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] [4] 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 [5] (International Review 4)

 

The War in Spain - No Betrayal! [6] (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 [7]  )

 

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]] [8]

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.