (…). Turning its back on the monolithism of the sects, it calls upon the communists of all countries to be aware of the immense responsibilities which they have, to abandon the false quarrels which separate them, to surmount the deceptive divisions which the old world has imposed on them. The ICC calls on them to join in this effort to constitute (before the class engages in its decisive struggles) the international and unified organisation of its vanguard.”
Similarly, the words of the Manifesto of the 9th Congress of the ICC remain as valid today as they were in 1991: “Never in history has so much been at stake. Never has a social class had to face such a responsibility as the proletariat today. If the class proves unable to take on this responsibility, then it will be the end of civilisation, and even of humanity itself. Millennia of progress, labour, and thought, will be wiped out for ever. Two hundred years of proletarian struggles, millions of working class martyrs, all will have been in vain. To stop the bourgeoisie's criminal manoeuvres, to unmask its vile lies, and to develop your struggles on the path towards the worldwide communist revolution, to abolish the reign of want, and to achieve, at last, the realm of liberty,
Workers of all countries, unite!
International Communist Current
(September 2025)