The 2024 Presidential election is underway in the United States. As is the custom and tradition, every four years the American working class are treated by the bourgeois to another clownish sideshow of debates, political rallies, & advertisements. On social media the masses are bombarded with quippy or alarmist reels & shorts, and all are encouraged to share in the collective narcissism of opinion exchange & debate, joining the chorus of moronic self assured experts and political pundits. This election cycle as the masses choose Democrat or Republican, to turn on CNN or Fox, to eat their Big Mac or Whoppers, to enjoy their Pepsi or Coke, or get drunk from their Coors or Budweiser, we ignore the bourgeois call to exercise our god given right to freedom of choice. Instead, we only call upon the workers to dispose of your ballots into the closest trash can, as we always have.

As the bourgeois pour an unlimited amount of money into the election circus, hundreds of millions of dollars in perverted propaganda is forced upon the public to tell us that to save the nation is to save ourselves and to do that we must “Vote or Die”. This famous slogan of the, self­titled, bi­partisan electoral activist campaign fronted by Sean P. Diddy Combs, now forever lives on in infamy as the debauched hip­hop mogul and cultural representative of the American bourgeois, is charged with innumerable sexual crimes following a similar exposé of bourgeois insider and sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein. As the Caligula­ like depravity of the representatives of American bourgeois is increasingly exposed year after year, and the edifice of American imperial hegemony continues its sharp decline, each passing election cycle only confirms the total moral degeneration, incoherence and senility of the entire putrefying bourgeois order.

While the bourgeois, their schools and their media would like us to believe that in this demented ritual known as “elections” we are provided a mirror of the will of “American People” as reflected by the number of votes earned by the candidates, the truth is that this democratic system long ago eliminated any independent working class political expression, fully establishing a two party class dictatorship following the class upheavals at the conclusion of the American Civil War. Within this rotting capitalist civilization there is only democracy for the capitalist class, who selects which Party’s political program it will adopt for the next four years, through a grotesque system of “voting with their dollars” which is nothing other than a competitive propaganda war waged against the proletariat.

Between January 2023 and April 2024, US political campaigns collected around $8.6 billion for the 2024 House, Senate, and presidential elections. Both parties enjoy more or less equal monetary support from the banks & the financial sector, the medical industry, and real estate; however, the Republicans tend to receive more support from the traditional and long established production and extraction industries; whereas the Democrats receive more support from tech, Hollywood, the middle class lawyers, civil servants, the non­profit industrial complex and elements of the labor aristocracy in the unions.

In 2023-24 Republicans received 92.8% of the financial contributions from the mining industry, 88.3% from the oil and gas industry, 85.1% from Trucking, 81.5% from home builders, building materials 81.2%, automotive 76.0%, steel production 71.8%, poultry and eggs 95.2%, dairy 69.9%, crop production 67.1%, livestock 68.2%, chemicals 68.3%, Sea Transport 65.2%. In 2023­24 Democrats of all donations received from Electronics Manufacturing & Equipment 64%, 86.7% of the TV/movie industries donations, of all unions 93% of donations, education (universities and schools) 91%, internet companies 85.2%, publishing companies 84.4%, nonprofits 80%, lawyers 78.9%, civil servants 76.4%.

The competing economic interests of the bourgeois shape the basis of the chasms that exist between the Democrats and Republicans in their policy positions; however, both parties have historically played a crucial “bad cop” and “good cop” role in disciplining the American proletariat. In a general sense, the Democrats have tended to represent the interests of the petit­bourgeois and the middle classes. While today they attempt to espouse the classical liberal bourgeois rhetoric and pose as a historically progressive force, in the not too distant past they were the party of Manifest Destiny and Black Slavery, then of Jim Crow segregationists and the white labor aristocracy. Today we are supposed to believe they are the champions of the oppressed (just forget about their sending of aircraft carriers to guarantee the free slaughter of tens of thousands of proletarians in Palestine) pitched against a regressive conservative right wing which allegedly seeks to establish a Mussolini style dictatorship.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are a party which has always primarily represented the interests of industrial capital. In this election cycle the Republicans have begun to flirt with the labor aristocracy and attempted to win the unions to its side. The first ever invitation of a union president, Sean O’Brien of the Teamsters, to speak at the Republican National Convention alongside Trump’s visits to UAW picket­lines earlier this year, were unprecedented events; however, demonstrating the shallow nature of the Republican’s attempts to win over labor, Trump, in a recent interview with fellow capitalist Elon Musk, expressed his support of breaking with established labor law and firing striking workers.

The Republicans’ current experiment in appealing to workers is based on the old recipe of appealing to white workers fear of immigrants stealing American jobs in order to win the labor aristocracy to the side of industrial capital. This has so far failed, as the Teamsters announced that they would not support either of the bourgeois Party’s this election. Regardless of the reasons, this break with the two bourgeois parties by one of the largest unions in the country represents a significant moment in the history of the working class which is today finding a newly combative footing amid a mass strike wave that continues to grow across the country and the world. While we put no premium of significance on popular opinions, even bourgeois sources show that public approval rates for unions have grow astronomically to 70% in recent decades, while support for the bourgeois parties and government is in constant decline. This is merely an indication of the shifting tides within American society where unions and strikes are increasingly seen as the realm to deliver material gains for workers as the false promises of economic recovery for the working class by the bourgeois parties continue fall flat.

As such, the Republicans (and by extension, the Democrats) opt to propagandize “cultural” critiques of society, reducing the deepening economic crisis into a narrowly conceived moralistic degeneration that appeals to the reactionary traditional sentiments of the petty bourgeoisie. For instance: amid the global recession that followed the 2020 pandemic a so­called “labor shortage” emerged, as workers began taking up strike action and refusing to work for low wages, the bourgeois screamed,“no one wants to work”. In response the Federal Reserve organized an attack on the working class by raising interest rates, creating wide scale unemployment to reduce workers bargaining power. Likewise, the mass migration to the southern national border which is a result of the imperialist domination of the global South, conveniently becomes the source of American’s losing jobs, the opioid crisis, crime and homelessness; portraying desperate workers in search of employment to be only criminals bringing social blight upon the nation and thereby absolving any responsibility on behalf of the international bourgeoisie.

The Republican Party, offers a border policy which will never completely cut off immigration but instead works to create a section of highly exploited labor constantly in fear of deportation. The national capital has little interest in completely drying up it’s reserve army of labor, merely using its state apparatus to crush them into total submission. The Republican Party’s policy is intended to act as the hammer against the most exploited workers: the immigrants, indigenous peoples, poor Black workers, women and gender non­confirming; while the Democrats act as the velvet glove that keep the workers in place for the next firing round by offering false promises of upward mobility for a select few minorities to the ranks of the labor aristocracy and middle classes.

While as a result of the growing accumulation crisis within the capitalist economy, the industrial interests are increasingly at odds with elements of liberal democracy and the middle classes who defend it; the two capitalist parties, the collective capitalist class, have always found unity in the patriotic work of beating the American and international working class into submission. Be it from the use of its marines and aircraft carriers or its police, prisons and border walls; nothing will ever change the nature of these two blood drenched social machines of hypocrisy and war which sacrifices all that is sane and beautiful in the world on the monstrous altar of capitalist imperialism.

Regarding the particular issues confronting the bourgeois in this election, the most important is Trump’s proposal of a national tariff of 10­20% on almost all imported goods, with much higher tariffs proposed on China. The tariff benefits the domestic manufacturing and extraction industries in the United States, as it helps keep out foreign imports of finished goods and raw materials. Thus it eliminates competition and keeps the domestic market captured by the national industrial capital. From the Biden administrations successful passage of the CHIPS act to this tariff, the US capitalist class is in a mad rush to reestablish its industrial base, in preparation for the next inter­imperialist war; however, while Trump claims it as a method of developing U.S. industrial production capacity, its ability to actually effect significant growth of the U.S. industrial bases at this point in history is highly questionable as are the other policies recently passed by the bourgeois; despite this, by hamstringing foreign competition it will enable a further attack on the living standard of the US workers by allowing US companies to jack up prices on consumer goods unabated.

The implementation of a national tariff is a major trade policy shift away from the free market policies of the bourgeois in the postwar era. It is a return to the old mercantilist trade policies which predominated the world in the pre­World War era and has always been an essential policy of developing capitalism’s which sought to cultivate their own industrial centers through protectionism. The tariff builds on Trumps “trade wars” which despite his claimed “isolationist” foreign policy allegedly aimed at preventing “world war three”, sets the stage for future imperialist conflict by escalating the respective national capitals competition over raw resource markets escalating tensions with U.S. imperialism’s primary enemy China.

Democrats have branded the tariff a national sales tax which will result in increased costs for each household up to $4,000 a year. Many of the financial interests also feel it will increase inflation. The Democrats currently favor retaining cheap imports from China, while focusing the forces of U.S. imperialism on the in Ukraine with Russia. Trump on the other hand has stated that he would immediately bring about a negotiated resolution to the conflict. Trump’s position on Ukraine is a primary cause of one of the now three alleged assassination attempts against him in the course of the election. During his presidency Trump was constantly at odds with his generals and fired many. It seems his position on Ukraine is out of line with the established consensus doctrine within the U.S. military bureaucracies.

The Democrats under Kamala Harris have made half­hearted calls for price controls to restrict price gouging which has led to inflation. As usual, the Democratic campaign has once again made more empty promises to raise taxes on big businesses and Americans making $400,000 a year; whereas, the Republicans propose a number of tax cuts worth trillions. Harris’s “opportunity economy” attempts to appeal to petit­bourgeoisie, by offering competitive relief in their struggle against the big capitalists through various tax breaks and start up capital incentives. Under capitalism, competition is a precondition of monopoly and vice versa; there is no idealistic “small capitalism” that does not eventually result in, or dissolve from, monopolization. Her pie in the sky, plan for the “opportunity economy” offers nothing to the working masses, who themselves struggle against both the petty bourgeois and the big bourgeoisie. It is easy for the Democrats to adopt empty nationalist union rhetoric like “When unions are strong, America is strong”, but when the serious, actual power of a strike like the railroad strike of 2022 was brought to the point of materializing, they destroyed it by necessity, collaborating with the business union bureaucracy to effectively disarm the working class of their strongest economic weapon.

Yet, despite all this, we see posturing between the two bourgeois parties– both claiming to represent the workers and accusing the other of being the “real enemy” of labor– even though the emancipation of the working class is simply impossible through the very system that enslaves it. At their logical conclusions, these parties can only “develop” to the point of the aforementioned consolidation, realizing fascistic or social­democratic forms. Thereby achieving temporary national bourgeois political unity and openly subordinating the working class for the interest of the national economic interest. Such was the strategy of the ruling classes in the period of crisis leading up to the second World War with the emergence of European fascism, Stalinism, and FDR social­ democracy.

The Republicans’ disproportionate backing by the traditional landed industrial interests compared to the liberal middle classes which forms a large part of the Democrats base, explains how the increasing polarization and hostile partisanship between the two bourgeois parties has emerged amid an increasingly unhealthy capitalism facing a profit accumulation crisis which forces the big bourgeois to eat up the middle classes and labor aristocracy to retain its rate of profit accumulation. As a result the two bourgeois parties find themselves increasingly unable to come to agreement on many key issues, including the federal budget on a recurring basis.

In this election cycle Trump continues to diverge from the norm in American bourgeois politics by openly threatening use of the military and legal system to take retribution against political rivals within the bourgeois while also alluding to the possibility of establishing himself as an unelected head of state. In response, the Democrats have again taken up an anti­ fascist rhetoric in a campaign to “save democracy”. Many Republicans have openly discussed the possibility that Trump’s election may be the last presidential election in the United States amid more comments referring to a possible civil war should Trump not be elected. In light of the events of the January 6th “insurrection” where a disorganized mob of a few thousand Trump supporters stormed the Capital, as well as the subsequent failed legal prosecution by the Democrats, Trump has certainly become a martyr to his base which is composed of a large section of declassed petit­bourgeois and lumpen elements who see the liberal order as needing replaced by an authoritarian leader imbued with special powers.

While Trump’s own comments and those of other Republicans indicate that the idea of shedding the democratic veneer to the bourgeois regime is certainly being considered by many within the ruling class, Trump himself in this election cycle has made contradictory comments about his own ambitions this election. His chaotic leadership style, unpopularity within many in the military and the general division among the bourgeois amid the absence of a true existential threat to their class order in the immediate future, make it highly unlikely for their class to consolidate itself around Trump at this time. The presence of a strong and defiant Democratic Party means that it would be very difficult for Republican’s to establish a thoroughgoing one Party state. Regardless of whether or not Donald Trump himself strives to become a full blown dictator in the immediate future, it does not deter from the long established world wide march of the bourgeois states towards increasingly authoritarian and fascistic methods.

As Marx poetically noted, “The structure of the economic elements of society remains untouched by the storm­ clouds of the political sky”; the stage of development of economic production is always, in the last instance, the deciding factor of a nation’s actions, and individuals are only but a living conduit of their corresponding class force. As long as the capitalist mode of production prevails, it can only provide capitalist forms of political expression in its system.

Heading into this upcoming election we are faced with other inevitable crises on the horizon: the next great war of the most developed bourgeois nations continuously encroaches, the rising price of goods and the ability for the masses to replenish their natural needs is becoming harder and harder to obtain, and the looming natural disaster brought about by capitalist overproduction is largely unaddressed.

Imperial tensions in Europe and the middle­east are reaching deadly peaks, with bourgeois wars ravaging innocent working masses through the guise of national “self­determination” on all sides. In America, many are horrified by the inevitable results of such wars and are confused by their own country’s role in the devastation; some protesting in the streets with proclamations of pacifism and “general” democratic freedoms yet again. Only now, the protests are happening under Democratic Party rule which has promised to continue making the American military the “most lethal force in the world”, despite also hypocritically claiming to be an alternative to Trump’s “violent” demagoguery.

We are reminded, as was established in the Third Communist International, there is no “general democracy” that is above class; it is always firstly a tool of the ruling class and shaped around its protection. Who is elected will make little if any serious difference in the everyday life of working class Americans, because in the end, American workers are presented with one choice with two faces: Capital and Capital will elect which ever candidate best suits it’s interests regardless.

The only path forward towards emancipation for the proletariat is to continuously organize ourselves along the class lines of our economic reality as workers and to struggle against capitalism and all of its expressions(including it’s bourgeois parliamentarianism), not relying on “democratic” tyranny to “free us” from itself; for if there are “storm­clouds” forming, they are not the clouds of bourgeois electoral­ism, but the impending final confrontation of the two warring classes engaged in a protracted battle for the fate of history.

It is only through the victory of the proletariat directed by the historical organ of the working class, The International Communist Party, that the irreconcilable contradictions between labor and capital can finally be put to rest; by destroying the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie and realizing new systems of proletariat dictatorship, thus eliminating class society once and for all.

The clashes of armies in the Middle East and Ukraine are not embedded in any perspective of historical accommodation, either global or regional. The purpose of imperialist war is war, capital, war. And it is also an economic activity in itself, a branch of industry.

Moreover, in it’s national and religious disguises, it serves to arouse division and dismay in proletarians.

The atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had no military purpose, nor were they dropped on naval bases or industrial complexes. Instead, they were knowingly used against the population. By August 1945, World War II had its victors, in the East as well as in the West. It needed an ultimate sanction of the overwhelming power of America’s capitalists, of their conquered world empire.

But it was also a "vae victis" (woe to the vanquished) launched against the proletariat, a reminder of what the bourgeoisie is capable of in order to maintain its domination. The proletariat emerged from the second imperialist war annihilated, politically defeated and prone to the capitalist interests of reconstruction and national capital accumulation. In Russia, the counterrevolutionary Stalinist ideology had been the expression of the working class’s submission to domestic state capitalism, and in the war to the "democratic" imperialist bourgeoisie front. It had cost the working class tens of millions of deaths.

Then began eighty years of social peace, of bourgeois peace, with increasingly bestial rhythms of exploitation of workers, and of robbery by imperialists in all corners of the world.

But the capitalist economy has its limits. The giantism of production collides with an ever­shrinking market; the inordinate increase in the mass of the means of production strangles the rate of profit. Capital today, increasingly hungry for profit, like a wounded monster runs mad the world in order to invest itself.

But submission to order is already creaking in areas where bourgeois rule is less firm. In more recently formed countries with extensive proletarian youth, social peace is shattered by uprisings, still sporadic, still disconnected and still lacking class organization and direction.

In the Middle East

Hamas’ Oct. 7 action fits into this context, kicking off a war not between religions and nations, but between world giants of capital that in the narrow region come to measure and challenge each other, through proxies, supplying states and militias with endless giant arsenals and with aircraft carriers at anchor.

The war in the Middle East benefits all capitalists, near and far. Among other things it supports the price of oil. And it is against all proletarians, near and far.

Hamas, a "terrorist" party founded with the financial support of the State of Israel, would have prearranged an incursion of this size without the ubiquitous Mossad and CIA spies having any inkling of it and without any defensive reaction from the efficient Israeli army.

Militarily, it has had the sole purpose of exacerbating tempers in the certainty of immediate fierce retaliation by the Israeli state. Domestically, the war is necessary for Hamas, a bourgeois party, to keep the mass of the dispossessed in the Gaza Strip subdued.

The deadly Israeli Air Force bombardments are not against Hamas but against the population, to push them, in desperation, to side with Hamas or seek its protection. Bombing militarily makes no sense, in the tunnels underground life goes on, and the ruins are only an obstacle to armored action. The German defeat at Stalingrad teaches this.

But the massacres by the Israeli air force benefit all the bourgeoisie in the area. It is a warning to workers, Egyptians, Syrians, Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese: this is fiery wrath of your local bourgeoisie.

That is why in imperialist warfare, in which brigands among themselves share the spoils, it is profoundly wrong for the working class to take sides.

Knowing the relations and interests of imperialist blocs and their changing sides is important, to refute we communists the lie behind their "morals" and their false "international law". But for the working class, the enemy is at home. The war is not so far away. In fact the class war every day the proletariat fights it.

The bourgeoisie has its centers of analysis and study for military and economic issues. But above all it has its state, the supreme organ for its defense as a class. The proletariat today has its party, tomorrow it too will have its state, temporary but inflexible, which will be able to deal with the bourgeois enemy states with defeatism and war on war.

 
In Ukraine

While attention is focused on the massacres being perpetrated in the Middle East, Russian armed forces are marking progress in eastern Ukraine: in the southern Donbass region, the country’s industrial heartland, they have occupied the mining town of Vuhledar after a resistance of nearly three years. A few days later they entered Toretsk, another important center on the Pokrovsk route, a key access junction to the region.

The fall of these cities confirm that Ukraine, despite its government’s bellicose declarations, will have to surrender to the greater strength of the Russians.

Even during this tough battle, as in many episodes of this war, Ukrainian soldiers were forced by their commands to hold out to the last, even when it was evident that any further sacrifice would be in vain. The surviving troops had to retreat under enemy fire, which was approaching from three directions. Hunted down by drones over their heads ready to launch grenades, under mortar and rocket fire and with the constant threat of guided bombs, the Ukrainian soldiers had to flee on foot to save themselves.

This shows how much the Ukrainian government and General Staff care about the fate of their soldiers,defending the "aggrieved homeland", who are increasingly sent to the front without adequate training and armament. Many young recruits try to abandon the front, deserting.

The lack of the class party, the absence of an organized labor movement, and the consequent rampant individualism, prevent this refusal to fight from taking on a collective aspect today, from being transformed into a movement against the imperialist war that, starting from the trenches, involves the proletarians in the cities, taking on classist and anti­capitalist connotations.

The lies of the bourgeois Ukrainian government match those with which the equally bourgeois Russian government defends its war, called a "special military operation".

It is actually a war against the Atlantic Alliance and the United States, which is very interested in striking, in addition to the Russian state, the German ally and Europe in general. A Europe increasingly linked economically with Russia and China.

Arms manufacturers everywhere are doing a brisk business. While many tens of thousands are dead or maimed proletarians at the front, the industries for war are working at full capacity. In Russia, unemployment would have all but disappeared. The blood of Ukrainian and Russian proletarians is spilled in defense of the interests of capital, arms suppliers, industrialists and bankers. Through war capitalism seeks to overcome its economic crises of overproduction and settle scores between rival imperialist blocs, making its wage slaves pay the price.

The Debate Over Long-range Missiles

In September in the upper echelons of diplomacy of the United States, Britain and European states, the possibility of allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory with missiles supplied by Western countries was discussed. For their use, in fact, Ukrainian personnel are not enough, but Western technicians are needed.

The "experts" were already taking the concession for granted. The foreign minister of Britain’s new Labor­majority government, but as militaristic and warmongering as the previous "right­wing" one, had even gone to Washington to urge President Biden to assent. But in the end this decision was again postponed. The reason may perhaps lie in the threatening intervention of the Russian government, which said it would respond very harshly. But also because of the doubts expressed by many governments in NATO itself, such as Germany and Italy.

The use of these missiles, from a military point of view, could not change the fate of the conflict, and lead to "victory" in the Ukrainian camp. Last week both U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Council spokesman John Kirby clearly illustrated their substantial military futility.

But Kiev insists on this demand only to involve the Allies in the war: it knows that it has no resources to hold out much longer and seeks an escalation of the conflict and its widening.

The Russian government, for its part, has made it clear that if it is allowed to launch those missiles, it will consider itself at war with NATO, respond militarily and has even threatened the use of the atomic bomb.

The European Parliament, which sees war as good business and tanks as a useful substitute for electric cars, which are "environmentally friendly" but do not "pull", has passed a resolution calling on states to remove restrictions on the use of weapon systems supplied to Kiev against Russian military targets. While this decision is not binding on individual states, it demonstrates that the European one is a warmongering lobbyist assembly. This is confirmed by the appointment of former Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, a member of the Fatherland Party and the strongly anti­ Russian European Conservative Group, as European Commissioner of Defense.

The Adventurous Foray into Kursk

In early August Ukraine launched a daring offensive in the Russian Kursk region, using surprise and speed to outflank Russian defenses. The operations were led by a mixed group of units, totaling about 10,000 to 15,000 men, with elements of regular brigades and special operations forces. These were some of the best and most experienced Ukrainian troops.

Some were withdrawn from the Donetsk and Kharkiv fronts, where they were fighting the Russian advance, while others would serve as an important reserve to stem it.

This operation, which immediately received the support of Western diplomacy and was prepared in cooperation with the intelligence services of Britain and probably the United States as well, is turning out to be a major failure.

The purpose was probably the capture and control of the Kurchatov nuclear power plant and the Sudzha power distribution node, as well as forcing the Russians to divert some of their troops from the offensive in Donetsk.

Neither goal was achieved. The nuclear power plant remained in the hands of the Russians, who used the superior availability of assets and soldiers to stop the Ukrainian advance without diverting units from the Donetsk front. The commander­in­chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces himself, Oleksandr Syrsky, said Russia had intensified its efforts and deployed its most combat­ready units to the Pokrovsk front in Donetsk.

Moreover, the invasion of Russian territory by enemy troops, with the blatant technical, material and training support of Western powers, reinforced Moscow propaganda based on the syndrome of encirclement of the homeland and aggression by the West.

Diplomacy Talks Peace While Expanding War

The difficulties of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are reflected in recent statements by President Zelensky, who, going against a law he himself had passed, proposed inviting Russia to the next peace summit scheduled to be held in November. A few days later he made another trip to the U.S. to present his bumptious "Plan for Victory" and to call for new loans and weapons to continue the war.

According to the Financial Times, Ukraine and its allies are considering a possible deal that would see Kiev join NATO in exchange for a compromise on Russian­occupied territories. Russia would gain "de facto" but not "de jure" control of the currently occupied Ukrainian territories, a fiction by the Ukrainian government to justify before its people the sacrifices, deprivations, and nefariousness it has imposed to fuel the war.

This situation of uncertainty and diplomatic vacuum increases the danger of provocations that could lead to a widening of the conflict. The blows struck in recent days on important ammunition depots inside Russia seem to respond to provocative will rather than to results on the military plane. Ukraine risks collapse and its rulers risk their heads, while the vaunted reconquest of "all occupied territories" would demand costs in men and weapons that not only Ukraine but not even its Western allies can afford and do not want to shoulder.

The Russian government, which immediately rejected the invitation to participate in peace talks, also has quite a few problems to solve. Although tens of thousands of young men have been sacrificed in this war and many voices even in Russia are ready to demand an explanation, for Moscow, the occupation of the Donbass alone would probably not be sufficient to provide the sought­after security guarantees, especially if Ukraine, though maimed of part of its territory, joins NATO. Russia’s objectives therefore could expand and the war continue.

But even when peace is reached, it can only represent an uncertain truce in preparation for the general war that is brewing.

Let the proletariat, the Ukrainian proletariat as well as the proletariat of Russia, who have suffered deprivation and death in recent years because of their capitalists’ war, draw the painful lessons and turn against the criminal instigator, which is the bourgeois regime and its states.

This is the only true historical dissolution, the transformation of war between states into war between classes, the overthrow of bourgeois power and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which alone can pave the way for communism.

Germany, the second largest "donor" to Ukraine, will halve its military aid in 2025 from eight billion this year to four. The difference would have to be made up by drawing on interest earned on Russian bonds frozen in Europe, which is difficult to achieve. To this end, Germany is counting on the creation of a special financial instrument using frozen Russian assets.

The difficulty for German capitalism, its state, its bourgeoisie and its business committee that is the German government, to remain a loyal province of the empire to which it belongs is obvious.

Contrary to what some self­styled anti­imperialists believe, imperialism is not a moral category, caused by wickedness and thirst for conquest, but the supreme and terminal phase, in every sense, of capitalism; it is therefore inseparable from the conditions and needs of capitalism in the various states. The servility of various European countries, and not only to the larger U.S. imperialism, does not depend on the meanness and poor quality of the "political class", much to the chagrin of the various Mosca, Pareto, and modern epigones, but on the overall interests of the various national capitalists. The latter may sometimes also be harmed by the imperialist center to which they are linked, but overall so far the advantages have outweighed the disadvantages. If capital traces the furrow of its own reproduction and multiplication, it is the sword of imperialism that defends it and partly determines the conditions of its growth.

Moreover, individual states are always afraid that they lack the necessary force of repression against the proletariat: just as the ancient Greek poleis gave themselves spontaneously to Rome because the proprietary aristocracies that ruled them saw the empire as the guarantee of their power and property, so modern states see imperialism as the salvation of their bourgeoisie in the event of a powerful awakening of the class struggle.

If the German and European bourgeoisie in general has made its state a loyal vassal of North American imperialism, it is therefore not out of stupidity or servility, but in pursuit of its own interests.

Should these interests diverge there could be changes in alliances that are difficult to predict. Germany, as a vassal of U.S. imperialism, has had to participate in a war that is not only against Russia, but also against Europe’s interests and in particular its own: the sabotage of the gas pipeline in the Baltic was an act of war against Russia and against Germany, which now has to pay dearly for the methane, which is not least the cause of an economic crisis that is driving it toward recession.

The German bourgeoisie bears this very badly, but perhaps the advantages of the Western alliance still outweigh the disadvantages. The imposed break in relations with Russia can still be borne by the German economy, but if it were forced to break relations with China as well, which is not unlikely, it might not be able to bear it. It is difficult to predict the development of inter­imperialist relations: after two lost wars with the United States surely Germany will think a thousand times before breaking up, but the thing is by no means impossible.

However, it is not the German state and its bourgeoisie that will decide, but the survival and growth needs of its capitalism: as always, the big decision­ makers decide nothing but are merely the puppets of history, almost always unaware and moved by strings invisible to them.

In the major geopolitical scenarios painted in America, Germany is already considered an enemy country, despite being part of NATO. We still reiterate that we communists are not anti­American, just as, for example, we are not anti­ Israel: we are against all imperialism and against all states that are not in our hands. To be against only a few bourgeois states implies that there are "lesser" ones, with which we can always ally ourselves: this is the logic of anti­fascist and inter­class alliances, it is the reneging of communism. Imperialism large and small, like states large and small, sends proletarians to slaughter each other in endless wars.

Proletarians must be very clear that when bourgeois class rule is in danger, all empires, all states will be ready to make a new "holy alliance", to throw themselves together against the proletarians, the "new barbarians" who are endangering "civilization", which, in their language, is their wallet. Communists have no allies in the bourgeois class, just as they have none in the bourgeois states and imperialist blocs, which are only mortal enemies of communists, proletarians and, more generally, the human species.

On September 12th 2024 approximately 32,000 workers organized under District 751 and District W24 of the IAM (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union) working for the Boeing company overwhelmingly voted no on their proposed tentative agreement and likewise voted yes to strike. This is the first time in 16 years that a full contract has been on the table for negotiation. The tentative agreement included changes to wages, health care, mandatory overtime, and more. The last major contract was passed after almost a 2 month strike, though with significant turnover and an inexperienced workforce the majority of current union members were not a part of that action. While the company and leadership in the union would like to suggest this was a great offer, the rank and file at Boeing would beg to differ.

The initial demands the union proposed was for a 40% raise over the life of the 4 year contract while Boeing responded with an offer of only 25%. At first glance a "reasonable" person may think that the offer from Boeing is a good one that the members should have accepted. Once one decides to look deeper into the issue though we can see why members are willing to say no for the chance for more. Bad contracts being extended, low wages in a high cost of living area, and the desire to reinstate their pension plan have pushed these workers to say no.

We applaud the workers’ desire to strike and their voting against the defeatist tentative agreement, going against the wishes of their District President who was quoted as saying that "We recommended acceptance because we can’t guarantee we can achieve more in a strike.

Of course there is no guarantee of success when we are compelled to fight, though there will forever be nothing but an increase in misery for workers who are unwilling to come together in their collective interests and take a stand against the capitalist class. Besides the opportunity for material gain that can be had from collective action it is also a training moment for the workers involved in potential future struggles, and can be a point of valorization for workers in other industries that can see their brothers and sisters openly and proudly saying no! We will not take it anymore! Workers across the world who are willing to fight are a beacon for others who at times may have little to no hope that they even have the ability to push back against the bosses, or union fat cats.

Whether it’s from reading statements from company or union officials, or their lap dogs in the mainstream media,we can draw parallels in how this contract is being sold to workers by remembering the most recent national rail union negotiations in the USA. Not only by looking at what these figures bring up but also what facts that they leave out. Company officials in both industries love to tout the size of the percentage wage increase especially in regards to contracts that have been passed prior. One of the most obvious issues with this though, is the fact that these talking heads don’t mention the reality of record inflation across the United States, nor the fact that both the railroads and Boeing are employing less people across the board than during prior contracts. While numbers may look impressive when they are first seen, they become increasingly less impressive when you account for the fact that prior contracts for most of the unionized workers within America have been nothing but capitulation for the last two decades. Workers who were in the past, clear members of the labor aristocracy, have either started the process of, or are being increasingly proletarianized. Regarding Boeing, the rejection of the proposed agreement is an obvious sign of the will to fight against this current fate.

It should be of no surprise to anyone that has been following the situation at Boeing to see these workers pridefully say no to a contract that isn’t worth the paper it was written on. Workers with the IAM took a strike sanction vote at T Mobile Park in Seattle in July of this year and a landslide vote, showed 99.9% of the rank and file were in support of striking if a meaningful contract couldn’t be reached by the September deadline. Along with the show of force in Seattle there have been numerous workplace actions in the lead up to this contract vote. Workers across all facilities have been marching on the job, and using horns along with music to harass management on the shop floor. All of these actions are a positive development within the US working class. The more that workers take up an openly antagonistic relationship with the bourgeoisie the clearer it becomes that we have distinct and separate interests. Members of both the company and the union try to promote a perspective that suggests that Labor and Capital can go happily hand in hand into the future. That their upcoming successes are bound up in one another, and when one wins so does the other.

Here is a quote from IAM leadership that explains exactly how they view their relationship to Boeing "Ultimately, we love this company and couldn’t be more proud of the jobs we do or the products we build.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Labor’s success will be in understanding its position in an historical movement. We know that in this parasitic relationship within class society what is good for the goose is not good for the gander. When one takes up this collaborationist perspective promoted by leadership within the IAM, the only win is for the companies, and trade union bureaucrats. When leadership of organizations for worker’s struggle defang themselves, the company is emboldened and will consistently try to take more from less, whether that is cutting wages, and benefits or threatening the loss of jobs by shipping them elsewhere. We applaud the workers at Boeing for banding together to defend their immediate interest but that must also be coupled with a rejection of this collaborationist perspective. Workers and their bosses do not win together. When workers secure higher wages or better working conditions this directly cuts into the profit that is accumulated by the company. This real distinction between producers and exploiters is at the very heart of class society, and will never be undone by the well wishes of romantic "leaders" within the workers movement.

Workers will only ever win in the historical sense when they band together, under the leadership of a revolutionary fighting organization, the International Communist Party with the explicit goal of striking the death blow to class society. Of course not every battle is of such serious importance but workers must become aware of the situation they find themselves within, and recognize that antagonism and not capitulation is the answer to the woes in class society. We must attempt to build fighting organizations of the class that openly recognize the antagonistic relationship between Labor and Capital, and are willing to organize and defend the widest swathe of workers. When leaders in a union wax poetic about the love they have for the bosses, they should be met with a swift kick out the door!

On October 1st, 2024 over 40,000 workers at 36 ports represented by the International Longshoremen’s Association went on strike for the first time since 1977. The strike came about after there was a standstill in negotiations over wages between the ILA and the USMX. The ILA is formally the East Coast equivalent to the West Coasts ILWU which almost had a 22,000 person strong shutdown of 29 Pacific ports in 2023 over similar demands. Wages, and a fight against automation. The United States Maritime Alliance is a collection of powerful shipping companies joined together as a united front to handle negotiations with the union that represents East and Gulf coast port workers. The ILA and the USMX have a closed off bargaining process where very little information flows in and out of but what has been said publicly was that the union initially asked for a 77% increase in pay over the life of the six year contract. While the USMX responded with an offer of only 50%. This wage dispute, along with a fight over automation, and shipping container royalties was the straw that broke the camels back, and after the USMX was served with a strike notice as required by law, the ILA held true to its word and stopped almost all work along the East Coast at 12:01 Tuesday morning. We sadly have to specify almost above because the self identified I Love America union will not be stopping US military cargo, nor are they stopping any cruise ships that need to dock or depart. It is quite a sight to behold that of one of the most powerful unions in the USA today decided to keep their hands off of Americas crown jewels, that is the physical nourishment of a brutal global empire, and floating theme parks with unlimited frozen yogurt.

Flippancy aside the ILAs gameness secured them a tentative agreement after three days which includes a 61.5% raise over the life of the contract. This is not the end of the bargaining process though, work has resumed on the ports but may come to a halt again mid January. The agreement that was put forward was solely bargaining over wages, and the other critical issue of automation has not been dealt with at all yet. The ILAs current President Harold Daggett has been very vocal about stronger language in the contract about automation. Desiring to have an agreement that disallows any meaningful new automation at the ports while the contract is ratified. So if Mr. Daggett sticks to his words we may very well see this powerful union with a New Years Resolution of striking come January 16th.

This large of a strike in such an important sector has put the ILA in the sights of other labor organizations. With this newfound media spotlight a variety of other unions including the ILWU, Netherlands Port Workers Union, and Bermuda Industrial Union have put out statements of solidarity with the ILA. Now, at this point in time the strike is over so any practical application of this "solidarity" is null and void. Though it begs the question that if the ILA would have been on strike for longer would these unions have rejected cargo that came from ILA ports, would they have also went on strike, or slowed down in solidarity? The answer is probably not, but an increased practical solidarity and shared fighting capacity should be something that we strive towards in our unions and all labor struggles. Whether it is fighting for demands that are applicable to the whole class, uniting struggles of different workers, or attempting to build a class wide union these are practical things the labor movement within the US should be striving for, and while these statements of solidarity are practically irrelevant at this moment they are a microcosm of a positive development within the class.

The necessity of unifying workers across unions, and different workplaces is made incredibly apparent in a struggle such as this. How much greater the blow dealt to capital would be if workers not only on one side of the continent were on strike but both? How much more could workers win if not only port workers were unified but railroad workers, truckers, and seaman had unified contracts and struck at the same time. This unity among the class must be fought for, and needs to transcend national boundaries. Workers in North America from the bottom of Mexico to the tip of Canada must come together to defend their immediate interests and to build a unified class. The bourgeoisie has no qualms with holding hands with their "enemies" whether it is other governments, or different companies that they are in competition with when that unification can continue their domination of the working class. Workers in these different industries must come together so that the fight not only benefits themselves but the entire class in their struggle within class society. This unity will be the very foundation of what will allow a new world to be built. A world constructed on the basis of necessity and a true freedom. An antithesis of this "freedom" that we have in our current global capitalist age. The freedom to split society into those who work and those who take. A freedom that allows an ever increasingly smaller amount of individuals to live wonderful lives while the rest are supposed to support and be grateful for their subservience to the class of owners. The International Communist Party happily encourages workers not only to fight for their immediate interests but to also struggle for a world in which this division is overcome. This can only happen when workers of all races, industries, and creeds are united sea to shining sea.

Boeing Workers’ Strike in Washington/ Oregon

A handful of party militants went to the picket line in Gresham Oregon and then to several 5 of the 7 locations in Washington state including Everette where the largest contingent of workers are located. CSAN and Party material was distributed among the workers. Despite threats from some picket line bosses who wished to expel our members, the vast majority of workers expressed a positive interest in our positions and literature.

University Food Service and Custodial Workers’ Strike in Illinois

The building and food service workers at University of Illinois represented by SEIU (Service Employees International Union) Local 73 voted against initial bargaining attempts by the Board of Trustees and the union. Alongside SEIU Local 73, the union representing graduate student workers started an undergraduate labor solidarity group in which the party is militating. A solidarity rally was held about one week before the strike began where a Party leaflet explaining class unionism, steps to take to further the struggle, and calls to push back against the pitiful electoralism of SEIU was distributed. Negotiations with the union continued throughout the week as they attempted to avoid the strike. This concluded with an affirmative strike vote. The strike of building and food service workers at the University of Illinois began on September 22nd after attempts from the University to delay it with legal action. A CSAN quarter sheet urging unionized workers to call in sick, work slowly and work the bare minimum, and to organize a walkout was made and handed out to those still working during the strike. The strike concluded on October 2nd with the workers demoralized and ready to accept an unsatisfactory contract. While this new contract was certainly an improvement over the initial offer, it fails to come close to the higher wages being paid just ten years ago. To reach these heights and to go further still, class unionism is needed. We distributed the following leaflet on the picket line.

UFCW Fred Myers Workers’ Strike in Portland, Oregon

One of the largest of the fights in which the party is militating is the fight of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555. Most sections of Fred Myers grocery workers in Oregon went out on strike earlier in September over issues such as wage demands and a lack of willingness on the part of the boss to negotiate with the union. The strike was to take place for a set limit of days (6 days) with the boss getting advance notice of the strike allowing Fred Meyers bosses the chance to hire scab workers. During the strike the stores largely continued to operate and many customers and workers crossed the picket lines. Workers and this strike were further weakened by divisions within the union. Despite collaborationist leadership who encouraged workers to take a pacifist attitude to scabs and those crossing the picket lines, we reinforced the lines and alongside the militant elements in the union encouraged workers to defend the lines, distributing the newspaper as well.

In addition to this, workers organized in United for Class Wide Action within UFCW, supported by Party members and CSAN, have pushed for the strong wage demand of $40 and this demand was propagandized for among Fred Myers workers. This led to the union being successfully pressured into significantly increasing their original demands to $32 an hour from the company. When previously it was much lower and groups like Essential Workers for Democracy, a reformist caucus within UFCW, only wanted to see a wage demand of $30.

Efforts in Oregon Educators Association

In OEA the party, militating within a local education workers union, organized a strike solidarity committee within their local to bring fellow education workers to join Fred Meyers and then Boeing workers on the picket lines. The union has also been engaged in a year long open bargaining session, where we agitated for strong wage demands, and successfully argued against compromises against collaborationist attitudes that sought to compromise in the face of “budgetary” issues claimed by the district. We put forward the benefit of strike action in strengthening the unions leverage against the boss and the need for immediate collective action when the bosses began refusing the unions wage demand.

Class Struggle Action Network

Party militants continue their work within CSAN, to coordinate with other combative and anti­capitalist elements within the unions. Recently, the most prominent of these fights is within Starbucks Workers United. A Starbucks worker and member of the CSAN organizing committee alongside coworkers at his store and others continue to struggle against the inclusion of a No­ Strike clause (No­Strike clauses are regularly included in labor contracts banning workers from striking during the duration of a labor agreement; a historic burden on the working classes struggle in the United States) within a Starbucks workers labor agreement and against the leadership of Starbucks Workers United whom has failed to prioritize organizing a majority of Starbucks stores in the United States and wants to enter into a friendly relationship with Starbucks bosses by putting forward weak economic demands and conceding workers ability to strike. CSAN, party militants, and these Starbucks workers continue organizing efforts to bring together more Starbucks workers around this fight through leafleting and holding meetings.

In July, in Georgia of the Caucasus, 1,700 workers employed by the company Evolution, a Swedish company that operates worldwide offering services in land-based and online casinos, went on strike. It employs 16,000 workers, and Georgia has the largest number of employees, about 7,000. Many are migrant workers from countries such as India, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey and others.

The company is known for its poor working conditions. Wages range from a minimum of 800 Lari (the Georgian currency introduced in 1995 by the government of former USSR Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze) to a maximum of 1,000 Lari, which can be achieved only through the receipt of bonuses for which additional time and health must be sacrificed. The average salary-officially stated-is 1,100 Lari (at today’s exchange rate about 410 Dollars or 370 Euros). The wage situation has been exacerbated by inflation in recent years. The sanitary conditions of the workplace are equally terrible. Treatment by middle and upper managers is in line with this situation: before the strike, screenshots of managers’ chats were circulated showing their racist, sexist comments, in which they mocked workers by making jokes about their appearance and even their health.

The workers are organized in a union formed in the company just over two years ago, called Evo Union, which is part of a union federation called Labor that organizes mainly workers in the agricultural sector but recently, under the leadership of a new young and energetic leader, Giorgi Diasamidze, has expanded to other sectors. Since 2018 Labor has led several strikes, often victorious.

Labor is part of the Georgian Trade Union Confederation (GTUC), founded in 1992 after national independence in 1991, the result of the dissolution of the USSR. It continues the tradition of state unionism of the former supposadely socialist regime, not defending the interests of the working class but submitting them to those of corporations and capitalism in general. It is a corrupt organization, headed personally by Irakli Petriashvili, elected five times. It claims 250,000 members.

The Evo Union has made a variety of demands. Among the main ones are: a 100 percent wage increase; pegging of wages to inflation; a permanent medical garrison at the main workplace in Tiblisi; food vouchers and healthy food; and paid leave during menstruation.

Initially, the union followed the legal process for calling the strike, seeking to resolve the dispute at the labor court. After the mediation period ended unsuccessfully, it declared the strike, which began on July 12.

Other unions, especially those formed outside the GTUC, actively expressed solidarity with the current strikers. The most active has been the deliverymen’s union, which was engaged in a major struggle last year that we reported on in our Italian, English and Turkish periodicals (iPC420, TCP51, KP3), whose militants have constantly helped the strikers, including with food and water, and joined our comrades in suggesting more aggressive and determined measures to the union.

The start of the strike was a little hesitant, which, for example, did not allow the full effect of the denunciation of management behavior resulting from the circulation of insults to workers contained in their private chats. Only 4-5 union militants were involved in organizing work and this was not enough.

As soon as the strike began, the company took various countermeasures, from circulating rumors about the closure of its operations in Georgia, to placing fences around union stands at entrances to workplaces.

Since August 1, union action has become more incisive, organizing sit-ins in front of the workplace entrances, forcing those who wanted to enter to climb over them. Some members of bourgeois left-wing parties spoke out against this decision, asserting that it "divided the workers". Instead, the action was successful, discouraging more workers from going to work. At its peak, the strike was joined by 1,700 workers, but many others, totaling about 4,600, while not declaring themselves on strike, absented themselves, by agreement with the union, asking for leave of absence or placing themselves on sick leave.

On the morning of August 3, the company declared that the union was illegally blocking the building, leaving no way in; for the entire month of August it would more easily issue bonuses to workers who were not on strike; for each shift of attendance it would give an additional payment of 20 Lari; and it would impose a warning for each strike shift (after 3 warnings the worker is fired).

After that statement it rounded up 600 shift workers urging them to overcome the chain of sitting strikers and even trample them. However, this arrogance of the management backfired: only about ten went in. The company also hired a dozen new guards who attacked the workers, sending one worker to the emergency room. But most of the guards actually sided with the workers, obeying company orders slowly and unwillingly, basically ineffectively.

After that failure, the company relaunched its threat to close or downsize the business. It sent all workers an email asking them, if they intended to continue working, to fill out a form. It then canceled the night shift on August 3 and the morning shift on August 4. A brief lockout. Then resumed activities but at a reduced pace. This action began to have a negative effect on strike morale which, having peaked in early August, began to decline.

On August 8 the company hired new guards, bouncers in clubs and festivals called the "Zonder brigade", known in Tbilisi for being openly violent. Their first action tried to disrupt strike committee elections that were taking place in front of Evolution’s administrative building.

From that moment the union leaders began to call for help from all kinds of bourgeois parties and politicians. In general, they reacted to the decline of the strike by promoting actions that could be described as liberal, unrelated to the methods of class struggle, ineffective and individual in character.

On August 13, several union militants began a hunger strike. Our comrades tried to dissuade the workers from taking such an initiative and proposed to try to involve other workers in the struggle, but they went unheeded.

Since August 15, it has been decided to hold "surprise" sit-ins without notifying the company and police which entrances would be manned. The company hired additional guards, bringing the number to 150.

On August 19, the union leader stated that if the company continued to fail to respond to the workers’ demands that evening at 8 p.m. the union would organize a demonstration and block the road. Police were promptly mobilized to the scene at 6 p.m. and their numbers matched those of the strikers and solidarity workers. The police warned that if they blocked the road they would arrest the workers, and the union desisted.

This development generated some discontent among the strikers about the conduct of the struggle.

The company recovered from the initial slaps and spent considerable resources against the strikers, sowing discord among the workers and demoralizing all those who sided with them. Anti-strike propaganda aims to marginalize striking workers, to present the strike as an individual choice of an irrelevant number of unjustly disgruntled and uncivilized employees. The fake social media accounts and professional lackeys of capital are "influencers" who spread disinformation and use arguments as foolish as they are effective, echoing the dominant ideology. They target strikers, attacking their integrity, painting them as liars and troublemakers who violate others’ right to work and act against their fellow workers. The voluntary and amateur action of workers cannot compete with the social media propaganda machinery that the company can afford, and unfortunately, at the end of the day anti-worker disinformation efforts get more results than pro-strike propaganda, which is natural given the strikers’ lack of resources. The strength of the workers’ struggle lies not in counter-information but in extending the struggle, in breaking down the boundaries between companies and categories. Locked in the individual company, day after day even the most determined struggle is worn down and defeated. To this end, the strike must be well prepared already with the aim of not limiting it to the single enterprise.

On September 7, the "Zonder brigades" ravaged the strikers’ tents, taking away chairs, tables and other tools.

Since early September, in response to complaints about the line of conducting the struggle, the organizing group has been expanded. A day of mobilization was promoted for Sept. 21 to revive the strike.

Despite its limitations and flaws, the strike went better than expected, led to closer contacts with militants of other unions and represents a wealth of important lessons for the continuation of the working class struggle in Georgia.

The International Communist Party commends your struggle for better wages and better working conditions. The necessity of this fight is something endemic of our exploitative mode of production: capitalism. Despite being a public institution, the University still exploits its workers like any other capitalist enterprise, state owned or private. There is no better demonstration of this than the bosses’ clear interest of keeping your wages low and making you work more hours even while inflation rises; in a word, increasing immiseration.

It is only through the power of striking indefinitely that the capitalist class is forced to give concessions to the working class. This is why the bourgeois state collaborates with the bosses and actively sabotages your freedom to strike by making it illegal in the public education sector to abandon the no-strike clause in your contract. The bourgeoisie fears the strike and will do anything it can to reduce its power.

Our power to strike does not come from bourgeois “rights” enshrined in their constitutions. It comes from our shared material interest as a class and our will to act. The Government, whether Democrat or Republican, will always take the side of the bosses when push comes to shove, i.e. when the state or the bosses are under serious threat from combative workers. The Democrats have clearly shown this during the recent rail strike and through their promotion of class collaboration and submission to the bosses instead of worker combativity. If the Democrats truly had the interests of the working class, they would repeal the Taft-Hartley Act and support the freedom to strike at all times in every sector.

SEIU will spend $200 million attempting to buy influence within the Democratic party, but this is an erroneous maneuver. The bosses and capitalists will always be able to outbid the unions as the extraction of surplus-value guarantees that they will have the monetary advantage; it is a DEAD END. This money would have been better spent on valuable organizing initiatives to bolster the power of the strike and to organize the unorganized.

WORKERS! To further your struggle, to extend it for even higher wages and a shorter working day made even more necessary by the rising cost of living and the depressing reality of having to work more than one job, means to UNITE AS A CLASS. Practically, we must work towards aligning contract expiration dates, striking in solidarity and at the same time as other workers, and unifying our trade unions across occupation and country into a genuine CLASS UNION.
     AGAINST SUBORDINATION TO BOURGEOIS PARTIES!!
     AGAINST LIMITATIONS ON STRIKE POWER!!
     AGAINST COLLABORATION WITH THE BOSSES!!
     FOR INTERNATIONAL AND CROSS SECTOR SOLIDARITY!!

Comrades, workers,

Our trade union struggle and the formation of the class union is the essential step in the process of eliminating capitalist exploitation. To that end, the authentic working class communist party is necessary to direct the unions towards revolution and proletarian dictatorship. It is only in this way that capitalist society can be overcome with communist society, one without classes, without wage-labor, and without the state. Only after this necessary and monumental leap forward for the human race can we finally GIVE according to ability and TAKE according to need.

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

We came together, comrades from different countries, to bring the contribution of our work to the great cause of communism.

For this goal­which is not close to us in time, though certainly inscribed in the course of history­we know it will require a world communist party, capable of handling Marxist doctrine well and both leading the working class. Without the leadership of the Communist Party, revolution is impossible.

We do not gather to compare our personal or group opinions. Not to invent original theories. Not even to listen to brilliant new discoveries about the course of history. We gather to defend the continuity of the Communist Party, in its program and, today, in its small living organization.

It is first of all a continuity of doctrine. We have an impersonal theory, born in the mid­nineteenth century and then only strengthened and confirmed. In that theory is contained the answer to all our questions of today and tomorrow.

Every answer is already written. And it is within the reach not only of a few exceptional priests or men but also of the last of the comrades: just go and read, just study.

General custodian of our revolutionary science and revolution can only be the collective organ of the party. The Communist Party is not the sum of individuals, but a unitary organ that precedes and exceeds our individuals.

It lives outside in the harshness of social warfare, "in contact", and tomorrow at the head of the working class.

Internally it presents itself as an anticipation of communist society. In strident negation and overcoming of all the miseries of the petty bourgeoisie, among which the most deadly are individualism, envy, competition, and permanent intra­ species struggle.

Communism already lives in the Communist Party. We prove to the despicable bourgeois that it is possible for a human group to operate, disciplined and efficient, without an apparatus of coercion, spontaneously ordered because it already knows all its orders.

This is how the Communist Party wanted to be from its now distant origins in the League of Communists and in its even older generous pre­ scientific utopias.

These meetings of ours are further confirmation that communism is possible.

As usual, the meeting, attended by the entirety of our sections and held in the usual maximum order, was divided into a preparatory session of the proceedings, in which all groups are asked to report on their progress, and any difficulties, for which they can ask the remaining comrades for help, and a session for the presentation of reports.

Everything presented proved consistent with our program and confirmed the correspondence of the party’s tactical direction, receiving the unanimous approval of those present.

These are the exhibits we heard:

• Course of Capitalism

• Disparities in World Steel Production

• Origins of the Communist Party of China

• The Founding of the Communist Party of Turkey

• Report of the Study on the Women’s Issue

• The Agrarian Question

• The Ideology of the Bourgeoisie

• The Civil War in the Donbass

• The National Question in the Middle East

• Report on Trade Union Activity in Italy

• Report on Union Activity in North America.

Report of the Study on the Women’s Issue

The group’s goal is to give continuity to the elaboration of the comrades before us, to reiterate that it is the party that anticipates the integral program of communism, which will come to remove the barriers that make one human being economically dependent on another.

The working group met three times. In the meetings, each comrade was assigned to read a party text and report on what he or she discovered there. Discussions focused on extracting insights and questions elicited from these texts.

The list includes Engels, Bebel, Kollontai, Zetkin and from our party since 1953.

We also have the collection of "Compagna, organ of the Communist Party of Italy for propaganda among women".

Today women’s dependence on both the capitalist and, because of their inveterate subordination, on men remains. The party must prefigure the appropriate tactics to combat the double exploitation of women, which has persisted since the beginning of human history and today has no reason to exist and only hinders the path to the economic equality of the sexes and liberation from the millennial social exploitation of men.

We aim to dissect the intricate layers of patriarchal oppression still emerging at the surface of modern capitalist societies and explore avenues for women’s emancipation as embodied in the invariant body of the party’s theses.

The working group identified several discussion points that will be explored with further readings and meetings: patriarchy in the past; women’s labor in the wage­earner; domestic work; the issue of abortion; divorce; prostitution; the issues of homosexuality and transsexuality; and gender­based violence.

The comrades emphasized the need to contextualize these issues within a general critique of the mode of production, capitalist and previous.

In future studies (perhaps not of us but of comrades after us), just as our nineteenth­century comrades analyzed the results of science from a dialectical materialistic point of view, we will examine some new studies in the field of anthropology (progressing slowly and with difficulty), especially on the development of technology, and based on the extension of knowledge, and relevant studies in the field of education, which in the last period have affected the whole world.

We do not find it of much use to draw on many of the theoretical works of feminists because they do not relate to the actual course of history.

It is necessary to fight patriarchy. It is necessary to open our eyes more clearly to the propaganda and psychological violence of the surviving overpowering within the capitalist system.

As a result of today’s class­based education system, women are made insecure, subjected to psychological stresses and strains and inequalities in their living conditions. Oppressed by domestic work, they find it difficult to return to the scientific and theoretical field, of which they have been deprived for thousands of years.

And this also as communists and in the party. Yes, women comrades need a working group, just as they may need their own newspaper, addressed specifically to women.

In particular, the situation of working­class women is to be described. It is necessary to struggle against the oppression of women just as one struggles for wages. Although it will end only with the proletarian revolution. It is a struggle that our socialist comrades began in the 19th century, work that has continued into the 20th and will continue until the fall of bourgeois society.

There have been setbacks due to the defeats of the working class and the prevalence of anti­feminist propaganda and intimidation by the state apparatuses. Communist militants we seek a light in the harsh conditions of defeat, which it is our responsibility to analyze and learn about.

Just as in order to end the exploitation of man by man we must break down its first cause, its commodification, so we cannot achieve communism without the liberation of all the oppressed. From the time of social harmony from primitive communism to the antagonism of exploitation, with the dualism of oppressors and oppressed, we seek the return of the human species to its organic unity where all contradictions are resolved. Here the centrality of this work as well.

Women’s advocacy must also affect unions is an area of application of this study. After the historical report this is the topic we will focus on.

In the past, communists have supported claims that were not just of the working class, such as women’s suffrage. But changing historical conditions led us to the rejection of parliamentary means to advance women’s conditions as well.

Working women must demand their protection from unions. These today do not even perform their most basic function of defending wages and hours. But it is their job to defend the condition of the entire proletariat, the unemployed, immigrant workers, women workers, homosexuals and all oppressed groups of workers. We must know the conditions that vary from country to country and from union to union. We need to articulate in unions all the demands of the working class.

We turn our gaze from primitive communism, free from exploitative relations and in harmony with nature and each other, to the egalitarian society to come, with a return to immediately human relations between the sexes. Only in the post­capitalist world will the seeds planted for millennia in men’s brains by classist modes of production wither. The study of patriarchy is generally concerned with the relationship of human beings to each other in class societies.

Deep in our minds, traces of what has been imprinted on them for generations survive in our behaviors. Primitive community groups existed as an organic structure that functioned together, while we are isolated and opposed to each other.

The party is the organic link that connects us to man’s historical responsibilities. With the party we return to an organically functioning community. But we are no longer in the purity of early man; we are today still under the domination of capital, in which most of our life takes place in areas dominated by exploitative relations. Only in the party does the light of doctrine allow us to unveil the traumas and miseries that external society spreads. Only then, as communists, can we explain in unions to workers, who cannot be free, the necessities we have learned from our history.

It is essential to communicate among comrades with affection and respect, even under the present bourgeois conditions, to create a party environment that welcomes in warm camaraderie the sentiments of the future society.

We will also be able to deal with the issue of ethics, starting with how Marx, Lenin and all our comrades understood it, which leads us to given behaviors, according to certain forms. And to think about how we revolutionaries embrace each other, even in a society around us based on antagonistic relations. This, too, is an issue we will have to address.

The Origins of Left‑Wing Socialism and Class Unionism in the Ottoman Empire:
Early Years and Founding of the Communist Party of Turkey

The antecedent of the founding of the Communist Party of Turkey can be traced more or less directly to the October Revolution. The first effect of the revolution on Turkey, which was at war with Russia at the time, was immediate. Russian soldiers returning from eastern Anatolia left power to a Soviet government representing Turks, Kurds and Armenians, based in Erzincan. In addition to Erzincan, the new Soviet government had influence in Erzurum, Dersim, Bayburt and Sivas. But it was soon suppressed by the Ottoman army before the Union and Progress Committee surrendered to the Entente and Constantinople and most of Anatolia were occupied by the victorious powers.

The first congress of Turkey’s leftist socialists was held in Moscow in 1918, with the participation of former prisoners of war, and led to the creation of the Communist Organization of Turkey, headed by Mustafa Suphi, Sharif Manatov and Süleyman Nuri.

In late 1918 and 1919 legal socialist organizations emerged in Constantinople, such as the Socialist Party of Turkey with 14,000 members and the Social Democratic Party with 2,000. To their left, Turkish students returning from studies abroad, mainly in Germany, formed the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party of Turkey, later renamed the Socialist Workers’ and Peasants’ Party of Turkey, a party that followed the ideological line of the USPD.

Some of the remnants of the left wing of Ottoman socialism reorganized in Constantinople as the Communist Group, under the influence of Bolshevism.

Meanwhile, the Nationalist Forces emerged as irregular militias in 1919, opposing the occupation. Soon some officers, led by Mustafa Kemal pasha, defected from the Ottoman army and, after a series of congresses, assumed leadership of the movement. Mustafa Kemal and his allies formed the Society for the Defense of Law, which soon became organized throughout Anatolia. By the end of the year, the Nationalist Forces had about 7,000 militants. In 1920, the Society for the Defense of Law established the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara, as an alternative to the Assembly of Deputies in Constantinople. Within a few months, the Nationalist Forces reached 15,000.

Its largest component was the Mobile Forces, which were 5,000 strong. These were based in Eskişehir, where a section of the Socialist Party of Turkey isolated from the center of Constantinople was organized. They often engaged in acts of dispossession of the rich to benefit their cause. The Mobile Forces included a 700­man Bolshevik battalion, so named because it was commanded by a follower of Mustafa Suphi.

In those days Sharif Manatov arrived in Ankara and, together with dissident military vet Salih Hacıoğlu and some other comrades, declared the founding of the Communist Party of Turkey on July l4. The party opposed the government in Ankara as well as the government in Constantinople. It published the Comintern’s Appeal to the Peoples of the East. By the end of the year the party had 350­400 militants, assisted by the Communist Organization of Turkey, now based on the Caucasus in the Black Sea region.

Yet it was neither the Communist Group of Constantinople nor the Communist Party of Turkey founded in Anatolia that established the first contact with the newly formed Communist International by sending representatives to Moscow, but the leftist Socialist Workers and Peasants Party of Turkey. İsmail Hakkı, one of this party’s delegates to the Second Congress of the Comintern, expressed a position completely contrary to that of the Anatolian Communists: "After the Russian Revolution and the partition of Turkey by the European imperialists, when the Janus face of the English and French capitalists was openly shown to the Turkish people, a new movement, a liberation movement, was born in Turkey. The Anatolian movement, now led by the Democratic Party, is the best response to the ruthless exploitation to which Turkey has been subjected by the Entente countries (...) Now the revolutionary state of Anatolia, which is gathering around it all the forces hostile to the Entente, driven by a centuries­old hatred of imperialism, is preparing for the struggle against European imperialism. The workers of Turkey will not allow themselves to be enslaved once again by the Entente and, thanks to the Russian revolution, which is the best friend of Turkey in struggle, the Turkish people will achieve complete freedom in a short time and, together with the workers of all countries, wage the struggle against imperialism throughout the world".

Shortly thereafter, between September 10 and 16, the First Congress of the Communist Organization of Turkey was held in Baku. Renamed the Communist Party of Turkey, it was the only Turkish organization represented at the congress was the Socialist Workers and Peasants Party of Constantinople. However, the Baku organization included rather radical militants, so the congress documents were considerably to the left of the positions of the Socialist Workers’ and Peasants’ Party: "We are convinced that the national revolutionary movement under way in Anatolia helps the proletarian movement of the whole world in its struggle against imperialism of the whole world, and it is certain that this national movement, with its development and deepening within the country, serves the emergence of class consciousness and thus prepares a suitable field for the social revolution of tomorrow. The Communist Party of Turkey will, on the one hand, contribute to the growth of the movement against imperialism in Turkey, and on the other hand, strive to prepare the principles for the real goal and ultimate aspiration of the workers, of the working people, to win power for the proletarians".

Moreover, thanks to the influence of Bolshevism, the congress recognized the Armenian genocide and adopted a proletarian internationalist approach to the question of nationalities: "They did not hesitate to create enmity between the Turkish and Armenian people. They have made enemies of these two nations that have lived together throughout history. It is the poor and helpless people who die everywhere and always, who are oppressed and deprived of the right to live. During the World War, which was a consequence of European imperialism, the poor Armenian peasants again fell prey to the lies of the British, the lies of the dashnaks and the instigation of the priests. They began to massacre the poor Muslims of Van and Bitlis, burning their houses and looting their property (...) In response, the government of the Union and Progress Committee acted without hesitation, the Armenians were deported, their property was confiscated, and most of them were killed by secret orders.

"Like any nation, Arabs, Kurds and Bulgarians will decide and determine how to live. As Russia accepts federation, so must we. Not only we, but all nations must accept this principle. Only through this principle can humanity become one big family. Just as the Communist Party of Turkey will try to save the Turkish workers and peasants from the influence of the Unionists and treacherous Socialists, it must separate the oppressed classes of the Greek, Armenian and Kurdish nations from the Dashnak or Badr Khan organizations, uniting them in the name of the same interests and purposes as one class".

Shortly after the congress, the International Workers Union (IWU), a coordination of combative workers hoping to form revolutionary class unions, was founded in Constantinople in October 1920. It was initially inspired by the American Industrial Workers of the World. It sent a warm letter to the Comintern announcing the founding of the union and asked to join the Profintern.

These developments alarmed Mustafa Kemal, who in late 1920 founded a pro­government Communist Party of Turkey. The fake party’s application to join the Comintern was rejected. However, he forced the Communist Party in Anatolia out of illegality to prevent the masses from being deceived: he founded a legal organization under the name People’s Communist Party of Turkey. The party line also changed, seeking to broaden its appeal to classes other than the proletariat and softening toward the Kemalists.

The party in Anatolia merged with leftist nationalists who critically supported Mustafa Kemal.

Despite the warnings, all the party leaders from the Baku Congress went without precautions to Anatolia. When they arrived in Erzurum, the local branch of the Society for the Defense of Law incited the population to attack them. The same scenario was repeated in Trebizond, where they later moved. Mustafa Suphi, Ethem Nejat, İsmail Hakkı and other comrades decided to return, but after leaving the city on a boat, they were approached by another boat and were all killed on the direct orders of Mustafa Kemal. Following this trauma for the communist movement in Turkey, the section stationed in Baku split into a left wing led by Süleyman Nuri and a pro­ Kemalist right wing led by Ahmet Cevat Emre.

Meanwhile, the Communist Group was struggling within the International Workers’ Union against the influence of anarchism. Ginzberg of the Communist Group expressed this struggle in his 1921 report to the Comintern’s Eastern Secretariat:

"The IWU (...) has given itself a bad policy in the last five months because of the acceptance of the principles and program of the American IWWs".

In a 1924 report entitled "A Brief Overview of the Turkish Labor Movement", Ginzberg describes these events as follows:

"There was also an Armenian Social Democratic Party (Hunchakist) in Constantinople with 2,000 members, mostly workers (...) In 1921, the communist group of the IWU (...) came into contact with the left wing of this party and the two groups merged to form the Communist Party of Constantinople in December 1921 (....) The Communist

Armenian faction of the Communist Party of Constantinople conducted a massive campaign in favor of Soviet Russia and Soviet Armenia through the press, conferences and agitations.

"Until the Franklin Bouillon agreement, the political line of the Communist Party of Constantinople was to support the Kemalist movement, but after this agreement, which was considered a betrayal of the independence movement, the party did not hesitate to unmask the Kemalists and lead the working class, while supporting every progressive step, to fight against the local bourgeoisie and imperialism through class struggle".

Origin of the Communist Party of China After the Third Congress

At the Third Congress of the Communist Party of China there was a bitter clash over the issue of relations with the Kuomintang, with many comrades opposing the tactics of entrism in that nationalist party. Immediately after the conclusion of the congress, in a letter dated June 20, 1923 and addressed to Zinoviev, Bucharin, Radek and Safarov, Maring made the leadership of the International aware of this, reconstructed the steps that had led to the adoption of the tactic of entry into the Kuomintang and defended the reasons for it.

Underlying his proposal was a negative assessment of the development of the revolutionary movement in China, characterized by the country’s economic and social backwardness and the weakness of the Communist Party, while, on the other hand, he showed admiration for the strength of the Kuomintang in southern China.

Hence the proposal to push Chinese communists into political activity in the Kuomintang and support for the national revolution as their main task. Maring wrote that since August 1922 the Party had been pushed to help the nationalist movement by participating in organizing the Kuomintang. Despite this, according to Maring, at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern Radek had proposed that the CPoC carry out independent political action under a communist banner, with the proposal for China to quickly develop a mass party. Maring immediately after the Fourth Congress went to Moscow to advocate the continuation of the tactics adopted in August, with the result that in January 1923 the ECCI adopted a resolution that the nationalist revolution was the main task of the Party and that its members should remain in the KMT.

The resolution, however, gave rise to discussions in the CPoC: about what was to be done in the KMT; how many communists were to be employed at this intervention and how many in propaganda among the workers; whether the Chinese bourgeoisie had a revolutionary role or everything would have to come from the workers and peasants.

While it was stipulated in the theses of the Third Congress of the CPoC that the party’s task was to develop the KMT throughout the country, at the same time criticism was leveled at the nationalist party for its tactics based mainly on the military aspect, thus leading it to bind itself to the feudal militarists of the North, and to seek relations with foreign imperialists, a tactic incompatible with a revolutionary nationalist party. Instead, the KMT should have been forced down the road of revolutionary propaganda and created a left wing in this party made up of peasants and workers.

Zhang Guotao, who opposed the view that wanted strong support for the KMT, summarized Maring’s position in his November 16, 1923 letter to Comintern officials Voitinsky and Musin as follows:

"The Comintern considers that the central task of the CPoC at this time is the nationalist movement and Soviet Russia should support the Kuomintang. So the Chinese Communists should concentrate their efforts in the reorganization of the Kuomintang and

work within the Kuomintang and develop the Kuomintang. All the political propaganda work of the CPoC should be done inside the Kuomintang (...) The labor movement should be brought inside the Kuomintang and workers throughout China be brought inside the Kuomintang. Only when the class consciousness of the workers within the Kuomintang has

developed, could a left wing of the Kuomintang develop. Only at that time could a real PCdC be formed. This would be the only process of the Chinese revolutionary movement".

It seems clear that since 1923 the perspective had been outlined that the revolution in China subordinated the social movement of proletarians and peasants to the demands of the national revolution and that only the party of the Chinese bourgeoisie, the Kuomintang, could lead the revolutionary movement. The Communist Party of China was to confine itself internally, bringing in workers and peasants. Although on paper the independent existence of the Communist Party was left standing, in fact it was reduced to the "left wing" of the Kuomintang, a directive endorsed by the leadership of the International and given to the Chinese Communists.

But the CPoC was still not convinced, and still in November 1923 resistance persisted. Zhang Guotao denied that the Kuomintang was the sole representative of the Chinese revolutionary movement. He then argued that the Chinese bourgeoisie was dependent on foreign capitalists, and although there were contradictions between the Chinese bourgeoisie and foreign imperialists, the local bourgeoisie was far from fighting against foreign oppression. On the other hand, the strength of the working class was yes young and weak but it had already shown its pugnacity. Zhang Guotao believed that workingclass

strength was already present and could be a major component of a future nationalist movement. He accepted the need to remain in the Kuomintang, organizing sections and trying to reorganize it, but he did not consider this work predominant. Communists were to continue to propagate their political positions independently, and it was necessary to prevent the labor movement from passing from the hands of the CPoC to those of the KMT. The main task remained to organize the workers.

Zhang Guotao believed that the Kuomintang was not only not a true nationalist party but that it was not even an organized party. He believed that the arrival of a Chinese nationalist party would take years. He proposed, therefore, that in workers’ centers where the Kuomintang had no influence it should not be allowed to organize sections, while only in Canton and Hong Kong was the work of the CPoC in the workers’ camp forced to be conducted within the Kuomintang.

Thus, there were comrades within the CPoC who were unwilling to cede the leading role of the revolutionary movement in China to the KMT and give up the political independence of the Communist Party. The CPoC leadership itself, at a meeting of the Executive on November 2425, 1923, was forced to acknowledge that the resolutions on the national movement and the Kuomintang question, laid down at the Third Party Congress, had not received substantial support from grassroots party members.

Despite the opposition to the tactics established at the Third Congress and the difficulties encountered in its implementation, the CPoC leadership confirmed that it was continuing on that path. The November 1923 meeting of the CPoC Executive resolutely condemned the "leftist distortion" of the single front policy and adopted a decision ordering communists to actively participate in the reorganization of the nationalist party.

The resolution left no doubt as to the path taken: all Communist Party work was to be conducted within the Kuomintang, now considered the central force of the revolution in China. The reorganization and development of the Kuomintang had become the main tasks

of the Communist Party, and to this end, the resolution issued precise directives: the Communists, while remaining members of the CPoC, were to join Kuomintang sections in centers where these were already present or to create Kuomintang sections themselves where there were not yet any; the program dictated by the KMT leadership was to be followed; and the correction of the KMT’s political tendencies was to be carried out "in accordance with the nationalist principle embodied in the Three Principles of the People".

It was the full adherence to Sun Yat­ sen’s bourgeois program and the submission of communists to the political leadership of the nationalist party. The nationalist movement had become the focus of all the work of the CPoC and the solution of the "national question" was placed above class interests and its own struggle.

On December 25, 1923, the CPoC Executive issued "Circular Number 13", which obliged, among other things, to ensure the election at the next KMT Congress, set for January 1924, not only of communists but also of "relatively progressive" figures. Special envoys were sent to Party sections to implement these decisions.

These decisions in the field of tactics were accompanied by new theoretical formulations to support them. The revolutionary character of the bourgeoisie and its function in directing the national revolution were exaggerated.

Mao Zedong himself, newly elected to the Central Committee, advocated this. In July 1923 he wrote that it would be the merchants, i.e., the bourgeoisie, who would feel "most acutely and most urgently" the sufferings of dual oppression to local militarists and foreign imperialists, and although the national revolution to overthrow militarists and imperialists "is the historic mission of the Chinese people" as a whole (merchants workers, peasants, students, and teachers in Mao’s formulation), because of the contradiction between the economic interests of merchants and those of foreigners and militarists, the role of merchants was considered by Mao to be "more urgent and more important than the rest of the "people".

Thus, by theorizing a preeminent role of the merchants, and thus of the bourgeoisie, we approach the classical position of Menshevism, which leaves the leadership of the revolution in the still backward countries to the national bourgeoisie. This interpretation of revolutionary development in backward countries, according to which the imperialist yoke made the national bourgeoisie of colonial and semi­colonial countries more revolutionary than the Russian anti­feudal bourgeoisie in later formulations, will be the same with which the degenerate International will justify all the directives imposed on the Chinese communists, which will lead to the tragic defeat of the proletarian revolution in China, while Lenin had already made it clear that "bourgeois revolution is impossible as a revolution of the bourgeoisie", definitively separating Bolshevism from the Menshevik current.

Disparities in World Steel Production

At the meeting, we returned to a theme our party has explored since the 1950s. Using old studies and new statistics, we restored annual steel production tables from 1860 to today for Great Britain, France, Germany, the U.S., Japan, Russia, Italy, China, and the world total.

Today, capitalism is shaking the entire world. After the crumbling of the Soviet Union and the rapid increase in production in Asia, especially in China, we have witnessed an exacerbation of the crisis. This crisis can only be resolved through a global war.

While Western economies decline, their contest for control of natural wealth across the planet continues. The Chinese state seeks domination of nearby seas. In Africa, nations like China and Russia compete with Western ones to influence local economies. Middle Eastern oligarchies defend income from their oil resources, trying to ensure their processing as well. Latin America is witnessing increased extraction of raw resources. Thus, preparation for war and the continuation of proxy conflicts persist, maiming and destroying the working class.

In the past, it was a matter of national pride to flaunt the successes of one’s country’s steel industry. Now, the bourgeoisie of the old capitalist nations are forced to admit that they must buy metallurgical products where they cost less. National economies in industrial decline are giving way on the international market to new emerging national economies.

But everywhere, this ever­growing productive capacity is marked by a constant slowdown in the relative pace of increase. This shows that not even the new emerging economies are immune to the same decline that Western countries have experienced.

In this post-war period, two dramatic changes have occurred in the steel industry. We have measured these changes with production data and their annual percentage variation. Both of these numerical series have indicated deep economic crises, with lasting effects on the rate of production expansion in general and on the industry’s rate of profit.

From the production graphs, it is clear that the main Western economies have experienced a decrease in steel production or at most a halt in growth. In contrast, China, Japan, and Russia were not initially affected as dramatically as other capitalist nations. This is because steel production has moved from the old economies to emerging ones, from China to Mexico. These data will be presented and analyzed in more detail later.

We have compared the production and increases of the last 50 years with the timeline of the previous 150 years. From 1860 to 1910, the main Western economies were in a development phase, and growth followed a more or less exponential trend. Until the First World War, steel production continued to grow.

In the period between the two wars, it was observed that production continued to follow this exponential curve in the United States. Meanwhile, European countries like England, France, Germany, and Italy recorded stagnation. In contrast, China, Japan, and the Soviet Union showed a constant increase in production, just like the Western economies from 1860 to 1910.

The preparation for the Second World War required an increase in steel production worldwide. After the First World War, the main European nations had recorded stagnation. A decline in production occurred after the devastation of the Second World War. This time, stagnation also occurred in the United States. It did not occur in the Soviet Union, China, and Japan.

The production of China and Japan did not immediately surpass that of the West during this period. However, in 1949, with the founding of the People’s Republic of China, there was an explosion in steel production that continued to grow exponentially, as with all production.

But already in the 1970s, the old capitalist economies suffered from a crisis caused by overproduction. While China continued to record exponential growth in steel production, in Japan it no longer increased. Comparing China’s growth with that of the United States, one can see the sudden decline in U.S. production in the mid­1970s. Meanwhile, Chinese steel production continued to follow an exponential curve. In Japan, one can also see the halt in steel production growth. Relevant graphs were shown at the meeting.

Western steel companies will continue to see a slowdown in the rate of growth of production. Even Japan, after the 1980s, would soon see a dramatic decline in national production. All the gains made after World War II would vanish.

Since the early 2000s, all Western economies have seen their production either remain constant or even contract. Meanwhile, China has continued to grow, but even this at an increasingly slow pace.

The rate of increase in production is directly related to the rate of profit. It is not that capitalist steel production at a given moment stops growing. The accumulation of capital within the global economy always increases. But the amount of this accumulation, which increases from year to year, is always relatively smaller compared to the mass of production. This is true for each national economy. Graphs were shown at the meeting that demonstrate this.

Faced with the falling rate of profit, the European, Japanese, and North American bourgeoisies have reacted with restructuring and subcontracting. In the process, subcontractors are forced to give up part of their profits to get the order. They have also relocated part of the production to countries where costs are lower. Mexico, for example, has become a key center for the production of cars destined for the North American market.

Since the 2000s, the United States, Japan, and Germany have invested colossal sums in China, transforming it into the new "workshop of the world". Among other things, China has become the world’s leading steel producer. It supplies part of the steel needs of Europe and the United States.

Marxism does not foresee a growth of capitalism followed by a decline. Rather, it predicts the simultaneous dialectical strengthening of the mass of productive forces that capitalism controls and their unlimited accumulation and concentration. This occurs simultaneously with the antagonistic reaction of the dominated forces, that is, the working class. The general productive and economic potential increases until the equilibrium is upset and an explosive and revolutionary phase occurs. In the course of an extremely short and intense period, the old forms of production collapse and the productive forces diminish, opening the way to a new arrangement and a new, more powerful rise.

But while production always expands, the relative rate of this production is always decreasing. Thus, if in 1943 the United States produced almost 80 million tons of steel, to maintain the 3.9% increase of 1943 in 1944, the country would have had to produce 83.74 million tons. Of course, this was not the case. In 1943, production increased by only 3.3%, although it was 1.3 million tons more than in 1942.

Furthermore, within a given national economy and a given branch of production, one can observe not only a decreasing rate of growth in steel production but also a constant absolute slowdown in production.

As a historical trend in steel production, for example in the United States, the rate of growth not only decreases but goes into negative territory. This means that, regardless of the amount of annual production, the economy will not be able to produce at the same volume as in the past. This effect is found in all the countries analyzed. For the United States, this turning point occurred in 1980; for Japan, in 2009.

Therefore, on the one hand, we are witnessing an explosion in production. On the other hand, there is a slowdown in the pace of such production. We can say that the tendency of production increases exponentially since capitalism always tries to produce more. However, the tendency to slow down the rate of increase of production, which corresponds to the rate of profit, imposes itself. This tendency is difficult to distinguish through the noise created by the contingent oscillations of production. But as an inexorable trend, this rate of increase is decreasing. At a certain point, production stagnates and a crisis occurs.

It is a growth that, however, entails a decrease in the rate in the long run. This translates into periodic economic crises.

The loss of production of a particular commodity can, of course, be compensated by importing it from abroad. And this is only if that commodity is still socially necessary and has not become obsolete. This is obviously the case with steel, which is increasingly needed to produce machines, buildings, infrastructure, and always weapons of war.

Bourgeois Ideology
Medieval Aristotelianism, Averroism and Occamism

We are still in the prehistory of bourgeois ideology. The party is not an academy of historical or philosophical studies, nor even of Marxist studies. What interests us is how much of the concepts from the 13th and 14th centuries were considered useful and adopted by the nascent bourgeoisie. This is regardless of the actual fidelity to the doctrines in question, which were almost always distorted according to the needs of different societies in different eras.

Scholasticism

Scholasticism had the task of understanding the Revealed Truth through rational activity. Not trusting reason alone, it also appealed to religious tradition and authorities: the decision of a council, the writings of a Church Father, a biblical saying. If this was a limitation, it was also a virtue. It manifested the common and non­individual character of the research, proven by the fact that the writings were often not signed. On this we are in complete agreement: intellectual property is the most despicable form of private property, which deprives the human species of the use of its best results. Even in this, we have not invented anything. We have recovered, dialectically, a part of our history – the history of the species—a history that, as we have already written, we claim in its entirety from the club to the missile.

With Augustine of Tagaste, Neoplatonism became the philosophical basis of Christianity. Neoplatonism, along with Stoicism, remained at the foundation of Christianity for about eight centuries, until the rediscovery of Aristotle in the 13th century.

The Rediscovery of Aristotle

In 1210, the Provincial Council of Paris banned the philosophical writings of Aristotle. Only with Albertus Magnus of Cologne and Thomas Aquinas was Aristotelianism incorporated into the Christian vision. Thomas purged Aristotle of everything that was in contrast with the Christian religion. It then became the supporting philosophical structure, the official doctrine of the Catholic Church.

The Church adapted to a world that saw the birth of a new class – the bourgeoisie – and the slow decline of feudalism and its ideological bases. "Thomism" was the ideology of a still feudal world, but to a lesser extent than the previous one.

What is obvious, but only for us Marxists, is that these conceptions did not transform their world but were a reflection of such transformations.

The interest in the investigation of nature, stimulated by Aristotelian texts, was a step towards the claim of greater autonomy by the nascent bourgeoisie. This movement fostered autonomy and self­confidence against the Augustinian tradition, which considered knowledge of the world to be of minimal importance. Since God was within man, true knowledge was considered internal.

Furthermore, Aristotle’s reasoning in terms of cause and effect led to viewing the cosmos as governed by necessary laws. In some authors, these laws could be identified with God himself – a God different from that of the biblical tradition, because necessity denied him omnipotence and absolute freedom. To the point of making him a "useless hypothesis", as in the response attributed to Laplace towards Napoleon.

Knowledge of Aristotle’s "Politics" was important in the second half of the 13th century. Here, we find that human communities are governed by their own laws – laws of nature – without the need to introduce divine law. If in previous centuries the law of nature was part of divine law, now it gained its own, more or less broad, autonomy. Thomas Aquinas himself, for whom the important thing is the relationship between man and God and who considered the relationship between men among themselves to be of little importance, accepted Aristotle as he was with regard to politics.

There is therefore a sphere – politics – governed entirely by the law of nature, where it is not necessary to introduce divine law.

A few centuries later, the bourgeoisie took possession of a very limited and unimportant "right of nature". They expanded it enormously and made it their own revolutionary ideology. This is attributable to a class reality that overwhelms and distorts, along with the old world, also the old ideologies. In the ethics and politics of Aristotle, the bourgeoisie of the 14th and 15th centuries, while certainly remaining Christian, found a way to affirm partial autonomy with respect to the Church and the feudal world it represented.

Averroes and "Free Thought"

Ibn Rushd, called Averroes by the Latins, was born in Cordova in 1126. He was a doctor, philosopher, and jurist. The myth of an Averroes who was a rationalist if not an atheist has survived to this day. He supported a rigid distinction between the sphere of faith and the sphere of reason. The theory of the "double truth" was suited to the bourgeoisie. While as Christians they condemned lending at interest – always considered usury – bourgeois bankers or merchants, they practiced it.

We Marxists agree with Averroes: for us too, "right reason illuminates right faith and vice versa". Our science, without our communist faith, would be nothing. It is not even possible to separate them, except by making an abstraction. Faith and communist sentiment without science are blind and destined to fail. A Marxist science, separated from communist faith and sentiment, would resemble a Golem. Like the Golem of Central European Jewish tradition, it would be directionless – a sort of phantom pure science or pure technique destined to turn against its creator.

Averroism in the Christian world was a conception held by some philosophers, useful to the nascent bourgeoisie. For them, the rigid separation between the sphere of reason and the sphere of faith – between the investigation of nature and revealed truth – was an instrument to affirm autonomy between the "earthly city" and the "city of God". All this meant greater autonomy of the bourgeoisie from the power of the Church and from the feudal relationships it embodied. In Aristotle, Al Farabi, and Averroes, happiness consists in attaining knowledge and therefore contemplation. Now, contemplation becomes proper to the "city of God", while knowledge increasingly aims at the "earthly city" – politics and the production of wealth.

Occam and Nominalism

In his polemic against Aristotelian and Neoplatonic metaphysics, Occam goes so far as to deny the very principle of causality. While this aspect does not advance science, experimentalism does, as it takes the place of the apriorism of Platonic ideas and Aristotelian categories. What the bourgeoisie adopted was not the denial of the principle of causality, and only partly experimentalism, but the nominalism at its basis.

The "nominalists" deny reality to universal concepts, considering them mere concepts, verbal forms, signs. Science no longer has the universal as its object but the individual, whose knowledge can only be founded on experience. Nominalism is a step in the direction of materialism.

Averroism and Occamism led an attack, from two opposite sides, on Scholasticism, contributing to its dissolution. Occamism, with its nominalism and the importance attributed to experience, was the more disruptive of the two.

Individualism, which Occam also takes from Duns Scotus, was certainly the main aspect adopted by a bourgeoisie that was uninterested in other aspects of his thought. Connected to Occam’s nominalism are also his political conceptions, adopted by the bourgeoisie, according to which the Church must not have claims of temporal dominion. The rigid separation of the plane of faith from that of reason translates into a pro­ imperial position. It also leads to a position where truth no longer resides in the Church understood as hierarchy or in the pontiff, but in the Church understood as the totality of believers – a totality formed by the reality of individual Christians. Such conceptions were functional to all the classes that could not stand the feudal structure of society: to the bourgeoisie as well as to poor peasants, and sometimes even to kings and nobles in conflict with ecclesiastical power.


(Continued to next issue)

The change of the masthead of this newspaper was not of our own choosing, nor was it due to even the slightest need for discontinuity or rectification with what has been published in the past and throughout the party press, which we totally claim. The fact is that, as a result of an outflow of one group from the party, we lost the bourgeois ownership of the masthead of our Italian­language newspaper, “Il Partito Comunista”. And we want to keep the same title for the party organs in all languages.

To the motives of those who wanted to take a different path – among them the inescapable questions of organic centralism and union address – we are not here to give contradiction or rebuttal: the answer is written in clear letters in all the columns of fifty years of our newspapers and will be confirmed in the studies and deepenings we will continue to expound in our meetings and publish in the issues to come.