On December 14 last, on the sands of Australia’s Bondi Beach, two gunmen – a father and son, used two high-powered, legally-owned rifles to open fire on a children’s event marking the start of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. Fifteen people were killed by the two men, including a 10-year-old girl and an elderly Holocaust survivor. The elder of the two gunmen had been investigated by the Australian police for his links with the Islamic State in 2019. Dozens more were injured. As is now usual in these expressions of capitalist horror, individuals showed great courage and honour in trying to protect their fellow human beings and, as is also usual in these cases, security was lax to non-existent. The first response of the Australian government from the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his officials was to defend their state and its “democracy”, while promising further increases in its security and repressive measures that will weigh above all on the working class.

This latest slaughter of innocents comes on the 10-year anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, the mass shooting at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, the bombing of Brussels Airport nine years ago, and, eight years ago, the bombing of Manchester Arena during a concert perpetrated by an individual whose Manchester-based Libyan Jihadi family were working for MI6.  From these four events, all closely related to imperialist interests, over 200 celebrating individuals of all ages were killed and thousands more injured by explosive devices that had “to whom it may concern” written on them. The massacre of civilians, always a feature of oppressive systems, constantly reaches new, sickening heights under capitalism which thrashes about in its own decomposition and moral decay. And in the midst of this our leaders can only offer their hypocritical and empty “condolences” for the victims of their own system while beefing up their security systems.

The decomposition of capitalism, the rotting of a system dying on its feet, brings along with it a rise in all levels of violence, sexual, racial and totally indiscriminate atrocities as well, of course, as the organised violence of the state in the pursuit of imperialist interests through terrorism, warfare and support for warfare. Growing up in and surrounded by this unfolding global putrefaction, the mental health of youth can only be affected and often twisted by the forces of despair, by the no future and no perspective that capitalism holds and generalises throughout the world. Thus, indiscriminate attacks on schoolchildren and students are on the rise everywhere, to the point where they have become commonplace and banal along with attacks by pupils on teachers: “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.”[1] Youth is particularly affected by this ongoing carnage, bewildered, confused and psychologically damaged by the ambient death and destruction taking place all around them.

States that have no care for victims cynically exploit the violent acts that occur in other states for their own imperialist interests. Thus, the butcher Netanyahu castigates Australian Prime Minister Albanese over the Bondi attack, saying that he “allowed the disease of anti-Semitism to spread” because of his politically structured support for a Palestinian state. For his part Albanese proposes “a moment of national unity”, while advocating new measures that further strength the repressive machinery of the state. The ruling class generally unleashes massive ideological campaigns after these atrocities take place stirring up divisions by the way and implementing inquiries and measures that do nothing to “prevent this happening again”, as the empty mantra of the bourgeoisie has it. The only thing that they can do, the action that they are forced to take, is to implement and enforce more security measures, more obvious state repression ostensibly to “manage” and defend the state but, in reality, build up an arsenal of laws and  measures that can and will be used against the working class in its struggle. And in the west particularly, the more experienced bourgeoisie use these outrages and atrocities, not to deal with their root cause because they are beyond its control, but to defend the lie of the democratic state and corral us into being “good citizens” behind it.

The effects of decomposition, the violence, ravages, irrationality and absurdity of capitalism will remain a mortal threat to humanity and a constant danger for the working class and its struggle and, as long as capitalism exists, these threats will only become more manifest. There have been significant moments in history that show that only the struggle of the working class – and the working class alone – can push back the attacks of the ruling class and open a perspective for the future of humanity: the communist revolution. In 1905 in Russia, workers defended Jews against the pogroms unleashed by the Tsarist regime to counter the revolutionary tide; in the Netherlands 1941, in the depths of world war and the counter-revolution, workers in Amsterdam led strikes in order to prevent Jews being rounded-up by the Nazis working in conjunction with the Dutch authorities; in Hungary 1956 when workers came onto the streets against the bloody repression by the bourgeoisie in Poznan and in Poland, 1968, when young workers showed solidarity with students by joining them when they were being attacked by the police. Whether it’s a terrorist attack or that of a psychologically damaged individual, the working class can do little to prevent such occurrences which can only proliferate with the decomposition of capitalism. Indeed, there are dangers for it in getting involved in the campaigns of the ruling class around such events. What the working class can do, as it begun to with force and vigour in 2022, is develop its own struggle against this rotting system because in that struggle lies the perspective for a future that can go beyond the horrors of capitalism.

Baboon, 24.12.25

Letter from a contact

I find it very difficult to accept your point of view on the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Of all forms of society, democracy is, in my opinion, the best, because in a democracy, freedom of expression is respected. It is thanks to our democratic form of society that the ICC can express its criticism of the capitalist system. In a fascist dictatorship, for example, the ICC would not have been able to criticise the capitalist system. If the ICC had indeed expressed its opinion against capitalism, you would probably have disappeared into concentration camps. But in a dictatorship of the proletariat, liberals, for example, cannot criticise communism. If liberals had indeed expressed their criticism of communism, they would probably have disappeared into re-education camps. That is why I am in favour of a democratic society and against any form of dictatorship. Because in a democratic society, all opinions are respected…

Our response

In his letter, the comrade raises an important question that lies at the heart of the mystification around democracy that the ruling class wants to hammer into the heads of the exploited, that, in a true democracy, all individuals would be equal (‘one man, one vote’) and, even if its implementation is not perfect, citizens would have the task of defending the democratic state which is, according to Churchill,  “the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

We salute the comrade's sense of responsibility in that he very explicitly expresses a fundamental disagreement, or at least a questioning, of a fundamental position of the ICC and the legacy of marxism in general. However, without wishing to offend the comrade, the vision he expresses in his letter completely ignores the conditions in which bourgeois democracy emerged and developed, foremost among which are the massacres carried out by democratic states against the struggling proletariat and their ferocity targeting revolutionary organisations as soon as they begin to pose the slightest threat to the established order. It was indeed the democratic French Republic that slaughtered the Paris Commune, it was the democratic Weimar Republic that crushed the German revolution of 1918-1919 in blood, it was the ‘great Western democracies’ that hunted down revolutionaries such as Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, often hand in hand with autocratic, fascist or Stalinist regimes.

So where does this discrepancy come from between the bloody history of bourgeois democracy and the comrade's idea that in a democratic society, all opinions are respected? Very often, the difficulty lies not in the answer, but in how the question is posed. In his letter, the comrade speaks of democracy as an abstract concept, that of ‘democracy in general’ which is taken outside of history and class relations. But in history, there has never been such a thing as ‘democracy in general’. In ancient times, Athenian democracy was the political organisation of slave owners who ruthlessly exercised their domination over the exploited masses. Similarly, today there is no such thing as ‘democracy in general’: there are only bourgeois democracies, which, as we will try to convince our comrade and our readers, are nothing more than machines for oppressing the working class, and the most sophisticated weapon of the bourgeoisie for exercising its dictatorship over the rest of society.

Bourgeois democracy is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie

Indeed, for marxists, today's society is not a collection of equal individuals, a kind of agora where all opinions freely confront each other in the marketplace of ideas. On the contrary, today's society is divided into classes with conflicting interests, a society in which the bourgeoisie dominates and exploits the proletariat. Thus, in the 19th century, the various factions of the ruling class were able to share power in Parliament by seeking to exclude the proletariat (through denying the right to vote, for example). Yet the workers movement was fighting for the establishment of democratic states. So why was this?  Because ‘democracy in general’ is the least bad of all systems? Because marxism had illusions about the possibility of overthrowing capitalism through Parliament? No! The marxist current saw even further ahead. Democracy was then the weapon of the revolutionary bourgeoisie against the old feudal structures that still clung to power, and the working class could still wrest genuine reforms (working hours, wages, end of child labour, etc.) from capitalism in its heyday. In both cases, the aim was to promote the development of the proletariat in order to... better overthrow capitalism and its democratic state. The bourgeoisie systematically and violently suppressed in blood the democratic demands of the working class.

However, with capitalism entering its decadent phase with the First World War, the conditions for exercising power changed. Imperialist competition between nations intensified, forcing the bourgeoisie to exercise greater discipline behind the state. Parliament became a mere rubber-stamp, a chamber for the directives of the executive branch, and capitalism was no longer able to grant real reforms to the working class. Everywhere, the democratic form of the state became an empty shell, a pure ideological mystification intended to hinder the revolutionary perspective that was now on the agenda.

The democratic structure of the state is, like all other forms of the state within capitalism (military dictatorship, fascism, Stalinism, etc.), an instrument designed to ensure and perpetuate the domination of the bourgeoisie over society. It is even the most sophisticated form of this:

- ‘Universal suffrage’ has proved to be one of the most effective means of concealing the dictatorship of capital behind the illusion of a ‘sovereign people’. It is still one of the preferred instruments for both channelling the discontent of the working class and maintaining the illusion that it is possible to make the capitalist world more just and humane through democracy. For marxists, on the contrary, since capitalism entered its period of decadence (at the time of the First World War), the proletariat has no longer had any truly positive reforms to wrest from the bourgeoisie; capitalism has become an irredeemably reactionary and destructive system. It is no coincidence that the bourgeoisie began to push the proletariat en masse towards the ballot box when capitalism entered its period of decline, particularly in those countries where the working class is highly concentrated and experienced in struggle.

- ‘Freedom of the press’ is perfectly compatible with the monopoly of information by the bourgeoisie and its mainstream media. The role of the latter is to disseminate official state communiqués and to drown (with the help of social media) the truth under a daily deluge of lies, false information and absurdities. The message disseminated ad nauseam by the bourgeois press is that there is no alternative to capitalism. Moreover, ‘restrictions’ can be placed on the freedom of the press at any time the democratic state deems it necessary, as is done by all governments during wars or when the proletariat defends its revolutionary perspective.

- ‘Freedom of expression and association’, like ‘freedom of speech’, are also mystifications ‘tolerated’ ... as long as they do not threaten the power of the bourgeoisie and its imperialist interests. There are numerous examples of flagrant restrictions on these ‘freedoms,’ including against competing bourgeois factions. In the United States, the ‘world champion of democracy’ and ‘home of human rights’, American citizens were persecuted for their left-wing sympathies during the McCarthy era in the 1950s. During the great strike of May 1968 in France, far-left groups were banned and their leaders arrested. Over the past year, the group Palestine Action in Britain has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation. Since its founding in 1975, and despite its relatively modest size, the ICC has not been spared either: its militants have also been followed, intimidated and subjected to searches.

As Lenin wrote in The State and Revolution (1917), "A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession […], it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.” In short, bourgeois democracy is a perfect synonym for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

But what about the dictatorship of the proletariat?

Throughout history, no oppressed class has been able to overthrow the old society without going through a revolution and a phase of dictatorship designed to break by force the resistance of the existing ruling class and ready to go to any extremes to maintain its domination. Thus, as in the American and French revolutions, the bourgeoisie had to wrest the state apparatus from the hands of the aristocracy, waging a policy of repression and terror against the counter-revolution in the name of democracy and human rights.

However, as the Paris Commune and the revolutionary experience of 1917-1923 taught us, the working class cannot use the bourgeois state to establish its own domination over society. Indeed, the state is not a neutral instrument that could just as easily be used to defend the privileges of the exploiters as to benefit the exploited class. On the contrary, in all its forms, the state is essentially an instrument of class domination over society. Engels, in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, demonstrates very well that the state is a specific product of class society, designed to maintain, through coercion (army, police, justice, surveillance, social control, etc.), the cohesion of society for the benefit of the ruling class, an instrument of violence directed against the exploited classes. The task of the proletarian revolution, which entails the elimination of classes and exploitation, is therefore to destroy the bourgeois state from top to bottom[1], and the political weapon used for this destruction is the workers' councils. These councils are not a pipe dream or a utopia, but the “finally discovered form”, as Lenin wrote, of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was the working class itself that first brought about this form of political organisation during the Russian Revolution of 1905.

For the first time in history, instead of the police and the army, the workers' councils claimed the monopoly of weapons and instead of a handful of professional politicians ‘chosen’ every four or five years to defend bourgeois property and exploitation, power was exercised by the entire working class, with representatives who could be mandated and dismissed at any time. Instead of the dictatorship of the minority over the vast majority, it was the dictatorship of the vast majority over the minority. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the proletarian freedom of criticism exercising power against capitalist exploitation and the armed resistance of the bourgeoisie.

Depriving the proletariat of its weapons, namely the workers' councils, because they are instruments expressing dictatorship and wanting to dissolve the working class into ‘the people’ in the name of democracy, would only mean demanding it abandons its revolutionary perspective, the only alternative perspective to the continued, inevitable and further descent of capitalism into barbarism, war and widespread misery.

ICC, 31 December 2025

ICC public meeting

Saturday 7 February,

The Lucas Arms, 245A Grays Inn Rd, London WC1X 8QY, and online. 2-5pm UK time, ​2-5pm UK time.

In 1991, in response to the collapse of the eastern bloc and the war in the Gulf, the ICC wrote: “faced with the tendency towards generalized chaos which is specific to decomposition and which has been considerably accelerated by the Eastern bloc's collapse, capitalism has no other way out in its attempt to hold together its different compo­nents than to impose the iron strait-jacket of military force. In this sense, the methods it uses to try to contain an increasingly bloody state of chaos are themselves a factor in the aggravation of military barbarism into which capitalism is plunging”. ("Orientation Text: Militarism and Decomposition", International Review 64).

 The US attack on Venezuela, the mounting threat to annex Greenland and to once again launch air strikes against the regime in Tehran confirm in particular that it is the world’s strongest power that has become the main factor in the acceleration of chaos and disintegration, a process which bears with it the threat of the destruction of humanity.

 The ICC is calling a public meeting to discuss the implications of these developments. We aim to go deeper into the evolution of imperialist conflicts, but also aim to pose questions about the impact of these events on the class struggle, and what should be the response of the internationalist minority faced with the “aggravation of military barbarism into which capitalism is plunging”.

 On this occasion, there will be separate three meetings on the same day, in English, French and Spanish. To take part in the English meeting online, write to [email protected] [2]. 

On 8 January 2026, a mountain of garbage collapsed in Barangay Binaliw, Cebu City, in the Philippines, crushing lives beneath tons of capitalist waste. At least 13 people were killed. Dozens remain missing. But the true culprit is not gravity, nor nature - it is a social system that piles waste on the poor and calls it ‘development’.

This was not a tragedy. It was a crime. And the fingerprints are all over the machinery of capitalism.

Profits before life: the calculated neglect of Binaliw

The Binaliw landfill was never safe. It was a festering monument to capitalist indifference, operated by Prime Integrated Waste Solutions under the guise of a “public-private partnership.” In reality, it was a ticking time bomb - an open dumpsite masquerading as a landfill, carved into a mountain and stacked high with garbage, in defiance of basic engineering and human decency.

Warnings were issued. Residents protested. Councilor Joel Garganera himself condemned the site as a disaster waiting to happen. But the city government and its corporate partners pressed on. Why? Because in capitalism, waste is not a problem to solve - it is a business to exploit. And the lives of workers and the urban poor are expendable in the balance sheets of profit.

Green lies and the theater of reform

Now, as the dead are pulled from the rubble, the state performs its familiar ritual: crocodile tears, promises of ‘investigation’, and vague talk of ‘improvement’. But as the ICC makes clear in its “Manifesto on ecology [3]”, these gestures are nothing but theater. Reform is a lie. Regulation is a smokescreen. The system cannot be fixed because it is functioning exactly as designed.

Capitalism’s greenwashing - its climate summits, its ‘net zero’ pledges, its technocratic tinkering - only deepens the crisis. It is not malfunctioning. It is decaying. And in its decay, it poisons the air, the water, the soil - and the very possibility of a future.

The disposable working class: sacrificed to the god of garbage

Who died in Binaliw? Not the executives. Not the politicians. It was the workers. The scavengers. The families living in the shadow of a garbage mountain. They were sacrificed on the altar of capitalist ‘efficiency’, buried not just by trash, but by the contempt of a system that sees them as trash.

This is not unique to Cebu. From Payatas to Delhi, from Lagos to Jakarta, the poor are forced to live and die in the margins of waste. Capitalism creates zones of sacrifice - geographic and human - and calls it progress.

Revolution or extinction: the ICC’s unflinching verdict

The ICC does not mince words: capitalism is ecocidal. It cannot be reformed. It must be overthrown. The working class is the only force with the power and interest to reorganize society on a rational, ecological, and human basis.

This means rejecting every illusion: electoral politics, nationalist ‘solutions’, NGO band-aids, and bourgeois climate activism. It means building an international, revolutionary movement rooted in class struggle and historical memory - especially the lessons of the workers’ councils of 1917–1919.

No more graves beneath the garbage!

The Binaliw collapse is not an isolated event. It is a symptom of a dying system that will drag us all down with it unless we act. The choice is not between better waste management and worse - it is between a world organized for human need, or a world buried in its own filth.

We owe the dead more than mourning. We owe them justice. And justice will not come from the state, the market, or the ballot box. It will come from the streets, the factories, the assemblies of workers who refuse to be buried alive.

Let the stench of Binaliw be the smell of capitalism’s rotting corpse. Let us bury the system before it buries us.

 Internasyonalismo (Philippines) 22 January 2026

In a previous article on pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Italy[1], we denounced the bourgeoisie's trap designed to divert the outrage over the massacres in Gaza into nationalist support for Palestine, i.e for the Palestinian state and the Palestinian ruling class, which is at war, notably with its Iranian allies, against a rival bourgeoisie, that of Israel. Against war and the steamroller of nationalism, the only perspective for the proletariat is to defend the unity and solidarity of workers in all countries, to refuse to allow workers to be drafted into a war that is not theirs, in which they are forced to murder their class brothers and sisters. This perspective of concrete and living international class solidarity is still a long way off, or at least it is defended today only by small revolutionary minorities. But it is the only possible way to prevent the bourgeoisie from plunging the entire planet into military barbarism. The enemy is not the worker from another country who has been forcibly conscripted; “the enemy is in our own country, it is our own bourgeoisie,” proclaimed the revolutionaries during the first imperialist world war, when the proletariat was still reeling from the declaration of war. In 1912 in the United States, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) also pointed out that the national flag is always used to blindfold workers and make them lose sight of their class interests[2]. In other words, the demand for a ‘free’ Palestine is the opposite of proletarian internationalism; it is a call to continue the imperialist war.

This is what those who waved the Palestinian flag at demonstrations in Italy fail to see.

We have often demonstrated in our articles that the era of capitalism's ascendancy is well and truly over, an era in which the emergence of new nations represented progress in terms of the development of productive forces and the growth of the proletariat. However barbaric the wars that unified nations may have been, as was the case in Italy in 1860 and in Germany after 1870, they represented a step forward in the development of capitalism and, consequently, of its gravedigger: the working class. It was then possible for workers, under certain conditions, by organising themselves separately, to sometimes support wars of national liberation and struggles for democratic rights.

That time is irretrievably gone; capitalism is no longer and will never again be a factor of progress. The task of the proletariat is now to resist attacks on wages and working conditions and, by politicising their struggles, to constitute themselves as a class, to prepare to overthrow the bourgeois state everywhere, firmly rejecting all nationalist propaganda. This is a long-term task that requires workers to become aware of their interests and their ultimate goal. Revolutionaries must play their part in this politicisation and, even if they are still in the minority, continue to denounce without fail the dominant ideology, particularly when it’s propagated by organisations that claim to be working class or even revolutionary - all the ‘left-wing parties’ of the bourgeoisie. The latter, systematically advocating the defence of the small bourgeois Palestinian state on the pretext that it is ‘under attack’ or ‘weaker’, are merely endorsing the confinement of its proletarians in a logic of war, in the name of a supposed ‘liberation’. The slogan “Free Palestine” is a trap!

The genocide in Gaza provokes anger and indignation. These kinds of feelings have often radicalised the class struggle, especially when workers are victims of repression. The history of the workers’ movement provides countless examples of this. It is normal to get involved in the class struggle with our emotions, but these can also be bad advisers because they trap us in the immediate and in outward appearances.

However, the current situation has absolutely nothing to do with the class struggle. On both sides, the proletarians are hostages to an imperialist conflict, victims driven to crime and hatred towards each other. It is therefore necessary to take a step back and not allow ourselves to be drawn into the nationalist trap. This is obviously extremely difficult for the proletarians and politicised elements of Israel and Palestine, as they are directly immersed in this barbarism, without the political weapons of the proletariat, without the internationalist solidarity of their class brothers in other countries. They are caught up in the heat of events, amid provocations and revenge, the rage of despair and powerlessness, in an atmosphere marked by death and the ideology of war. We have seen that it was also very difficult for the proletarians in Italy because of the currently very low level of consciousness in the class, whose maturation is only just beginning on an international scale. They still have to take a step forward to be able to unmask the deceptive discourse of the ruling class. Let us take a few fragments of this discourse:

1. ‘It is only fair to demand a national home for the Palestinians, as the Jewish people demanded and obtained after the Second World War.’ The creation of the State of Israel took place during the Cold War between the two great imperialist blocs led by the USSR and the United States. It is the product of imperialist war, as shown by the regional wars that have constantly bloodied the Middle East. If a Palestinian state is created in turn, the same will be true. Calling for a ‘free’ Palestinian state means formalising yet another competitor on the world stage, calling for the endless pursuit of imperialist war in this dog-eat-dog world that will once again pit all the states in the region against each other, each seeking to rely on the medium and great powers that defend their geostrategic interests on the international stage. All states, regardless of their size and power, are imperialist states. All are compelled to defend their national and strategic interests, their place on the bloody chessboard of decadent capitalism.

2. ‘To abandon the struggle for a free Palestine is to implicitly accept the massacre of the Palestinians and leave the way open for the annexation of all their territories by Israel.’ Rejecting the terrain of imperialist war and nationalism does not mean abandoning the struggle! For the proletariat, it means regaining the means to fight for their own class interests, it means being able to acquire the enormous strength that stems from the fact that Israeli and Palestinian proletarians have the same class interests, that they can overcome these divisions imposed by the bourgeoisie. Yes, this perspective is not immediately achievable. Yes, the working class does not yet have the means to oppose the massacres head-on. But the alternative proposed by the left wing of capital is the creation of a new imperialist state already in the orbit of Iran and Hezbollah. It is an exploited working class that is being sent to its death by Hamas or another ‘more presentable’ faction of the Palestinian bourgeoisie that is just as barbaric.

Far from putting an end to the massacres and preventing capitalism from sinking deeper into war, nationalist slogans in favour of a ‘free Palestine’ only serve to distract workers from the only perspective capable of truly ending capitalist barbarism: world revolution. Through these campaigns, the bourgeoisie seeks to prevent the proletarians of the major capitalist metropolises from developing their resistance to the effects of the crisis and the rise of militarism, which are essential stepping stones towards the politicisation of struggles and mass strikes, the only means capable of providing a beginning of a response to the imperialist, destructive and murderous adventures of the bourgeoisie. International class solidarity is a powerful lever, the only one that can give respite to the working class on the periphery of capitalism, deeply impacted by war, while awaiting the emergence of an international revolutionary wave.

3. ‘The great powers or institutions such as the International Court of Justice have the means to end this war and impose peace.’ The peace plan that Trump is seeking to impose reveals to us every day how much of a new deception it is. This attempt is doomed to failure and the hypocrisy is total. Trump would like to be able to resolve the problems caused by this war in Gaza so that he can deploy his forces in the Pacific against the Chinese enemy, that is, to prepare for other wars. The idea of ‘peace’ under capitalism is always a pure lie and a pipe dream. The rare moments of respite, when each nation prepared for war through an arms race, are now turning into a ‘hybrid war’, against a backdrop of rampant militarism and high-intensity conflicts. War is not simply the result of the will or a decision of the bourgeoisie. War is a product of the capitalist system. As Jaurès said, ‘capitalism carries war within it like a cloud carries a storm’.

To give in to support for the ‘nation’, an embodiment of this system, is not only to accept but to promote the logic of war. The only way to end war, or at least initially to hinder the bourgeoisie's warmongering projects, is to reject all patriotism and nationalism, defending the unity of the proletariat, first and foremost in the major capitalist metropoles, where the working class has a wealth of historical experience, but also on the periphery of capitalism where the class may be weakened by the weight of intermediate social strata. The communist revolution will put an end to imperialist war once and for all by abolishing the economic categories of capitalism: wage labour, value production, competition, classes and national borders. This is why it is so important to defend internationalist positions and the autonomous struggle of the working class throughout the world, a working class which, in Italy as elsewhere, is today capable of developing its consciousness, albeit slowly due to numerous obstacles and the still strong ideological hold of the bourgeoisie.

Avrom E, December 2025

 

 

The US military raid on Venezuela on Saturday 3 January raised several questions about the scale of the attack, about the motives of the US government and which position to defend as revolutionaries.

We received contributions from two different contacts, which we welcome because of their clear defence of the internationalist position in reaction to the US military strike. Both recognise the motive of the US for this attack, i.e. compelling any recalcitrant nation on the American continent to comply with the needs of the US. Both are convinced that this expression of force is also directed against China and intended to chase this country out of the Western Hemisphere.

One of the contributions also mentions another motive: “the American bourgeoisie requires an expansion of markets”. It was Trump who boasted all the time about tens of millions of barrels of oil that Venezuela was going to supply to the United States. But the American bourgeoisie, and in particular the oil companies, knew very well that Venezuela will not provide an opportunity for sustainable profitable investments. At the same time, the population of Venezuela is too poor to buy the expensive American products en masse.

In fact, generally speaking, wars in the current period do not lead to an economic boost for capitalism and not even to an economic advantage for the victorious nation. This is one of the reasons why we speak about the irrationality of wars in the present period. The only “victory” for the US, in line with the recent US National Security Strategy, is having chased China and Russia (the closer ally of Venezuela) more or less out the continent. But it must pay the price of an increased instability in this part of the continent, “forcing the United States into a headlong rush of military interventions and adventures”[1]. This is another characteristic of the present period of decomposition: the US, violating international law and inviting others to do the same, as the main factor for the increase of the chaos in the world.

 

The first contribution

For some time now, Trump and the assortment of nationalist ghouls who accommodate him in the leadership of the MAGA movement (be they politicians, propagandists, or activists) have openly expressed their intentions to assert more stringent control over the region in which the U.S. lies, by force if necessary, with calls for: making Canada the 51st state, invading Mexico, and even annexing Greenland. A new development has now occurred in this regard. After months of bombing Venezuela and threats of regime change against its “socialist” president, Nicolas Maduro, he has been captured by American military forces and the Trump administration has asserted U.S. leadership in determining the government of Venezuela going forward, threatening the new president and former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, to soften Venezuela to American imperial interests, lest it be attacked again, and this time worse. Following this development, Trump has made threats against Gustavo Petro, the leftist president in Colombia who’s made a point of condemning the coup of Maduro, and also reiterated his desire to annex Greenland.

There are two main reasons for this hawkishness across the region. The first is that the American bourgeoisie requires an expansion of markets, all the better in the case of U.S. political occupation where it would have an enormous edge on the world market. Protectionist policies would likely be utilized as well to ensure the industries obtained from these expansionist projects were sufficiently monopolized by the American bourgeoisie. The second reason is that the American state, with Trump at the helm, is preparing itself for war, particularly against China, and finds it necessary to absorb countries within its region into its political umbrella, or at least to make them effectively subordinate, even if their official sovereignty is maintained. Speaking of China, the capture of Maduro and insistence that Rodriguez align herself with the U.S. is not only a Venezuelan or a Latin-American affair, but is also a development in the rivalry between the two largest powers in the arena of world imperialism, the U.S. and China. Seeing as Maduro’s Venezuela was aligned with Chinese imperialism, the prospect of a realignment towards the U.S. means for China the threat of losing a significant ally in the region of its imperial rival.

MAGA propagandists often portray the Venezuelan situation as the freeing of the Venezuelan people from a brutal dictator. Even much of the democratic opposition doesn’t disagree with the coup of Maduro, it simply criticizes the method which was used to do it. It too has always called for the Venezuelan people to be freed from Maduro’s regime in some way. All this, however, is simply veiled language for what is actually intended. Both the MAGA and the democratic bourgeoisie mean by freedom the freedom for Venezuelan markets to be penetrated by American capital. Whether this occurs in an environment of liberal democracy or “dictatorship” is of little consequence to them, despite what their propaganda might suggest. Ultimately, whether one is in a liberal democracy or a “dictatorship,” they are inevitably in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, of capital.

On the other hand, leftist propagandists often portray the Venezuelan situation as yet another attack by the U.S. on a socialist country. Far from being socialist, however, Maduro’s Venezuela, and Chavez’s before him, was simply a state-capitalist regime, that is to say, it nationalized significant portions of its economy, which were in turn directed by the state bureaucracy. But nationalization is not socialism, as it retains capitalist social relations. The fact that the state, rather than private firms, becomes a more prominent employer of wage labor doesn’t negate this fact. Nor was Maduro’s government a government of the working class, or dictatorship of the proletariat, as was seen, for example, in the Paris Commune of the late 19th Century or the council republics of the early 20th Century. The working class never took power in Venezuela via a revolution. Rather, Maduro was the successor of Chavez, who himself took power via election within the framework of a bourgeois state with broad petty-bourgeois appeals to the “masses” and social reforms.

Whether Venezuela be China-aligned or U.S.-aligned, “dictatorial” or liberal-democratic, state-capitalist or private-capitalist, the Venezuelan proletariat will remain exploited and oppressed. Only through the creation of its own independent political organs in opposition to the existing, bourgeois state, and the subsequent crushing of that bourgeois state, can the Venezuelan proletariat begin to transform its conditions. And only through the Venezuelan proletariat’s fraternization, and eventual fusion, with the proletariat in the other countries of the world, given they’ve also succeeded in conquering political power, can social revolution be carried through to such an extent that capitalism is transcended and a new mode of production arises, that of communism, in which states and classes will have dissolved.

Synthesiz

 

The second contribution

On the Venezuelan shakedown

The second quarter of the 21st century began as the last one had ended: with wars, occupations and military adventures. Only 3 days into the New Year, the spectacular kidnap of Venezuelan President Maduro and his wife by the USA – backed by air and naval forces including the world’s largest aircraft carrier, a nuclear-powered submarine, spy planes and 15,000 troops – is the most obvious example. But the continuation of the war in Ukraine, the on-going genocidal strangulation of Gaza and the widening Israeli occupation of the West Bank, plus the carnage in Sudan, speak of a social system gripped by a deepening spiral of self-destruction on a global scale.

Why the ‘Hollywood-style’ capture of Maduro?

It certainly wasn’t, as Trump has insisted, because of Maduro or his state’s involvement in the drug trade, something in which the US itself is well versed. Indeed, President Trump has pardoned over 100 convicted narcotics offenders since coming to office for the second time – the most recent being the freeing of ex-Honduras President Hernández who had been sentenced to 45 years jail by a US court in March 2025.

Nor was it primarily to gain access to Venezuela’s oil reserves, said to be the largest on the planet. While the mafia-like US state has confirmed it will ‘run’ the country and ‘wet its beak’ in the oil profits it hopes to extract, global demand for oil (and prices) are falling and even China, which had invested billions to secure supply, had largely written this off as ‘bad business’.

No: the main driving force of this ‘mission impossible’ - orchestrated in the face of all previously established rules of international conduct - was to again demonstrate the US’s overwhelming military might in front of its ‘allies’ and its rivals. In a world of ‘every man for himself’ America once more acted out the role of Top Gun.

It was a warning to the US’s allies that, as Trump boasted, it was uncontested in the western hemisphere. It was clearly a signal to the ruling religious clique in Iran that regime change is the order of the day; it sent a message that Putin, who had met with Maduro in Moscow a few months previously and voiced his unwavering support, was in fact powerless to defend those in Russia’s orbit, as the fall of Assad (in Syria) had indicated the previous year. And while some bourgeois commentators felt that the lawlessness endorsed by the Trump clique would only encourage China to mimic such antics vis-à-vis Taiwan, the mighty US war machine assembled in the Caribbean has a global as well as regional reach.

Why such a demonstration of force by the US?

Following the collapse of the Eastern bloc, the US used the first Gulf war as a means not just to threaten its enemies but, above all, to keep its allies under the godfather’s thumb. For the disappearance of the ‘Soviet Union’ and its sphere of influence implied a corresponding crumbling of the western alliance – a process recognised and completed early in Trump’s second term with the “Atlantic divorce.”

But just as the Gulf wars failed to prevent the growing chaos in international affairs, the tendency of ‘every man for himself’ was actually stimulated by the US’s intervention which brought a veritable feeding frenzy in the wake of it actions in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya and today in Syria.

Decomposition, the final phase of capitalism’s decadence, itself has a history. Today, the bloating of military budgets in almost every nation as war or war preparations become generalised and in particular, the growth of China as a serious economic if not yet equally powerful military rival, threaten USA hegemony. Washington bailed out the Trump-friendly Milei regime in Argentina with a package of 20 billion dollars to provide a counter-weight against the influence of China in Argentina and Venezuela was another South American country reliant on Beijing’s largesse. Thus, the US show of boastful bravado in fact stems from a global and historic weakening of its dominance, even in its own ‘backyard.’ Its actions create yet further regional and global instability, demonstrating the utter irrationality of imperialist wars in this epoch.

The US intervention in Venezuela is more than mere spectacle. It is a stepping up of the stakes, a further departure from international ‘norms’, a further lurch into chaos. It will for a while reassert the US’s will. But it can’t prevent the increasing decomposition of capitalist relations with murderous implications for the planet’s populations. It will in fact only accelerate this process.

KT 4.1.2026

 

It took just one night for US special forces to kidnap Nicolas Maduro in the heart of Caracas and imprison him in a New York jail. This impressive show of force, intended to decapitate the Venezuelan government, was an opportunity for Donald Trump to boast once again and issue a warning to the world:

"No nation in the world can accomplish what we have accomplished !"

Behind Trump and Maduro, the same capitalist barbarism

Trump's supporters played their usual role as defenders of democracy: by overthrowing a dictator, America had exported ‘peace, freedom and justice for the great people of Venezuela’.

This time, the charade did not go down well. Trump no longer even bothers with international law, the false pretext that the major powers, led by the United States, have used since 1945 to justify their imperialist actions and impose their ‘order’. The US military has thus intervened outside any legal framework under the flimsy pretext of fighting narco-terrorism. And Trump did not even hesitate to justify his intervention by pointing to the juicy profits that, according to him, American control of Venezuelan oil could generate. Trump and his clique therefore have no interest in democracy; they had only one goal in mind: to overthrow an uncooperative regime, place Venezuela under guardianship and deal a huge blow to its rivals, notably Russia and above all China, which has been on the offensive for years and is establishing itself in Latin America: “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never again be questioned” (Trump).

Of course, Maduro's supporters, particularly the forces that control capital, namely the ‘radical’ left-wing parties, immediately denounced this as a violation of international law and as an example of  ‘imperialist aggression’. The Bolivarian regime, at the head of a ‘non-aligned’ country, represents, according to them, a hotbed of resistance to ‘American imperialism’.

This discourse is pure hypocrisy! Venezuela is far from being the innocent little victim of the American ogre. In their confrontation with the United States, Maduro, and Chavez before him, have unflinchingly enlisted the support of Putin's Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, thereby demonstrating that Caracas, like all countries in the world, however weak they may be, is a genuine cog in the wheel of imperialism, its wars and its plundering. While Venezuela is clearly no match for the American juggernaut militarily, its leaders have not hesitated to use both oil and cartels as weapons of war. As a veritable corridor for cocaine produced in Colombia, Venezuela has thus contributed greatly to the flood of drugs into its enemies' countries.

Left-wing parties may well boast of ‘21st-century socialism’, but the ‘Bolivarian leaders’ are nothing more than a bourgeois clique that is hated and corrupt to the core. Chávez and Maduro have both pursued a systematic policy of job insecurity and increased exploitation, impoverishing the population as never before, and violently repressing the numerous protests that have punctuated their reign. The country has thousands of political prisoners. Kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial executions are commonplace. This ‘paradise on earth’ of 28 million inhabitants has 8 million refugees, the highest rate in the world! Maduro's ‘terrorism’ has been directed primarily against the working class!

As in every conflict, the bourgeoisie seeks to make us choose one bourgeois camp over another, to lock us into a false alternative between nations at war. But nowhere, neither in the United States, nor in Venezuela, nor in Ukraine, nor in Russia, nor in Israel, nor in Palestine, does any bourgeois faction offer the slightest hope for a more just and peaceful world. For this world is one of capitalism in irremediable crisis, where all states, whether democratic or authoritarian, populist or liberal, are in competition, all are imperialist and are active agents of destruction and chaos.

A new stage in chaos has been reached

Latin America is a microcosm of the barbarism into which capitalism is sinking. Rampant poverty, trafficking of all kinds, large-scale corruption, the disintegration of social and state structures... the continent increasingly resembles a gigantic Wild West. Through his military operation, Trump is importing war and the promise of considerably accelerating this chaos.

Today, Trump is strutting about, confident in the omnipotence of his army: “We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” But the trouble is only just beginning. Far from the ‘ideal’ scenario of the 1973 coup in Chile, Washington is no longer able to replace one leader with another at will. We are no longer in the Cold War era, when the bourgeoisies were still disciplined and concerned with preserving the general interests of national capital within the framework of their military bloc.

Now, without the existence of these blocs, every man for himself and chaos reign supreme. The United States has spent twenty years trying, in vain, to establish stable governments in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Even if Trump is “not afraid to put boots on the ground” the same will be true in Venezuela. Whatever happens, the US administration will have to deal with an extremely divided Venezuelan bourgeoisie1 [7] that Maduro had struggled to bring to heel. What Trump is likely to end up with is a powerless state, a fractured, miserable and anarchic country, a hub for all kinds of trafficking and the starting point for new waves of emigration.

All of this risks destabilising the entire continent and forcing the United States into a headlong rush of military interventions and adventures. Neighbouring Colombia has already deployed its troops to the border, fearing the consequences of a humanitarian crisis and conflicts between cartels. Even the US government is aware of the instability to come: “We are ready to launch a second, larger attack if necessary,” Trump said. And his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has already threatened Cuba with words worthy of a movie mafia boss: "If I lived in Havana and was part of the government, I would be at least a little worried... "

The consequences of this intervention go beyond the American continent alone. Trump has just trampled on all the international regulatory bodies designed to manage rivalries between nations, and wiped his feet on the legal framework that had allowed the United States to impose itself as the world's policeman in the past. Trump is acknowledging that: the United States no longer has the power to impose a world order faced with the development of every man for himself. Thus he is exploiting, ever more brutally, America’s immense military superiority to impose US interests. In the midst of chaos, only force is law.

In fact, Operation Absolute Resolve is not only a blow to the great Chinese rival, it is also a warning to the Europeans: while Trump has made clear his intention to seize Venezuela's vast hydrocarbon reserves, the United States will not hesitate to stab its ‘allies’ in the back if the defence of American strategic interests requires it. Katie Miller, the wife of the White House deputy chief of staff, posted a photo of Greenland draped in the colours of the American flag on the day of Maduro's abduction, accompanied by a caption that was explicit to say the least: “soon”...

Capitalism has nothing more to offer humanity than ever more wars and barbarism. The only force that can put an end to capitalist war is the working class, because it carries within it a revolutionary perspective, that of the overthrow of capitalism. It was the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat in Russia and Germany that ended the First World War! The working class will have to conquer real and lasting peace everywhere by overthrowing capitalism on a global scale. It will take years of struggle to regain its class identity and its weapons of struggle. But there is no other way to overthrow this moribund and destructive system!

EG, 4 January 2026

1 [8] Moreover, the United States has made no secret of the fact that Operation Absolute Resolve was made possible by complicity at the highest levels of the Venezuelan government.

 

In the second half of 2025, several countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, racked by intense and widespread poverty, were rocked by popular uprisings. These began in Indonesia in August, followed by Nepal and the Philippines in September. They then spread to Peru and several African countries (Togo, Morocco, Madagascar and Tanzania) and broke out in just a few months. Anger was fuelled by corruption, injustice, inequality and lack of transparency in countries heavily affected by the crisis of global capitalism.

The mainstream media exploited these movements, claiming that young people, Generation Z, were going to change the world. But should the world welcome these popular uprisings, and will they help to put an end to barbarism?

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world and suffers from high inflation, chronic underemployment and low levels of investment. Its economy is kept afloat mainly by money transfers from hundreds of thousands of young people working abroad in appalling conditions. In Indonesia, the economy is also under severe strain, and there are signs that the country is approaching a debt crisis, with high unemployment, massive lay-offs in the industrial sector, and households hit by a crisis linked to the sky-high cost of living. These countries all suffer from underemployment, considerable income inequality, absolute poverty and recurring food crises.

The population of all these countries is very young. Often, young people under the age of 30 represent 50%, and sometimes even 60%, of the population. And the unemployment rate among this generation is very high. For example, in Indonesia, it exceeds 15%; in Nepal, it is well over 20%; in Peru, it is around 30%; and in Morocco, it is even approaching 40%! The outlook is extremely bleak for a large part of the youth in these countries. This is one reason for their involvement en mass in these forms of protest.

Added to this is endemic corruption, which infuriates the wider population. According to “Transparency International's 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index”, all the countries affected by these movements, which mobilise mainly young people, are among the most corrupt: Morocco and Indonesia rank 99th, Nepal 107th, the Philippines 114th, Togo 124th, Peru 127th and Madagascar 140th out of 180 countries. During the protests, the persistent corruption of the ruling clique is always one of the central issues.

Corruption, the spark that ignited the ‘Gen Z’ revolts

In Indonesia, the large popular demonstrations on 25th August were triggered by the announcement of a 50 million rupees per month housing allowance of for members of parliament. This came at the time of mass lay-offs (of more than 80,000 workers), a more than 100% increase in property tax and major budget cuts in education, public works and health. In response to these protests, the Trade Union Coalition (KSPI) decided to call for a general strike on 28 August, making economic demands strongly marked by nationalism and totally awash with democratic mystifications, such as an end to offshoring, an end to lay-offs, an increase in the minimum wage and a review of the anti-corruption laws. However, on 29 August, with the death of a delivery driver who was hit by a police car, the situation worsened and it sparked riots in 30 provinces across the country for a whole week, with dozens of public and private buildings set on fire and more than 2,000 people arrested.

In Nepal, the immediate trigger for the popular protests was the government's ban on 26 social media platforms on 4 September. This blockage was seen as an attempt by the government to cover up its corruption. The banners and placards brandished at the rallies denounced the culture of nepotism, corruption and impunity. For a generation facing unemployment, inflation and disillusionment with traditional parties, these practices epitomise ‘a failing system’. When riot police used live ammunition on 8/9 September, killing more than 70 protesters and injuring more than 2,000 others, the protests escalated. In response, young people unleashed blind and vengeful violence: looting, attacking and chasing politicians, and setting fire to the headquarters of the Congress Party and the Parliament.

In Morocco, the deaths of eight women, who were victims of negligent health care in public hospitals in the town of the Prime Minister, led to a series of protests against widespread corruption among the ‘elites’ and nepotism among politicians. The gap between the lack of prospects for young people, massive unemployment, and the state's costly investments in stadiums for the African Cup of Nations and the 2030 World Cup was a driving force behind the anger, which was fiercely repressed by the authorities, resulting in three deaths, hundreds of injuries and thousands of arrests.

Popular revolts are a dead end

While indignation and the desire to fight are legitimate, the protesters are directing their anger against the mismanagement of the state or the corruption of this or that politician or bourgeois faction, which is only targeting the symptoms of the putrefaction of the entire capitalist system. It is the capitalist economy, now undergoing an unprecedented crisis, that is the cause of the suffering and misery in these countries, a crisis that is sacrificing ever larger sections of the world's population, starting with those in the most fragile countries, in an attempt to prolong its rule. It's the historic crisis of capitalism that lies behind the total lack of prospects for the mass of the population, and especially for young people, who are facing chronic unemployment.

Popular revolts are by definition heterogeneous and do not have a class character: they mobilise ‘the people’, but the working class is unable to develop its own autonomous struggle because the boundaries between classes are blurred. In fact, these revolts are incapable of developing any perspective other than the illusion of a nation-state abandoning its predictable abuses which means they feed all the democratic illusions in defence of the state that the bourgeoisie uses to distance the proletariat from its revolutionary perspective. They are thus not directed against the bourgeois state, but only against its ‘malign effects’ that are thought to be 'fixable’.

However, when they are reduced to impotence and a lack of perspective, one of the intrinsic characteristics of popular revolts is aimless violence. Since demands cannot be met, immediately and satisfactory, rage begins to take over and the movements quickly degenerate into blind violence, destroying everything in their path. But clashes with the forces of repression, the occupation of government buildings, the hunting down of members of the government, and even the massive participation of workers in these actions do not give these social movements a revolutionary character, not even a potential one, despite the repeated efforts of the capitalist far left to make us believe so.[1]

These popular revolts are regularly exploited and manipulated by bourgeois cliques and used to their advantage. Protests against corruption in the Philippines, against income inequality in Indonesia, or against the ban on social media in Nepal, etc.; all these pretexts provide bourgeois organisations with an excellent smokescreen for settling their rivalries, as was the case during the anti-corruption demonstration on 17 November in Manila, which was largely hijacked by a Christian sect in favour of Duterte's camp.

We see the effects of this impasse in Iran, where the working class, unable to develop its struggle independently, to direct its discontent against exploitation, trapped by illusions about ‘democracy,’ ‘the people,’ “individual rights,” is caught up and massacred in bloody clashes between bourgeois factions, all of which promise a country free of corruption, freer, and more just.

All these protests end either in false victories, when the old bourgeois faction is replaced by a new one, or in outright state repression, or both. And the state's response to these demonstrations is generally brutal: in Nepal, it has left more than 70 dead and hundreds injured; in Indonesia, thousands have been arrested; in Madagascar, 22 have been killed and more than a hundred injured. Popular revolts, reflecting a world without a future and characteristic of the system's phase of decomposition, can only spread the ills of a putrefying capitalism.[2]

We must fight on our class terrain

Popular revolts perpetuate the myth of a fairer and better-managed capitalism and are in no way a springboard for class struggle. They represent a major obstacle and a dangerous trap for the proletariat. For the demands made during these movements “dilute the proletariat within the general population, blurring its awareness of its historical struggle, subjecting it to the logic of capitalist domination and reducing it to political impotence”[3].  The proletariat has everything to lose by allowing itself to be drowned in a wave of popular protests, totally blinded by democratic illusions and the possibility of a ‘clean’ capitalist state.

On the contrary, workers must impose their own slogans, their own demands and organise their own rallies, within the framework of a movement of their own. By fighting on the economic front (wages, ‘reforms’, redundancies, etc.), they are beginning, even without seeing it clearly, to oppose the very structures of capitalist society and wage-exploitation. In the long term, they are creating the conditions for broader reflection and an awareness of the revolutionary perspective.

The proletariat is, in fact, the only force in society capable of offering an alternative to the increasingly unbearable conditions of an obsolete capitalism. But this cannot succeed within the borders of a single country, especially when this proletariat is isolated from the battalions of the proletariat at the heart of capitalism and has little experience of the struggle against bourgeois democracy and the many traps that this class sets for it. Only by developing a common struggle with the working masses of the central countries, who have a long experience of dealing with the democratic mystification, will it be possible to bring about the necessary overthrow of capitalism and the emancipation of humanity.

 

Dennis, January 2026

 "This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States Armed Forces". These were Trump's words a few minutes after the first massive bombings of Iran by Israeli and American aircraft. This was followed by an all-out response from the Revolutionary Guards, who in turn launched missile salvos at Israel and American bases throughout the region. Schools, hospitals, ports and airports, residential and tourist areas – missiles are raining down on terrorised populations from all sides. The entire Middle East is ablaze! At the time of writing, the death toll is still unknown, but the bodies are piling up in many Iranian cities and there have also been a number of victims in other countries targeted by the Iranian regime, including American soldiers. 

A dizzying plunge into barbarism and chaos

Trump, to justify this new massacre, claims to be seeking to destroy a bloodthirsty regime that “has been engaged in a relentless campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our soldiers and innocent people in many countries”. As for his sidekick, Netanyahu, he claims to want to protect “humanity” from ‘this terrorist and murderous regime’. According to the Shah's son, Reza Pahlavi, it would even be a “humanitarian intervention”!

For their part, the Iranian authorities are posing as victims: “The time has come to defend the homeland and face the enemy's military aggression. Just as we were ready to negotiate, we are more ready than ever to defend our country.”

To hear all these smooth talkers, their carpet bombing would be motivated by world security and the defence of the oppressed! This war propaganda is nothing but a vile web of lies. The reality is that the Middle East is plunging into a warlike chaos of unprecedented proportions. And this, barely eight months after Operation Midnight Hammer, which was already supposed to ‘destroy’ Iran's nuclear programme and impose ‘peace’ and stability in the region by force.

But this new military operation, given the terrifying nickname Epic Fury, is on a completely different scale to that of June 2025. The United States has amassed a veritable armada around Iran: warships, submarines, hundreds of aircraft and thousands of soldiers. A real massacre is about to begin. Trump and Netanyahu are well aware of this and have immediately made their intentions clear: their operation will be massive and particularly deadly. According to the US president, "we are going to destroy their missiles and wipe out their missile industry. It will be completely destroyed. We are going to destroy their navy. [...] And we will ensure that Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons.” He then called on the “great and proud people of Iran” to “take control of [their] destiny." In other words: to take up arms against the regime and be massacred in the streets.

On the other side, the Iranian state threatens the United States and Israel with an “overwhelming retaliation’” Missiles are raining down by the thousands, but the dictatorship in Tehran is struggling to counter American omnipotence. The regime has been considerably weakened by the bombings of June 2025 and the destruction of its allies Hezbollah and Hamas. The only response Tehran has been able to offer to the crisis triggered by Operation Midnight Hammer was a fierce crackdown on the opposition. But whether the regime collapses or manages to hold on, despite the death of its ‘guide’ Khamenei, it will shamelessly spill blood for its survival and will not hesitate to export war. Unable to respond directly, the Iranian state has already activated its militias and armed groups, ready to sow chaos wherever possible, including through terrorism.

Catastrophic international consequences

In the coming days, Trump will no doubt boast and praise the omnipotence of the US Army. On a global level, this new conflict will undoubtedly weaken the United States' main adversaries. Foremost among these is China, which, dependent on Iranian oil and access to Middle Eastern ports to develop its new Silk Roads, has largely replenished the Revolutionary Guards' missile stockpile. The scale of Operation Epic Fury is, in this respect, a new message to America's enemies: “no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States Armed Forces".

But, as after the 2025 operation and the one in Venezuela, this new show of force is nothing more than a spectacular stunt, a hollow victory that will neither stabilise the region nor resolve any conflicts. On the contrary, global disorder will reach a new level of barbarism! For contrary to what Trump claims, the hypothetical collapse of the regime, far from bringing stability, will only be the prelude to a new descent into horror: an unstable Iran fragmented by rival and heavily armed factions, the emergence of uncontrollable terrorist groups, an endless spiral of clan, religious or ethnic revenge, terrorised populations seeking to flee by any means possible... Whatever happens, the chaos will increase considerably!

By threatening the economic and oil lock-down of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is also threatening the global economy with a deeper crisis. This is why Tehran immediately targeted the area. There is no doubt that its Houthi accomplices will do everything possible to put the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden on permanent alert.

All states, large and small, are already trying to exploit the prevailing chaos for their own sordid imperialist interests.

Saudi Arabia says it is ready to intervene, as are Hezbollah and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq. China, whose influence is also targeted by this operation, will sooner or later flex its muscles, in Taiwan or elsewhere, risking a military conflict with the United States.

An expression of the barbarity of capitalism

This is by no means a catastrophist view of the situation, but the logical conclusion imposed on us by all the wars of the last twenty years: the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the war in Iraq in 2003, the implosion of Syria in 2011, war in Yemen in 2014, Gaza in 2023... each time, these military adventures have led only to catastrophic situations and fiascos, including for the United States, despite the power of its army!

Behind these endless conflicts, punctuated by incessant and false promises of peace, the same dynamic is at work: capitalism is inexorably plunging humanity into widespread war and chaos. From Mauritania to Burma, an unbroken global arc of armed conflict has become firmly entrenched. In Europe with the conflict in Ukraine, in Latin America, in Africa, in Oceania, everywhere war is spreading in an uncontrollable and anarchic manner. Everywhere, chaos reigns and neither the United States, nor the European countries, nor China, nor the international institutions, nor any state, nor any bourgeois faction is capable of putting an end to it. The ‘ceasefires’ and ‘negotiations’ are all proving to be nothing more than temporary and precarious interruptions, agreed upon in order to better prepare for the next clashes.

Faced with the barbarism of capitalism, there is only one way out: proletarian internationalism!

In his first speech, Trump called on the Iranians to “take their country back”. In London, Berlin and Georgia, a few demonstrators even gathered to support the American operation and ‘democracy’. These warmongering cries are despicable traps! Calls to be slaughtered for the Shah or any other faction of the Iranian bourgeoisie! With the potential end of the mullahs' regime, there will be no happy tomorrow. It will still be the same system, the same capitalism, the same barbarism.

On the other side, the mullahs and their supporters, starting with the leftist parties of the West, are calling on the ‘Iranian people’ and the working class to mobilise everywhere against the ‘imperialist aggression’ of the United States. Pro-Iran demonstrations took place the day after the first attack, in Tehran itself, but also in Iraq and Pakistan, with several victims in front of the American embassy. Here too, these are only calls to support one imperialist camp and to be massacred in the name of a clique of bloodthirsty barbarians.

The working class does not have to choose sides! The proletarians of the whole world must not succumb to the siren calls of nationalism or take sides with either camp, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere. All nations, all bourgeoisies, whether democratic or authoritarian, left or right, populist or ‘progressive’, are warmongers.

Despite the pompous rhetoric of hypocritical morality, pitting ‘civilisation’ against ‘barbarism’, ‘good’ against ‘evil’, ‘aggressors’ against ‘victims’, wars are nothing more than clashes between rival bourgeoisies. In these ever-increasing conflicts, it is always the exploited who are taken hostage and sacrificed for the interests of those who oppress and kill them.

To end wars, capitalism must be overthrown! History has shown that the working class is the only force that can end capitalist war. It was the strength of the revolutionary proletariat that ended the First World War, in 1917 in Russia and in 1918 in Germany! These revolutionary movements were able to impose an armistice on the governments. To put a definitive end to wars everywhere, the working class will have to conquer this by overthrowing capitalism on a global scale.

But there is still a long road ahead, fraught with obstacles. Faced with the barbarity of war, many people want to resist and express their indignation. And indeed, if we do not react, capitalism will lead us into chaos and widespread destruction. But those who are taking to the streets today are often doing so behind the slogans of the left wing of capital: “No Kings”, “Stop the genocide”, “Free Palestine’”.. all are slogans that instil the idea that the causes of war lie in this or that leader, in the madness of Trump, in the colonialism of Israel, in the religious delusions of fundamentalist Jews, in American imperialism... Behind an apparent radicalism, behind speeches ‘for peace’, for ‘the rights of peoples’, ‘for the defence of the oppressed’, it is always a question of choosing one bourgeois camp over another and calling for the defence of the ‘democratic’ state. In the United States, anti-Trump demonstrations have denounced the lack of consultation with Congress and respect for ‘international law,’ as if a ‘legal’ war were any less barbaric.

Although the working class does not yet have the strength to directly oppose the wars of the bourgeoisie, and the revolutionary perspective still seems distant, this path nevertheless requires relentless resistance against the attacks of a capitalism crushed by the growing weight of crisis and militarism. By refusing to sacrifice our lives and wages on the altar of ‘competitiveness’ or the ‘war effort’, we are beginning to stand up against the very heart of capitalism: the exploitation of man by man.

As we have shown in numerous articles, since 2022 we have been witnessing a veritable resurgence of workers' militancy on a global scale.

By refusing the sacrifices imposed by the war economy, workers are showing concrete solidarity with their class brothers and sisters trapped under the bombs. And this determination not to give in is accompanied by a maturing of political consciousness: everywhere, small minorities are posing questions about how struggles should be organised and about the future of the system, about the link between the crisis and the proliferation of wars. For revolutionary minorities, the time has come for debate and action to transform these subterranean reflections into an organised force capable of preparing for the revolutionary struggles of tomorrow.

EG, 1 March 2026

Sunday, 22 of March, 2026

2-5pm UK time

In response to the escalation of war in the Middle East, the ICC has published a new article on its website (Capitalism is war! It's capitalism that must be overthrown! [11]) and is holding an online public meeting whose aim will be:

• To define the internationalist position against all those who support one side or the other in this inter-imperialist carnage
• To analyse the evolution of global capitalism and the catastrophic ‘future’ it offers humanity
• To discuss the challenges confronting the working class, which is faced with the acceleration of war and chaos.

Please write to [email protected] [12] if you want to attend.

The meeting will be held in English. The ICC will hold separate meetings, physical and online, in several other countries and languages. Please see our website for details (www.internationalism.org [13])

 

With the outbreak of war in Iran, once again the Middle East is being ravaged by fire and bloodshed. Once again, the US state has deployed a massive military force in the region.

And now, a deluge of bombs and missiles is raining down on the civilian population, held hostage by the imperialist rivalries of all the belligerent states.

Schools, hospitals and working-class neighbourhoods are being destroyed on a daily basis! Women, children and the elderly are desperately trying to escape the bloodbath, wandering through the rubble and ruins, stepping over the corpses littering the streets of Tehran, Beirut and many other cities besides.

Peace under capitalism is the peace of the grave!

To justify this new imperialist slaughter, the enemies of the Iranian state, led by Trump and Netanyahu, are calling on the working class to continue taking to the streets against the bloodthirsty regime of the mullahs, in the name of a supposedly ‘humanitarian’ cause. They are calling on them to be massacred by once again handing them over, bound hand and foot, to the savage repression of the mullahs’ regime

These warmongers thus claim to be defending the cause of the Iranian people and all the oppressed.

Pure hypocrisy and shameless lies!

With the Iranian state’s retaliation, the escalation of war only serves to further exacerbate the barbarism and chaos in this region of the world.

Trump has thrust the deaths of Khamenei and certain dignitaries from his inner circle into the spotlight, to demonstrate to us that the world’s leading ‘democratic’ power can save humanity from dictators.

With the deployment of Operation ‘Epic Fury’, Trump is demonstrating that the United States, once the ‘world’s policeman’, has become the primary agent of destabilisation across the globe. We can be certain that ‘Pax Americana’ will continue to plunge the Middle East into ever bloodier chaos with the involvement of other states and other bourgeois cliques (Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah, pro-Iranian militias in Iraq).

Let’s not delude ourselves! Neither the United States nor any other bourgeois state can bring humanity peace, prosperity, or any new ‘world order’. Quite the contrary. ‘Peace’ under capitalism has always been the peace of the grave! Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, the Congo… all these zones of armed conflict show what awaits all of humanity, across the entire planet, if capitalism is not overthrown.

Workers must not support any imperialist camp!

These fields of ruins are awash with incessant calls for patriotism, for a ‘Sacred Union’ behind national flags, and behind the fanaticism of religious factions in countries dominated by all manner of fundamentalism.

Even if the Mullahs’ regime collapses, no new regime will be able to bring the Iranian people any respite or stability. As long as capitalism dominates the planet, wars and chaos can only continue to intensify.

In this umpteenth imperialist war, as in all the others before it, the proletariat must not allow itself to be held hostage to interests that are not its own.

It has nothing to gain from it! For this war is not theirs! To allow ourselves to be drawn into the ranks behind this or that bourgeois clique, to line up behind one camp against another, is to defend the interests of our exploiters.

We are all affected by the massacres in Iran!

What served as a pretext for the escalation of war was the bloody repression of the mass demonstrations in Iran, caused by the worsening economic crisis and the impoverishment not only of small traders, but above all of the working class.

In this revolt of the Iranian ‘people’ against the dizzying deterioration of their material living conditions, the proletariat was drowned amongst the other non-exploiting sections of the population. In this revolt born of despair, it was unable to assert itself as an autonomous class.

But the Iranian workers, who have a long tradition of militant struggle, will have no choice but to fight against the rising prices of food and basic necessities. For they can no longer feed their children today. In Iran, as in the most developed countries: ‘enough is enough!’

We cannot stand by and watch the massacres in Iran! We cannot remain indifferent.

This war is not a distant and ‘exotic’ conflict.

We, the proletarians of the whole world, are all affected by what is happening ‘over there’!

It is our class brothers and sisters in Iran who are falling by the tens of thousands every day under the bombs and machine-gun fire of our exploiters and murderers.

It is our blood that all these vultures are spilling on the altar of capitalism!

The proletarians of all countries can and must express their solidarity with the exploited and massacred class in Iran.

Not by allowing themselves to be lulled to sleep by the left-wing and far-left parties of capital, which merely denounce the massive bombings by Yankee imperialism whilst lending their support to the Iranian state. As for denouncing the illegal nature of the intervention, this is merely to better advocate the ‘legal’ war of the ‘international coalitions’. It is the same trap as defending ‘humanitarian’ war. All wars are imperialist! As Lenin said regarding the League of Nations: the UN, NATO… are all dens of thieves.

The only solidarity that the proletarians of all countries must show to their class brothers and sisters in Iran (and in all the states of the Middle East) is the mass struggle against ‘their’ own national bourgeoisie, against their exploiters and murderers, against all states and their governments, whether right-wing or left-wing.

It is the same ruling class that is sowing terror and death in Iran and imposing waves of redundancies, precariousness and rising unemployment upon us here.

It is the same system of exploitation, global capitalism, that is plunging us into misery and unleashing its warlike barbarism!

The bloodbath engulfing Iran and Lebanon today is a call to responsibility for the proletariat of all countries, particularly its most experienced battalions in Western Europe, the ‘richest’ and most developed nations of capitalism.

It is only by developing its autonomous struggles on its own class terrain, against capitalist exploitation, that the proletariat of the core countries situated at the historical heart of capitalism will be able to offer a future to all humanity, drawing with it the exploited of the whole world.

Capitalism was born in Europe amidst mud and blood. It is in this part of the world that the working class has already endured the cruel experience of two world wars.

Let us remember that it was the development of the revolutionary wave in Russia and Germany that forced the bourgeoisie of the great ‘democratic’ powers to bring an end to the first global holocaust of 1914–18

The working class of the core capitalist countries has a long experience of class struggles against the imperialist crusades of ‘their’ national bourgeoisie. It has a long experience of the ideological deceptions that served merely as pretexts to enlist them on the battlefields in the name of defending ‘democracy’ against dictatorial regimes, civilisation against barbarism, and all the rest of it.

Because its interests are diametrically opposed to those of its exploiters, the working class is the only force in society capable of putting an end to the wars, slaughters and chaos into which capitalism inexorably plunges the entire human race!

What is the answer to the barbarism of war?

To put an end to the dictatorship of the global bourgeoisie, to build a new society without war and without exploitation, the proletarians of the whole world must develop massive, united and widespread struggles across national borders. For the proletarians have no country! In Russia or Ukraine, in Gaza or Israel, everywhere, always, workers must refuse to kill their class brothers and sisters, fraternise, and turn against their exploiters.

To succeed in developing the revolutionary perspective, the working class must first refuse to be conscripted behind national flags, refuse to serve as cannon fodder, and refuse all the sacrifices imposed by the ruling class in the name of defending the state and the national economy!

To fight en masse against the devastating effects of the global economic crisis—a permanent and irresolvable crisis—is to begin to get to the root of the bloody chaos and barbarism of war; it is the start of the path towards the necessary politicisation of the struggles. To march towards revolution, the working class must develop its class consciousness.

By stepping up our struggles against the encroachments of capital and against the barbarism of war, we must assert our unity and our international class solidarity – a class that has no particular interests to defend.

Faced with the gravity of the challenges posed by capitalism’s descent into decomposition, and faced with this new carnage in Iran, there is but one slogan:

Down with war! Down with capitalism!

International solidarity of the entire working class!

Workers of all countries, unite!

International Communist Current

Public Meeting

To collectively build a path of struggle towards revolution, it is vital to come together to debate and organise. The ICC’s public meetings are one of the possible venues for such gatherings.

In response to the escalation of the war in the Middle East, the ICC is organising a series of public meetings on 21 and 22 March in all countries where it is present, to:

• Define the internationalist position against all those who support one side or the other in this inter-imperialist bloodbath.

• Analyse the development of global capitalism and the catastrophic future it holds for humanity

• Discuss the challenges facing the working class, which must contend with the acceleration of war and chaos.

Online meeting in English: Sunday 22 March, 2pm to 5pm UK time. If you want to attend, write to us at [email protected] [12]

 

Website: www.internationalism.org [13]

(Mail to: BM Box 869, London WCIN 3XX)

 

 

We publish a common declaration of Internationalist Voice and the ICC on the new war in the Middle East, an initiative taken by IV, which has quite rightly called for a common statement of the groups of the communist left faced with this major step into barbarism.

While the flames of war raged from every direction, Trump launched his election campaign amid a media frenzy, presenting himself as a peacemaker. He promised that, once elected, he would bring an end to all wars, projecting a peace-loving image and even claiming he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. However, Trump’s return to power not only failed to halt the wars but actually intensified military tensions: the war in Ukraine continues, the slaughter in Gaza has persisted despite the ceasefire, and simultaneously, military tensions between Thailand and Cambodia, conflicts between India and Pakistan, clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan, wars in Myanmar, Syria, Sudan, and Nigeria, as well as military tensions in Venezuela, have continued. Now a full-scale war has erupted in the Middle East, involving or affecting around fifteen countries. Today, war is no longer merely a military event; increasingly, it reflects the capitalist system in the barbaric era of imperialism and the way of life it produces.  

Imperialist wars are not merely the result of decisions taken by warmongering leaders; rather, they express the very nature of the capitalist system in the present era. Regardless of the mask each state wears ‒ whether it calls itself democratic or is openly dictatorial, whether it claims to be peace-loving or openly raises the banner of war ‒ they all share one fundamental characteristic: the sacrifice of the working class and the oppressed as cannon fodder in imperialist wars. Without exception, all these states bear responsibility for these wars, and all of them are war criminals.  

Contrary to the demagogy and lies of the bourgeois gangsters, who claim that the United States and Israel, through “precise” strikes, are merely seeking to eliminate political and military officials and target the military infrastructure of the Islamic bourgeoisie, the reality is quite different. In practice, all sides also target civilian infrastructure: factories, schools, residential areas, refineries, workplaces, sports halls, markets, and even clinics and hospitals are bombed. The commander of the United States Central Command has stated that the scale of the first 24 hours of the current operation against Iran was twice that of the operation against Iraq in 2003. The truth is this: all sides are complicit in the perpetration of war crimes. 

Trump speaks the language of bandits and even takes pride in his crimes. Thus, Trump proudly declares:

“No one should challenge the strength and might of the United States Armed Forces. I built and rebuilt our military in my first administration. And there is no military on Earth even close to its power, strength or sophistication.” 

During the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg argued that, in order to normalise war crimes, objective violence must be accompanied by a kind of brutality in thought and feeling, such that the spilling of blood is not only regarded as something ordinary, but even becomes a source of pride. Today’s warmongers are clearly confirming Luxemburg’s historical analysis. Trump is the clearest expression of this attitude. Like a bandit, he proudly speaks of the most lethal and destructive army in the world ‒ an army that no other force is capable of confronting. In other words, this warmonger not only welcomes war, but sees it as a stage on which to display the power and technological superiority of the United States

Only the working class can end capitalist wars

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

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

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

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

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

                                Workers have no country!                       

Down with the imperialist war!

Long live the war between the classes!

 International Communist Current  https://www.internationalism.org [18]

 Internationalist Voice  https://www.internationalistvoice.org [19]

  20 March  2026

We are drawing attention to the “Resolution on opportunism and centrism in the period of decadence [20]” from our 6th Congress because, although first published 40 years ago, it is as relevant as ever, given that the struggle against opportunism, i.e. the penetration of bourgeois and petty ideology into the workers’ movement, can only be a permanent struggle for revolutionaries.

Two other resolutions from this Congress – a rejected resolution put forward by the minority which later became the “External Fraction of the ICC”, and then Internationalist Perspective, as well as the Congress resolution on the international situation – together with an orientation text entitled “The 6th Congress of the ICC: What is at stake” can also be found here: International Review no. 44 - 1st Quarter 1986 [21].

We are publishing a letter from a young sympathiser in Sweden, who asked us how we would analyse the recent anti-deportation protests there. Our answer is that we agree completely with his approach: while recognising the legitimate anger that impels people to protest against the increasingly brutal immigration policies being adopted by all states, this anger, whether in Sweden, the US or elsewhere, is being channelled onto the bourgeois terrain of ‘defending democracy’ or ‘human rights’.

We also agree with the comrade’s criticism of the illusion, held by the sympathiser of the Internationalist Communist Tendency mentioned in the letter, which implies that these protests could somehow be turned into genuine working class movements. In fact we have recently published a number of articles which show that this illusion is being spread by the ICT itself[1].

*****

I wonder how ICC views the protests against the so-called ‘teenage deportations’ in Sweden right now. I have seen the news about it and I think that every honest person agrees that the deportations of families with children are appalling. But some groups on the left have categorised the protests as ‘popular’ or ‘working-class self-defence’, ideas that I consider to be incorrect and harmful. I believe that the ICC's review of the ICE protests also applies to our equivalent in Sweden. The ICC wrote that ‘the protests against ICE today are not a class struggle against the attacks of the capitalist state on immigrant workers but a campaign for the democratic lawful restriction and brutalisation of immigrant workers’.

In Sweden, we see something similar to the problems with the American protests. People are protesting for a ‘dignified refugee policy’ and to defend human rights, arguing that immigrants who contribute to society should not be deported. In other words, this protest movement is not actually critical of the deportation of workers, but only critical of these particularly grotesque deportations of families with children. The message of the protests also legitimises the bourgeois state and its ‘human rights’ by criticising the deportations on the grounds that they violate international law, but not because deportations as a whole are contrary to the interests of the working class. When deportations took place under the Social Democrats and at the beginning of the Tydö government's term, we saw no similar protests, so the protests have no connection to a general criticism of the deportation of workers. The protests cannot therefore be said to have been shaped by the working class, in defence of the working class. Defending immigrants on the grounds that ‘their work contributes to society’ only serves to worship the position of the working class as an exploited class. For that matter, such thinking also reinforces national barriers, since Swedish workers apparently do not have to meet the same requirements as others. The communists cannot therefore take a stand with the protests, either in the United States or in Sweden, as they promote ideas that communist organisations cannot legitimise. Pushing for protests means playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie. For that matter, all the parties in parliament agree that something must be done to counteract the deportations of teenagers, especially the red-greens, so the protest movement has an undeniably bourgeois character.

Unfortunately, all the self-proclaimed communists/socialists seem to be taking a stand with the protests. Socialist Alternative has taken part in the protests, limiting its rhetoric to things like ‘Stop the deportations, reinstate the right to asylum, the right to family reunification and permanent residence permits and citizenship for all who wish it’ or ‘Invest in welfare – not the military. Fight against warmongering and divisive nationalism‘, demands that are completely within the framework of capitalism. When I spoke to a person my age who sympathises with ICT, he agreed that the protests do not, of course, question the validity of the bourgeois state, but that the protesters are nevertheless fighting on a “class basis”. As I said, I find it difficult to see this as a fact, given that the general goals of the protest movement are either a change of government or a more ‘ethical’ refugee policy (which still defends deportations!). Of course, it is possible to convince individual workers who participate in these types of protests, but what is not possible is for the workers to take control of the protest movement itself. Just as the working class cannot simply take control of the bourgeois state in its current form, workers cannot conquer the bourgeois protest movements either.

 

Arson attacks on north London synagogues and a Jewish ambulance charity, armed attack on a synagogue in Manchester leaving three dead, two Jews stabbed in Golders Green. Recorded increase in anti-Semitic threats, graffiti and insults since the October 7 massacre and the ruthless destruction of Gaza; a further acceleration since the start of the Iran war. And it is not only in Britain. Following shootings in the US and the atrocity at Bondi beach[1], there is no doubt that we are seeing the spread and intensification of anti-Jewish hatred.

But it’s not only Jew-hatred which is on the rise. Judaeophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia and all the rest are the product of a capitalist society which, as it sinks into an advanced state of decay, is generating a toxic mixture of ethnic, religious, national and racial divisions. This decay is not new: the Nazi persecution and mass murder of Jews in the 1930s and 40s was one of its most graphic expressions. But today capitalist society is far more fragmented and lacking in even any short-term solutions to its insoluble crisis. Hatred against minorities is taking ever-more numerous forms and is increasingly manipulated by governments to boost their repressive campaigns against immigrants. And as imperialist wars spread chaotically across the planet, these antagonisms are directly encouraged and exacerbated in order to justify the slaughter of whole populations. We have entered a new era of genocides.

We see this, for example, in the unending massacres in Africa, from Rwanda in 1994 to Nigeria today where jihadist gangs, modelled on ISIS, regularly target Christians or rival Muslim sects or in Sudan where we are witnessing the slaughter and starvation of tens of thousands, a large part of it organised along ethnic lines[2]. But the imperialist war in the Middle East, widely presented as a conflict between Muslims and Jews, is certainly one of the main sources of the current wave of anti-Semitism, but also of anti-Muslim or anti-Arab racism. 

The ideological attacks

The attacks on Jews in Britain have been accompanied by a very loud campaign by the main political parties to prove that they are the real opponents of anti-Semitism and that their rivals are soft on the issue: Starmer, having assumed the leadership of the Labour Party with pledges to cleanse the party of anti-Semitism, accuses the Green Party of hoovering up the anti-Semitic exiles from the Corbynite Labour Party. But the Green’s leader, Zak Polanski, loudly proclaims his Jewish identity and his condemnation of anti-Semitism. At the same time, the government is considering the idea of banning pro-Palestinian marches, which would no doubt produce a counter-campaign in favour of preserving our ‘democratic right’ to protest. Similar arguments and counter-arguments can be heard across the world.

We will not enter into these wars of words between bourgeois parties. Our aim is to respond to the question: what and who is fuelling this rise in anti--Semitism?

If, as we insist, it is decomposing capitalism that is the ultimate source of all the different brands of racist poison, the governments and political parties who serve this system are all actively stirring the cauldron. The Israeli state generates anti-Semitism by presenting its own mass killings and ethnic cleansing as a heroic defence of Jewish people everywhere, thus strengthening the false idea that all Jews are accomplices to its brutal wars. At the same time, it helps to destroy any understanding of the actual reality of anti-Semitism by branding all criticism of its crimes as anti-Semitic.

The regimes in conflict with the Israeli state generate anti-Semitism in a more obvious way: the explicit objective of the October 7 operation was to kill as many Jews as possible. It was led by a proto-state, Hamas, whose constitution refers directly to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that classic ‘proof’ of the world-wide Jewish conspiracy forged by agents of the Tsarist secret police. There is reasonable suspicion that some of the recent attacks on Jews in Britain have been carried out by a proxy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Right and left parties help to spread the poison

The different political factions of the ruling class are no less involved in this re-emergence of anti-Semitic prejudices. In the USA and Europe, right wing and populist parties, mainly concerned with stirring up hatred against Muslims, have to a great extent aligned themselves with Israel and advertise their great love for the Jewish people. But you don’t have to scratch much below the service to find the old anti-Semitic tropes, even if you don’t include the more traditional fascist wing (like Fuentes in the US for example) who don’t hide their conviction that the Jews are agents of Satan. Thus, the majority of the populists adhere to some form of the Great Replacement Theory - the idea that a shadowy “globalist elite” is undermining traditional culture in the west by opening the floodgates to brown, black or Muslim immigrants. This is only one or two steps away from the mythology of the world Jewish conspiracy. Meanwhile, MAGA critics of Trump’s Iranian adventure are increasingly arguing that the real government of the US has been usurped by Israel.

And in any case the newly discovered ‘solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people’ trumpeted by the far right and the populists does not mean that they have finally understood that racism is a Bad Thing. On the contrary, it is a mere pretext for whipping up what they see as a more profitable and vote-winning form of racism – the kind directed against Muslims and particularly Muslims fleeing from zones of brutal conflict like Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq.

But the left wing of capital (Labour left, Greens, Trotskyists etc) also plays its part in this sordid enterprise, by proclaiming that the inter-imperialist carnage in the Middle East is really a war of national liberation and by its more or less critical support for the “Resistance”, made up of Hizbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and the theocracy in Tehran. Thus, the slogan “Globalise the Intifada” is anything but a call for world revolution against capitalism. Rather it is an appeal to the methods used during the actual “Intifadas” in Israel/Palestine between the late 80s and the 2000s: strikes and demonstrations that divide the population on purely national lines, and the action of terrorist gangs against Jewish Israelis.

The left and especially the far left often complain that the mainstream media are only concerned with the sufferings of a small number of Jews while having little or nothing to say about the fate of millions of Palestinians or the Iranians. Such arguments are yet another means to rack up further divisions in the working class and above all to justify supporting one imperialist camp against the other.

The only way out is internationalism

As we wrote in part two of our article on the history of anti-Semitism, Zionism and anti-Zionism[3], “In 1938, Trotsky warned that Jewish emigration to Palestine was no solution to the tide of anti-Semitism sweeping Europe and could indeed become a ‘bloody trap for several hundred thousand Jews’. Today Israel has the potential of being a bloody trap for several million Jews; and at the same time the increasingly murderous policies carried out in its ‘defence’ has created a new variety of anti-Semitism which blames all Jews for the actions of the Israeli state.

This is a true ideological maze and no exit can be found by following the mystifications of the pro-Zionist right or the anti-Zionist left. The only way out of the maze is the uncompromising defence of the internationalist proletarian outlook, founded on the rejection of all forms of nationalism and all imperialist camps”.

The struggle of working class, the exploited class under capitalism, which is international by its very nature, is the only force that that can point to a way beyond the dangerous divisions imposed by this putrefying social order.

Amos, May 2026

Introduction

Toward the end of March, the ICC held an international online public meeting on the implications of the US/Israeli attacks on Iran/Lebanon. A close sympathiser has sent us his thoughts on the meeting, showing that the lack of planning by US imperialism for the consequences of the offensive reflects the decline in US power that has driven it since 1989. Apart from touching on some alternative analyses, he looks at the serious economic and environmental impacts of the war, and the historic situation of capitalism, where the bourgeoisie can only exacerbate the contradictions of its economic, political and social system. We welcome this contribution as part of the necessary process of clarification within the working class.

o-O-o

It was important to hold this meeting about the US, Israel and Iran war, its meaning and its consequences.

I welcome the involvement of comrades from around the world (US, Sweden, Moldavia, India, Philippines, Indonesia from what I heard). This is a real strength of these meetings as it enables information and analyses from different parts of the world to be shared. I salute the quality of the interventions, especially by comrades for whom English is not their first language. Several participants were new to these discussions, suggesting the war may be stimulating reflection within a minority of the class. If the development of class consciousness is understood as a process, often unseen, these open, direct expressions can be taken as symptomatic of a wider reflection and questioning since participation in a public discussion, particularly if in a foreign language, is a significant step. However, the meeting was smaller than I thought it might be, given the subject and timing. I look forward to hearing about the reports from other meetings organised by the ICC and, hopefully, other groups of the PPM.

The significance of the war

There was general agreement on the gravity of the war at the imperialist and economic levels but there were some significant differences of interpretation.

The majority at the meeting agreed that the war was an expression of the chaos that has been growing within capitalism in recent decades, especially at the imperialist level. The ICC has been analysing the gradual disintegration of the old western bloc since the collapse of its eastern counterpart in 1989 removed the rationale for its existence. Initially, the US was able to draw large numbers of states into war in the Gulf, but the numbers steadily declined and former allies began to assert their independent imperialist goals. This war is especially marked by the refusal of every major European power to join in, including Washington’s most loyal ally, London. Even today, the UK is not directly participating in the war, although its claim to be only allowing the US to use its airfields for defensive actions is hollow. Other countries, notably Spain, have been much more forthright in their condemnation of the war and refusal to participate.

The US, especially under Trump, will not tolerate such insubordination but neither tariffs nor military muscle have worked. The godfather is looking weaker. Its military might alone, which remains overwhelming, is not enough. Today, the Iranian state, despite the destruction of much of its military equipment and the killing of its senior leaders, not only still exists but continues fighting and, with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has the advantage to some extent. On 28 March the Houthis entered the war (although it is unclear if they have engaged beyond the initial salvo). Trump’s claims of fruitful talks and an imminent deal seem designed to calm the markets at best and, at worst, are an expression of desperation and frustration from the self-proclaimed greatest deal maker who cannot make a deal. The interspersing of these claims with threats to lay Iran to waste reflects a realisation that he is not in control and risks being his worst nightmare: a “loser”.

However, this is not about the psychology of any individual. The evident lack of planning and consideration of alternative strategies reflects the decline of the US bourgeoisie. This is certainly most advanced within the Trump faction, which is marked by stupidity, greed, hubris and the celebration of cruelty, but it is the product of the longer-term decline of the right of the American ruling class, from the election of stooges such as Reagan to the incompetence of the Bushes. Nor is this restricted to the right. While the Democratic Party under Obama was certainly more competent and serious it maintained many of the strategies, such as assassinations of enemies and mass deportations (albeit without the performative cruelty of today), while the scandals surrounding Bill Clinton and the maintenance of Biden in office despite his cognitive decline reveal it is affected by much the same immorality and clinging to power as the Republicans. In short, the current American ruling class is affected by similar delusions as other powers that have passed their peak, such as Britain through much of the first part of the twentieth century until it crashed into reality with the Suez crisis (albeit conducted with more English reserve and before the phase of decomposition).

The war is also a diversion from the struggle against China, which has been acknowledged as the most important challenge facing US imperialism, prompting the pivot towards Asia several years ago. China still cannot challenge the US militarily, but it is expanding and modernising its forces rapidly. It pushed back successfully against Trump’s tariffs, forcing a reduction, partly by threats to withhold supplies of the rare earth metals that it currently has a near monopoly of. It has long used its economic strength to build links with significant parts of the world. To this extent, it appears as the most likely leader of a rival bloc. However, as was pointed out during the meeting, it is facing its own economic challenges, with an aging population and severe imbalance between the working and nonworking population. Its rate of growth has fallen, and it faces challenges of overproduction and, I assume, declining rates of profit. Furthermore, the global situation is such that the redivision of the world into rival blocs paving the way to another world war may never arise. The proliferation of smaller wars, environmental catastrophe and social collapse may destroy humanity before this happens.

Two comrades at the meeting put forward alternative analyses.

The first of these was that the war against Iran is a proxy war between China and America. The implication of this analysis is that the reformation of blocs is already sufficiently advanced for wars to be subsumed within this division. This is not the case for several reasons:

• China has not yet established itself as a pole of regroupment at the imperialist level because it is not strong enough to require countries to accept its dominance. It is true that China is the dominant economic power in its region, but this does not translate mechanically into political leadership, especially as its military strength is not sufficiently mature.
• A bloc system requires two poles, but this war shows that the US for all its military might, has lost the allies that gathered around it during the Cold War. Its actions increasingly amount to mere lashing out in anger and frustration at a world slipping beyond its control. The refusal of substantial parts of its old allies to play any part in the war and even to call it illegal and accuse the US of war crimes, shows it too is unable to cohere a bloc around itself. Israel alone cannot compensate for this and is, anyway, an unreliable ally, prone to striking out beyond what Washington desires.
• The centrifugal forces of decomposition have been at work for thirty years, with states pursuing their own immediate interests. For example, the EU has never worked as a military entity and even its economic coherence has been questioned by rogue members such as Hungary and, before that by Brexit.

For these reasons, while we may face “a world of wars” as a recent article on the ICC website puts it, we are not about to face a third world war. This is no comfort however, as slaughter and carnage grow.

The second analysis depicted the conflict as a war against the proletariat intended to pull it back into line following ‘uprisings’ in some countries. This is incorrect because these ‘uprisings’ were not proletarian and posed no threat to the ruling class. If the class struggle were at such a pitch that the bourgeoisie saw war as the only way out it would at once run up against the reality that a working class so mobilised to defend its class interests would be most unlikely to pivot to accepting mobilisation in the interests of its class enemies. As the ICC has long argued the working class must be defeated before it can be recruited as canon-fodder.

The economic and environmental impacts of the war

The discussion of the economic impact of the war benefitted significantly from the contributions of comrades from varying parts of the world. This and the environmental impact have been widely reported as they have grown and begun to directly affect the working class and other exploited strata, so I will limit myself to a few points.

Most immediately, the significantly increased cost of petrol and diesel has made travel more expensive and, as it works through the economy, will affect the costs of production, transport and storage of all commodities, in particular food.

This will affect all countries, including those like the USA that are largely energy self-sufficient, because oil and gas prices are set globally. Petrol has gone above $4 a gallon, which is high by American standards.

Some states are already implementing measures to manage the situation, such as the introduction of a four-day week in the Philippines; while others, such as UK, are making known plans to manage demand and provide targeted support, presumably to prevent panic buying.

The blockade of the Straits of Hormuz means that fertiliser, much of which requires natural gas to be produced, will also be sharply restricted threatening the amount of food produced in the next growing season and thus raising the prospect of escalating prices and shortages that could lead to hunger and even starvation. Even if the war ends soon these consequences cannot be ended by the stroke of a presidential sharpie pen.

There have been comparisons to the oil crises of the 1970s and the crisis of 2007/8 but parts of the bourgeoisie have speculated openly that the present crisis could outstrip them all with an unparalleled global recession. There has been a release of supplies from emergency stocks to try and stabilise the market, but the price has continued to rise. International financial institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank have not acted decisively yet, although they have now announced the setting up of a body including the International Energy Agency to coordinate their response.

The environmental impact of the war was touched on by several comrades and may be a major legacy of the conflict, including:

• the release of toxic chemicals from the targeting of oil production, storage and transportation sites threatening human and animal life both immediately and in the long term;
• the reduction in agricultural output due to the poisoning of the land;
• the direct emissions due to war;
• threats by both Iran and the US to target the desalination plants that millions in the area rely on for fresh water. The Iranian regime thinks it has nothing to lose while the American doesn’t care (it’s history of environmental warfare stretches back at least as far as the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam war).

Perspectives

At the time of writing, the war continues with contradictory actions and messages from the main participants but with indications that rather than being contained it is spreading.

The US is making claims of ending the war in weeks, not months, that Iran is desperate for a deal, that there are substantive negotiations and that “hell will break loose” if a deal is not made. However, the war has not gone as imagined: Trump’s strategy of threat, deception and sowing confusion, has not worked. The Iranian bourgeoisie, unlike New York investors and businessmen, cannot be bullied by second rate mafia tactics. This is also the case with the Chinese, Russian and, for that matter, Israeli bourgeoisie. Trump is emerging weakened from the conflict, shown to be unable to control things as bragged and eroding support amongst his base by breaking the promise to end wars.

Iran is continuing to fight; the closure of the Strait of Hormuz continues; most recently its Houthi ally has begun firing missiles at Israel. This raises the possibility of the flow of oil from the Red Sea, which Saudi Arabia has been using as an alternative route, being disrupted and has prompted Saudi Arabia to threaten to enter the war.

The current Iranian regime will remain in power unless the US launches a ground offensive comparable to the Gulf war when it ended up committing 300,000 troops. Currently, it only has, perhaps, some tens of thousands involved in total.

No ‘popular uprising’ of the ‘Iranian people’ is likely as they know too bitterly the cost of protest and are still reeling from the most recent slaughter. There are media reports of individuals saying that US and Israeli bombing is a price they are willing to pay for liberation from the clerics, but one suspects they are a minority.

Iran has a history of class struggle, which played a significant role in the 1979 overthrow of the Shah. There seemed to be signs workers were involved in the recent protests but it is clear they were subsumed within the ‘popular’ movement rather than being an autonomous force. The working class in Iran has been brutally repressed over the years and is not likely to appear as a major force in the immediate future.

Israel is continuing and even accelerating its offensive. It has its own aims to destroy Hezbollah and is openly talking of annexing part of Lebanon. Its previous occupation did not end well and the current attempt to eliminate the threat may ultimately multiply it, as it may in Gaza too.

It is not true that Israel tricked Trump into the war. Antipathy towards Iran is shared by much of the American ruling class, but the same need to assert itself against the ebbing of its power that has driven it since 1989 remains the primary cause. Israel’s persuasion and Trump’s own incompetence and folly may have played a secondary role. Previous presidents played a more careful political game, informed by the knowledge of what Iran could do.

Ukraine has sought to bolster its position by offering its expertise in drone warfare to Arab states (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar), showing once again that the war and the Ukrainian state are fully integrated into global imperialism.

In the longer term, at the imperialist level, China and Russia gain from this. The US appears as a global bully whereas China presents itself as a friend. Russia has already gained relief from oil sanctions and is also benefiting from the diversion of military aid from Ukraine.

The war is likely to contribute to further increases in military spending, at the cost of other things (eg further cuts to the UK aid budget with soft power traded for hard), offering another opportunity for China to step in as a friend, as it has been doing in many parts of world through the belt and road scheme.

Is this the end of NATO, even as a pretence? The conflict may be formally outside the area covered by the treaty, but it is ultimately another expression of the process made evident by the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the centrifugal forces that were unleashed. This process is the result of the historic situation of capitalism in which the bourgeoisie is unable to overcome the contradictions of its economic, political and social system while the working class is unable to overthrow it. Every nation state is an active participant in this.

The working class does not support this war, other than possibly in Israel where there is, reportedly, high popular support. In the US, most of the population oppose the war. But lack of support does not translate into active opposition to the war and, indeed, attempts by groups such as the Stop the War coalition amount to no more than calls to pick a side or accept the illusion of a peaceful capitalism. The only effective struggle against war today is for the working class to defend its wages and living conditions and to refuse to make sacrifices for the ruling class

To reiterate, in conclusion, I think the ICC is right that the conditions do not exist for a global war[1]:

• firstly, because of the strategic alignment of the major powers: China is not yet ready to directly challenge the US; Russia lacks the ability and the US is no longer has a solid bloc to lead;
• and secondarily because of the balance of class forces: if nothing else, 2022 showed that the passivity of the proletariat cannot be taken for granted.

This does not mean the conflict cannot yet spread and its consequences around the world are substantial and growing.

PW, 2 April 2026. Amended 28 April.

 

This is an online public meeting in English. 

It will be held on Sunday 31 May, 2026, 2pm to 5pm UK time.

If you would like to take part, write to [email protected] [12] and we will send you the links you need.

90 years ago this July, the military forces led by Franco launched a coup d’Etat against the Spanish Republic. The workers of Barcelona responded with their own methods of struggle: massive strikes and the formation of workers’ militias. But very quickly this proletarian response was dragged onto the bourgeois terrain of defending the Republic against fascism, and the ensuing ‘civil war’ was turned into an inter-imperialist slaughter, a dress rehearsal for the even bigger massacre of World War Two

Today the working class is also confronted with the spread of imperialist wars across the globe, even if the conditions which led to World War in the 1930s are not the same – above all because the working class has not suffered from a historic defeat as it did with the crushing of the international revolutionary wave of 1917-23. But the dangers posed by capitalism’s accelerating dive into the chaos and self-destruction of a system in terminal decline are no less real.

In the 1930s only a handful of revolutionary organisations, and above all the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, were able to understand the real nature of the war in Spain and put forward an internationalist positions against all those – from the Stalinists and Trotskyists to the anarchists - who called on workers to rally to the defence of bourgeois democracy. Faced with today’s wars, this intransigent defence of internationalism is as vital as ever.

In a brief presentation and through interventions during the two and a half hours of open discussion, we will present our analysis of the events in Spain 1936-39. To enable the maximum of political clarification, we recommend that those interested come prepared to take position on the topic and in particular to pose any questions or divergences they may have. To assist with this preparation, we suggest comrades read the following two texts which provide an orientation on the ICC’s position:

 

https://en.internationalism.org/content/2547/bilan-lessons-spain-1936 [26] (International Review 4)

 

The War in Spain - No Betrayal! [27] (chapter 5 of our book The Italian Communist Left, available on our website:  https://en.internationalism.org/content/17626/pamphlet-italian-communist-left-1926-45 [28]  )

 

The crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz and its global economic consequences reveal, once again, the historical impasse into which capitalism is dragging all of humanity. The war that has been raging in the Middle East since February 2026 is part of a dynamic of accelerated collapse of the global capitalist order,[1] a dynamic in which every manifestation of the decomposition of the capitalist system (uncontrollable wars, environmental crises, populism, etc.) has repercussions on all other fronts, including the economic sphere, which for a long time had been kept under control, however precariously. This was thanks to relatively coordinated responses by the bourgeoisie at the international level (such as the massive injection of money by central banks following the 2008 crisis) and the existence of robust international economic institutions.

The clearest expression of this endless spiral toward the abyss lies in the way the bourgeoisies of the major powers, in their desperate attempts to save themselves individually, are dragging the entire global economy toward a crisis that even bourgeois experts acknowledge as unprecedented.

An economic crisis caused by a bankrupt system

From the very origins of the workers’ movement, the limits of capitalism have been identified in the inability of the capitalist mode of production to absorb the entirety of its output within its own sphere. Chronic overproduction of commodities can only be contained by the conquest of new markets, which themselves eventually become integrated into the capitalist sphere and contribute to increasing the quantity of commodities. This leads to the reliance on debt: initially a factor accelerating capitalist expansion, it inevitably evolves into widespread deception, creating ‘virtual’ outlets for overproduction that can only be repaid through further debt.

The current level of overproduction and debt is therefore unprecedented and continues to grow. Globalisation, which, starting in the 1980s, had made it possible to temporarily ease the tensions linked to the protectionist tendencies inherent in capitalism in crisis and of opening up new markets, particularly in Asia, is also reaching its limits. The Chinese domestic market, in particular, is increasingly running out of steam, pushing China to export to other markets already stifled by overproduction.

It is in this context, under the pressure of the ‘every man for himself’ mentality characteristic of capitalism in decomposition, that the major powers are tending to return to protectionism and begin the dismantling of globalised production chains. The most extreme example is undoubtedly Trump’s tariff policy, intended to protect and boost the U.S. economy, particularly the manufacturing sector. But Europe is not to be outdone with its “European preference” policy aimed at “doing to Chinese companies what China has been doing to European companies for the past twenty years,” to quote the European Commission in the context of its Industrial Acceleration Act[2]. This protectionist drive is therefore not the whim of an isolated leader but rather a somewhat desperate general approach—for example, by Europeans attempting to counter China’s equally desperate move to compensate for the sluggishness of its domestic market.

But all these policies only exacerbate global overproduction by fragmenting it, confining any form of response within national borders, and thus driving open trade wars in all directions, which in turn fuel the tensions and militarism that generate a proliferation of endless armed conflicts. They also lead to the dismantling of the last remaining tools for regulating the global economy: the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, multilateral trade agreements, central bank coordination mechanisms... everything is being gradually eroded. This leaves the door open to a now completely deregulated ‘every man for himself’ scenario and the absence of coordinated crisis management, leading, for example, central banks around the world to face “a difficult combination of circumstances[3],” to choose between two equally ineffective options: raising central bank interest rates[4] to curb inflation or lowering them to support growth. In a capitalist world in decline, such crisis management tools have become, at best, ineffective; at worst, counterproductive.

The protectionism advocated by Trump is therefore anything but a solution to the crisis. On the contrary, it breeds unprecedented uncertainty. As the World Economics Journal writes: “the uncertainty caused by tariffs is particularly problematic for both investors and businesses. Thus, the indirect effects appear to be far more severe than the direct ones. In addition to increasing uncertainty, trade wars deteriorate relations between the United States and other countries, while damaging the U.S.’s reputation as an economic partner. At the same time, they do not fully resolve the problems President Trump sought to address, namely full employment and increased manufacturing activity[5].”

Any isolated attempt by a capitalist state to resolve the crisis on its own thus only deepens the crisis on a global scale. This is the fundamental law of the period. Trump’s policies (tariffs, immigration restrictions, cuts to research and health budgets) are not policies for economic recovery. They are suicidal policies: they undermine the very foundations of American capitalist reproduction, notably through soaring unemployment, in the name of short-term survival that merely postpones and amplifies the inevitability of catastrophe.

Yet not all of the bourgeoisie is burying its head in the sand in this situation, nor does it see only the positive in the prospect of its own flourishing economy operating in a closed loop, surrounded by a world collapsing on the other side of the walls. An economist like Richard Bookstaber, a former official at the U.S. Treasury who predicted the subprime crisis in 2008, is inevitably listened to and quoted by the press worldwide when he predicts a crisis that is likely to be even more severe[6]. His logic is clear: today, the interconnection of economies is at its peak, contrary to what protectionist policies might suggest, and financial flows are carried by a fragile physical infrastructure that extreme geopolitical risk makes increasingly vulnerable. Data centres are indispensable vehicles of global finance that rely on highly contested physical resources (water, electrical grids, rare earths, supply chains). Then there is also the rise of private credit, which concerns him: since the 2008 crisis, credit has increasingly been provided by non-bank entities such as investment funds, whose fragility stems from “the opacity of the valuation of [their] assets and [their] concentration on a limited number of borrowers, particularly tech giants[7].”

The war in the Middle East delivers the final blow

Such was the grim picture that could be painted before the first missile struck Iran. As The New York Times put it, “The war spreading in Iran has dealt a stunning blow to a global economy that had already been battered by the collapse of the international trading order, the war in Ukraine, and President Trump’s chaotic policy making“[8]. Trump’s decision to attack Iran (a country that controls access to the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 15% of the world’s oil supply passes) defies any rational economic logic, even from the perspective of the long-term interests of American capitalism.

But Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has consequences that extend far beyond the oil market alone. The disruption of global supply chains—already weakened by the 2020 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the U.S. protectionist push in particular—is entering a new phase of turmoil. The disruption is global and very tangible: from the start of the war, in Kansas, homebuyers saw 30-year mortgage rates exceed 6%; in western India, grieving families discovered that gas crematoriums had closed; in Hanoi, gas stations ran out of fuel; in Kenya, tea farmers feared that their exports to Iran would rot on the docks[9]. It is an entire system being swept into the unknown that makes this war a historic event.

A historic event also because its effects will last well beyond the conflict itself. First, the disruption of maritime and air transport: the insecurity of shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf and its surrounding areas, port congestion—particularly in China, the impossibility of deploying alternative land-based infrastructure in the short term, and the inability of the new Arctic routes, closely watched by the powers of the Northern Hemisphere, to take over in the short term.

Second, the risk to global agriculture due to disruptions in fertiliser supplies. Qatar, whose main liquefied natural gas export facility was shut down following a drone attack, is also a major producer of raw materials for the fertiliser industry. The rise in fertiliser costs (already evident since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022) has a direct impact on agricultural production costs worldwide, threatening food security in the poorest countries. But even more significantly, agricultural production itself will be directly impacted in terms of volume—and in a lasting way—posing a risk to food security across the entire planet.

Finally, it is important to highlight the slowdown—or even standstill—in investment across many sectors, given the unprecedented unpredictability of U.S. policy, whose objectives change from one day to the next. The structural uncertainty generated by Trump’s policy—first regarding tariffs and then the trade war—with a U.S. leader capable of partially backing down in the face of market pressure, or even resorting to the most brazen lies, before committing to new policies that are just as uncertain, undermines the very foundations of investor confidence.

The capitalist economy’s dependence on energy resources has been a constant since at least the advent of electricity in production. Coal and then oil have long dominated electricity generation. While this is less the case today, oil and gas remain indispensable for transportation—a central function in the globalised economy that makes dependence on hydrocarbons more of a vulnerability than an opportunity for profit. By closing the Strait of Hormuz, Iran—acting on a purely suicidal logic of “if I fall, everyone falls with me”—is aware that it possesses a major weapon of retaliation against the global economy. This is all the more true given that the threat is here to stay, if not permanently. As The Economist writes: “even when the war ends, the world will have changed.” Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, now knows that energy prices are the United States’ Achilles’ heel. In Ukraine, which has tested drone defense systems, some Iranian-style drones still manage to get through. There are no plans for U.S. troops to occupy Iran to put an end to these launches. The United States lacks the capacity to defend all oil tankers, even if it provides them with cheap insurance. Disruptions in energy markets will therefore be recurrent as geopolitical tensions flare up, especially if Iran concludes that it needs a nuclear weapon to ensure its security”[10]] [29]

Finally, the sharp decline in hydrocarbon production poses a risk of a stock market crisis due to their importance in the development of artificial intelligence: “The helium needed for semiconductor production comes from the war-torn region, and many Asian factories operate using energy derived from imported hydrocarbons. And maritime transport conditions in Asia are becoming increasingly strained every day, particularly in Singapore, which is the world’s largest supply port but also produces 10% of the world’s chips and 20% of manufacturing equipment. […]All of these factors could suddenly burst the bubble that has benefited companies like OpenAI and Nvidia across the Atlantic. And trigger a stock market crash”[11].

The economic crisis is accelerating environmental destruction

All of this is without accounting for the acceleration of ecological disasters, particularly in the region affected by the conflict. In three weeks of war, more than 300 incidents involving environmental risks were recorded by the Observatory of Conflicts and the Environment. The most striking incidents were caused by the bombing of hydrocarbon-related facilities in Iran, which plunged the capital Tehran into darkness and generated a cloud of fine, toxic particlesin a city already vulnerable to air pollution, while causing lasting contamination of the country’s drinking water facilities and groundwater, as reported by IRIS, which notes that “armed conflicts can act as accelerators of environmental degradation: industrial fires, soil contamination, marine pollution, or damage to water resources amplify existing ecological pressures,” thereby making war “a full-fledged factor in the ecological crisis.”[12]

But one of the strategic resources in the conflict remains water, a scarce commodity in the region, to such an extent that the growing needs linked to industry as well as tourism in the Gulf states must be met largely through the production of desalinated water. These facilities have already been targeted by Iranian missiles, and the United States continues to threaten to completely destroy these facilities in Iran, thereby risking rendering these regions permanently uninhabitable.

All of this adds to the ecological disaster that capitalism has already inflicted on the planet. Ecological destruction is inherent in the very logic of a system that prioritises capital without regard for the environment, even as this destruction of the environment constitutes a direct and lasting threat to capitalist production. The war in the Middle East is a new and frightening illustration of this irrationality.

This overview should leave no doubt about the long-term persistence of this war’s effects on the capitalist economy. As The Economist writes: “It is difficult to predict how this crisis will end. But even if countries adopt the right policies, it is already clear that the war has made the global economy less prosperous, more volatile, and harder to govern.”[13]

The working class, the primary victim of the crisis

Capitalism’s sustained plunge into a new and unprecedented multifactorial crisis will inevitably lead the bourgeoisie to seek solutions by exploiting the labour force. It is the working class that is already paying the price for the decomposition of capitalism; it is the working class that will pay more and more for this brutal acceleration of the system’s decay until it finds the path to a decisive confrontation with this system of exploitation and misery. The New York Times lists the following elements: “gas prices at the pump are affected. But so are the prices of food, medicine, airline tickets, electricity, cooking oil, semiconductors, and much more.”[14]

Trump’s “America First” policy had already failed to produce the results he had hoped for. Having failed to develop the manufacturing sector through protectionism and achieve full employment through its immigration policy, the world’s leading power now faces an unprecedented crisis and a surge in unemployment. European and Asian powers are not spared: growth in Europe is expected to at least slow down and be accompanied by a renewed rise in inflation. In China, where growth now relies fundamentally on the trade surplus, the slowdown in transportation and the scarcity of hydrocarbons will weigh on growth that is already experiencing a sharp slowdown, with inevitable effects on unemployment and purchasing power.

Added to this—and already underway—is the strengthening of the war economy, which, since 2022, has been the central focus of the major powers. Military budgets, already rising sharply, are absorbing an ever-greater share of financial resources.

The working class will face increasingly frequent and severe attacks on its living and working conditions, with inflation that wages will not offset and an acceleration of the pace of work to meet the demands of the “national war effort.” This undeniably creates the objective conditions for the development of a reaction by the working class and the growth of its struggles.

However, the bourgeoisie is aware of this and will mobilise all means at its disposal to hinder the development of the working class’s consciousness. It knows that the outbreak of war always provokes a moment of shock and fear. Already, rising gasoline prices and the expected increase in gas prices tend to generate reflexes of individualistic withdrawal. Mass unemployment, which is already present in the United States and increasingly threatens Europe, also has deleterious effects on the necessary unity of the proletariat. Finally, the crisis affects not only the working class but all of society, with possible reactions taking the form of riots or interclassist revolts, as France experienced with the Yellow Vests crisis beginning in late 2018—a movement already triggered by rising fuel prices and initiated by the petty bourgeoisie and small business owners in the trucking industry.

However, even if the crisis affects the whole of society, it is the working class that will be most severely hit, for it is at the heart of capitalist production. It is from the working class that the war effort will demand the most; it is the working class that will suffer the most massive job losses in the face of the economic slowdown; it is the working class that will see its purchasing power melt away in the face of inflation; it is the working class that will suffer the most from shortages of medicines, the food crisis, the unbearable cost of heating, etc.

GD, April 2026.

 

We are at a historic crossroads that has finally shattered the illusions of a stable postwar order that emerged after 1989. What we are currently witnessing with all the current wars is not a temporary conflict, but a qualitative intensification of the imperialist contradictions that have thrust capitalism into its era of decadence and accelerated decomposition. The breakdown of the Transatlantic Alliance, which is taking place during Trump’s second term, is not the result of personal misconduct on the part of the U.S. president, but rather the expression of a systemic necessity: the U.S. is withdrawing as the "guarantor of security", essentially withdrawing from NATO in an attempt to address its own existential crises and top priorities, forcing its former vassals and allies to bear the costs of a crumbling system on their own. However, with its policies, the U.S. can only keep adding fuel to the fire and further escalate one conflict after another.

For Germany, this means the loss of the protective U.S. umbrella against Russia and the need to redefine its own military identity. It is a return to the reality that prevailed between the world wars: a country in a geo-strategically central location that is obliged to use force to assert its imperialist ambitions in order to maintain its place in the global dog-eat-dog world. But this path is marked by countless contradictions. The rapid militarisation it is undertaking has been described as a “turning point” What is being celebrated is not only the fastest military buildup in Europe, but also the harbinger of a profound social assault on the working class.

1. Imperialism as an expression of decadence

To understand current dynamics, we must shift our focus from day-to-day politics to the fundamental laws of capitalism. It was the left wing of the Social Democratic Party of that time, centered around Rosa Luxemburg, that was able to initiate a deeper analysis, which Rosa Luxemburg would then elaborate upon in her 1913 work The Accumulation of Capital. As Karl Radek had already analyzed in “Our Struggle Against Imperialism” in 1912, imperialism is not merely the “foreign policy of a collapsing capitalism,” but the inevitable consequence of capitalist accumulation in its stage of decadence. Decadent capitalism, having left its phases of growth behind, was forced to redivide the world in order to secure the maintenance of its hegemony, and this was not possible without a corresponding imperialist policy. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote in The Junius Pamphlet in 1915: “Imperialism is not the creation of any one or of any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognisable only in all its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof at will.” [1] [32]

Radek emphasised at the time that the German bourgeoisie, due to the belated formation of its nation-state and of its industrialisation, played a particularly aggressive role in this process. Today, this story is repeating itself—not as a farce, but as a tragic necessity—though, of course, under different circumstances.

While the U.S. is currently attempting to salvage its waning hegemony through destabilisation in the Middle East and the Pacific, Germany, at the heart of Europe, is pushing for a reorientation. The rift between the U.S. and Europe is the first step in a process in which Germany is forced to assert its imperialist interests independently—and thus, if necessary, even against the interests of its former allies. The drive toward militarisation today is not a political choice, but a historical necessity from which the German bourgeoisie cannot escape. In the era of capitalist decay, war has lost its function as an engine of economic expansion and has become a permanent way of life for society. As a geo-strategically central, landlocked country in Europe, Germany is under particular pressure in this regard: without the protection of its own ocean or a stable bloc leader, it is forced to redefine its imperialist and military existence in order not to lose ground in the global competition. Every national bourgeoisie—and especially the German one—must expand its power to secure its position; the “turning point” is thus not an expression of free political choice, but the inevitable reaction to the systemic crisis of capitalism.

2. From a frontline state and military restrictions to the new aspiration to become a leading power

Today’s militarisation stands in sharp contrast to the role Germany played after 1945. During the era of the bloc structure, Germany was the potential main theater of war and a bulwark in the Cold War, but it was a state without sovereignty. The Bundeswehr was primarily conceived as a territorial army, equipped with tanks and troops to ward off the Soviet threat, but completely dependent on the presence of U.S., British, and French forces. Germany was, in a sense, a military dwarf at sea and in the air; it possessed no capabilities of its own for out-of-area operations and no navy or air force of global significance.

The illusion that emerged after 1989, when the Russian army withdrew from East Germany and the bloc boundaries disappeared, was the notion of peaceful integration and economic dominance without military means. The German bourgeoisie believed it could assert itself in Eastern Europe through economic means, while military capabilities were being dismantled. Mandatory military service was abolished, barracks fell into disrepair, and U.S. troops reduced their presence. Yet this period was merely a historical interlude made possible by the implosion of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.

With the accelerated decline of the U.S., the war it provoked in Ukraine, and Russia’s return as a military power, this illusion collapsed. The “turning point” of 2022 marked the beginning of a new phase in which Germany is forced to rebuild its military infrastructure from the ground up and rearm at all costs. But unlike the U.S. or France, which possess global projection capabilities and nuclear weapons, Germany remains essentially confined to the European theater. Its navy is limited mainly to the Baltic and North Seas, and its air force relies on support from NATO.

Nevertheless, the German bourgeoisie strives to become the number one power in Europe. In doing so, it finds itself caught in a deep contradiction: on the one hand, it is attempting to equip the EU with a military arm ‘through the back door’; on the other hand, it is also driven by an ‘every man for himself’ mentality, which brings it into conflict particularly with its close partner, France. While France seeks to defend its dominant role in joint projects such as FCAS (fighter jets) and KNDS (tanks), the German bourgeoisie is increasingly trying to push through its own position—a contradiction that undermines European defense cooperation. At the same time, bilateral partnerships are being forged with India, Japan, and South Korea, and the list of countries that are equally important for a ‘privileged’ relationship—or that are striving for one, such as Turkey—is long. But its main focus must be on Europe, and here the current confrontation with Russia is the defining factor. The U.S. has provoked this process, forced a break with Russia, pushed for distancing from China, and continues to do everything it can to weaken Europe. But this is also provoking a counter-movement: Germany is rearming, while the economic foundation on which these ambitions rest is already faltering.

3. Militarisation is impossible without an attack on the working class

For Germany, militarisation means even greater, massive debt (on top of the debt already accumulated) and the necessity of severe social cuts. The federal government has already driven the national debt up to 2.8 trillion euros, and plans for an unlimited increase in defense spending will cause these figures to skyrocket once again. This is not a sign of strength, but a desperate attempt to maintain its position—and even expand it into a military leadership role—by fleeing into boundless militarisation amid brutally intensifying imperialist rivalries and the ever-increasing pressure of the economic crisis. The consequences are catastrophic for the working class. The “ecological transition,” of course, is also being sacrificed to free up funds for tanks and aircraft. The automotive industry, once the backbone of the German economy, is already in an existential crisis that will sooner or later lead to the collapse of certain companies. Thousands of jobs are being lost, and fears of further plant closures are growing. Corporations such as Volkswagen and Daimler-Benz, which traditionally relied on civilian production, are now pushing into arms production. They want to profit from militarisation, but this means transforming the entire economy into a war economy.

The “turning point” is no longer merely a military one, but a social one as well. The bourgeoisie knows it has no alternative but to launch social attacks. The demand to raise the retirement age to 70 is a blatant attack on the living conditions of the working class. Spending on healthcare, education, and social security systems is being cut to finance military spending. Working hours are being extended, and the right to early retirement is being undermined. But time is running out. The cuts will soon be felt. Added to this are the effects of growing economic chaos due to escalating global imperialist tensions (the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz), and the pressure on the working class will increase. The militarisation of civil society is advancing: A 10-billion DM plan to strengthen “civil defense” has been announced, which will overhaul infrastructure, logistics, cybersecurity, and other areas. This heralds a society being prepared for war, in which the needs of the population are subordinated to the logic of the war economy. As is the case internationally, the bourgeoisie is in the midst of a deep crisis of credibility. The established parties—the CDU, SPD, Greens, and FDP—have no answer to the crisis other than austerity and rearmament. The “firewall” against the AfD (“Alternative for Germany”) is crumbling, and this populist party is growing, fueled by the anger of the population and the powerlessness of the established forces. Yet the AfD offers no solution, only another form of oppression and mystification. The bourgeoisie knows that its ‘solutions’ are fueling social unrest, but it has no alternative.

A turning point for the working class

We stand at a crossroads. Imperialist conflicts are escalating, the economic crisis is deepening, the bourgeoisie is pursuing an increasingly short-sighted, aggressive, and irrational course, and the working class is under attack as never before. For the ruling class, this “turning point” is a necessity to secure its power. For the working class, it is a declaration of war against their living conditions.

The illusion that this course can be reversed through a change in political leadership or ‘democratisation’ is dangerous. The problem is not Trump, Merz, or the AfD, but the capitalist system itself, which thrives on exploitation and war. Militarisation is an expression of the decadence of capitalism, which is driving towards its own destruction.

The task of the working class is clear: we must defend our own class interests and not line up behind bourgeois slogans in “popular fronts.” We must link the struggle against social attacks with the struggle against war. The international solidarity of the working class is the only weapon we have to fight against the imperialist powers and their wars.

Pandora’s box has been opened. Capitalism is leading us into the abyss. Only the revolutionary struggle of the exploited class can save humanity. A turning point has arrived—not for the bourgeoisie, but for the working class, which must refuse to be the victims of imperialist barbarism.

May 25, 2026, Weltrevolution

 

 

 

Note: We have decided to go ahead with the meeting as the weather should be a bit more bearable tomorrow

ICC open meeting

2-5pm, Saturday 27 June

Calthorpe Arms

 252 Gray's Inn Rd, London WC1X 8JR

The ICC will be holding an open meeting, without a formal presentation, where we will be available to discuss any aspect of our politics, current world events, or the history of the workers’ movement. We welcome suggestions in advance about possible questions or topics: write to [email protected] [2] or BM Box 869, London WC1N 3XX.

Over two nights -9th and 10th June- in Belfast racist gangs waged a systematic campaign of terror against migrants. They went from home to home, kicking down doors, smashing windows, throwing petrol bombs into houses in order to drive out migrant workers. Cars and even a bus were set on fire in order to terrify people. Letters were sent to health workers living around the North Belfast hospital telling them to leave or be ‘burnt out’. Cars were stopped in the search for ‘foreigners’. One nurse was chased by four masked men on her way to work. International health workers had to be rescued by their fellow workers. Some workers took those driven out into their homes, at great risk to themselves. These attacks were coordinated, and included migrant workers’ addresses being distributed online so they could be targeted. Older men – perhaps linked to the Loyalist paramilitaries and drawing on a long experience of persecuting Catholics and dissident Protestants - were reported directing these gangs, that were mainly composed of disaffected youths. At least one victim reported police standing by while their homes were torched. The systematic nature of these attacks has not been seen on this scale before.

All this recalls the anti-Jewish pogroms organised by the Czarist bourgeoisie in the early 20th century. These massacres were used by the Russian ruling class, especially after the 1905 revolution, as a way of diverting workers’ militancy away from seeing the ruling class and its system as their historic enemy and blaming the Jews instead.

But today we are not just talking about the use of pogroms in one particularly rotten and anachronistic empire. Today it is the entire ‘world empire’ of capital that is rotting on its feet, and the more it rots the more it is raising the most irrational hatreds and divisions onto a new level, spreading the spirit of the pogrom across the globe. Today all minorities – religious, ethnic, national, sexual – are being scapegoated. In particular, migrants fleeing from persecution or war are being blamed for the real problems that result from the advancing decay of the capitalist system: declining health and social care, housing shortages, unemployment….

The Belfast pogrom is not simply the product of cynical manipulation by the bourgeoisie but the decomposition of capitalist society. As we said about the growing anti-Semitic attacks: “today capitalist society is far more fragmented and lacking in even any short-term solutions to its insoluble crisis. Hatred against minorities is taking ever-more numerous forms and is increasingly manipulated by governments to boost their repressive campaigns against immigrants. And as imperialist wars spread chaotically across the planet, these antagonisms are directly encouraged and exacerbated in order to justify the slaughter of whole populations. We have entered a new era of genocides”[1]  

The ruling class’s use of race, religion or any division they can use to disperse its main enemy, the working class, has a long history.

Of course, the main political parties have denounced the pogrom. They also condemned the race riot that took place the week before in Southampton, after the conviction of a Sikh man for killing a young Polish student who had been handcuffed by the police as he lay dying. Starmer made a big display of denouncing Nigel Farage’s inability to condemn the violence in Southampton and his call for “pure cold rage”. This did not stop him promising to impose even more draconian measures against immigration. One of his ministers, interviewed immediately after a Somalian woman had recounted the terror and her friends experienced, which reminded them of the war in Somalia they had escaped, made a point of boasting about the government’s success in deporting 70,000 ‘illegal’ migrants, and insisting that war-damaged migrants posed a real threat! Such crass manipulation of the tensions is not new. Both Labour and Tory governments have used migration to promote division for decades.

However, in the dynamic of a society in uncontrollable decomposition, the bourgeoisie is now playing with fire.

The main parties are now faced with the rise of populist parties such as Reform or Restore, whose central political message is the idea of overcoming the crisis through anti-migrant policies and are more and more openly calling for mass deportations. These parties thrive on their brutal displays of racism and Islamophobia. They embody and embrace the nihilistic dead-end of capitalism, by shamelessly selling the illusion that sacrificing one part of the population can benefit another part. These parties have no hesitations about stoking up violent confrontations, even if they don’t not openly call for them. The greater the instability, the more they can present themselves as the ‘saviours’ of the nation.

These parties are increasingly turning the main parties’ promotion of racial divisions against them. Reform and Restore promise to actually do something about migration, not just talk about it. This forces the main parties to adopt even more draconian policies, further exacerbating tensions.

An imperialist dimension

Labour and Tories have pointed to the role of Musk, Vance and other Far Right elements in the US who have actively been promoting these riots and the whole climate of fear around migration. They point to the links between Reform and Restore with the Trump administration. What they avoid saying is that this link is part of US imperialism’s strategy of destablisation aimed at its British and European imperialist rivals. A policy based on promoting and backing populist and Far Right parties – the ones referred to as “patriotic parties” in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy:

“American diplomacy should continue to stand up for genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history. America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism. Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.”

Reform and Farage have become one of the main tools of US imperialism. Faced with Trump’s threats to Greenland, and the Iran war, Farage has tried to distance himself from Trump, because of the latter’s growing lack of popularity, even in Reform. Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore, has been much more loyal to Trump and has now gained the backing of Musk and others around Trump. Reform is now faced with a rival on the Right, and having to adopt polices such as mass deportation which Farage once called “politically impossible”. He was always willing to place the race card, but within some constraints, because it would undermine his image as the only person able to stop the Far Right. Reform is now competing with Restore over the numbers to be deported. 

Poison for the working class

The whole political apparatus of the British state is becoming ever more unstable, trapped in the deepening contradictions of dying capitalism. The toxic ideological fumes this is giving off are a real danger to the working class.

The main danger is the ability of the main parties, and their leftwing parties in particular, to divert workers’ revulsion faced with pogroms and race riots into the defense of democracy and the state. Reform and Restore are presented as a threat of democracy, human rights and social cohesion. Workers are told you have to back one of the traditional, the same ones that have been fueling racism for decades and pushing through shameful anti-immigrant policies. We are told that we have to go and vote for these parties, which are dripping with the blood of refugees, in order to block the rise of Reform or Restore to power and oppose racism.  

A large demonstration was organised in Belfast by Unite against Racism. But this ‘unity’ means uniting behind the bourgeois state which organises exploitation and discrimination in the name of the ‘nation’, the very basis of which is racism and hatred against those who come from the other side of the border. The “unity” is above all that of the ‘people’, in order to make us forget that both ‘British’ and ‘foreign’ workers are part of the same international class.

This class unity has been demonstrated in practice in Northern Ireland, notably in the struggle of Belfast NHS workers. Health workers, who usually come from many different national and ethnic backgrounds, are an important part of the workforce and have engaged in a number of struggles to defend wages and protests against working conditions.

The only antidote to racism and the pogrom atmosphere is the united struggle of workers across ethnic, national, religious and all other divisions foisted on them by capital.

Phil, 24.6.26

 

Since 10 October 2025, the Pakistani army has intermittently been bombing Afghan cities. Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad were targeted, and the bombings continue. The aim is to put pressure on the Afghan regime to ban the activities of the Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP)[1] in Pakistan. While these bombings have so far failed to reduce TTP activity, entire neighbourhoods of Afghan cities have been seriously damaged and hundreds of people have been killed or seriously injured. Eight months ago, Pakistan also decided to cut off cross-border trade in order to force the Afghan regime to take action against the TTP. For the Afghan economy, the impact is considerable, as it seriously compromises trade, economic stability and the daily lives of the population: supply restrictions have caused the prices of basic necessities such as flour, cooking oil, rice, and fuel to soar; thousands of workers, truck drivers and day labourers in the Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan have lost their means of subsistence; youth unemployment is exploding. The Afghan economy risks collapsing.

Imperialist each-against-all inevitably leads to military confrontation

How can we explain this confrontation between the two countries when the Taliban movement was welcomed, financed and armed by the Pakistani state? Between 2001 and 2021, Taliban leaders were trained, protected and indoctrinated within Pakistan's borders, often within madrassa networks steeped in radical Islamist ideology. These institutions functioned not only as religious schools, but also as strategic centers, producing fighters and commanders who would shape the Taliban insurgency. In short, by largely supporting the Taliban's fight, Islamabad was effectively behind the current regime in Afghanistan. In doing so, the Pakistani army and secret services hoped to obtain what security experts call “strategic depth” [2] which would strengthen their strategic influence in Afghanistan and allow better control of minorities on their own territory by securing its western border. But that was without taking into account the imperialist ambitions of his former protégé. The new regime in Kabul refuses to subordinate its own interests to Pakistani demands and gives carte blanche, even grants its support, to the Pakistani Taliban terrorist movement TTP, which has now changed its strategy and is carrying out terrorist attacks from Afghan territory, among other places in the Pakistani Pashtun province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

According to Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, these bombings are necessary because the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is said to have “brought terrorists from all over the world to Afghanistan and exported terrorism”. The accusation against Afghanistan of exporting terrorism is particularly hypocritical on the part of Pakistan. Pakistan has always harboured terrorist organisations. Militant groups are an integral part of its security system. Thus, it even used the Taliban as a backup force to “pacify” the region of Balochistan when it was in revolt. During the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan intensified its policy of using radicalised proxies to carry out acts of terror and achieve its foreign policy objectives. Additionally, many terrorist attacks across the world are attributed to Pakistan. Groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), which target Indian-administered Kashmir, have operated from Pakistani territory for decades with an appreciable degree of tolerance from local authorities.

As for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, although it does not have the same means as the great powers or even the regional medium powers, it nevertheless shares the same imperialist ambitions. It's a bit like the world of gangsters: while the godfather rules the whole city, the local pimp controls a street. Kabul, which does not have the capacity to launch a large-scale military attack against Pakistan, resorts to a method that it knows well and with which it has experience: terrorism, and for this, it uses the TTP. The TTP claims, based on their ethnic composition, that in Pakistan, the traditionally Pashtun autonomous province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) belong to the Taliban, and it is waging a campaign of guerrilla warfare and bloody attacks there.

The conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan is an expression par excellence of the intensification in all regions of the world of “each against all” which increasingly dominates current imperialist relations. Regional powers, as well as the terrorist organisations they use, constantly manoeuvre to weaken their rivals, exploit instability and obtain advantages that are as temporary as they are illusory, freeing themselves from any stable alliance structure. At the same time, the massive destruction and ruins that are accumulating, without any of the belligerents gaining the slightest lasting advantage, underline the total irrationality of these conflicts. The Pakistani-Afghan conflict concretely illustrates the broader trends of the decomposition of capitalism: the multiplication of local conflicts, incessant military confrontations, the growing irrationality of political orientations and decisions, etc.

Imperialist tensions across South Asia.

But the conflict does not only concern tensions between Pakistani and Afghan imperialism. The fact that India has strongly condemned Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan territory highlights this. In fact, since November 2024, India, Pakistan's main imperialist adversary, with which it was in open war until May 2025, has forged political ties with the Taliban regime. Faced with increasingly strong imperialist pressure from its historic competitor in the region (China), also faced with the erratic policy of the Trump administration which constantly threatens drastic increases in customs duties and which is moving politically closer to Pakistan, Modi's government has strongly strengthened diplomatic, security and economic ties between Kabul and New Delhi. Thus, India has reopened its embassy in Kabul, supports the Taliban in areas linked to the fight against narcotics and internal instability, and projects are being studied to offer investment facilities to Indian companies in Afghanistan. This rapprochement is obviously perceived by Pakistan as a direct threat and also explains the increasingly aggressive position towards what it perceives as an Afghanistan-India axis. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has openly accused the Afghan Taliban regime of facilitating Indian objectives.

Furthermore, the destabilisation of the autonomous province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also seriously worries China to the extent that the “Silk Road” to the Pakistani port of Gwadar also crosses this province and, moreover, the Pakistani regime, a long-time ally of Beijing, seems to be looking more and more towards the United States. While the Chinese regime, which has significant economic interests in both countries, is increasing efforts to end the violent clashes between the two nations, Pakistan is determined to continue its policies until Kabul puts an end to the TTP attacks. This intransigent attitude is supported by the United States.

Since 2022, Pakistan has had a new government which seeks to limit its dependence on China. Favouring ties with the United States, it joined Donald Trump's Board of Peace and strives to curry favour with the American president in his deals.[3] The United States today views Pakistan as an ally in the fight against the threat of terrorism that Afghanistan, in particular, poses to South Asia. The first result of cooperation between the two countries was the designation by the United States of the Balochistan Liberation Army as a foreign terrorist organisation and the subsequent arrest and detention of the mastermind of the suicide bombing at Kabul International Airport on 26 August 2021, which killed 182 people. Finally, authorisation was granted by the United States to Pakistan to use Afghan airspace to carry out bombings on strategic TTP sites along the border, but also in certain towns.

Thus, in addition to the scheming of local imperialist powers, the intrigues of major imperialist powers come into play, and all of these manoeuvres make the formation of alliances in South Asia particularly uncertain and volatile. The rise of an imperialist each-against-all mentality, here as elsewhere, underlines the system’s descent into chaos and barbarism.

Capitalism is war! Workers have no homeland!

In addition to the imbroglio of the imperialist ambitions of the different actors, small, medium and large imperialisms, this war illustrates a more general characteristic of the current period of putrefaction of capitalist society: conflicts which persist and get bogged down without finding a solution, burying entire regions in the quagmire. Thus, the United States' decision to give Pakistan carte blanche to bomb TTP positions only increases chaos and the risk of larger regional conflagration. The Pakistani-Afghan conflict demonstrates how imperialist confrontations increasingly escape the control of the great imperialist powers, whether directly or indirectly involved. As a result, uncontrolled and increasingly barbaric militarism is spreading around the world: increasing military operations, increased border bombings, proliferation of armed militias, terrorist attacks and nationalist propaganda are intensifying, even as these policies only increase instability. The growing recourse to militarism, despite its manifest inability to resolve the underlying political questions and contradictions, reveals the deeply irrational character of the decadent capitalist system.

Like all wars, this one is criminal! First, the Pakistani bombings and the TTP terrorist attacks left hundreds dead and injured. Moreover, these regimes are spending billions of dollars to fight this war while large parts of their populations are plunged into extreme poverty: in Pakistan, 11 million people suffer from severe food insecurity and malnutrition, while 1.7 million are on the brink of famine; In Afghanistan, 17.4 million people suffer from acute food insecurity, while 4.7 million are at risk of famine.

This war in no way corresponds to the interests of the working class in any region. If it cannot be indifferent in the face of bullets and bombs, and feels solidarity with all these victims, the working class does not have to take sides in all these conflicts, but must clearly denounce all the imperialist camps involved. It must express its solidarity in its fight against the exploiting class of capitalists and, in the development of its struggle throughout the world against all nationalist mystifications, by defending proletarian internationalism.

F. June 1, 2026.

The Anarchist Communist Group (ACG) held an on-line meeting on June 1st last on the topic of what they call the “Spanish revolution” of 1936. This event is of vital importance for revolutionaries because, among others, it highlights the defeat of the revolutionary wave from 1917 to the mid-1920’s and shows how, in this counter-revolutionary period, events in Spain were not a revolution, not a “civil war”, but a crushing defeat where the interests of the working class were derailed from its own terrain and then mobilised in a rehearsal for the second, imperialist world war by both the right and left wings of capitalism.

The presentation, by four members of the ACG, lasted one hour with each taking about 15 minutes. The two-hour meeting advertised was thus reduced to 90 minutes including 30 minutes “for questions”.

From the outset “The Spanish Revolution” was hammered home by the ACG; there were lots of meanders about the various factions (the FAI, for example[1]), but according to the ACG, events in Spain were part “of an unrivalled movement of anarchism in over 50 years of libertarian communism”. Collectivisation was necessary, it said, in order to win the war against Franco before making the revolution. They added “what happened on the land was more important than the factories”. In fact, there was a strong emphasis throughout on the role of the peasantry as the driving force of this so-called revolution. There was also criticism of the POUM (the Trotskyist group which was part of the “Popular Front”), for putting war aims before the revolution. They mentioned The Friends of Durruti (FoD – see below) for according priority to the ‘revolution’ rather than to winning the war against the right.

We insisted in our intervention that there was no revolution in Spain and the political and military situation was dominated by imperialism. In this context “collectivisation” was the organisation of the war economy, just as workers’ self-management and occupations have always turned out to be the working class managing its own exploitation.[2]

We made the point about members of the CNT in the government of the Spanish Republic (four members joined in 1936) telling the workers “we are all brothers in the Republic”, thus contributing to mobilising them in the service of the Republic and preparing the brutal repression of the proletariat by the Republican army and police. The CNT was part of the democratic process that crushed the working class and elements like the FoD were a workers’ reaction to the betrayal, but this didn’t demonstrate “the vitality of anarchism” as the ACG claimed, but its inability to draw the conclusion that it was the CNT itself that participated in the mobilisation of the working class behind the democratic faction of the bourgeoisie against the fascist faction, and was thus part of the build-up to imperialist war – a link in the chain of imperialism. We concluded that the defence of democracy always opens the working class to defeat, and it’s clear that in Spain democracy and Stalinism was on one side and Germany, Spain and Italy on the other. Spain was the final expression of the international defeat of the working class through the crushing of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave.

The ACG immediately denounced this ICC intervention as “gibberish and deranged” with general approval and silence from the majority. This made it possible for them to avoid any in-depth response and to steer the debate onto a number of secondary issues.

The avoidance of debate also enabled the Communist Workers Organisation, a member of whom was present at the meeting,  to express its unfortunately habitual opportunism This group, which is part of the Communist Left, had listened to an hour-long attack by the ACG on marxist positions, including support for anti-fascism in an imperialist war, and its only response was an empty question about possible differences in the FAI. It did speak again after the ICC intervention, not to support a proletarian position, but to sheepishly and half-jokingly talk about historical differences between marxism and anarchism, without the least mention of Spain in the 1930’s. A possible explanation for the CWO sucking up to the ACG in this meeting was revealed in a previous meeting in March this year by the latter on “Anti-militarism”, where the ACG revealed that it was “affiliating” to the CWO’s entirely opportunist “No War but the Class War” committees.

The Communist Left defends internationalism

The analytical framework of the Communist left is essential for understanding what happened in Spain in 1936. We will recall some of its most important positions.

On the one hand, the fundamental context for a proletarian revolution is its internationalist dynamic against all and any support for nationalism and the nation state, including its democratic and anti-fascist factions. The “Spanish Revolution”, a build-up to imperialist war in which both fascist and anti-fascist, democratic and Stalinist forces were involved, was a local expression – a very significant local expression which had international consequences – of the defeat of the working class which took place entirely within the international framework of imperialism’s preparation for the Second World War. It was also part of an internationally orchestrated ideological campaign against the working class, aimed at driving that defeat home. In this respect, the ruling class had learned its lesson from the revolutionary wave that followed – indeed ended – the First World War, that the working class had to be crushed as a precondition for marching it off to war, and it used its left wing to complete the job.

At the same time, in the 1920s and 30s, the fractions of the Communist Left had already begun the difficult task of deepening the marxist understanding of the dynamic of capitalism, war and the reasons for the defeat of the revolutionary wave of the early 20th century. In the epoch of capitalist decadence, colonial wars had been replaced by “imperialist war for a new division of the market” between “old” and “young” capitalist nations. “War no longer expressed the ascent of capitalism, but its general decadent nature” (Bilan, no. 11)[3]. Wars of this time couldn’t be compared to the progressive wars of capitalism against feudalism. No war could be “progressive”, “just” or “anti-reactionary” except the class war, and this was in line with the position of the Bolsheviks and Rosa Luxemburg that the choice facing humanity was revolution or barbarism – and the war in Spain was precisely an expression of capitalist barbarism. So no more support for bourgeois democracy:“the war in Spain had carried out this pitiless selection, demarcating the proletarian from the capitalist camp”.[4]

In 1934, Bilan had already denounced the Spanish Republic, founded in 1931, as “reactionary” after it killed at least 1500 striking and fighting workers in Asturias: “...October 1934 marks the frontal battle to obliterate all the forces and organisation of the Spanish proletariat”[5]. Further attacks on the working class from the Republic were made on the working class as they were mobilised into the Spanish war economy. If the Spanish working class fell into this trap, it was also to a large extent due to the illusions propagated by anarchism, illusions maintained and spread today by the ACG.

Workers tried to fight back against this “betrayal” by the left and the CNT in particular, fighting on their own ground and dying for it – notably on the barricades of May 1937 in Barcelona. Others were armed by the Republic and Fascist gangs and, dizzy with the ideological and physical onslaught taking place in an international context of defeat, were used as cannon-fodder in the war.

There were also political expressions questioning the role of the CNT and the left in the war; we’ve mentioned the FAI and the Friends of Durruti above and it was the latter that the ACG – along with many anarchists – refer to as showing the positive dynamic of anarchism. But although the Friends of Durruti criticised the CNT for its “collaboration”, it could not understand that it was the CNT itself that was part of the forces of the bourgeoisie in this imperialist war.[6] The group could not see beyond the frontiers of Spain and the “Spanish Revolution”, blinding it to the international defeat of the working class which dictated  a course towards world-wide imperialist conflict, and the events in Spain were part of this.

The events in Spain in 1936 once again illustrate the historical bankruptcy of anarchism

The depiction of war in Spain in the 1930’s as a workers’ revolution when it was in fact an imperialist war coming out of the defeat of the working class internationally, its support for “anti-fascism” and its democratic coalition, show that the ACG is fundamentally unable to defend the demarcation lines between proletariat and bourgeoisie. Without the defence of those lines, deemed essential by the Communist Left, this group is doomed to incoherence and further slides into leftism.

This slide is evidenced from statements from the ACG paper Jackdaw (February 2024). It quotes the ACG as saying: “For all the anger and opposition its (Israel’s) genocidal actions are creating amongst ordinary people, there are not, so far, any allies amongst the nation states of the world, notwithstanding South Africa’s filing a case of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice, that might intervene meaningfully on their behalf”[7]. Thus, these anarchists are appealing to capitalist states to come to the aid of Palestinian nationalism, citing the concerns of “ordinary people".

  As the ICC article says, the ACG go further in supporting an end to arms sales to Israel while calling on the British government to support a ceasefire. When one of our militants at the ACG meeting of April 23 called the ACG out on this outright support for the bourgeoisie and its manoeuvres on the level of imperialism, the ACG flatly denied that such a thing was suggested. Nevertheless, the ACG presenter said that “it was the human thing to do” to denounce Israeli atrocities while their paper states that: “Iran and their Hezbollah allies have refrained from any full-blooded commitment, despite provocation from Israel, because they know the consequences of an escalation”. Here they put forward the suggestion that restraint and moderation are being shown by the proxies of Iranian imperialism. This innuendo and suggestion is rife throughout the ACG’s position on the Middle East and it boils down to support for Palestinian nationalism – or the “resistance” as their speaker kept referring to it at the April meeting, with no clear position on the imperialist nature of Iran and its allies, i.e., all sides in this imperialist war.  Even the CWO has recognised the drift on the ACG position from that of proletarian internationalism to the support of Palestinian nationalism: "The ACG has been clear in its rejection of nationalism in Ukraine, but now seems to be entering the mire of bourgeois politics in Palestine".[8]

The “clarity” of the group on the fundamental issue of proletarian internationalism is paper-thin, virtually devoid of any theoretical foundations. The real substance and content of the ACG’s political positions were fully on display at its last two meetings above: support for anti-fascism, the “progressive” factions of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist state; tacit support for warring factions in the wars in the Middle East. The Anarchist Communist Group is sliding further into leftism.

Baboon, 22.6.26

 

 

 

We publish an account of the ICC’s recent online international English-language public meeting, written by a close sympathiser. We think the comrade has approached the discussion in a very clear way and we support his contribution.

The subject of this online public meeting marked a change from recent ICC meetings that have focussed on current events, including the wars in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon. This was deliberate given the salience today of questions of fascism, democracy and the situation of the working class.

Following the brief presentation made by the ICC the discussion first considered the significance of events in Spain in 1936 and then the lessons for today.

On Spain 1936

With no interventions directly defending the Republic, anti-fascism, or the idea that the ‘revolution’ in Spain went beyond Russia in 1917, the discussion focussed on understanding the method that enabled a minority of the proletarian movement to analyse the events leading to the Second World War and drawing out elements of that analysis.

In the maelstrom of events that marked the rise of the revolutionary wave in Russia in 1917, the defeat of the revolution in Germany in 1919, and the isolation and degeneration of the revolutionary wave leading to the counter-revolutionary victory of Stalinism, the majority of the revolutionary forces of the working class were profoundly disoriented with many lapsing into defence of the USSR, a position that would end in their active support for the Second World War. Foremost of those struggling to remain true to the working class were the militants grouped around the journal Bilan. It maintained the internationalist and proletarian traditions of the Bolsheviks and the Zimmerwald left in its defence of the historical interests of working class and, as a result, suffered not only isolation but also condemnation and physical threats from Stalinists, anarchists and ‘socialists’ alike. Several participants emphasised that it was the method developed by Bilan that lies at the heart of the communist left today and the ICC in particular. “Reading the texts of the Italian Left and MC [Marc Chirik, a militant of the communist left and one of the founders of the ICC] reinforces the momentous work to reestablish this link with the workers’ movement, clarifying lessons in a period of counter-revolution… a method of long patient work against the tide.”

An essential expression of this method was the importance of understanding the context in which the events in Spain happened. It came after the defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-26. As the ICC noted in one of its interventions: “We have to analyse the balance of class forces on an international scale and across an entire historical period.” This defeat did not preclude outbursts of determined struggle, such as those by workers in France. Spain also saw such outbreaks in 1936 and again in 1937, but these were derailed by the forces of the republic and its enablers in the POUM, the CNT and the Socialists. Class autonomy was replaced by the dictates of the Republic and class struggle by the defence of democracy. Spain ’36 was part of the trajectory of the defeat of the working class and the revolutionary wave that started in 1917. The workers’ struggles in Spain were the dying gasp of this dynamic. The diversion of the working class in Spain from the defence of it class interests against the bourgeoisie as a whole to the defence of one faction of the ruling class, obscured by clouds of rhetoric about revolution and collectivisation, was one of the last acts in sealing the trajectory towards 1939.

The discussion was able to point to some of the main players in this defeat and the process through which it happened. At its heart was the failure by the working class to challenge the state in all its forms. This is what happened in Russian 1917 when the Soviets confronted the Provisional Government, creating a situation of dual power and then the seizure of power by the working class. In Germany in 1919 the workers’ councils were betrayed by the SDP into handing power to the bourgeoisie. In Spain this reality was disguised by the myth of the collectives and performative actions against expressions of the ruling class such as the church. The establishment of collectives in factories and farms did not challenge state power but kept the working class contained both physically and politically, easy prey to calls to defend what they had ‘gained’ against the fascist menace and thus to leaving the class front for the military fronts. Ultimately, collectivisation led to mobilisation for war. The anarchist CNT, the POUM and the Stalinists all played their part in the betrayal and defeat of the working class. As one comrade remarked with reference to the CNT: “In essence they were fooling the workers into their defeat.”

The lie that the anti-fascist struggle would lessen the oppression and slaughter of the working class resulted in its greater oppression. The pursuit of the lesser evil helped open the door to the greatest evil to befall the working class and humanity until that point.

One comrade, Mario, asked whether democracy or fascism was preferred by the bourgeoisie: “Leftists say that fascism is preferable for them… I think that bourgeois democracy is more stable and better for business than fascist oscillation,” supporting this by pointing to countries such as Spain, Greece, Chile, South Korea and Taiwan that have transitioned to democracy. This was echoed by another participant who argued: “Democracy seems to be the lesser evil here. Under a democratic state it is much more sustainable for the bourgeoisie.” In response Karl stressed the ideological role of democracy in disorienting the working class: “An important aspect on the question of democracy is that you are supposed to be part of decision-making in the state… I think the important aspect is not what is preferable for the ruling class – democratic or fascist state – but the way they can use the democratic ideology to get people to adhere to and support the state… that was one of the main recruiting arguments in WW1 and WW2 when everyone thought they were supporting the democratic state against threats.”

The ICC argued that democracy was the classic form of the way the bourgeoisie organises but distinguished between its use in the 19th century, when it was an effective tool to manage the differences within the bourgeoisie, and its use in the period of decadence when it is central to the organisation of the economy and preparation for war. Above all, democracy has been central to defeating the working class. “The comrades of Bilan portrayed democracy as the most cunning weapon as it pulls workers from their economic and political interests and disarms them politically in order to enrol them for the defence of democracy.” (ICC intervention).

On the lessons for today

This part asked whether participants saw fascism on the rise today and the reasons for their position. Overall, there was agreement that fascism was a product of specific historical circumstances, principally that it was based on the defeat of the working class’s revolutionary efforts of 1917-26; the conditions for it do not currently exist because the class has not been defeated.

However, an important difference was expressed by Carter, who argued that the Trump administration is moving towards fascism in its disregard for democratic norms and open deployment of force: “Not full authoritarian rule but several authoritarian measures without being challenged. Redefined terrorist identification to target people on the left. I’m not saying the working class is defeated but normal legislative checks failed in stopping Trump as he is able to engage in fascist repressive actions in and outside the US.”

Another participant, Mario, responded by arguing that it is necessary to distinguish between the form and content of fascism: “The form can look similar, but fascism historically has been based on the defeat of the working class with the state employing its authoritarian measures against it; crushing the unions, free speech, assembly, universal suffrage and all aspects of bourgeois democracy in favour of authoritarian rule by the state accompanied by other mystifications such as chauvinism, racial superiority of one group… What Trump is trying to do is limited by the working class not being defeated….”

The ICC pointed out that the type of measures imposed by the Trump regime are far from unique, giving the examples of repressive measures by the European Union forcing migrants to live in squalor inside the EU or facing imprisonment and torture at the hands of states outside, but paid for by the EU. Trump has simply been more open about what he is doing. In response Carter maintained his argument: “If he [Trump] is not fascist, he is building up to be fascist very soon.”

Other participants who rejected the argument about the current possibility of fascism pointed to the development of populism and how its irrationality gives impetus to the calls to defend democracy: “Despite similar rhetoric, today’s rise of populism occurs not in the context of a bourgeoisie united with a perspective towards total war, but of a bourgeoisie which cannot organise itself for even the most basic regulation of its economy and state. We think this is an important distinction, but clearly we should not be caught off guard; the situation is in many ways more dangerous today than in the past.” This was echoed in another intervention: “Today’s populist movements, which are often presented as fascist, are a product of the current situation and specifically the decomposition of capitalism with its consequences of incoherence, irrationality and often incompetence.”

Conclusion

This was a useful discussion with a high level of engagement by a large number of participants showing that the subject remains relevant. At its core was the question of the nature of democracy and its relationship to fascism. They are presented as polar opposites but, by considering the history of the ‘Spanish revolution’, we can see that the one was the condition for the other. By drawing the working class from its fight against the whole of capitalism and bourgeois society, the democratic myth and the forces of the left that called for its defence helped defeat the working class and open the road to fascism and global war.

In understanding how the ideology of democracy has been used against the working class and by showing how ‘revolutionary’ posturing by the forces of the left of capital, whether under the mask of socialism, Trotskyism or anarchism, reinforced this ideology, revolutionaries can arm themselves against its use today and tomorrow. Today the campaigns against Trump, and populism generally, are drawing on this ideology, seeking to pull the working class into defending democracy, and with it the whole edifice of obsolescent, decomposing capitalism. This cannot be halted by united fronts, popular fronts or any compromise with ruling class but only by the independent, self-organised struggle of the working class across the globe. If this seems a distant prospect today it is not brought nearer by compromise with any part of the class enemy. In seeking to clarify this, the meeting was a small moment in an essential process.

PW 21/06/26