Over and over, the 2nd International and its member parties had warned the workers of the coming war and threatened the ruling classes with their own overthrow should they dare launch Armageddon. And yet in August 1914, the International disintegrated, blown away like insubstantial dust, as one after the other its leaders and parliamentary deputies betrayed their most solemn promises, voted war credits and called the workers to the slaughter.

How could such a disaster happen?

Parliament’s rejection of the government’s motion supporting military intervention in Syria was seen by many as a reassertion of democracy, Labour showing a bit of backbone at last and Cameron being cut down to size. Indeed, the vote in Parliament attracted a lot of attention not only in the media but also amongst the population. Faced with the terrible slaughter in Syria many are deeply concerned about what is going to happen in Syria and the Middle East. However, the vote in parliament was not the manifestation of the ‘popular will’; rather it graphically illustrated the impasse of British imperialism.

It’s always difficult - and unwise - to make precise predictions about the international situation, particularly as imperialist tensions and conflicts take on a more irrational and chaotic character. However, we can say with some certainty that, whatever the specifics of events in Syria, whether the regime falls or not, there will be more fighting, more bloodshed and the greater likelihood of the war worsening in Syria itself and extending beyond its borders.

In less than a month at the time of writing, a second border clash left at least 14 dead and scores of wounded as Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd of Palestinian protesters trying to break into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights from Syria. Barely one month before, hundreds of people broke through a border fence and clashed with thousands of Israeli troops mobilized in anticipation of possible unrest as Palestinians prepared to protest the anniversary of the Arab defeat in the 1967 Mideast war. This is just a ‘skirmish’ compared to the history of violence and bloodletting that stains the region...

 This contribution is based largely on the book The Politics of Heroin (CIA Complicity in the Global Drugs Trade) by Alfred W. McCoy. It deals with the period around World War II, the US state’s use of the Mafia domestically, its use in the invasion of Italy and the subsequent explosion of heroin production up to the late 1950s.

Even though revolutionaries today are far from all sharing the analysis that capitalism entered into its phase of decline with the outbreak of the First World War, this was not the case for those who had to respond to this war and who participated in the revolutionary uprisings that followed. On the contrary, as shown in this article, the majority of marxists shared this point of view. Similarly, for them, understanding the new historic period was indispensable for reinvigorating the communist programme and the tactics that flowed from it.

After having turned the globe into a gigantic slaughterhouse, inflicting two world wars, nuclear terror and countless local conflicts on an agonised humanity, decadent capitalism has entered into its phase of decomposition, a new historic phase first marked by the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989. In this historic phase, the direct employment of military violence by the great powers, above all by the USA, becomes a permanent phenomenon.

“The world we live in is a little mad. In Kosovo we discover crimes against humanity every day; other less spectacular but equally horrible conflicts in Africa and Asia; economic and financial crises which break out suddenly, unforeseen and destructive; growing poverty in many parts of the world...” (quoted in Le Monde, 22/6/99).

In July, during a visit to India no less, David Cameron, British Prime Minister, no doubt delivering a message from his earlier meeting with the US administration, accused Pakistan, or elements within Pakistan, of exporting terror and playing a double game. He should know. The export of terrorism and the double games that surround it are a speciality of British imperialism – as Pakistan well knows.

It now appears that the policies of engagement, cooperation and diplomacy trumpeted by Obama have, if they ever existed, given way to policies more like those of the Bush team, but further extended and refined to meet the increasingly dangerous demands of the world situation.

[if gte

As we saw in December 1995 with the maneuver orchestrated against the working class in France and more generally against the European proletariat, the bourgeoisie is always abl