Capitalism is endless reproduction of capital; of capitalist production’s purpose is capital itself. The increase of commodity production beyond any natural limit, at a breakneck speed, does not generate better welfare for mankind, but rather a series of catastrophic crises of overproduction that ravage social life over the entire planet. Of such crises – denied for decades by bourgeois theorists, and believed unavoidable by authentic Marxism – the working class is the first victim, bearing the weight of unemployment, reduction of wages, and intensification of work loads.

For capitalism war is the necessary consequence of its periodical overproduction crises. Capitalist war is therefore unavoidable. Only the enormous destructions provoked by the modern world wars allow capitalism to start anew its infernal cycle of reconstruction-accumulation.

Our era’s imperialist world wars – although invariably hidden behind "humanitarian", "democratic", "pacifistic", "defensive", "antiterrorist" screens – are badly needed by the various capitalisms to share out the exhausted markets, to divide up the continents among themselves. They are therefore wars for the conservation of capitalism; both on the economic plane and insofar as they provide, during the crises, for the elimination of the part of labor force that exceeds the reduced capacity of the system of production to employ it. As a matter of fact, they are immense slaughters of slaves that capital is not at that moment able to support. It’s either war or revolution, there’s no alternative route.

The revolutionary communist attitude towards war is to denounce the idea of peace being compatible with capitalism as a tragic illusion, and to affirm that only the overthrowing of bourgeois power and the destruction of production relations founded on capital will free mankind from such a recurrent tragedy. On the line of Marx and Lenin the party proclaims the tactics of class antimilitarism, of fraternization at the fronts, of revolutionary defeatism at the front and the rear; which aim to turn the war among States into a war between classes.

Recently, the Trump administration has put forward a number of “outrageous” proposals including the annexation of Canada  & Greenland, two countries with rich arctic shale oil & gas reserves. He has proposed to annex Gaza for a Middle East “Riviera” real estate project, while offering to broker a peace deal in Ukraine in exchange for direct control of rare earth mineral mines, amid a myriad of other hawkish threats directed at countries in the Western Hemisphere. While the liberals cry “oligarchy!” and “coup!” against democracy, there will be no return to “normal” & the reason behind the “madness” has nothing to do with the bourgeois chosen carnival barker, but is the product of the inevitable and world historical unfolding of capitalist economy whose highest stage is imperialism & fascism. A stage of human development which can only be brought to an end by international communist revolution.

The United States as with all the other world capitalisms is on the verge of a major economic catastrophe as a result of the global overproduction crisis. The exploding public and government debt, necessary for holding the world economy together after the 2008 financial crisis, is now at increasing risk of default year after year, something that has potential to erupt into the largest economic cataclysm in world history. As rival imperialist powers also continue their ascent, the U.S. bourgeois is in desperate straits finding fewer and fewer opportunities to simultaneously grow it’s profit margins and pay it’s debts.

Behind the dominant faction of the bourgeoisie in Washington are the interests of big oil, big tech and big auto. They aim to reassert the U.S. as an industrial and manufacturing powerhouse by kick starting an artificial intelligence (AI) industrial explosion fueled by cheap oil & cheapened labor, leveraging the U.S. new status as the largest producer of oil to corner the world energy markets, and maintain the subordination of potential rival imperialism in the U.S. orbit through ensuring their continued dependence on American imports and exports, as they build a protectionist wall to cut out Chinese companies that are hopelessly outcompeting U.S. corporations.

To “save America”, through the Republican Party they have united around the program of the far-right Heritage Foundation, which seeks to discard the prevailing norms of the domestic and international bourgeois legal order and alliance systems, downsizing the U.S. “administrative state” while promoting a litany of private-public projects aimed at renewing U.S. infrastructure and deepening nationalist and conformist indoctrination and terror, taking these desperate measures to attempt to ensure labor’s total subordination.

At the height of U.S. power following the two World Wars, the country was by far the world’s largest creditor. Through institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and initiatives such as the Marshall Plan it financed the rebuilding of world capitalism through issuing massive loans and binding countries around the world to the U.S. dollar as its reserve currency.

As Capitalism has played its natural course, the United States is no longer the world’s largest financier but instead, its largest debtor. On the second day of Trump’s second term in office, the United States reached its $36.1 trillion annual borrowing ceiling. The ceiling forced the Treasury Department to take “extraordinary measures”, which are expected to hold the government over until March 14th, in order to continue US expense payments and avoid defaulting on government loans; however, it appears that congress will squabble until the last moment to finalize a plan, once again risking default.

According to the country’s largest hedge fund founder Ray Dalio in early February, the “The United States is currently in a ‘death spiral’ of debt that could lead to an economic ‘heart attack’". The potential for a U.S. default on its loans has increased dramatically in recent years, something that if it were to happen could trigger an economic cataclysm, global recession, frozen credit markets, plunging stock markets and mass worldwide layoffs. According to the Treasury Department, as of February 5th, in only one month’s time, already 60% of the department’s debt-cap measures had been exhausted, having only $133 billion left of the $338 billion authorized.

The United States is currently in $35 trillion worth of debt and the current proposed Republican Budget would add $4 trillion more to the debt. With a current value of around $28 trillion, the U.S. Treasury market is the world’s biggest bond market and is crucial to the U.S. government’s ability to finance itself and maintain stability of global financial markets. In 2013 the country’s debt to GDP ratio surpassed 100%. In 2023 it hit unprecedented levels of 123%, thus with each passing year it becomes less and less likely the U.S. will actually be able to pay it back. In fact, spending increased 50% between 2019 and 2021 due to pandemic tax cuts, stimulus programs, increased spending, and decreased tax revenues resulting from widespread unemployment.

Government debt is accrued by issuing U.S. treasury bonds which are purchased on a market by foreign countries and private investors that buy in expectation consistent and stable returns; however, if the government is unable to service their debt payments, the whole system implodes. As the current administration lobbies congress to remove the debt ceiling completely while maintaining large tax cuts, it is unlikely that the overall debt to GDP ratio will close anytime soon, even with significant spending cuts, thus only adding to the growing uncertainty and potential of a major financial crisis.

According to the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) in 2024 corporate bankruptcies hit their highest level since their peak following the 2008 financial crisis in 2010, with over 694 filings in 2024, accompanied with a large increase in delinquency rates on loan repayments. The retail sector hit with consumer budgets tightening due to inflation saw 108 companies file for bankruptcies followed by industrial and healthcare industries with 88 and 65 firms respectively. Over 30 companies that filed for bankruptcy had more than $1 billion in liabilities, including big names such as Party City, Spirit Airlines and Red Lobster. Credit-rated nonfinancial US companies held a record of $8.45 trillion worth of debt in 2024.

Inflation remains a lingering risk that could erode consumers’ buying power and long-term corporate bond returns, and is likely to increase with more tariffs.

Household debts are also growing at an alarming rate, according to the New York Fed overall household debt levels increased by 0.5% to $18.04 trillion, credit card balances topped $1.2 trillion, rising 7.3% from the fourth quarter of last year with 33% of Americans having more credit card debt than savings. The share of households becoming seriously delinquent (90+ days delayed payment) on their auto loans and credit cards are at 14-year highs, with 3.6% of the overall debt becoming delinquent in the final three months of 2024, the most since the second quarter of 2020.

The increasing threat of a default, has already led to the downgrade of the U.S. federal government’s credit rating by several credit rating agencies. The major agency (S&P) reduced the country’s rating from AAA (outstanding) to AA+ (excellent) in 2011 due to projections of net government debt rising to about 80 percent or more of GDP by 2013 and Fitch Ratings lowered the country’s credit rating to AA+ from AAA in 2023 due to the government delaying a debt ceiling agreement that year. For the consumer, a worse government credit rating leads to higher interest rates for payments on mortgages, auto loans and credit cards. A diminished credit rating is one part of a sequence of events that could eventually lead investors to feel the U.S. is less likely to pay off its debt, accordingly, more investors will demand higher interest rates for loans to compensate for growing risk and, in turn, U.S. debt would become more expensive. This will make it more difficult for the government to afford running its deficit spending for its budget and force it to cut back its program spending.

Ahead of Trump’s victory, Japanese investors offloaded a record $61.9 billion of the securities in the three months ended Sept. 30, according to data from the US Department of the Treasury. Funds in China also sold off $51.3 billion during the same period, the second biggest sum on record. Japan and China still own $1.02 trillion and $731 billion worth of Treasuries respectively, underscoring their power over the US debt market; however, the bond market has been in a “free fall” since the election, only flatlining in recent days. The economic reality of the American bourgeois state is that it must service it’s growing debt, financially it has very little room to maneuver without risking facilitating a global economic meltdown, potentially unlike what has ever been experienced in world history.

Thus, the fascistic orgy taking place in the White House is a desperate attempt by the American big bourgeois to avoid the existential fires mounting all around the capitalist system which is on the verge of economic cataclysm. While they claim to be stripping down the government of non-essential functions in an alleged attempt to lower the national debt, their actual proposals only enlarge the debt by increasing budgets for lucrative government contracts and retaining 4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the ultra wealthy, while squeezing the working class for every drop of surplus possible through increasing taxes on consumers in the form of tariffs, rising consumer costs and repression of wages amind increasing demands for repayment on private debts such as student loans.

As the rapidly enlarging national debt becomes more and more insurmountable, making any new major initiative on the part of the government increasingly financially risky, the grand vision to save America, via an economic autarky built on hardline tariffs, large scale public works projects, fueled by territorial conquests abroad under a renewed Manifest Destiny have so far fallen flat with Mexican and Canadian tariffs having to be canceled due to poor stock market response.

Despite promises of lowering inflation, the administration proves itself unable and uninterested in reducing the price of consumer goods such as eggs and its trade war policies will only lead to rising prices.

On the coattails of a campaign jammed packed with fevered dreams of a new utopian American Reich, the reality is that three weeks into the new administration and the government can barely manage to keep the lights on; however, the government now openly states that the average American must endure some “pain” in expectation of future prosperity and America becoming a “rich” country again. Thus to ward off the impending economic apocalypse the dominant section of the bourgeois put their hopes in reorganizing the economy around an industrial and manufacturing boom led by a massive artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructural expansion powered by an abundance of cheap energy resources.

As we have pointed out, the debt to GDP ratio gap in the United States has continued to grow year after year, likewise the U.S. GDP has in recent decades averaged to around 2-3% growth annually about half the rate of countries such as India and China. Thus the U.S. economy must eventually close these gap or face its demise. Major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs have pointed to AI as the solution to increase U.S. GDP growth, eventually increasing it to upwards of 7% annually by vastly increasing average worker productivity by automating an estimated 25% of work tasks and generating productivity growth by 1.5 percentage points annually. According to Goldman Sachs, “Assuming workers aren’t permanently replaced by automation and there’s capital to support the increase in productivity, the increase in productivity could boost long-run worldwide GDP by as much as 15%”, executives anticipate a small impact from AI on activity and hiring needs in the next 1-3 years but a much larger impact in the next 3-10 years. Sachs, further notes that information and communication technology (ICT) investment has already been the main driver of productivity growth in major economies over the last 20-30 years. While, the underlying productivity growth has been slowing, they say that research suggests that growth in total factor productivity tends to slow over time as countries develop, except during rare “regime shifts” such as those triggered by the “first and second industrial revolutions”.

The global artificial intelligence market size was estimated at USD 196.63 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 36.6% from 2024 to 2030. AI has proven to be a significant element of the upcoming digital era. Tech giants like Amazon, Google LLC, Apple, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft are investing significantly in research and development of AI, thus increasing the artificial intelligence market cap. The AI market is also characterized by a high level of merger and acquisition activity by the leading players. This is due to several factors, including the desire to gain access to new AI technologies and talent, the need to consolidate in a rapidly growing market, and increasing military strategic importance of AI. This industry has also been subject to increasing regulatory scrutiny due to concerns about the potential negative impacts of AI, such as algorithmic bias, privacy violations, and job displacement. As a result, governments around the world have begun developing regulations to govern the development and use of AI, angering many of the tech oligarchs who now wish to dispense of these troublesome and foolish employees.

To move the United States forward as a leader in the anticipated AI “technological revolution”, a massive $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative called the “Stargate Project” has been proposed by OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and an Abu Dhabi–based investment fund called MGX which will open massive data centers around the US to massively expand AI. Oracle said in a statement the project aims to support the “re-industrialization of the United States,” providing 100,000 jobs and boosting capabilities to protect the “national security of America and its allies.” According to Fortune, the joint venture will invest an initial $100 billion of private capital to fund U.S. AI infrastructure, with a further $400 billion expected over the next four years.

Trump said he would help with other emergency declarations to get more AI infrastructure off the ground, citing the need to keep AI development in the U.S. He’s expected to issue a spate of executive orders to ensure new data centers built in connection with the investment will have enough energy. According to Technology Review, Much of the groundwork for this project was laid in 2024, when OpenAI increased its lobbying spending sevenfold and AI companies started pushing for policies that were less about controlling problems like deepfakes and misinformation, and more about securing more energy.

The amount of energy required for the most advanced AI systems could reach unforeseen levels. For example, Microsoft’s planned Stargate AI Supercomputer data center alone may require as much as four to six gigawatts of power, almost the equivalent to the power needs of a large city such as New York. According to Datacenter Dynamics, In the last three months, ExxonMobil and Chevron, the two largest oil and gas companies in the US, announced plans to develop gas-fired power plants to serve the data center market, citing AI power demand as the primary driving force, in addition to several new facilities they have already built last year to service AI demand. The growth of the AI sector led global market intelligence agency S&P Global to project last year that demand for natural gas to support data centers could reach up to three billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) by 2030. According to midstream energy and refining managing director Micheal Grande "It’s faster to power data centers with gas than to wait for emerging clean energy technologies.”

Despite the anticipated growth, Chinese innovation once again threatens U.S. Capital. Last month a small Chinese company unveiled a new AI technology called “Deepseek” that has thrown big Tech in the U.S. in a panic, jeopardizing their plans for a massive economic overhaul. Deepseek is a new AI program which operates at approximately 1/10th the energy costs of current AI technologies in the United States. With the release of its V3 model in December, which only cost $5.6 million for its final training run and 2.78 million GPU hours to train. For comparison, Meta’s Llama 3.1 despite using newer, more efficient chips takes about 30.8 million GPU hours to train. Nvidia, whose chips enable all these technologies, saw its stock price plummet by 600 billon on news that DeepSeek’s V3 only needed 2,000 chips to train, compared to the 16,000 chips or more needed by its competitors. While Deepseek has not reduced demand, it has sent silicon valley into a mad rush to advance their plans at an even more rapid pace to keep up with the competition. As such the need for cheap oil to fuel the AI boom necessary for U.S. economic growth, U.S. capital must rapidly move forward plans to grow it’s energy production.

The the oil industry has played a central role in machinations of American imperialism today as ever before. The expansion of the oil industry is crucial for fueling the anticipated AI boom, an industrial expansion the bourgeois desperately need in an attempt to avoid getting shoved off their fiscal cliff, while it is also a necessary element in the extension and maintenance of U.S. of the protectionist wall against China by providing cheap oil to ward off investment in EV’s infrastructure and supply chains. Ultimately for capitals accumulation deals with Russia must be struck and securing the artic for U.S. imperialism must be advanced.

A fact unknown to most Americans, is that in 2015 the United States became the largest producer of oil on earth as a result of the new technologies and innovative methods of horizontal high pressure hydraulic fracturing to drill for oil, known as fracking. Thus in 2016 the U.S. lifted its decades long ban on oil exports that were put in place after the 1973 oil crisis. For decades the United States was “addicted to foreign oil” as George W. Bush used to say, totally dependent on heavy crude oil imports. Prior to the fracking explosion US oil production peaked at 9.6 million b/d in 1970, annual U.S. crude oil production flattened and then generally declined for decades to a low of 5.0 million b/d in 2008. By 1972, 83% of the American oil imports came from the Middle East. The energy insecurity of the U.S. economy was first exposed during the 1973 oil crisis, when OPEC countries issued an embargo on oil sales to the U.S. At the time OPEC’s share of the world oil trade was 75%. It resulted in fuel shortages, forcing a rationing of gasoline and skyrocketing prices. Before the embargo, a barrel of oil traded for around $2.90, quadrupling to $11.65 per barrel by January 1974.

The oil embargo was the result of Middle Eastern countries retaliating against the U.S. for it’s military aid to Israel during the Yom Kippur War, fought against Egypt and Syria. The crisis triggered a major shock in the United States bourgeois who understood that their empire built on fossil fuel powered aircraft carriers and automobile sales had a major Achilles heel. Thus for decades after 1973, the focus of US imperial foreign policy was organized around subordinating OPEC countries in the Middle East and working towards “oil independence”. Thus it is no coincidence that Hamas deliberately chose the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War to launch its assault into Gaza last year on the eve of the ascendancy of the United States as a contender petrol-state.

In 2009 the rise of the fracking industry led to an economic boom which ultimately enabled the U.S. economy to quickly recover from the 2008 financial crisis. The development of horizontal drilling fracking methods created a groundswell of small independent frackers, who through various contracting agencies that brought the technological expertise, set up fracking operations on their land. The “drill baby, drill” movement, aggressively pushed to lift government regulations that prevented the extension of fracking throughout the 2010’s and open up public lands to oil extraction. Over the years these small proprietary operations were bought out and consolidated into the major oil corporations in the United States, a process which has rapidly played out over the last decade. By 2015 the US became the largest producer of crude oil in the world due to the continued expansion of fracking, producing 9.42 million barrels per day (b/d). By 2023, 64% of US crude oil production in the United States came from hydraulic fracturing & production averaged 12.9 million barrels per day, far outstripping domestic demand.

As the production of crude rapidly increased it led to a glut of fracked sweet crude oil on the U.S. market that was unable to be refined at U.S. refineries equipped to process foreign imported heavy crude, and a glut of Liquified Natural Gas also emerged. As a result, in 2016, the United States rescinded it’s decades long policy of banning oil exports to begin moving this surplus onto international markets. Despite opening up exports, the U.S. oil industry continues to face an overproduction crisis, due to limited consumption and market share. Any increase in production without a rise in price would only diminish profits, correspondingly the vast surplus forced U.S. capital to compete with other imperialist powers for control of foreign export oil markets. As fracked U.S. oil costs more to produce and thus is already sold at a higher price, it wasn’t able to break into major export markets outside North America, until after the February 2022 war in Ukraine, when Russian crude oil and LNG was sanctioned in Europe.

In 2016, in response to dramatically falling oil prices due to U.S. fracked oil output on global export markets, Russia, Mexico and other oil producers that weren’t previously part of the OPEC alliance joined to form OPEC+. Within OPEC+, oil production between the countries is limited to mitigate the growing global overproduction crisis which could burst out in a crash unless carefully contained due to an over abundance of commodities on the market that leads to declining prices. Thus the cartel works to keep prices artificially high through limiting and reducing international production. However, these methods put a straight jacket on productive forces which overtime leads to intensifying contradictions between producers. As increased oil production capacities and facilities spread to new countries across the world, reactivation of decommissioned installations, and the incorporation of new production zones the price of oil on the global market continues to experience a downward pressure and faces declining profitability.

For a time the U.S. followed the OPEC strategy; however, it has increasingly sought to cut into their markets due to overproduction. Because of it’s diversified economy, it can run more risk of increased production and lower price. This forces OPEC nations to reduce production and thus loose market share; however, too low of a price for too long would also destroy the U.S. oil industry and fracked crude is more costly to produce, so while the U.S. may aim to cut into other OPEC markets it ultimately also must play a balance of controlling global oil supply to maintain profitability. Thus it too must ultimately seek to make allies amongst other elements in the cartel if it wishes to dominate the market and steal other smaller players market share. So we can see why the bourgeois is keen to open lines of communication with Russia once again.

Many OPEC nations require relatively high oil prices (often above 60–70 per barrel) to balance their budgets. OPEC countries government budgets tend to be from 30-90% reliance upon oil revenues. 60–70% of Saudi Arabia’s budget, 90% of Venezuela, 40-50% of Russian government revenue. When oil prices fall OPEC countries experience significant declines in government revenue, leading to budget deficits and economic instability. Unlike the U.S., many OPEC members lack diversified economies, making them more vulnerable to prolonged periods of low oil prices. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration between 2016 and 2025 OPEC+ global market share has declined from 53% to 46%, while the United States has grown from essentially a complete outsider to hold 9.1% market share. Today many OPEC countries can no longer afford to reduce prices further without vastly reducing returns and getting completely cut out of their existing markets. So to succeed in the oil market it requires a degree of cartelizing, while to break into it one must act as a bit of a rogue. So we can understand how the United States shifting geopolitical alliances under Trump are ultimately guided by these determining & impersonal economic realities.

In 2023 the U.S. became the world’s largest exporter of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) and the fourth largest exporter of crude oil, followed by Canada in fifth place, and of whom approximately 97% of it’s crude exports go to the U.S. The two are sandwiched between OPEC+ countries with Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iraq respectively in the top three positions. Inversely the U.S. exports about 10% of its oil to each Mexico, China, Canada, the Netherlands & South Korea with the remaining exported to 142 other countries.

Following the War in Ukraine in 2022, The U.S. market share of crude oil imports in Europe rose to 18% overtaking Russia as the number one supplier as sanctions took place. Russia’s share of Europe’s natural gas imports has fallen sharply, from 31% in the first quarter of 2022 to nearly 19% by the end of the year. That has made the United States Europe’s second-biggest supplier of gas, with a nearly 20% share, behind Norway. Three years into the Ukraine war, as the two armies slaughtered each other for years spilling countless soldiers blood, Russian oil on the world markets flowed mostly uninterrupted. Russia withstood numerous weak sanctions, including the G7 mandating a $60 per barrel price cap on its oil sales. U.S. sanctions have not aimed to completely stop Russian international exports, despite its embargo to U.S. markets in fear of skyrocketing global oil prices. Despite these sanctions in 2024, the EU imported a record 16.5 million metric tons of LNG from Russia, surpassing the 15.2 million in 2023. Nevertheless, EU countries led by Germany, have done much to move off of their Russian oil and gas. Between early 2022 and the end of 2023, the EU slashed its imports of Russian fossil fuels by 94 percent, from $16 billion per month to around $1 billion per month

By November 2024, the United States had refilled its 400 million barrel Strategic Oil Reserve, which it had mostly depleted in 2022 to keep prices low in the face of a surge after the Russian fuel embargo. Thus, in January 2025 the Biden administration felt confident to issue a new round of sanctions which led to rising prices of Russian oil. Within a few days Russian oil in the Indian and Chinese market increased 20% in price. As a result India has decided to move away from Russian imports in favor of U.S. imports. The spike in shipping price was a result of aggressive push in the final days of the Biden administration, to intensify sanctions against Russian and Iranian tanker “shadow fleets” operating under flags of convenience. Also in January, Ukraine refused to renew the longstanding contract with Russia which allowed oil and natural gas to flow through it’s territories amid an intensified drone bombing campaign targeting Russian refiners that has reduced their output by 10-20%.

Facing the complete loss of access to European markets and the loss of its access to Indian oil markets which have accounted for approximately 30% of it’s oil revenues alongside a growing deficit of over $100 billion since the war began Russia faces a potential economic crisis. Despite the Trump administrations flattering tone towards Putin, behind the scenes the administration has threatened harder sanctions from those already initiated in the last days of the Biden administration. According to recent statements by the Trump administration envoy to Ukraine & Russia Keith Kellog at the Munich Security Conference on Feb 15 “So what does (Russian President Vladimir Putin) have to give up? Well maybe he’ll give up his oil revenue and we’ll force him to do it, because what you do is start employing sanctions that break the economic back.

While Russia has been winning the military conflict in Ukraine on the ground, it appears the United States is beginning to win the larger economic war on Russian oil, as Trump is set to meet with Putin to talk terms in Saudi Arabia in the coming days, the three petrol-states will likely also hash out a deal for carving up the world’s oil markets in a post-Ukraine war world.

Meanwhile, the offensive comments of JD Vance Trump’s vice president at the recent Munich Security Conference, have outraged and stirred the European states up enough to rally around Zalensky who is now calling for the creation of a “European Army”, as the UK pledges to send troops to Ukraine if necessary and the continental states plan to gather to discuss increased defense spending. Despite the cries of the liberal European democracies against the rise of American fascism, they ultimately act like obedient dogs and do just what the fascist were cajoling them to do, arm yourselves for war! Of course, this will mean no chance of them returning to cheap Russian oil, and no real chance for a revitalized German economy. However, they will continue to find a willing purveyor oil in the United States, despite the ruffled feathers!

Thus we can see the economic and political sands shifting all over the world, the U.S. dividing and conquering the to maintain its dominance around it’s oil economy as it’s primary imperialist rival China works to leave fossil fuels behind. The U.S. can then once again shift it’s military weight to other theaters within the global build up to the next inter-imperialist war.

In the first few weeks of the Trump presidency he announced the American big bourgeois ambitions for the conquest of Greenland and the annexation of Canada. Taking into consideration the United States functioning as an imperialist petrol-state due with it’s new role as a petroleum-exporter we can understand why it is important for U.S. capital to gain control of these areas rich in oil and rare-earth mineral resources. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects U.S. crude oil production to peak in 2030, while OPEC production is expected to continue rising through 2050. Thus for the U.S. to maintain its competitive advantage it must continue to expand it’s operations. As we have already pointed to the extensive reliance of the Canadian economy on both U.S. oil imports and exports it is clear why annexation of Canada would be in the economic advantage for the forces of U.S. imperialism. Likewise, an analysis by the U.S. Geological Survey suggests that Greenland “contains approximately 31,400 million barrels oil equivalent of oil” and other fuels, including around 148 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

As global warming has commenced the receding of the arctic ice caps has made the arctic area a zone of increasing economic and strategic significance. The climate reality has led to the opening up of Canada’s Northwest Passage and Russia’s Northern Sea Route. These pathways could significantly shorten shipping time by 30%-50% between Asia, Europe, and North America. The area is expected to have 13% of undiscovered global oil reserves and 30% of natural gas reserves, along with an abundance of rare earth minerals. Greenland is rich in untapped rare earth elements such as dysprosium, neodymium, europium, and yttrium. All important materials for AI hardware, quantum computing technologies, renewable energy systems, and advanced defense equipment. The Tanbreez project alone contains an estimated 28 million tonnes of rare earth oxides, nearly 30% being heavy rare earth elements. These resources could significantly reduce U.S. reliance on China, which currently controls over 80% of global rare earth element production.

Currently the arctic is becoming a hotly contested zone for world imperialism. Russia, which controls 53% of the Arctic coastline, has heavily militarized its territories with airbases and naval forces, while China has declared itself a “near-Arctic state” to justify its growing investments in Greenland’s mining sector. It also holds substantial stakes in major Russian Arctic LNG projects. By acquiring Canada and Greenland, the United States would secure dominance over these resources and routes while acting against Russian and Chinese ambitions.

China’s EV market has grown exponentially over the past decade. In 2020, EVs accounted for about 5–6% of new car sales, but this figure has surged to over 30% in just a few years. China’s share of the global electric vehicle (EV) market in 2024 is expected to be around 76%. China is the world’s largest exporter of battery cells, cathodes, and anodes. In February 2024, Chinese manufacturers held three of the top five spots for global market share. In Q4 2023, Chinese automaker BYD sold more electric vehicles than Tesla. Electric cars account for 20% of total global car sales in 2024. According to Goldman Sachs China will also have the capacity to produce something close 25 million EVs by late 2025, as production is currently increasing by close to 4 million cars a year and Chinese firms continue to invest heavily. China now has a capacity to supply over half the global market for cars, which is typically around 90 million cars a year. China currently has the capacity to produce over two times its own domestic demand and is adding to that capacity quickly thanks to the rapid expansion of its electric vehicle sector. It thus has almost unlimited potential capacity to export. China has gone from exporting a million (low end) cars a year in 2020 to exporting 6 million cars a year in 2024.

Thus while we have so far explored the imperialist conflicts the U.S. is entering into as it emerges a dominant petrol exporter, its conflicts with China around the emerging AI and tech markets, and we can now see the lines of the conflict around the automobile export industry. For China, it has built an industry around supply chain which is at it’s advantage for its control of 80% of the worlds rare earth mineral deposits. For the United States, its role as the world largest producer of oil, means that its automotive industry is tied to its access to cheap petrol.

The ascendancy of U.S. capital’s world domination was built on the back of its auto-industry in the post-war era. It was an industry led in its early days by the national hero Henry Ford, an open and notorious supporter of Adolph Hitler and his National Socialist Party. Today we have Elon Musk filling in those shoes. The American auto industry faces a new existential challenge from the rising Chinese auto industry that dominates the globe’s electric vehicle markets, and faces a new potential competitor in Mexico.

As a result the tariff war on China many companies have moved their production centers to Mexico to access relatively cheap exploitable labor and close proximity to US consumer markets. Over the years the Mexican economy has rapidly industrialized and grown to become the largest producer of exported goods to the US, comprising 13% of all imports, displacing China last year who held that position for nearly half a century; however, the Mexican economy is highly dependent upon exports to the US, which comprise 83% of its overall export economy, making it highly vulnerable to US imposed tariffs, a fact which gives the U.S. serious leverage over Mexico in negotiating terms of trade deals. Likewise Mexico and Canada are the two largest export markets in the world for the declining U.S. automotive industry. U.S. automakers (Ford, GM, and Stellantis) collectively hold a 20-25% market share of new vehicle sales in Mexico.

A key development in the Mexican economy has been the move of auto manufacturers across the world to locate their factories in the country. A handful of cities such as San Luis Potois have become little Detroit’s hosting many international car companies such as BMW, Volkswagens, Audis, Mercedes-Benzes, Fords, Nissans and Chevrolets. In the first nine months of 2024, Mexican factories produced more than three million vehicles, of which two million were exported to the United States. In 2022, Mexico produced approximately 3.5 million vehicles, making it the 6th largest vehicle producer globally. Mexico exported around 2.8 million vehicles in 2022, accounting for 80% of its total production. The growing standards of living of Mexican workers has also led to a large internal consumer market for automobiles in which the imperialist powers now struggle for control over.

The automotive consumer market in Mexico is dominated by imports of cheap Chinese vehicles. China has positioned itself as the main car supplier in Mexico with exports reaching $4.6 billion in 2023 according to data from Mexico’s Secretariat of Economy. This growth was driven by increased demand for its affordable electric vehicles according to data from automakers and research firm MarkLin. The Chinese company BYD wants to sell 100,000 EVs in Mexico in 2025 and it plans to build a massive new manufacturing plant in Mexico this year. Elon Musk for years had planned to invest billions with the development of the EV “gigafactory” in Mexico; however, recently he has put his plan on hold, leveraging for more suitable deal. In response to early tariff threats, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum put forward plans for Mexico to develop their own supply chains and begin producing their own domestically produced EVs to compete on global markets.

Thus as international manufacturing companies have moved to Mexico to access cheap labor, it is now developing into a rival industrial power just as has happened with China. For U.S. capital, it wishes to both repel Chinese competition within Mexican markets and subordinate the Mexican economy to a subservient role within its new industrial reorganization and “reshored” supply chain.

Moving in suit with the U.S. this summer, Canada announced it would implement a 100% tariff on electric cars and a 25% levy on steel and aluminum from China, which is broadly in line with levels proposed by the former Biden administration, making Canada currently the only other country to completely align with the US on its trade policies with China. Bourgeois leaders in both countries have expressed dissatisfaction with Mexico’s ties to China and its lack of fully committing to the trade war. For a time Mexico had considered joining the BRIC’s alternative economic alliance to the G7 and is presently a part of the OPEC+ alliance. A large Mexican tariff on Chinese EV’s would clear out the far and away largest competition for US auto manufacturers in the Mexican market. While Mexico has followed along by imposing some tariffs on steel production, they have not complied to the extent that satisfies US capitals desires for domination of its markets. Long before the second Trump presidency the NAFTA era cooperation between Mexico and the other two North American states began to erode.

In a reversal of previous administrations who attempted to present a reformed face to US imperialism in Latin America, During Trump’s last administration he began to openly claim the Monroe Doctrine while initiating a campaign to push China out of Latin America. The recent renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America is only an attestment to that ambition. In the last decade China has become the main trading partner of most South American countries. Despite this, attempts to keep China out of the region have been longstanding. Over half of the countries that still recognize the ROC and thus remain trade partners with the U.S. and Taiwan instead of PRC are located in Latin America. The return of the vengeful eye of U.S. imperialism to Latin America also has the focus of curtailing developing regional imperialist blocks such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) founded by Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela to include many Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Nicaragua and others.

Today’s threats of military conquests targeting yesterday’s allies are all part of a new global divide being carved up by the preeminent imperialist powers. As the rising capitalisms in the East begin to put to rest any hope of the United States permanently preserving its status as the sole hegemonic imperialism, the old “Washington Consensus” has disappeared. The old faction of “neoliberal” and “neoconsevative” within the bourgeoisie Parties, received it’s final kick in the ass with the defeat of Kamala Harris in 2024. The commercial policies of a global “free market”, acceptable when the U.S. was the hegemonic power, are now blown away amidst the expanding trade wars. The apparent “multilateralism” between the U.S. & its allies is replaced with a “multi-polar” world of competing rivals and subject States. The hypocritical “international liberal”, “rules based order” which served as justification for countless wars since the end of the last great imperialist conflict, is replaced with an open & shameless embrace of a return to the Monroe Doctrine. The theater of high minded bourgeois legality, dropped for the simple assertion of “might as right” to justify territorial conquests. All the once great “liberal democracies” are falling one by one. As regional capitals across the world become imperialist competitors and the looming over production crisis afflict almost all sectors, the impending financial catastrophe which will set the stage for the complete destruction of the bourgeois world order becomes increasingly unavoidable.

The current economic and existential crisis facing the American bourgeois as a result of the overproduction crisis, the resulting exploding national debts, it’s declining competitiveness in it’s automobile, tech and manufacturing sectors, combined with it’s newfound rise as a major petroleum exporter, amid the inevitable growing concentration of the productive forces into a smaller and smaller number of large conglomerates, these representatives of the big bourgeoisie have asserted their dominance at the head of the pack of wolves and today they must execute a rapid readjustment to many of it’s states long established foreign policies and legal norms to “save America” which really means preserving the ability of their national capital to continue to accumulate. It is the economic laws of capital accumulation which ultimate shape and determine the changing sands of political and social forms. At this stage of world imperialism fascism, democracies rude counterpart becomes inevitable.

Today the exploding contradictions in capital have pushed the two bourgeois parties into an increasingly sectarian struggle which paralyzes the legislature. As big capital consolidates around the Republican Party, the old neoconservatives Republicans increasingly jump ship to the Democratic camp or capitulate. As the petit-bourgeois flood into the Democrats enflamed from the bold moves of the big-bougeosis to push them aside, the social democratic wing takes lead in performing the role of opposition; however, to continue to accumulate big capital’s needs must be put above all others and the rest of the bourgeois must fall in line or be forcefully subordinated. To break through the legislative stalemate, the old government system created to separate and balance powers between competing interests must be tossed aside and a no-longer veiled dictatorship of capital established. Yet as our Party demonstrated in our 1922 Report on Fascism written upon its rise in Italy, it is only a passing form of bourgeois democracy itself, completely capitalist and completely subject to the same laws of capitalist crisis, which will eventually gives rise to the return of the world wide communist movement culminating in the end of the bourgeois phase of history at the hands of the dictatorship of the proletariate led it’s international communist Party.

As capitalism continues its violent march towards continuous expansion- wetting the Earth with the blood, sweat, and tears of the laboring masses- workers of the world are forcibly shoved en masse to the borders of foreign nations in search of reprieve. 120 Million people have been displaced from their homes in recent years, due to violent conflicts and crises that inevitably arise from capitalism- whether it be from internal market crisis or imperialist pressure; with little to no other choice they find themselves uprooted and on the path towards the developed countries in the dominant imperial blocs where they face new problems.

Companies like CoreCivic (formally known as Corrections Corporation of America) and GEO Group, the largest for-profit prison operators and overseers of many ICE detention centers, lobby millions towards the Republican Party through various PACs in a bid to expand their enterprises; GEO donated $500,000 dollars to the “Make America Great Again” super PAC continuing their tradition of using the bourgeois immigration and crime policies to continuously fill their forced labor centers to generate profit: GEO group made $2.41 Billion in total revenue in 2023 while CCA made $1.9 Billion.

What the GEO group has referred to as “voluntary work programs” are nothing short of slave labor, where detained immigrants are forced into doing work under the threat of the withholding of basic needs and facing harsh punishment like solitary confinement should they decline. The National Labor Relations Board recently accused GEO Group of retaliating against workers for resisting this compulsory labor, finding that detainees were forcibly removed or isolated in solitary confinement for organizing hunger strikes and slowdowns in protest of their horrible wages and conditions. GEO says that because the programs are “voluntary”, the workers cannot be considered “employees” and therefore they are incapable of being charged with committing labor violations. They claim the workers cannot “strike” if they are not “legally” workers.

Lawsuits have been filed against GEO Group for subverting the minimum wage laws and paying these workers $1 a day for cleaning, sanitizing, repairing, and working the very detention centers they are held in. However, the 4th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with GEO’s business practice, saying that because the laborers have all their “basic needs met”, they are not protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act’s Minimum Wage mandate; they do not participate in “the free labor market”.

The lucrative use of forced labor in the immigration detention industry and the repression by militarized ICE thugs, who terrorize and round up a fresh steady supply of immigrants to exploit at the detention centers, call to mind the path taken by the enterprising Southern slavocracy of the past.

After the Civil War, the black slave was“free” to now sell their labor-power instead of having it taken once and for all by the slave owner; the bourgeois needed to justify a return of the old social relation that was once so profitable to him. In the belly of the Reconstruction grew the Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws that prolonged the indentured servitude of the new black proletariat by finding ways to criminalize their freed existence, reincorporating them back into the private prison system that rescued slavery for the bourgeoisie in the effort to rebuild the productive forces in the South coming out of the war.

Today, over 800,000 prisoners are forced to work in American prisons, with black Americans being disproportionately incarcerated as a continuation of this legacy of slavery. Conditions, like those of the immigrant detainees, are miserable. A majority of American prisoners say they can’t afford basic needs with the penny-wages they are given (if they are given) and fear for their safety while being forced to work with inadequate job training.

The bourgeois augury and vitriol that paint migrant workers as being harbingers of crime become the new political justification for throwing massive swaths of capital into private prisons, immigration detention centers, and law enforcement sectors. Every year, the federal government awards private companies billions of dollars to invent newer and more depraved weapons of border repression and control. Many of these companies are the regular go-tos for US military weapon contracts: like Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, etc. Since 1990, the amount of government funding spent on arming and fortifying the southern border has increased nearly 20 times over- from $400 million to $7.3 Billion.

The United States is the largest weapons dealer in the world by a colossal margin, accounting for 40% of all weapon sales between 2019 and 2023, and the amount of capital concentrated in these top private weapon manufacturers is mostly thanks to the deep pockets of the US government’s military budget in funding their wars, but the “immigration problem” has also become an advantageous way to expand a local market for what is typically reserved as an export of American imperialism. Private defense contractors also lobby heavily to the capitalist parties – favoring, this time, the Republicans – in a bid to get more contracts and grow their business, not too dissimilar to the private detention centers, revealing the symbiotic relationship between the capitalist parties and their base.

A common alarm raised by the bourgeoisie is that “criminals are pouring over the border” even though the rate of violent crime by foreign-born workers is less than half that of native-born citizens. A similar excuse is given for the increase in the militarization of the local police forces to combat the rising “violent crime” in inner cities, despite crime rates steadily declining since the 1990s. Police spending – both State and Federal – has steadily increased by over 187% since 1971. In both instances, the ultimate goal is to be able to simultaneously strengthen the internal police forces to repress the workers, throwing them into the forced-labor circuit, while also funneling money into the pockets of the bourgeoisie that have some stake in these detention industries.

“Fentanyl and opioid mules” carrying drugs over the border are frequently pointed to as proof of the credible link between immigration and crime, but it’s been well known that illegal drugs mostly enter through legal points of entry and sometimes even with the assistance of the border agents themselves.

It should also be noted, as we covered in TICP 61, how the amnesic bourgeoisie conveniently forget their own hand in the making of the opioid markets and rise of the powerful drug cartels and how those factors are themselves causes of displacement.

After an intense campaign by private American pharmaceutical companies like Perdue Pharma to create a mass of addicted OxyContin consumers and the subsequent dampening of the legal supply in response to the impact of the first wave of the opioid crisis, the Mexican cartels were able to build up their productive forces and pick up where the Sacklers left off, supplying cheap heroin to the booming American demand for opiates. In the struggle for a monopoly in the illicit drug trade, the cartels have unleashed immense levels of violence and economic coercion onto the Mexican proletariat causing many to flee in search for safety and better economic conditions. Migrations from regions in Mexico with the highest rates of violent crime were 15 times higher than regions with lower rates of crime, reflecting the urgency of these workers to escape their conditions.

These desperate fleeing workers who are forced to leave everything behind in search to offload the one commodity they are compelled to sell, their labor power, are then forced instead to give it for free in the cruel form of slave labor, shipped away when they aren’t immediately useful for the bourgeoisie’s labor market, or are left to the disposal of the increasing internal private military apparatus.

Modern immigration policy in the Americas has its origins in the 1942 Bracero Program, which were a series of agreements made between the aspiring Mexican bourgeoisie, and the now dominating American bourgeoisie that was emerging out of the war economy created to participate in the second great imperialist war. An expansion in the American agricultural and railroad industries and the prevailing “labor shortage” caused by the mass of American proletarians being sent to die in the imperialist war, created a high demand for cheap labor to be exploited, and the Mexican bourgeoisie was glad to oblige under the condition that the US increased border militarization in order to control the amount of workers exiting Mexico, believing that a trained Mexican workforce would return home to help boost the Mexican national economy and keeping them from losing their own labor reserve.

The Bracero Program was loose in its direction and had extreme shifts in how it was implemented and controlled- a few years of relaxed control, then sudden crack downs and “repatriations” of “illegal” workers back to Mexico. The Mexican proletariat was tossed between the two nations, always in economic precarity, and subjected to the favorability of the labor market and the fickle, anarchistic demands of the bourgeoisie. Many Braceros, as they were called, began to defensively organize themselves to strike against their abuses on the job site and the low wages they were being paid instead of what the program promised. The Braceros even organized strikes in solidarity with Japanese- Americans working in labor programs while being held in concentration camps during the war with Japan in a show of international solidarity among mutually oppressed proletarians.

The Mexican government conditionally did not want to extend the labor-exchange program to the state of Texas due to various contract violations and discriminations towards Mexican workers, but the Texan growers continued their practice of hiring “illegal” workers and violating numerous mandates such as as the requirement to provide workers’ transportation costs from and to Mexico, fair and lawful wages, housing, and health services.

This eventually pushed Mexico to halt their export of workers into the US. In 1951, the US Government on behalf of the powerful bourgeois growers, in turn allowed thousands of illegal immigrants to cross into the country and distributed them to various farms as an act of retaliation, violating immigration laws and diplomatic agreements with Mexico.

The relations between the Mexican and American bourgeoisies with the Bracero Program finally completely fell apart; it wasn’t long until the embedded contradictions from the anarchistic importing of cheap labor by the bourgeois powers began to intensify.

The beaten and traumatized American proletariat that had survived the second great imperialist war had now been home for long enough to really feel the pains of being in the reserve labor army. Due to the weakened state of the international proletariat from the decades of counter-revolution, the most advanced class-conscious portions of the American proletariat could not intervene in the growing nationalist resentment towards the influx of undocumented laborers in America, which had increased by 6000% between 1944 and 1954.

In 1952, the US decidedly launched a large scale military-style deportation operation with the racist name “Operation Wetback”, to forcibly capture and release immigrant workers deep into Mexico in an effort to reverse the decades of importing cheap labor and to reorganize their labor markets to pull from the national labor reserve instead of from Mexico.

The labor of the Mexican workers became superfluous to the bourgeoisie once their imperialist adventure in the second world war came to an end and the Mexican proletariat was left to permanently hang in the balance between the looming threat of deportation and the absolute need to work, even if that meant hyper-exploitation. On the topic of immigration, our party wrote,

“But the worker can also seek work in the twilight world of the ‘illegal immigrant’ and try and avoid the lengthy, soul-destroying and often hopeless attempts at obtaining citizenship in the "host country"...

Such measures result in a super-exploited section of the proletariat that lives out an illegal existence receiving minuscule wages and under constant threat of being shopped to the authorities, (the domestic servants kept as virtual slaves in the houses of the wealthy in Britain is a well-known example); this category of workers avoid claiming housing or welfare help, avoids application forms which ask for searching details and will hardly ever become unionized.”(Race and Class. Accompanying article to Auschwitz, the Big Alibi.)

Although the Republican Party today platforms a staunch anti-immigration position and a tough-on-crime policy, both capitalist parties equally extend their share of brutality on the border and utilize the militarized immigration apparatus for deportations. Under the Biden administration, the ICE detention centers continued their expansion to a considerable degree: 90.8% of immigrants currently detained are held in a private detention center compared to 81% under Trump’s previous term.

Further, despite vigorous campaigning against migrant work and the immigrant workers “stealing American jobs” rhetoric, the bourgeoisie under Trump’s leadership has taken a publicly friendly stance on H1B Visas for “highly skilled labor”, showing the bourgeoisie’s desire to further expand the quality and range of labor that can be imported at a lower price and thusly exploited, contradicting his ostensible concerns for “national security” and defense of “American labor”. When this labor stops being “good for business”, then deportation will again become the natural solution. The bourgeoisie headed by the Obama administration deported 2.9 Million people in his first term following the economic crisis of the late 2010s, which is twice the number of deportations that happened under Trump in his first term, demonstrating the ultimate submission of the bourgeois’ handling of the immigrant question to the demands of capital and not to the personal ideological whims of the individual bourgeois.

So it is really no surprise that the private immigration, military, and prison industries naturally intersect in interests, use of weaponry, and tactics, as they are all merely varying expressions of bourgeois oppression towards various sections of the international proletariat; and their ability to turn this oppression of workers into markets in themselves reflects the true essence of the state as the organizing repressive body of the ruling capitalist class and their united motivation of increasing their respective share in the total social capital while delaying the coming of power of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In 2023, it was reported that immigrant labor accounted for 18.6% of the labor force and focused mostly in service, construction, material moving, and transportation industries. The economic gains from the hyper-exploited immigrant labor has become undeniable; immigrant labor is predicted to add $7 Trillion over the next ten years to the national economy. It is increasingly evident that there is a portion of immigrant labor currently employed that is necessary for the simple reproduction of the national economy.

The current “labor shortage” is reminiscent of the economic conditions leading to the creation of the Bracero Program and the bourgeois desire to prey on the precarity of “illegal” labor to wield their waiting productive forces. The cheaper labor-power employed by immigrant labor satisfies the bourgeoisie’s need for the variable capital needed for wages to constantly decrease in their operations in order to rescue his falling rate of profit, while simultaneously providing a constant mass of workers able to wield the expanding productive forces that otherwise would sit idle and depreciate in value- making the hyper-exploited labor force a necessary element under current market conditions. Many industries, from nursing, construction, and agriculture, would actually face catastrophic shortages without immigrant labor. In certain states like California and Texas, immigrant workers made up over 40% of the construction force.

Among the laboring adult immigrants is also the use of undocumented child labor in factories, construction, and numerous other physically intensive industries, where many of these children and adolescents are subjected to horrifying injuries and are routinely killed. It is estimated that there are 200,000 immigrant children currently employed in “extremely dangerous and hazardous” workplaces” in the US like construction roofing; in one recent incident, a 15 year old boy on his first day on the job fell 50 feet and eventually died from his injuries, which only resulted in a fine to the company that illegally employed him.

The children work up to 12 hour shifts, sometimes overnight, receiving pitiful wages under the table so that they can pay off family expenses and then attend school during the day. They constitute yet another more depraved fraction of the hyper-exploited immigrant labor force employed in America and reminds us why Marx once claimed that the complete abolition of child labor under capitalism was simply a “pious wish”.

Immigrant workers are by and large paid even more miserable wages than the American proletariat, with immigrant laborers on average pulling 12% less in wages than native-born workers (drastically lower in certain industries). Not to mention the portion of their wages that are taken out in taxes towards benefits that they are ineligible for, which the bourgeois state happily appropriates. In 2022, it was reported that $96.7 Billion was paid in taxes by undocumented immigrants in the US.

Even compared to the meager percentage (11.2%) of American workers that are in unions, undocumented workers are even less likely to be unionized compared to native- born workers due to their natural aversion to being “discovered” by the state, as well as being essentially held hostage by their employer that could threaten to notify ICE at a moment’s notice. However, immigrant laborers have organized before and in equally distressing circumstances.

When the Bracero Program had finally come to a complete end in 1964, the United Farm Workers (UFW) union emerged, out of a series of strikes by Mexican-American and Filipino farm workers in 1965 for higher wages and formally associated with the AFL the following year. From the beginning, the UFW was faced by threats from both the bosses and the business unionism of unions like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) who, instead of standing in solidarity with the UFW workers, tried to out-contract them with the growers.

In the era of the infamous “Operation Wetback” ushered in under Eisenhower in the 50s, the Teamsters had adopted racist slogans and an anti-immigrant position in a supposed “defense” of American labor and national interest. A Teamster article title of the time read “Over 100 Communists A Day Invade U.S By Wetback Route”, reflecting the ultra-conservative and McCarthyist attitude of the union leadership under then IBT General President Dave Beck.

In addition to business union attacks, the UFW also had to deal with the “illegal” immigrants that were shipped in as strikebreakers by the bosses. Understanding that these workers were also being exploited and not their enemy, the UFW was able to organize with the strikebreakers to join in their strikes for better wages. Ultimately, the farm workers were able to get a 40% increase in pay with their contracts from the strikes.

The UFW today is trying to revitalize its efforts in organizing since its decline in membership in the 80s, but farm workers are not federally protected by the FLSA and therefore are left to the mercy of state law for bargaining rights. Workers will need to organize beyond the scope of legality, not bowing to the “rules” set by the capitalists who “legally” exploit and abuse them daily. 42% of farm workers are undocumented workers, so they will need the support of a strong militant class union and solidarity from native-born workers to defeat the bosses.

Early labor organizations rooted along class union principals, like the Industrial Workers of the World, have a long history of organizing immigrant workers in various industries. Despite doubts and abandonment from the conservative AFL unions, the IWW proved that immigrant workers could in fact organize themselves in a combative way and hold large successful strikes like the 25,000 textile worker Bread and Roses Strike of 1912 which united workers of over 50 different nationalities and won their collective demands for better wages.

One Proletariat

It is not simply a factor of “policy” or a “conflict of ideas” between the bourgeois parties that bring starving workers to national borders: it is the inevitable result of imperialism. The bourgeois politicians spin the desperation of our international class comrades into fictitious threats of imported crime, the drug trade, and the diminishing of our wages. All of which are conditioned, not on the moral degeneracy of a minority of migrants, but on the prevailing circumstances of the international and national markets and the rat-king of capitalist enterprises that oppress the proletariat abroad.

The miserable conditions for immigrant workers in the US have only been barely touched on above but their struggle represents the heart of the international proletariat. It is with the most exploited workers that we see in the clearest way, the violent antagonism that exists between the two warring classes and reaffirms the need for communism to erase the borders of the national ruling classes to protect the working masses. These very borders that keep workers from freely moving and fraternizing amongst ourselves will again become the frontlines where proletariats are slaughtered to defend in imperialist wars; it is why in the manifesto of our party we promptly declare: “Working men have no country”.

The bourgeoisie will continue to attempt to turn workers against workers and propagate fantastic stories to agitate the petty bourgeoisie, as well as the reactionary workers who have yet to identify with the international proletariat movement, against the proletariat, but rest assured they cannot deliver on their promises of “solving” the mass immigration crisis. As desperation increases for the bourgeoisie to reverse the falling rate of profit, the heightening of the contradictions inherent in capitalism will also intensify, producing further crisis and war and more workers will consequently be displaced globally.

Workers! – the only way forward is to join the international proletariat and continue building towards the Class Union. Immigrant workers face a tremendous struggle and will need to organize beyond the narrow field of “legality” that the business union leaders ultimately must comply with as the peacekeepers for the bourgeoisie.

It will require the strength and combativity of the rank and file workers to join together and stand in solidarity with our working class comrades and not only return to the strikes of yesterday but to build towards the great general strikes of tomorrow.

In an 1867 address written by an appointed committee of the First International Workingmen’s Association for an upcoming Congress in Lausanne, they highlighted the practical need to elevate the independent national struggle of workers into an international struggle to combat the bourgeois tactics of either exporting industry out to foreign workers to be exploited, or by importing cheap labor to exploit domestically, underlining how internationalism is required for the success of the movement:

“...in order to oppose their workers, the employers either bring in workers from abroad or else transfer manufacture to countries where there is a cheap labour force. Given this state of affairs, if the working class wishes to continue its struggle with some chance of success, the national organisations must become international”.

The Communist Party already holds the international program for our liberation, and in combination with our strength across all nations, we shall defeat the capitalists and eliminate their invisible lines of bourgeois influence and proletarian massacres.

In 2023, State Farm Insurance warned “Californians to stop living and building in high wildfire-risk zones”. With the bourgeoisie at the helm, we are heading towards a future where climate crises are increasingly commonplace. That statement from State Farm perfectly encapsulates the bourgeoisie’s attitude towards climate change: “please ignore how our mode of production is destroying the planet and instead focus on what you as an individual can do to avoid the coming climate crisis.”

The Human Cost

The 2025 Southern California wildfires wreaked havoc across the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Over 15,000 structures were destroyed, 28 lives were tragically lost, and more than 200,000 residents were forced to evacuate their homes. Climate scientists are most likely correct in their evaluations of the direct mechanical cause of the fires. Those being extended drought, high temperatures, cuts in funding for the Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACFD), the Santa Ynez Reservoir being empty for repairs, and irregularly high Santa Ana Winds. These conditions combined to create this human tragedy.

As wildfire survivors begin the daunting task of rebuilding, many homeowners turn to their fire insurance policies. But the very foundation of these policies is now threatened by the escalating climate crisis.

According to an investigation into homeowners’ insurance by the senate, “No matter how the data is analyzed, the bottom line is unequivocal: across the United States, there is a clear correlation between non-renewal rate and climate risk”. Non-renewal is when an insurance company voluntarily drops a policyholder. What this means is that as the bourgeoisie’s relentless plunder of the Earth’s people and resources is causing the climate to degrade, the risk of climate related disasters is growing so high that the economic viability of these insurance policies is coming into question.

This process was occurring in the lead-up to the 2025 LA Wildfires, it was reported that in May of 2024 State Farm cancelled policies for 74,000 homes in a single month, 2,000 of which were located in LA neighborhoods hit by the fire, and that “it wouldn’t issue new home policies in the state.” This process isn’t exclusive to State Farm, as in 2023 insurance companies dropped 1.72% of Californian homeowners.

In 1988, California passed Proposition 103, which instituted price controls for insurance premiums in CA, including for fire insurance. By all accounts Prop. 103 has been effective at keeping the premiums low, for example premiums in Pacific Palisades were lower than 97% of ZIP Codes in the US.

California also instituted the California Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR Plan) in 1968, which guarantees access to fire insurance for homeowners who cannot find policies on the market. According to a 2020 investigation statewide, 2.5% of homes have FAIR Plan policies, while in high fire risk areas that rate increases to 20.4%. During the period from 2020 to 2024 total FAIR Plan premiums for commercial properties rose by almost 500% and residential properties by 200%.

Before this year’s wildfires CA’s FAIR Plan was already being described as a ‘ticking time bomb’. In 2024 the President of CA’s FAIR Plan stated that “We are one event away from a large assessment”. This reflects a general breakdown in the business model behind fire insurance. A VP at an insurance company describes how "Insurers need randomness, If it’s always the same folks who are targeted, you need to charge them an astronomical premium”.

The bourgeoisie’s reckless destruction of the environment has transformed climate crises from being inconsistent to being regular. It is to be seen whether these policies California has put in place to moderate the anarchy of capitalist production will be capable of weathering these contradictions.

While insurance companies acknowledge the economic realities of the climate crisis by raising fire insurance premiums, they simultaneously have a history of funding organizations that deny its existence. Until 2012 State Farm was the largest individual contributor to the Heartland Institute, an organization notorious for its spreading of climate change denial. They only stopped funding the institute, not because they had a change of heart but instead because the institute released a tone-deaf billboard that year with a picture of the Unabomber saying: “I still believe in global warming, do you?”

One third of the firefighters involved in the 2025 CA Wildfires were prisoner volunteers who earned a paltry daily sum of $5.80 to $10.24. They also earned credits towards their sentences and ‘valuable career training’ (Learning to accept dangerous work, under poor conditions, for terrible pay is apparently valuable training for surviving as a proletarian). This is overseen by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Conservation (Fire) Camps Program (CDCR). In 2024 California voters rejected Proposition 6 which would have outlawed forced prison labor and the CDCR prison firefighters’ program.

A 2019 investigation revealed that California prisons “have, on average, three times the murder rate of the country overall and twice the rate of all American prisons”. As Matthew Han, who spent nine years in CDCR Prisons, explained, “the conditions in California prisons are so terrible that fighting wildfires is a rational choice. It is probably the safest choice as well”. Given these appalling conditions, it’s clear that participation in the CDCR’s Fire Camps Program isn’t voluntary.

California’s Proposition 6 was a commendable effort to locally abolish the exception within the 13th Amendment that permits slavery for incarcerated individuals. A National Institute of Justice study revealed a 44% recidivism rate within three years of release, climbing to roughly 83% after nine years. This reflects the chronic inability of American capitalism to re-proletarianize the lumpen. So long as prisoners constitute a readily available and exploitable labor pool, there remains a financial incentive to maintain their status as an exploited underclass. This weakens the fighting capacity of the proletariat as a whole and its ability to organize effective resistance.

The alienation and poverty that proletarians must live through is what drives them to crime in the first place. Incarcerated proletarians who fight California’s yearly wildfires are twice damned by bourgeoisie domination. First, the conditions of their lives have driven them to become lumpen, robbing them of the scarce dignity afforded to proletarians. Then, while incarcerated and isolated, they are compelled to ‘voluntarily’ fight the fires literally caused by capitalism’s acceleration of ecological collapse.

The question at hand is whether there is any revolutionary potential within the environmentally minded left. What will break first, the planet or the Green’s slavish belief in reform? The 1.6°C threshold was surpassed in 2025. Will the inevitable failure of the Paris Agreement’s 2°C target finally jolt reformists from their complacency? Or must millions perish from climate-driven famine and escalating climate disasters before their illusions are shattered? How far will the avarice of commodity production have to sink humanity before the Green’s realize reform has failed, and that it is only through the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie that the work to save the planet can even begin.

On a cold December morning, outside a Midtown Manhattan investor conference, the routine order of corporate America was shattered by the crack of gunfire. Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, had stepped through the revolving doors into the icy air, only to be met by a hooded assassin who ended his life in an instant. Within hours, grainy CCTV footage flooded news networks, capturing the cloaked figure mounting a rented city bike and vanishing into the city’s endless sprawl.

A groundswell of public sympathy for the assassin followed, revealing a profound discontent with a system that has made healthcare an instrument of capitalist accumulation. The industry, built on the commodification of human suffering, profits from the very illnesses it exacerbates, leaving millions in financial ruin or premature death. In a nation where medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy and the lack of health insurance claims tens of thousands of lives each year, the act was seen by many not as senseless violence but as an explosive expression of the rage that simmers beneath the surface of a society that prioritizes profit over survival.

The assassination cast sudden and intense scrutiny on the healthcare behemoth and the system it epitomizes: a system designed to extract capital from human suffering. UnitedHealthcare, the fourth-largest company in the United States, oversees the healthcare of millions from birth to death, profiting at every stage. Recent revelations exposed the company’s approval of AI systems designed explicitly to deny claims, overriding the judgments of doctors and leaving patients without critical care. One such system, with an error rate as high as 90%, was used to reject treatments for elderly patients, decisions that often resulted in untimely deaths. The capitalist system weaponizes technological advancements to extract profit, turning innovations into instruments of oppression rather than liberation. Far from advancing society, this use of AI reveals how technology under capitalism advances only the interests of capital, deepening the exploitation of the most vulnerable and reducing life to cold calculations of profit and loss.

The assassination emerged from a society steeped in violence. In America, where mass shootings and the daily erosion of social well-being have become routine, the outrage of the ruling class over this singular act reveals their deep hypocrisy. The same bourgeoisie that profits from a healthcare system designed to deny care and generate suffering now recoils in fear when violence is directed at them. Far from a random incident, this moment lays bare the crumbling foundation of a capitalist system where privatization, division, and militarization are deliberately used to fracture the proletariat – but are now faltering in the face of growing discontent.

In their panicked response, the bourgeoisie and their propagandists, who at first moralized that "murder is unacceptable under any circumstances", now expose their glaring hypocrisy by seeking the death penalty in court against the alleged assassin, wielding the very violence they claim to condemn as a tool of retribution. This is because the ruling class frames upward violence as a threat to civilization, while systemic violence against workers is normalized as necessary for economic order. The bourgeoisie cloaks their defense of property and privilege in moral outrage, masking their indifference to systemic suffering.

After World War II, the Allied powers acted decisively to suppress class antagonisms and prevent revolutionary upheaval. The construction of welfare states, including universal healthcare and social programs, was not an act of altruism but a calculated strategy to pacify the proletariat and stabilize societies on the brink of unrest. These measures sought to integrate the European working class into the mechanisms of capitalist management, as unions gradually abandoned their revolutionary charge to collaborate with the state. Once instruments of class struggle, workers’ organizations were tamed and repurposed as tools of social peace, ensuring that economic demands were addressed only within the confines of capitalist relations. In this way, proletarian struggles were co-opted into reforms designed to secure and perpetuate the existing order.

Across the Atlantic, however, the United States charted a different course. Unlike Europe, America, as the center of the primary global imperialist power where over half of the world’s productive power was centered, could rely primarily on its surplus to create a large labor aristocracy plumping up the American middle class with high paying jobs as a fruit of its post-war ascendancy. Hence, in the USA it was never needed to set up the European and USSR style medical coverage and instead other methods, such as the ones listed earlier were used to ensure labor peace, while forcing workers to be tied to their jobs in order to be able to have any kind of medical coverage, bypassing the system of taxation that would have otherwise been required to finance medicine.

The United States did also have its own welfare model in the face of the FDR “New Deal” and LBJ’s welfare and housing programs, which play the role of increasing labor peace but the American capitalist class did not aim to achieve full medical programs "Medicare for All" is one contemporary proposed reform legislation that is advertised as being able to create a government-run health plan covering everyone for doctor visits, hospitals, prescriptions, dental, and more, with no extra bills – paid through taxes, not private insurance, ensuring care for all without denials or networks. Any hope that the left of capital has to be able to achieve such a reform through programs such as Medicare for All are more than doomed in a period of declining profit rates as well which ensures the economic futility of the proposals of the capitalist left.

Another limited expansion of a medical welfare program was the Affordable Care Act(ACA), also known as “Obamacare”.. Since the passage of this bill the number of uninsured has decreased but, of the ones on Obamacare, 18% of claims were still denied and some of the plans based on ACA denied up to 80% of claims. At the same time, since the introduction of ACA a decade ago insurers, be they as a part of the program or not, have amassed $371 billion in profits, with UnitedHealth Group alone claiming 40% of those profit numbers and denying nearly one-third of claims, which is the highest denial rate for that industry. Revenues have soared since the number of uninsured has decreased as a result of tax funded ACA subsidies, mandates, and consolidation but also by increased prices for premiums, which have surged 52% since 2014, hitting $26,000 annually for working and middle class families, while CEO pay for the top insurers reached $75 million in 2023.

As a part of the trend of denying coverage in more cases, health insurers like UnitedHealthcare and Humana have been using AI tools such as nH Predict, to deny claims for elderly patients, which are reported to make errors often. With or without these high error rates, their aim is, amongst other things, to analyze patient data to predict necessary care durations, which are one of the many ways in which care can be denied, if the patient requires time to heal, for example, which can lead to premature termination of coverage and result in medical debt for patients or worse can result in a procedure not being done and even loss of life.

The U.S. private healthcare system capitalizes on human suffering as another opportunity for profit by performing what is essentially an extortion racket for procedures that can be denied based on technicalities while also, at the same time, allowing for pharmaceutical companies and “care providers” to jack up prices on important and sometimes life-saving procedures and medicines, causing many workers to go without, accumulate debt, not seek out care or suffer greater mortality. Hospitals, insurance corporations, and pharmaceutical giants operate as monopolistic gatekeepers, extracting wealth from workers while denying them care any time they can according to their own bureaucratic rules. Employer-tied health benefits further reinforce dependency, tethering survival to labor and increasing anxiety around organizing to fight the boss. Health benefits become tools of worker control, incentivizing dependence on employers and discouraging risk taking behavior through organizing, lest coverage be lost.

The unwillingness and inability of both wings of capital to successfully deal with the medical question is palpable and with this in the background Luigi Mangione’s actions are being denounced by the bourgeois press as despicable, an effort to render him contemptible in the eyes of the public. The denunciation occurs alongside an implicit acknowledgment of his widespread popularity, evidenced by social media metrics such as likes and upvotes, which showed his immense popularity amongst the masses of social media platform users, a majority of which are workers.

Luigi Mangione comes from a family of fairly wealthy business owners, a member of the petit-bourgeoisie who, through his own experience of being denied coverage chose to take upon himself an act of terror against the figurehead of one of the most extortionate of the businesses within the insurance racket. His denial of coverage is what makes him relatable despite his wealth and privilege, because his experience is one that he shares with many working and middle class people, who have either experienced this directly or seen it second hand. This relatability combined with the fact that capitalist “justice” system is so incapable of bringing justice to those suffering from preventable medical calamities that it leads to such extremist direct action makes him a sympathetic figure and the bourgeois press and class out of touch and out of step with reality by comparison. Capitalist “justice” is not capable of dealing with the far greater crime of “social murder” as Engels called it, and few can find much fault with Mangione’s actions despite the formality of their criminality.

The media spectacle surrounding his trial transforms the event into an absurd display, with excessive police presence parading the accused to and from the courthouse more as a theatrical warning to others than as a measured application of “justice” in the bourgeois sense. In the face of the impotency and conscious maneuvering of both the capitalist left and right to deal with this issue the unconscious and semi-conscious workers are left to think of what other options are on the table since bourgeois rule fails them.

If excruciating back pain and claim denials are capable of driving an otherwise healthy and even wealthy man to commit terrorism against a leader of capital then it stands to reason that it can also drive a less fortunate and less individualist and fatalist and more class conscious individual to organize for the proletarian revolution with the International Communist Party, through propaganda work, direct action in transmitting its tactics and doctrine through the transmission belt of militant union struggle, etc as a prelude to the overthrow of that same decrepit capitalist system that produced the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. The time will also come when the next Red Terror is necessary for the suppression of the counter-revolution, though it is too soon to speak of this at this stage.

While the capitalist judicial system will likely attempt to make an example of someone like him, we must be clear that such desperate and tragic individualist acts are little more than another expression of the suffering at the hands of the prevailing social crisis but in of themselves do little to change the balance of power, instead it distracts the masses from the collective and concerted action necessary to coerce our enormous foe Capital, of which it’s individual servants are always replaceable cogs doing it’s bidding.

Comrade Lenin wrote on this matter in his 1902 paper “Revolutionary Adventurism”, as did comrade Trotsky in 1920 in "Terrorism and Communism".. Lenin criticized the Socialist-Revolutionaries’ idea of "excitative terrorism", which relies on isolated acts of violence by individuals to inspire mass struggle because such acts only create short-lived sensations, leading to apathy and passive reliance on future "heroes". The SR was a poorly organized and theoretically weak mostly petit-bourgeoisie party that, amongst other things, promoted excitatory terrorist acts, which they considered to be "big work", and prioritized it over trade union work, mass organizing demonstrations, which they dismissed as "petty work". Lenin correctly indicated this is a form of political adventurism born from a lack of firm principles.

Trotsky, in turn, saw individualist terrorism as isolated and historically purposeless and the Red Terror as a powerful systematic tool of the ascending victorious proletariat to consolidate power, eliminate the remaining bourgeois elements of resistance, accelerating their demise effectively versus the aimless random acts of violence or the coordinated violence of the Tsar and whites, a class violence of a class which is falling out of favor.

CEO’s are easy to replace but the system that births them cannot be replaced by individual acts of terror. Only a genuine proletarian uprising leading to revolutionary war with the ruling capitalist class, and on an international scale (involving multiple of the largest most developed capitalist nations) at that, will be able to finally put this mode of production and broken system to an end. Individual acts of terror of this ilk may catch the imagination of the working class for a few days or weeks but they will never destroy capitalism, so wasting our energies on promoting this type of propaganda without clarifying exactly where and how it falls short is not something we will ever allow ourselves to engage in.

The anger that the working and even middle classes feel at the inadequacies of the healthcare system are not to be ignored but we should also differentiate the motivations of each of these social strata. The working class finds itself in the position of having to struggle at the workplace to even gain paid benefits or gain enough pay to purchase this insurance at the market rates for their income level. Labor aristocrats and small business owners find themselves paying ever higher prices for insurance that covers ever less and are likely the ones that will end up paying the taxes, should a “for all” version of healthcare ever pass. In one case, workers find themselves fighting ever harder to even get the minimum, while in the other, the middle classes find themselves being proletarianized and getting worse coverage with time.

We recommend workers, who are affected by these conditions to organize at their workplaces in existing unions while forming militant caucuses within them, demanding large monetary increases in pay. These combative bodies are the “transmission belt” of the party, so there will of course be intermingling between militant unionists those who are in and out of the party as this is an important part of achieving the transmission of the doctrine from the party to the class.

In a country like the United States, with the extortionate pricing for medication and basic services, the only way to get quality healthcare is to have enough money to cover the gaps of the already overly expensive insurance, so demanding such pay increases is partially also a a demand for access to healthcare and one that can be met immediately, while also intensifying the class struggle and preparing the ground for further militancy: class consciousness and the potential for ever stronger organization. It is indeed only one tactic, part of a larger strategy of class unionism that our party promotes and fights for as a vibrant militant alternative to lone wolf acts of supposedly anti-capitalist terror, and one strategy that will bear much more frightful fruits for the oppressed in the future.

Recently we have been witnessing street protests against femicides in many countries. We know that these movements are disconnected from materialist analysis, that they are under the yoke of capital and therefore cannot bring a meaningful solution to this problem, which today, as throughout their history, claims the lives of almost 90,000 women every year. Although our stance as a party on this issue is "The emancipation of women is possible only with the emancipation of the working class!", we also underline that in order to end the deaths of working women who have lost their lives in femicides, all workers, regardless of gender, must struggle together at all stages of eliminating patriarchy, from today to communism. The struggle against femicides and against the oppression of working women under capital in general is therefore an irreplaceable part of the movement.

In the first place, it is necessary to analyze the material foundations of the problem and to contribute to the transformation of women into vanguard workers in areas of struggle, from education to social solidarity organizations to emergency hotlines by improving the disadvantaged social conditions of women in the unions.

Patriarchal men cannot make a revolution on their own. The world revolution is a stage that we as humanity can reach by transforming workers of all races and genders in struggle as a class and implementing this agenda of organic transformative communism espoused by our party. Class conflict, not gender conflict!

One of the consequences of patriarchy was that men, having violently overthrown the primitive communist social order and established their own power, massacred women, the compassionate wardens of matriarchy. With the murder of the mother, which was a grave sin in the primitive communist societies of the past, the murder of women specifically because of their gender by the men closest to them began. Throughout history, countless women have been murdered by their husbands, partners and family members, or by other men they did not even know. The reasons men gave as justification for murder were nothing more than a woman’s desire to express herself as a human being and to make decisions about her own body and life.

According to the UN Global Survey on Women, approximately 89,000 women were murdered worldwide in 2022. While overall murder rates fell, femicides continued to rise from 2021 to 2022. Some 48,800 of 2022’s femicides were committed by partners or family members of women. Many of the women who are not murdered are forced to sleep in fear under the same roof as their future killers. According to available data, more than a quarter of women between the ages of 15 and 49 worldwide have been physically or sexually assaulted. Unable to feel safe on the streets or even in their own homes, women suffer from stress-related pain and physical illnesses as well as mental illnesses: Depression is 50% higher in women than in men and post-traumatic stress disorder is twice as common in women.

The overwhelming majority of these murders happen to working class women, especially women from countries at the bottom of the hierarchy of capitalist countries. They throw the workers of the countries they exploit and impoverish in front of their own imperialist capital groups in need of cheap labor, and in conditions where it is getting harder and harder to put bread on the table, workers who lack class consciousness, who are at the point of going into debt, let alone having money to spend on education, travel, health, sports, become vulnerable to provocation and prone to bloodshed. Then, as Engels pointed out, at home the woman becomes the worker, and the exploited man is rewarded with dominating her by being part of the patriarchal hierarchy headed by the men in power. For this reason, they see in themselves the right to take the lives of women, and they do not hesitate to encourage each other in their closed circles. The bourgeoisie protects murderers with laws and connivance, while the community of men, with its environment that supports sexual and physical violence, prepares the way for patriarchy to grow stronger and spread like a cancer among the class.

In these days when we are being dragged towards a large-scale global war, women are again being offered as an incentive to the soldiers of predominantly male armies, as has happened many times in history, but this time without explicitly naming them as trophies. The propaganda tools of the bourgeoisie and the effects of an expanding capital on the working class and the gender question manifest themselves, as in similar cases in history, in men being encouraged to become soldiers and women being pushed to bear children and participate in the workforce as cheap labor.

In the patriarchal order, however, institutions concerned with preventing violence against women demand funding from other similar institutions and research organizations, and call on legislators and the rulers of the state under the dictates of the bourgeoisie.

In the last twenty years the number of women’s organizations has increased, but the number of femicides has not decreased. With the exception of a slight decline in Europe, gender-based murders of women continue to rise around the world. Less patriarchal treatment is being sold to the rest of the world as an attainable dream, a privilege enjoyed by the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie and perhaps a small group of workers of average income in Europe and a very small part of North America. The working class sees this dream entering every country with weapons, war plans and corporations, pushing the women of the world to exhaust all their labor in male-dominated parliaments to help the murderer get a year or two more in prison. Every day, while working class women wait at the courthouse gates, 243 more women are murdered around the world.

Economic crises and wars will lead to the murder of many more women if we don’t fight and eliminate them. Overall, 80% of murder victims are men and 20% women, and men are more often killed outside and women at home. Both men and women are mostly killed by men. It is patriarchal and capitalist propaganda that makes men so harmful to their environment and leads them defeated and desperate into an existence of obsessions. These poisonous ideas have taken over the working class even more as conditions have worsened. As long as workers do not see ending the war and the poverty created by the war economy as the main goal, and as long as gender, racial and religious conflicts continue within the class, femicides and patriarchal violence will not end.

Women should urgently come together with LGBT workers and heterosexual working men in the unions who are willing to work with them on violence against women to solve their problems and meet regularly to discuss how to lead the women’s struggle in the unions. In the fight we will wage together with the methods of the class, not the deceptive class collaborationist methods of bourgeois feminism, working class men will eventually be able to walk shoulder to shoulder with women.

When the struggle is big enough, attempted femicide will no longer be dared. We need to change the understanding of protest that mourns individual murders and focuses only on making noise by organizing massive strikes against both harsh living conditions and in the defense of women. That is why the class must not fall for bourgeois divisiveness based on gender, race and religion in order to overthrow capitalism that leaves women helpless and doomed in the hands of men and turns men into murderers. Those who turn us against each other are the ones who gain the most from this.

As the International Communist Party, we know that the liberation of women, like all other groups oppressed directly and indirectly under capital, can only come through communism, that is, through the liberation of the working class.

But we communists have never cast ourselves as mere observers of history, and it is therefore vital for the final victory of the working class to seize every opportunity to reduce or eliminate the victimization of proletarian humanity, to drive the movement towards its final goal. The important point here is that, unlike bourgeois organizations, we do not ignore the material reality of capital and class conflict, i.e. the material reality of history, from the dominance of the patriarchal system to the emergence of the social role of "womanhood" and from there to the current femicides.

From October 22-24, the 16th summit of heads of state of the BRICS countries, an acronym by which the world’s major emerging economies are referred to, was held in the Russian city of Kazan. We are talking about a grouping of states that, after recent accessions, accounts for about 50 percent of the population and more than 35 percent of the world’s GDP. They control an estimated 42 percent of the world’s oil production. With $10.4 trillion, 21.6 percent of global trade, by the end of 2023 they rank second after the European Union.

But what are they really and what do they represent? They were born in 2009, with the union of the first 4 founding states-Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs)-to which South Africa (BRICS) was added a year later, later growing to 10 countries, the BRICS+, by early 2024, with the addition of Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Iran, while Argentina with the election of Milei in November 2023 has withdrawn from the project for now as it is still engaged in negotiations with the IMF on the terms of repayment of its debt, which amounts to about $45 billion.

As of Jan. 1, 2025, Indonesia, the fourth most populous country on the planet, joins the list while Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Malaysia, Thailand, Uganda and Uzbekistan join as “partner members.” The enlargement of this “alliance” would appear to be aimed at promoting an economy in competition with that of the declining imperialism of the United States and its allies, through the use in international transactions of a currency to replace the dollar and the founding of an alternative bank to the IMF and the World Bank, the New Development Bank (NDB).

The strategy is summed up in a few main objectives: greater fiscal and customs cooperation among member countries, greater influence on the international financial scene, and cooperation among the banking systems of member states. The NDB, which lends to emerging economies, mainly in the construction, infrastructure and energy supply sectors, was created in July 2014 at the 6th Summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, and has been providing financing since late 2016. The five founding countries each have an equal share of capital, which, together with that of the other members, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Uruguay, reaches $50 billion. No member has veto power. Assets currently total $30 billion and finance a hundred projects, with the aim of reaching $350 billion by 2030, surpassing the IMF, which manages $110 billion, and the World Bank with $98 billion.

The realization of this prospect is also attested to by a recent Goldman Sachs study on global growth to 2075, which sees the BRICS+ countries expanding sharply compared to the West. The association’s current president Dilma Rousseff, former president of Brazil, who will remain in office until 2025, has repeatedly stated that “the $87 trillion debt bubble of developed countries is a heavy ballast and a block to the development of emerging and poorer countries.” The solution to the problem is clear: “interest rate increases in international markets and excessive depreciation of emerging country currencies feed a vicious cycle of debt. The discrepancy between hard currency debt and income generated by local projects creates a drag on investment and development.”

The problem could be overcome by giving the NDB 30 percent of its financing in local currencies. This would allow expanding the influence of emerging capitalisms to the detriment of hegemonic imperialism in the international market, all within market rules, nothing displacing in the laws of capitalism and their devastating consequences. The Kazan summit, under the chairmanship of Vladimir Putin, was attended, in addition to the member states, by a group of candidate-observers from 36 countries. In addition to economic and financial issues, the summit dealt with open issues in the international arena, finally summarized in 134 points on 43 pages. Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi and Erdoğan (Turkey is the only NATO country to apply to join) showed no difficulty in shaking hands with Putin, disassociating themselves from the order to “isolate Russia” issued by Washington. Intimation this passively taken up by the EU, with the exceptions of Hungary and Slovakia, which proved to be a disaster for European economies instead of Russia, with Germany also in recession due to rising commodity prices, and in favor of the U.S. economy, which replaced, in part, Russia as a supplier of natural gas.

It is confirmed that all alliances between bourgeois states are fictitious and determined by the volatile needs of the moment. Today many countries do not intend to break with Russia because of its strategic weight and as suppliers of raw materials, energy and even weapons. The participation of UN Secretary General António Guterres was a further sign of a shift in the political line of that world robber organization. Also on the Ukrainian issue was support for China and Brazil’s call for an international conference with participation of Russia and Ukraine, which had already been rejected by Zelensky on the grounds that it did not include maintaining Ukrainian territorial integrity. In the Middle East, Israel was condemned and concern expressed over the extension of the war in Lebanon, whose territorial integrity is to be “maintained” by “ceasing attacks on Unifil personnel.”

After the invasion of Ukraine and as the international war crisis mounts with the massacre in Gaza, the Kazan summit gave further acceleration to the BRICS project, which is increasingly posing itself as an alternative to the post-World War II international equilibrium. However, despite the soothing and conciliatory tones about peace, a fairer and more equitable “multipolar” world for emerging capitalisms, the BRICS, led by Beijing and Moscow, cannot help but strive to replace U.S. hegemony, their real goal.

Within the group are India and Brazil, which do not always hold the same anti-Western positions as Russia and China. Between China and India there remains a historical and strategic rivalry made up of territorial disputes that led only four years ago to clashes along the Himalayan border with several deaths on both sides. At the same time, the two countries are in strategic competition in the Indian Ocean. Delhi, which aspires to compete with China’s world factory, is a member of the Quad, a strategic alliance with the United States, Japan and Australia whose main purpose is to counter any Beijing hegemony in the Indo-Pacific.

The possible expansion would add new critical issues. Iran’s entry, with Saudi Arabia waiting, will inevitably lead to new tensions in the group over increasingly complex Middle Eastern issues as evidenced by opposing fronts in the latest Syrian abyss where regional capitalisms and beyond employ proxy forces. If for the bourgeoisie it is an inextricable tangle, for revolutionary Marxism the issue is simple: within any alliance in capitalism the competition between bourgeois states inevitably leads them toward confrontation, commercial and military. The same rules of capital market and competition apply in the West as in the East.

Europe, too, has created its own bank and regulatory and customs union to better cope with competition in the world market, but this has not prevented each nation from asserting its own interests. Competition among individual bourgeoisies is ineradicable and can never allow lasting peace for humanity. Under economic crisis, competition can no longer be peaceful. Much less will it be able to free from wage slavery the working class, whose exploitation remains brutal in the East as in the West, in the North as in the South, in capitalisms old or young. In the more advanced BRICS+ countries, such as China and India, Brazil and Russia, social differences remain unchanged, just as in Europe or the U.S., and workers are called upon to make great sacrifices for the “good of the country.” Tomorrow they will be called upon to immolate themselves in the general war that capitalism is maturing.

It will not be a multipolar world, yet another fable designed to delude the workers, that will heal the wounds of capitalism but the ever-expanding and united class struggle among Western and BRICS+ workers for their own economic claims first and for the establishment of the Communist dictatorship state later.

In recent weeks the Russian troops have continued their slow advance both on the southern front of Donetsk and in the Russian region of Kursk, where it seems that 60% of the territory occupied by the Ukrainians has now returned to Russian hands. On the southern front, the Armed Forces of Moscow are advancing, albeit slowly, along almost the entire line. In the Donetsk region, it is being slowly conquered meter by meter against the strong defenses built up over the years.

The situation in Pokrovsk, one of the Ukrainian strongholds, is becoming increasingly serious for the defenders. According to Russian reports, the city, a key junction for the advance into Donetsk, at the crossroads of highways and railways, is already surrounded on three sides amid fierce fighting. The shortage of soldiers and the attacks by Russian drones on supply routes are causing difficulties for the defenders. The capture of Pokrovsk would be an important stepping stone towards the complete conquest of the Donetsk region.

However, Moscow’s strategy seems to be aimed, rather than at conquering territory, at provoking the collapse of the enemy’s military capabilities; the Ukrainian troops are forced to mass where they can be hit by aircraft or artillery, both specialties of which the Russians are much better equipped.

This has also been admitted in recent days by the head of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), General Kyrylo Budanov: “if serious negotiations are not started by the summer, processes could begin that are very dangerous for the very existence of Ukraine”. According to Ukrainska Pravda, Budanov’s words, although spoken during a closed-door meeting, were leaked to the press, confirming that there is no unanimity within the Ukrainian government on continuing the war “until victory”.

But Russia doesn’t seem interested in quickly reaching a ceasefire. The Ukrainian armed forces are weakened by tens of thousands of desertions, uncertainty about military supplies, a lack of ammunition, and a reduced air force. Moreover, Moscow must justify the tens of thousands of deaths and the economic damage caused by the war to its proletariat.

At the moment, the Russian Armed Forces seem to have overcome their recruitment problems and do not seem to be suffering from serious problems in obtaining arms and ammunition. They therefore aim all the regions already annexed in September 2022, namely Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, which are currently almost totally occupied, and to demilitarize what remains of Ukraine and ensure that it remains outside NATO.

After declaring its friendship with China and receiving help from North Korea, which supplies Moscow with ammunition and even soldiers, the recent strategic agreement with Iran has strengthened Russia’s position, even if it doesn’t go so far as to foresee that in the event one of the two signatories is attacked the other will be obliged to intervene.

During his election campaign Trump promised he would force the two belligerents to make peace in a day. Now he’s taken a few months, evidently not even Trump is all-powerful. Among other things, within the new American government there doesn’t seem to be a single vision on how to proceed. Trump had stated that he would threaten Moscow with a considerable increase in aid to Ukraine, contradicting his isolationism and abandonment of Kiev to its fate. In the meantime, however, they continue to fight. The Financial Times reports an interview with the new National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, who says that the administration will ask Ukraine to lower the age of conscription to 18. The US capitalists could therefore decide to continue the war “until the last Ukrainian” is dead, including teenagers, in order to obtain a few more meters of land for the Ukrainian bourgeoisie.

But for now Trump has suspended economic aid to Ukraine (to the advantage of the disastrous American finances) and has limited himself to inviting Putin to suspend the war, threatening an increase in sanctions and the imposition of customs duties. However, these would have very little effect given the minimal level of trade between Russia and the USA. Putin has nevertheless said he is willing to meet with Trump.

The leaders of the bourgeois European Union and NATO insist on their decision to help Kiev “until victory” with the reconquest of the territories currently occupied by Russia. They even intend to continue supporting Ukraine even if the United States were to cease doing so. The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, the Estonian Kaja Kallas, speaking at the annual conference of the European Defense Agency, once again emphasized the need to increase defense spending in Europe. “We must spend more to prevent war, but we must also spend more to prepare for war,” said the senior official, because ”Moscow will remain an existential threat as long as we continue to under-invest in our defense.” Not a day goes by without political and military representatives of European capitalists publicly declaring that the only way to save “our” continent is to strengthen the military-industrial sector, with a drastic increase in spending and recruitment, to protect it from the looming armed threat from the Kremlin.

The mobilization of millions of men is required because the professional armies, made up of only a few tens of thousands of specialists, would not be sufficient to fight the war that is being prepared. Millions of proletarians will be needed for dying capitalism, to be thrown into the horrendous furnace. In fact, many countries are already preparing to reintroduce compulsory military service. “If we don’t do anything Russia could attack us” is the cry of the warmongers who lead the European Union. In this way they mask the will of the capitalists to increase the profits of the arms industries. This would also be of great advantage to the United States, which already supplies 70% of the armaments to the European NATO states.

All the bourgeoisie are in fact – in principle – in agreement that the countries belonging to the Atlantic Alliance should increase their military spending to 5% of the GDP, more than double the current amount. Moreover, the theory that Moscow’s ambitions extend beyond Ukraine does not correspond to the current reality because Russia is not in a position to attack any European or NATO country, for political, economic, and demographic reasons. Moscow has explained the attack on Ukraine as a response to NATO aggression on its western borders. But Russian imperialism cannot expect to extend beyond the three key necessities of its foreign policy: Moscow’s primacy in the post-Soviet area; the pursuit of closer integration between the former Soviet republics with Russia as the guiding country; opposition to NATO expansion and, more generally, the effort to weaken transatlantic institutions and the current US-led international order.

The European states, despite their warmongering and despite being the most exposed to the consequences of the war, risk being cut out of any peace negotiations because the US president, as already anticipated, is ready to get rid of them and to deal directly with Putin, not giving them a say even if the matter directly concerns them.

The sanctions against Russia, and in particular the decision to cut off the flow of cheap gas and oil from Russia to European countries, are already bringing the most industrialized countries in Europe, Germany and Italy, to their knees. They are forced to buy gas from other suppliers, mainly from the United States, at much higher prices, even three times higher. The Russian economy, on the other hand, has not been too badly affected because it continues to export its gas despite the sanctions and has found other buyers on the world market.

Moreover, on the question of the attitude towards Russia there is no single position among the 27 member states of the EU, which are pursuing different and even conflicting policies.

France has always taken the hard line of a Western military response, calling, even recently, for the direct involvement of the Atlantic Alliance in the conflict, and has lifted restrictions on the use of its SCALP cruise missiles to strike Russian territory. Poland has repeatedly expressed its desire to become directly involved in the conflict and, for some years now, has been undertaking a daring rearmament program with important purchases from both the United States and South Korea. It plans to allocate 4.7% of its annual budget to defense next year, which is more or less in line with NATO’s requests.

The German government, now resigned, has taken a “centrist” position, sending significant military aid to Kiev but preventing the use of its long-range Taurus missiles inside Russian territory. However, it has committed to a complex and expensive rearmament plan. Italy has always declared itself decidedly against sending troops to Ukraine, but continues to send weapons and aid to Kiev while strengthening its military industry and increasing its defense spending.

The United Kingdom has always pushed for direct confrontation and the use of cruise missiles against Russia. The new Labour government, in perfect continuity with the previous conservative one, recently signed a “hundred-year collaboration” pact with the Ukrainian government that would even include the possibility of installing military bases in the country. But the same military circles point out that Her Majesty’s Armed Forces have never been so weak. The Telegraph writes: “The deployment of British troops on the ground in Ukraine comes at a time of cuts to the armed forces, which have called its credibility as a fighting force into question (...) The number of soldiers in the army in May fell below 73,000 for the first time since the Napoleonic era”. In recent years, in fact, the difficulties in recruiting and retaining personnel have become increasingly evident. Naturally, in these power games, the Ukrainian state, which is directly affected, has no role. It depends entirely on its “protectors” in Washington. Trump has called Zelensky a “beggar”.

What is therefore looming, despite oblique talk about the possibility of peace, is a prolongation of this war for a long time to come. The working class of Ukraine and Russia, tragically tested by these years of war, subjected to the iron heel of corrupt and warmongering governments, will rebel against new demands for proletarian blood and will impose its peace on the States, the only possible peace, bringing down the regime of capital in their countries as the proletariat of Russia did in October 1917. Only the proletariat fighting for communism will be able to put an end to the permanent state of war, misery and hunger, uncertainty and fear of tomorrow in which the capitalist regime, in full crisis, not only economic but also social and ideological, has brought the whole of humanity.

From the fragile truce that began on Sunday, January 19th in Gaza, all the contenders claim to be winners.

Since the day after the massacre of October 7, 2023, carried out by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militias, the Israeli bourgeois regime has fought on several fronts, officially declared seven: in the South in Gaza, in the North with Hezbollah in Lebanon, in Syria against the pro-Iranian militias linked to the Assad regime, in Iraq against other pro-Iranian militias, against the Houthis in Yemen, against the Iranian regime and finally against the armed groups of Hamas and the PIJ in the West Bank. Seen in this broader context, the war fought in these 15 months has been a success for Israel. Hezbollah, militarily far more powerful than Hamas, has been severely weakened, with a considerable part of its leadership physically eliminated, with the military logistic structures in Southern Lebanon largely destroyed, with heavy blows inflicted along the Beqa’ valley and in the Shiite neighborhoods of Beirut.

This led to the truce on November 27th that Hezbollah was forced to accept, which granted Israel the right to strike Hezbollah forces wherever it deemed they were not complying with the planned withdrawal to the north of the Litani river and their replacement with the forces of the regular Lebanese army, which is militarily weaker than Hezbollah. Israel has not hesitated to exercise this right, with more localized but almost daily bombings against positions, men, warehouses and vehicles of the pro-Iranian Shiite armed group. Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, scheduled for January 27, has been postponed. Less than seven days after the signing of this truce, the advance of the Sunni militias organized in Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which, moving from the enclave of Idlib, where they held power, conquered Aleppo on December 2, and in a few days descended south until they took Damascus on December 8, deposing the Assads who had been in power since 1970. This led to the breaking of the so-called “Shiite corridor”, which from Iran passed through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon, supplying Hezbollah with weapons, and to the flight from Syria of pro-Iranian militias, which fell back into Iraq. This was a second blow to the Iranian regime and its imperialist ambitions in the region.

Hezbollah was thus weakened both by Israel’s direct military action, which led to the truce, and by the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, which had been strengthening it from behind. In Lebanon, after two and a half years of paralysis, on January 8th the parliament managed to elect a new president, Joseph Aoun, and a few days later, on January 13th, a new prime minister, Nawaf Salam. This change of gear in Lebanese bourgeois politics has sanctioned the weakening of the so-called “Shiite tandem” – formed by Hezbollah and the Amal party – in the country. This change in the balance of power between the bourgeois parties in Lebanon led to a visit to the country by the President of the French Republic, Macron, on January 17. France, which is witnessing an inexorable decline of its imperialism, starting with Africa, and which had Lebanon and Syria as two strongholds of its colonial empire, can take comfort in this turn of events in its favor. On a regional level, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar are reaching out to gain influence and economic advantages from the renewed inter-bourgeois power struggle in the land of the cedars. On January 23rd the Saudi Foreign Minister landed in Beirut for the first time in 15 years.

However, the strength of the Shiite bourgeois parties in Lebanon has been reduced but not annihilated. On February 8th a new government was formed that entrusted 5 ministries to Amal and Hezbollah, including those of finance, health and labor, but none to Hezbollah. On the military front, since February 6 there have been clashes on the border between Lebanon and Syria between Lebanese Shiite militias and Syrian Sunni forces of the HTS.

The new Lebanese government formed on February 8 reflects the change in the balance of power both regionally and within the country. Five ministries have been entrusted to the Shiite party Amal – including those of finance, health and labor – but none to Hezbollah, which generally had two and thus loses the power of veto it had enjoyed until now, given that the most important decisions, such as approval of the state budget, going to war or implementing economic reforms, require the approval of at least two thirds of the Lebanese cabinet.

On the military front, since February 6 there have been clashes on the border between Lebanon and Syria between Lebanese Shiite militias and Syrian Sunni forces of the HTS.

The truce imposed on Hezbollah and the fall of Assad in Syria have had another consequence favorable to Israel, namely a more marked isolation of Hamas in Gaza. In fact, since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah had been launching missiles on Northern Israel, while keeping its action at a level that would not lead to an open war. Although there was partial support from the Shiite party to Hamas, it stopped on November 27. Furthermore, after Assad’s fall on December 8th, Israel launched a wave of massive bombings against the military structures of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces (SAAF), almost completely destroying the air, anti-air and naval forces of the deposed regime, preventing them from taking possession of the new Sunni bourgeois faction that had come to power. This means that for the next few years Israel will have less to worry about military threats from Syria and will have even more freedom in Syrian airspace, allowing it to get closer to Iraqi airspace and from there to Iranian airspace, which it flew over as recently as October 25th, bombing some military targets. Israel could also benefit from what happened in Syria. The fall of the Assad family has favored Turkish imperialism which, with the Syrian National Army (SNA) – financed, supplied and trained by Ankara – is active in northwestern Syria fighting the Kurdish forces of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian branch of the PKK, who lead the Syrian Democratic Forces, an Arab-Sunni minority.

The Kurds control a vast territory, about a third of the whole of Syria, in the part to the east of the Euphrates, in the North-East of the country, except for a strip on the border with Turkey, which is controlled by Turkey through the SNA. The territory controlled by the Kurds is the richest part of the country in terms of oil and agricultural products and goes well beyond the real Kurdish presence on Syrian territory. The Syrian Kurds enjoy the military support of the United States, present there with two thousand soldiers, and had a non-hostile relationship with the Assad regime, which granted them substantial autonomy.

The strengthening of Turkish imperialism threatens the Kurdish forces led by the PYD, which have also been weakened by the loss of control over the Arab-Sunni minorities who look to the new Sunni masters of the HTS. As a result, the Kurdish nationalists of the PYD are taking steps towards an alliance with the Israeli regime. Tel Aviv’s Foreign Minister, Gideon Sa’ar, recently declared: “The Kurdish people are a great nation, one of the great nations without political independence ... they are our natural ally ... [Israel] must extend a hand and strengthen [our] ties with them”. What is perhaps most worth noting at this juncture is how much the much-vaunted issues of principle are worth to bourgeois regimes and parties, used to justify wars that are instead for the sole purpose of profit.

In fact, we have an Israeli minister who pretends to feel sorry for the Kurdish national oppression while perpetuating the Palestinian one in a sea of blood. And at the same time, Kurdish nationalist parties that ally themselves with the two imperialisms – USA and Israel – primarily responsible for a national oppression identical to the one they suffered. It can be said that there is no solidarity between oppressed national minorities, even if they are so close geographically. From the moment that national struggles no longer have a social, revolutionary or progressive content, unlike in the past, in a capitalism that has now reached its imperialist phase all over the world, nationalist parties and movements are only puppets of the clash between imperialisms.

Another element that highlights the value of bourgeois political-ideological principles is the fact that the United States considers the PKK a terrorist organization, but not the PYD, its Syrian branch, which they instead support militarily. On the other hand, the HTS was also defined as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, but through Ukrainian military aid they were supported by the United States, and after they took power, all the political-diplomatic leaders of Western countries went on a pilgrimage to recognize the new holders of power.

Ukraine’s support through the supply of drones – of which Kiev has become a first-rate producer thanks to substantial investments from the United States – and training in their use contributed to the victory of the HTS and led to the weakening of Russian imperialism, which had to evacuate a large part of its military forces – land, air and naval forces – and may have to abandon both the Tartus naval base, where Moscow’s naval forces have been present since 1971, and the Khmeimim air base, built in 2015 and where Putin had been on a visit as recently as 2017. For Moscow, the loss of these bases in Syria would mean not having a military logistic-operational center in the Eastern Mediterranean that was used for Russian imperialistic expansion towards Africa. Moscow paid part of the lease on the port of Tartus by sending wheat supplies; these were interrupted with the collapse of the Assad regime and have been replaced by Ukrainian supplies.

The reaction to the setbacks suffered by Iran and Russia was the signing of a “global strategic partnership treaty” between the two countries on January 17 in Moscow. The relationship between Iran and Russia had been so non-linear as to be a “partnership” that in Syria the Israeli air force was allowed free rein by the Russian air force to strike pro-Iranian militias, which served as support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and for Assad’s regime itself. According to the January 15th edition of Haaretz: “Israel enjoyed almost unlimited access [to Syrian airspace] coordinated with the Russian command at the Khmeimim airbase”.

The partnership between the two imperialisms has been completed after being postponed for a long time. The contrasting interests of Russian and Persian capitalism are different, but the common difficulty has evidently made them overcome them, always partially. A situation similar to the so-called “Russian-Chinese friendship”, strengthened by the war in Ukraine.

Alliances between bourgeois states are only for profit and as such are always fragile and reversible.

So far the reasons why it is Israel that can be said to have emerged victorious from the conflict that began on October 7, 2000, on the border with the Gaza Strip and then spread. But it is precisely in Gaza that the result cannot be said to be equally favorable to Israel.

Although around 20 thousand Hamas militants and other allied Palestinian nationalist parties in Gaza died in the 15 months of fighting and their military strength was greatly reduced, the Israeli government’s declared objective of destroying Hamas and preventing it from remaining in power in the Gaza Strip was not achieved.

Hamas, together with the Iranian regime, have therefore claimed victory. A victory celebrated over 50 thousand corpses! Hamas was able and willing to show that it was still present in force by displaying, in the days following the truce signed on January 17, its police and militia men armed and fully dressed, with uniforms neat and perfectly clean. He has organized the delivery of Israeli hostages – five to date – through regime demonstrations to show his strength and his alleged popularity among the masses of Gaza. Certainly this support is not as unanimous and strong as they would have us believe and the majority of the people present at the delivery of the hostages were selected from among the supporters of the Islamist party.

In the days following the truce, Hamas declared that the deployment of militiamen and police was aimed at “preventing a power vacuum and chaos, ensuring public order despite the devastation” and “having succeeded in putting all the police stations in the Gaza Strip back into operation”. On Thursday, January 23rd, the Hamas Ministry of the Interior announced that its men were “exchanging gunfire in the eastern part of Rafah with ’truck thieves appointed by the Israeli occupation”.

For months, the few humanitarian aid trucks allowed to enter Gaza had been subjected to assaults by so-called “criminal gangs”. With the truce the number of trucks entering the Strip immediately increased. According to Al Jazeera, the media giant financed mainly by Qatar, as of January 31st 7,926 trucks had entered the Strip, of which 197 were oil tankers, 208 were transporting tents and two thirds were carrying food. Aid control is one of Hamas’ sources of funding. It is likely that the trucks were attacked by criminal groups who then resold basic necessities on the black market at high prices, but it is also possible that they were attacked by the hungry civilian population. This jeopardizes Hamas’ earnings and its control over the population. When they were subjected to daily Israeli bombardments, the population’s main concern was to survive. Now that, at least temporarily, the Israeli bombs have stopped falling, it won’t be easy for Hamas to maintain control over 2,300,000 people, in the conditions to which the war has reduced them.

The reports that Hamas continues to recruit many young and very young people, full of hatred and anger for the massacres and destruction carried out by Israel, are to be considered true. But there is no doubt that discontent among the population also plays a part against those who ruined the Gazans into the war. Furthermore, it should be considered that being a militiaman provides a source of income in a situation where the economy has been destroyed.

Hamas’s show of force is therefore not only directed against Israel and the other enemy powers, but also has an internal purpose, aimed at the proletariat and the dispossessed of Gaza, to warn them that every uprising will be met with the bullets of those policemen and militiamen who are so well dressed and armed.

Indeed, for the Israeli bourgeois state, if on the one hand having signed a truce with Hamas means admitting that they haven’t achieved the proclaimed objective of the war, on the other hand it allows them to maintain a permanent state of emergency, of perpetually looming war, useful for the purpose of controlling the working class. Also because every extra day of truce allows Hamas to reorganize and replenish its depleted forces. On February 9th the Israeli army also withdrew from the Netzarim corridor, which crosses the Strip horizontally just south of Gaza City, allowing the complete movement of people and vehicles, including military vehicles, from south to north.

The crowds brought together by Hamas at the places where the hostages are handed over serve to support the lie that all Palestinians support Hamas, just as, on the other side, the bourgeois Palestinian parties inculcate in the proletariat the idea that all Israelis support the government and that solidarity with the workers who oppose it cannot be built.

The objective of destroying Hamas is certainly difficult to achieve, but in fact not even desirable for the Israeli bourgeoisie.

Hamas is financed by the regional and world imperialist powers that support it – Iran, Turkey, Qatar – and the Palestinian underclass and dispossessed that it feeds to fill the ranks of its militias. Despite the immense destruction, the objective of the complete defeat of Hamas has not been reached, which leads us to believe that a greater military effort would be required. Bombing is not enough and more men would be needed on the ground. This is not easy even for an army armed to the teeth, thanks to funding from US imperialism, to sustain. Israel has already shown the first signs of crisis in the face of the longest war which it has been engaged in since its foundation in 1948 with the daily drip of victims, which is a lot for a population of only 8 million Israeli Jewish citizens. But even if this objective were to be achieved militarily, the sources of Hamas’s life would generate a similar party in its place.

The underlying problem is social control of the proletariat, first and foremost of the Palestinians but also of the Israelis. A “Greater Israel” including the West Bank and Gaza would have a 50% Arab-Palestinian population. Capitalism in its youthful and progressive phase would aim to overcome ethnic divisions through economic growth and reforms. Capitalism in its senile, imperialist phase is increasingly closing in on racism and the oppression of minorities all over the world and in Israel in the “Jewish state”.

The Israeli bourgeois state has no solution to the Palestinian problem. War is useful to weaken the opposing powers in the division of profits and Hamas’s proclamations for the “destruction of Israel” keep Israeli workers terrorized, so that they seek protection in the state of the dominant bourgeoisie that will lead them to the massacre of war. This is why Israel has financed Hamas for years and, more recently, accepted that Qatar could increase its financing. This is why today it rejects any plan to entrust political control to the Palestinian National Authority that holds it in the West Bank: because saying “no” to the PNA in Gaza is equivalent to saying “yes” to Hamas.

The solution that capitalism has to offer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only part of the framework of the third world war that humanity is heading towards. In this war, it will be possible to solve this almost century-old conflict in a capitalistic way, through ethnic cleansing and genocide, perhaps with a Greater Israel, or perhaps with a Palestine “free from the Jordan to the sea”, depending on which imperialist front wins. In any case, the working class would be defeated once again, on both sides of the front, if it is convinced to throw itself into a new proletarian holocaust behind the flags of the homeland, religion, democracy, ethnic hatred, whichever is best suited to help the bourgeoisie of each country achieve this goal.

But this perspective, this objective of the international bourgeoisie, is by no means guaranteed, because standing in its way are the catastrophic economic crisis of world capitalism and the revolt, the struggle, and finally the revolution of the proletarian masses.

The Iranian regime also didn’t miss the opportunity to claim victory for the truce in Gaza, trying to recover morale and internal social control after the heavy blows suffered in a few months. On February 8th, Hamas political leader Khalil Al-Hayya and other party leaders were received in Tehran by Ayatollah Khamenei.

But shortly after Assad’s fall, on December 8, strikes multiplied at the end of the year and then in the first weeks of January. The national currency continues to devalue and inflation to grow. On December 13, 1 US dollar (USD) was exchanged for 740,000 Rials, the Iranian currency. On December 27, the exchange rate for 1 USD was 800 thousand Rials. On January 23, it was 840 thousand Rials. On February 9, it was 890 thousand Rials.

Wherever it starts, the revolt of the proletarian masses serves to undermine the divisions of war that the international bourgeoisie uses to send the workers to the slaughterhouse for its exclusive benefit, that is, for its profits, regardless of the fact that the revolt seems to favor the fortunes of the bourgeois front where it has not yet taken root. If the Ayatollah regime were to fall under the blows of the struggling working class, the Israeli bourgeois regime would certainly claim victory, but the external enemy that props up its internal front would be removed. Both the Palestinian and Israeli warmongering nationalist parties would be weakened.

In this sense it’s true: both sides of this bourgeois war can claim to be winners, because the real loser is the proletariat, in Gaza, in Israel and throughout the Middle East. A truce wanted and decided by the bourgeois forces that wanted the war, not determined by the rebellion of the proletarian masses on one or both sides of the front, is only a pause while waiting for the conflict to resume. In itself it doesn’t mark a step forward towards conditions that would prevent the next world imperialist conflict from developing. But it is also true that all bourgeoisies and their states are intrinsically weak, sick, because they are being attacked by the economic and social crisis of capitalism, which is deepening more and more every day. The next revolt of the proletariat in the region – starting in Iran, Egypt, Turkey ... – will shake to their foundations all the bourgeois regimes in the area, and in the world, more than the “Arab springs” did in 2011, because it will happen in even more critical conditions for that old, great invalid that is world capitalism.

Historically, imperialisms have all already been defeated because they have nothing to offer to save themselves but death and destruction, the devastation of Gaza and of the world.

The proletariat, defeated in every conflict that begins and is fought to the end, is the problem that capitalism cannot solve and that, when for material reasons it inevitably reconnects with its party, overcoming a hundred years of counter-revolution, in a Stalinist and democratic guise, it will be fatal for it and will give back to the workers and to the whole of humanity hope and confidence in the future that today seem lost forever.

From December 19 to the 24th an estimated 680 workers across eight warehouses in the United States struck against Amazon. The strike was the largest collective action of Amazon workers to date. There was also strikes in solidarity called by the Ver.di German United Services Union in Werne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The strikers’ aimed for increased wages, better workplace safety conditions, more benefits such as better pension plan. This paired with efforts to unionize delivery drivers and warehouse workers in coordination with workers of other unions to allow for better collective bargaining to achieve these goals who held pickets outside non-unionized Amazon facilities across the country.

Although impressive in the number of workers who picketed against amazon in a short period of time, it wasn’t a very effective strike – even if costing potential millions over the holiday season – as it remained as a performative show of force by the Teamsters leadership in the face of the trillion dollar company, generating $15 billion of income within the last quarter. By having a 5 day strike much similar to the starbucks strike, to which capitalists can wait out knowing that such losses can be negated within the coming weeks, it shows that a much more serious, concerted and unified effort of Amazon workers to organize themselves outside the control of the established collaborationist unions must take place before any serious and effective strike action can occur.

America’s largest cross-industry regime union, the IBT claimed to represent 10,000 workers of Amazon after they partnered with the ALU in June 2024. The union struggle with Amazon has been going on for years but with only recent gains. The story of the ALU’s journey is detailed in the TCP N. 42, from the walkouts in response to the lack of COVID-19 protections back in 2020, ironically reprimanding and firing organizers under the false pretense for violating quarantine protocols and to the with the first factory warehouse in Staten Island, New York decided to unionize in 2021.

The Teamsters billionaire bootlicking president Sean O’Brien said that it is the fault of Amazon for the package delays, for missing the negotiating deadline out of a sense of greed. Personalizing the ignoring of negotiations as an extension of the “disease” of greedy intent from administrators, rather than an extension of inherent economic impulses naturally stemming from the crises of capital. As the largest seller of goods in American largest online marketplace globally, Amazon therefore is the largest expression of recurring economic crises through overproduction exceeding consumption, causing deflation of products, subsequent falling of profit, increasing of debt and loans taken on by the bourgeoisie, to which the proletariat pay with lower wages, higher exploitation and increased immiseration through higher costs of living from an inevitable period of inflation.

The company’s response to the strike is to claim that there is an illegal attempt to coerce workers by the Teamsters to join their union and their effort. A spokesperson from Amazon said “there’s a lot of nuances here but I want to be clear, The Teamsters don’t represent any Amazon employees despite their claims to be on the contrary.” continuing saying what you see here is almost entirely outsiders – not Amazon employees or partners – and the suggestion otherwise is another lie from the Teamsters.”

The company has spent tens of millions of dollars in union-busting efforts such as threatening wages, benefits, captive audience presentations, removing unionization efforts from messaging boards and firing workers for unionizing. Workers picketing were even arrested at Amazon’s BD4 Distribution Center in Queens, New York by the NYPD for “obstructing vehicle traffic.” proving time and time again that the police are the paid for attack-dogs of the bourgeois hired to protect and defend private property and nothing else. However, such repressive efforts by the company would prove meaningless, if labor mobilization was a fruitless endeavor for the working class.

Amazon is known to survey workers with their Time Off Task metric, taking socially necessary labour time literally, managers spying on their employees with around the clock radio communication, tallying when they were doing unnecessary functions such as using the bathroom or cleaning workspaces, reprimanding or even terminating workers for not meeting productivity quotas. Workers report being pressured to work more and faster causing sustaining pain and injuries, having to urinate in bottles to keep up with demands, workers suffering from heat stroke – even during the winter months – caused by facilities and company vans being unequipped with proper air conditionings and ventilation units. Amazon plans to invest $2 million for safety programs and touts its pay for its warehouse and transportation workers at a base wage of $22 an hour. While UPS is worth 20 times less than Amazon unionized workers here make from $25-$49 dollars an hour.

Reconcile Between None

The boss-linked Teamsters leadership have a history of electoralism spending upwards of 4.5 million in 2024 on lobbying, to both parties, mainly the Democratic Party. The Teamsters president Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention. Such coalitions with the bourgeois state parties attempt to pacify class struggle into reconciliation and collaborationism, in order to divert the union struggle back into the bourgeois state, in the benefit of the ruling class. Perverting class struggle through the lens of “peoples’ struggle” through national populist rhetoric against so-called elites of society instead of against the ruling capitalist class. Diverting the American working class’s attention through economic nationalism towards immigrants and workers in China and India that have “taken” industrial, medicinal and technical jobs that once "belonged” to America, Supporting dirigiste policies such as tariffs to attempt to bring jobs back to America.

Although the IBT had not formally supported either party or candidate their goals are to support a bipartisan coalition to push “pro-labor” policies for the American people, recognizing the truth that no one bourgeois party represents the will of the working class but contradictorily wants to collaborate with the bourgeois state as a whole, seeing their collaborations with the NLRB and DOL as not integrated enough in the state apparatus. This push for bipartisan electoralism was out of concern for an individualist workerist notion that places the ephemeral opinions and positions of the rank-and-file worker as a priority of class mobilization.

Even in recognizing such faults of the teamsters leadership tactics and rhetoric, this shouldn’t be taken as an endorsement of independent isolated unions, reliant on NLRB petition or voluntary employers for certification for unionization, both hedging for bourgeois support no differently than a regime union. Workers should be striving for a class union devoid of any bourgeois influence such as directly through employers or through the middleman of the bourgeois state, striking directly against the bourgeoisie as a whole in coordination with rank-and-file workers internationally.

The collaboration with the IBT and RWDSU was suggested by the party back in 2022 but the cross sector solidarity was weak even with the affiliation of the IBT, due to it not being logistically planned out in coordination with other workers within the warehouse, postal delivery, railway and cargo shipping sectors – many of which industries have IBT members – on a national scale to apply the most amount pressure against Amazon and capital as a whole and opening opportunities for expanding class struggle. Comrades within the party have intervened in strikes both in Oregon and Virginia in solidarity with picketing workers and have been active in leadership roles in the struggle of unionizing amazon workers in the recently closed locations in Quebec, talking about the importance of class unionism and rank-and- file caucuses to combat regime unionism, as well as distributing propaganda and speaking on the party’s programme.

The rebuilding of a united class based front in the interests of all workers internationally, in coordination with the grassroot unions and rank-and-file workers of every sect, trade, race, creed and nation to regain a militant labor force to combat regime unionist collaboration wherever it might be expressed is the only effective defense against the bosses attacks. Class struggle must be in the interests of the working class as a whole, in rejection of collaboration with the ruling class of one’s company, one’s own industry, one’s own nation and against one’s bourgeois state parties.

STRUGGLES OF CLASS!

HOSTILE FROM ABOVE!

RECONCILE BETWEEN NONE!

UNDIVIDED FROM BELOW!

WORKERS’ OF THE WORLD, UNITE!!!

In late December of 2024, SEIU affiliate Starbucks Workers United, held a five day “rolling strike” to protest the Starbucks corporation’s dismal wage offer during their contract bargaining. The strike comes in response to Starbucks’ offer of $0.25 wage increase after over a year of failed bargaining efforts. However, the company’s weak offer comes as no surprise as the SBWU leadership has ignored militant rank and file workers who have been pointing out for years that the union was moving in a direction which was not building enough leverage to force the company to make real concessions. While 98% of workers voted to authorize strike action, Workers United leadership chose to sabotage the strike by announcing a 5 day limit to the action, and planning to have stores walk out on different days across the country. The end result was a weak action that ended with no concessions made by the employer. The same method of short holiday strikes have also been employed by the union for years with its “Red Cup Day” actions which have likewise yielded similar results. True strike actions are always indefinite and are designed to leverage workers’ economic power to force the employer to make concessions. Anything short of an indefinite strike is merely symbolic action.

For the worker militants within SBWU who have been organizing within the union, the recent tactics used by leadership come as no surprise. For years Workers United and SEIU linked leadership within the union have focused the union’s resources almost entirely on a legal strategy of winning National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections and then establishing a contract with Starbucks by any means necessary, even if that means selling out workers freedom to strike. In the name of establishing an “organizing framework” they are in reality saddling workers down with an “organizing straightjacket”; however, Starbucks workers only need to look into the not too distant past to see examples of alternative forms of unionism that can deliver for workers. The first Starbucks unions were established by the IWW and through their method of “solidarity unionism” workers took frequent collective strike action winning serious wage increases, and quality of life improvements while working outside the established union regulatory framework.

Party militants engaged within the workers coordination called the Class Struggle Action Network joined our fellow workers in Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) on picket-lines in six states throughout the U.S in support of the effort to pressure Starbucks into conceding wage increases, consistent hours, and other critical demands. We heard from baristas in all corners of the country who were familiar with the efforts of SBWU members in CSAN who have fought to oppose the “no-strike” clause and the “collaborative” bargaining approach promoted by SBWU leadership on a national level. The holiday walk out made it clear that across the country there is a growing number of Starbucks baristas who want to see the union move away from the failed policies of collaborationist business unionism and towards a combative union program of working class militancy.

In Portland, SBWU workers at one location have taken matters into their own hands. Despite having no official local structure workers have begun holding regular union meetings at their store and organizing shop floor actions. Over the last year the local has established close ties to the Class Struggle Action Network. Leaders from the local have been active in opposing the no-strike clause against the current union misleadership’s adamant fight for it on a first contract, and have established a local retail and service workers council in Portland which recently succeeded in passing a solidarity resolution with SBWU strikers through the New Seasons Labor Union (NSLU). By organizing with the Class Struggle Action Network, workers at this location have been able to amplify the power of their union efforts through obtaining the wider solidarity of class militants in unions across the area.

All of these efforts coalesced on December 24th, when SBWU workers at the 28th and Powell location hit the picket lines. Workers here were able to shut down the store from 4 AM until late in the evening, executing the longest lasting picket line in the city. The turnout here was large with a constant presence of people throughout the day. Picketers were supported by material supplies provided by the solidarity of NSLU and other workers in the CSAN network. Starbucks workers on the picket line wore CSAN pins, and held picket signs inscribed with the working-class internationalist war cry, “Workers of the World Unite!”. Throughout the day, workers noted the importance of the organizing efforts that the network have played in strengthening their resolve to oppose the no-strike clause in the contract & helping to strengthen the local, which in the past has had trouble turning anyone out for previous Red Cup Day actions, and has been impacted by high turnover rates nationwide which has led to leadership gaps on the shop floor. Meanwhile Party militants distributed our press and continued our criticism of the short preannounced limited strike action, pointing to the need for increasing generalized strike action for workers to win concessions from the boss.

In Richmond Virginia, Party militants along with numerous other CSAN members joined SBWU workers on multiple picket lines throughout the city. A handful of CSAN militants helped workers hold down picket lines and encouraged would-be customers and scabs to respect the picket-line. With the extra solidarity muscle, workers’ confidence at these locations was bolstered and they soon were able to effectively defend the picket line with many cars and scabs choosing to turn around.

Party militants also intervened on Starbucks picket lines In Sonoma County, California and Chicago Illinois. The end result of the symbolic rolling 5 day strike was predictable. Workers ended up with no significant wage increases and only more demoralized about the power of strike action.

To understand the current situation faced by Starbucks workers, it is important to turn a page back to the roots of the organizing efforts of workers in the company. The first to successfully unionize Starbucks stores in the United States were the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), who waged a decade-long campaign from 2004 to 2014, and unionized 200-300 workers in over six states. It won 25% raises and guaranteed hours for workers across New York City, one of the U.S.’s largest cities, almost completely by utilizing direct action methods & without National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) union certification or collectively bargained contracts. Through frequent collective workplace action and strikes against the bosses to leverage their economic power directly against the employer and deliver “the goods” on bread and butter demands, with no need to wait for future promises to be delivered from the established union experts, no reliance on the NLRB or collective bargaining contract process. Over the long-term though, the realities of the high turnover rates in the service industry, company repression of union organizers, combined with the adhoc DIY style of IWW organizing, led the unionization effort to eventually fizzle out; however, the material gains won by the organizing remained for workers and often had crossover improvement in wages in stores across the U.S.

In this era the IWW found it extremely difficult to win NLRB elections. This was primarily due to the official policy of the NLRB to consider the bargaining units for chain fast food stores to be composed of all locations on a larger regional level. This meant that any certification vote had to be taken by all workers in the large bargaining unit, which made organizing and navigating all of the legal processes extremely difficult or impossible when combined with all of the other challenges of organizing in this sector. It is for these reasons that most established unions considered organizing workers in this sector impossible until recent years.

The Starbucks Union (SBU) campaign became a flagship campaign for the newly revitalizing IWW, that was moving from being mostly the nostalgic political society it had regressed to, into stepping it’s toes into labor organizing for the first time in decades. However, while the IWW effort mostly worked outside the NLRB process, a controversial part of strategy was the filing of Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) grievances through Section 7 of the NLRB as an attempt to win some staying power for the union by opposing firings of organizers. This method was questioned by many who viewed it as the beginning of a process of capitulation to the Wagner Act, which established the legal basis for the taming of the unions on a national scale, and ran the risk of moving the IWW away from it’s traditional embrace of combative class unionism and instead towards a slow integration into the regulatory regime via a pragmatic utilization of its legal methods within the union. Over time the tactic of engaging with Section 7 of the NLRB for filing ULP’s became increasingly accepted as a necessary tool to stave off repression and “get serious” with organizing within the union. Overtime, in some locals the process of filing ULP’s became a central focus of their organizing efforts.

Fast forward to 2016, and the Burgerville Workers Union campaign emerged out of the IWW. The unionization effort has often been hailed by the larger labor movement as a flagship effort in organizing hard to organize fast food and service workers, but the success came at the cost of traditional wobbly principles and was a highly controversial topic in its early years. In the case of Burgerville, the NLRB allowed small local shops to file as bargaining units for certification elections, in stark contrast from its position in the past on Starbucks. To win the contracts and establish the unions with NLRB recognition, the IWW organizers who had been experienced in the “solidarity unionist” organizing methods in Portland Oregon, went a step further into the arms of the NLRB by not just obtaining NLRB certification, but by entering into collective bargaining agreements which accepted no-strike clauses and conceded a number of other important powers to the bosses in order to “win” the contracts, in direct conflict with the IWW constitution. The contracts which emerged resembled those of the most typical negotiated by business unions, and relented on wage demands in favor of things more palatable to the bosses such as rights for workers to collect tips which puts the responsibility of wages onto customers rather than the company. Over time the Burgerville union and other similar efforts that surrounded it would slowly drift almost completely away from the IWW and association with its program and principles, into the orbit of the established business unionist movement, and with it strong links to the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO.

Over the years this particular method of unionism which involved running small shop NLRB elections and accepting no-strike clauses soon began to catch on. Other sections of traditionally hard to organize workers began filing for NLRB elections in small shops across the country and accepting contracts on terms favorable to the boss, leading to a bubbling up of smaller unions that operated independently of the established regime unions but grounded on narrow company lines, divided up by many small locals and restrained by typical NLRB mandated restrictions on union activity. As the harsh realities of the position of workers in relation to the company seep in after the fanfare of winning the mostly illusory NLRB guarantees, it has led many formerly independent unions to be absorbed by larger more established unions as can be seen with the Amazon Labor Union’s merge into the Teamsters. While some of the independent unions continue on their own today, many are finding they are having a difficult time winning on worker demands.

In 2021, the NLRB began to alter its policy for union elections in regards to Starbucks and allowed local stores to run NLRB certification elections rather than elections only taking place based on region. As a result, the regime union Service Employees International Union (SEIU), latched onto the emerging effort through its subsidiary Workers United. Workers United, is an affiliate of the notorious SEIU that is well known for its hardcore links to the Democratic Party and its ruthless tactics of suppression of militant elements within its union. Workers United’s president is a years long AFL-CIO union functionary & SEIU is well known for putting to membership weak contracts that members reject over and over, forcing the union leadership into strike action that they actively work to sabotage via organizing weak strikes with pre-announced expiration dates.

Instead of building up an organization, empowering local worker leaders to take up fights against the company and building towards a larger strike strategy, SBWU leadership has taken the strategy of negotiating away workers freedom to strike in exchange for a contract which will supposedly create a foundational “organizing framework” that will be a stepping stone to stronger future action; however, legal guarantees have shown everywhere to count for little instead only through solidarity and generalized strike action can corporate behemoths like Starbucks and Amazon be brought down. A Instead, the present leadership threatens to negotiate away their most important tools to defend their interests while weighing them down with a regime union style organization that ruthlessly protects the status quo. So instead of having an organizing “framework” workers are left only with a straitjacket.

Starbucks Workers!

• Oppose any contract proposal that negotiates away workers’ right to strike or accepts wages that do not exceed inflation rates and thus accepts real wage cuts.

• Self-organize territorial sections of the union featuring open meetings where all members are able to put forward issues, organize shop floor and territorial campaigns against the company, discuss and approve of demands of the union.

• Establish open communication channels where members of the union can freely communicate and self-organize internally within the union.

• Build towards a national indefinite strike against the company.

• Participate in and develop territorial assemblies of workers where all baristas and workers regardless of company are welcome to organize and coordinate their efforts to stand in solidarity with each other.

• Reprioritize organizing new Starbucks stores by advancing hard hitting organizing campaigns, that deliver material wins through taking escalatory strike actions for workers.

• Grow the union by transforming it to being inclusive of all baristas regardless of company.

The North American section of the Party began its work within the trade unions in a thoroughgoing way almost two years ago. As guided by the international trade union center, it has been the section’s priority to both study the history of the US workers movement, and to begin to gain direct experience within the existing unions. A primary priority for us has been to elevate our Party’s knowledge of the character of the various unions in the United States. To determine which are totally dominated by the capitalist regime and where communist proselytization within them is impossible, or to establish if and how communist influence can be extended to advance combative class forces.

As has been long established, because of the complicated and diverse history of the workers movement in various countries, the particular ways in which our Party relates to the unions in each national area must be developed through a systematic study, not totally founded upon a priori knowledge transferred from experiences in other national areas. Instead, knowledge must be gained from joint historic study alongside direct experience of Party militants attempting to intervene in these spaces. As the number of worker militants within unionized sectors who have approached the Party grew, work in this area became possible in the United States in a more expanded way.

In 2024 in the US there were approximately 334 labor actions across 515 locations. Statistics show, California had the largest number of strikes followed by New York, Oregon, Illinois, and Washington state. Cities with the largest amount of strike actions included: 1. Los Angeles 2. San Francisco 3. New York City 4. Portland 5. Chicago 6. Seattle. We currently have comrades intervening in 3:6 cities with the largest amount of strike activity in the US.

Over the last twelve months, Party comrades in the US have militated within the rail, education, mental health, grocery, service work, tech and distribution industries. Through the Party and the Class Struggle Action Network, we have worked within; International Brotherhood of Electric workers, National Educators Association, United Food and Commercial Workers, American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, and the Service Employees International Union. Comrades have been involved in three worker coordinations for education workers, rail workers and service industry workers, where small groups of workers have been organized around programs of class unionism as alternative visions for the union from leadership. Likewise, we supported workers organizing new unionization efforts in several other workplaces. A comrade was elected president of his very small rail union local and another made it onto the Executive Board of his local of the National Education Associations, both found them later to be mostly toothless positions. Our Party militants Intervened on the picket lines of well over a dozen strikes, led at least five worker direct actions and were present across five states on picket lines for the most recent national strike. Three comrades lost work and are having to look for new employment due to retaliation by the companies for agitating and organizing within their workplaces.

Through our experience, we have gained knowledge of the workings of many of the established unions. Their organizational structures both formal and informal, the legal regulations which restrict action, the methods in which the boss-linked and opportunist leadership rally around the more well-off and established sections of workers to council moderation to counter our propaganda and influence, as well as the general willingness and motivation of workers to enter into conflict with the boss and existing union leadership at different levels and in the different sections of workers. Because of prevailing economic conditions, the overwhelming corrosive influence of the bourgeoisie and it’s agents over the class, and the still minuscule number of Party militants and contacts we have within the class, at this current historic juncture the capacity of the workers for serious class struggle remains relatively low in comparison to other eras of heightened proletarian combatively.

Those established unions that have so far been more permeable to Party militants working within them on an official basis, have been those that have a relatively more democratic and decentralized official organizational structure, or where the unions local is so small, no organized opposition or leadership existed. The more dictatorial regime unions tend to represent the more poor propertyless proletarians, as in the case of the UFCW. These unions have shown themselves to more viciously persecute our militants hand in hand with the boss and get them fired from their jobs, unsurprisingly.

While conducting propaganda work for the Party within many of these unions is certainly still possible, their foundation as institutions within the restrictive National Labor Relations Board legal regulatory apparatus means that obtaining an actual position, often comes with the expectation that various bureaucratic work will be done, which comes with an implicit recognition of management rights and recognition of the legitimacy of the bourgeois legal order in ways that are against communist principles. So, any election to an official role must implicitly come with a complete rejection and refusal to comply or perform any/all of the established rules and practices at odds with communist principles. In most/many cases this means an abdication of the roles duties and responsibilities as outlined in the established unions constitutions and by-laws. In essence, a type of principled abstentionism should be practiced within the unions where established rules mandate compliance with these types of duties. In most places, the existing union structures merely acculturate workers to a defeatist acceptance of their plight and a narrow idea of the possibilities granted to them under the miserable bourgeois legal order.

All that said, we have found that in times of mobilization and potential strike action, we are able to most extend our influence while we have worked within the unions, gaining positions within strike and organizing committees have allowed us to advance more combative action on the part of some locals. We feel that the call for the establishment of territorial assemblies and associations of workers, the creation of strike committees etc, to be some of the most important initiatives for us to reassert in our propaganda to workers in the United States at this time.

In the case of the United States, the proletariat, who exists within the still relatively fat American imperialist order, the existing unions continue to represent only the narrow interests of a small section of relatively well-off workers, promising only petty-bourgeois aspirations in exchange for surrendering true class combatively. Across the unions, an almost universal truth is that they continue to conform to the traditional trade union structures, divided up between parochial and microscopic localist formations set with grudges and rivalries between local chieftains, making unified joint action an extreme difficulty in all but the largest, most powerful and centralized regime trade unions.

Short of a dedicated base organized around a class-unionist program, that thoroughly understands a vision of unionism at odds with the established NLRB regime union and boss-linked leadership’s methods, capture of any official position will be tenuous at best. While these positions can be used to some extent to continue to propagandize our positions, only a full proverbial revolution within the established unions themselves that completely topples and throws out the existing methods, rules and norms, will move most of these organizations into a terrain of thoroughgoing class struggle; likewise, the creation of such a militant base of class unionist forces within the established unions, which in many cases represent the most well off sections of workers, is not always possible as grounds for agitation and organization are not always there, and the logic of compliance with the existing bourgeois legal order and its collaborationist methods continues to be all pervasive in most unions where workers have been instilled with this idea of what a union is often for generations.

We have found that in many cases the labor left currents, represented by elements of Labor Notes and the Democratic Socialists America, have increased their influence in many unions, representing a larger union reform current that embraces strike action, union democratization and the like; however, these currents obviously stop short of a true class combatively by accepting and defending the overall class collaborationist order of the NLRB, inoculating workers with the need to carefully play by the established rules of order in most cases. Our interventions within the national Labor Notes conference expanded our knowledge of the ways the labor left, the left wing of capital, and the Democratic Party cooperate within the existing labor movement to present a radical front, to corral workers back into the field of class collaboration.

We have also seen the continual rise of independent unions who have emerged as a result of National Labor Relations Board elections, such as the Amazon Labor Union, only later to get swallowed up by large regime unions such as the Teamsters, or in the case of unions such as the grocery workers’ New Seasons Labor Union in Oregon unable to effect concessions from their employer who is in reality a multinational corporation which itself owns many varied businesses. Thus for the vast majority of proletarians who remain dis-organized neither the established regime unions now, smaller independent local unions founded on bourgeois legal guarantees are the answer. Only a general class union willing and morally able to operate outside the NLRB trap, uniting workers across sectors and industries can adequately defend workers economic interests. In the United States, scant few if any defensive organs exist which operate on class grounds and very few who are able to effectively organize the masses of unskilled laborers in industries with large turnover rates.

Our experiences in the unions reassert the vital need for the intervention of the class political party to wage a battle on the subjective level within the unions to marshal workers back to fighting along class lines and away from the short sighted complacent program of class collaboration.

In late January the Party held its regular and periodic General Meeting with a very positive outcome, first of all because of the atmosphere of fraternal work proper to the Party of Communism. More than 45 comrades, from 11 countries, connected between Saturday and Sunday. We managed to present all the numerous and well-prepared comrade reports. Including North American section activities, Update on the work “Race, class and the agrarian question in the U.S.” union activity in the U.S., South America section activities, Genoa (Italy) section activities, English translation work, section activities in Turkey, social media, financial report, work done on women’s issue, articles on anti-colonial struggles in Africa, agrarian question, imperialist war in Palestine & Ukraine, Origins of the Communist Party of China, working class condition and movement in Latin America, history of the communist party in Turkey, ideologies of the bourgeoisie, history and present situation of Burkina Faso. The extended reports will be, after further processing, published, in our magazines Communism and Comunismo and in the periodicals in the current 4 languages in which we publish them. A summary of all the reports, on the other hand, we will, as always, publish, in advance, in future issues of this paper.

We have also recently held public presentations organized in the cities of Richmond, Virginia, and Chicago, Illinois. For each of these events a script for the presentation was made, comprising 3 sections: Our tradition (covering our history), Our Theory (reviewing our program) and Party Action. It will soon be added to the website to the index "What Distinguishes our Party".

The Party has also recently created a Youtube channel which features audio recordings of our various texts which can be easily found on that platform.

Our press distribution across the United States continues to expand. A number of additional steps are being taken to further disseminate our Party’s program and positions. Recently a Party leaflet on the overproduction crisis, imperialist war, and revolutionary defeatism was created and distributed across three States.

Following timely agreements and invitation to all party comrades, we held our fall meeting via teleconference on Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 September 2024.

As is the custom of communists, all the work was carried out in an active atmosphere of understanding and help among comrades, engaged in a great task that we know goes far beyond our modest persons. Our only personal greatness lies in the awareness of our smallness, in the face of social material forces and their codified opposing historical programs. The function of the living structure of the Party is to preserve and defend the faith and science of communism and present it to the class, permanently in struggle against the dying enemy world.

In the preparatory session on Saturday, after the introduction by the center, the comrades and sections reported on the activity carried out in the previous months: the study and collective understanding of our doctrine and its applications; the regularity and scope of the meetings, from those of the sections to the international Party meetings; the channels and methods of the close working relationships between comrades, sections and the center; the difficult intervention in workers’ struggles; the tools for proselytizing and its results; translations into different languages; the editing, printing and distribution of periodicals; the contributions to the website; the financial support to the organization.

From the report of the Noth America section

We investigated how the Party has performed in the past and presented to the section meetings an outline of work for the future. We sought that all comrades have a basic idea of how we carry out different activities, supporting each other in exchanging the necessary skills, making more than one available for any organizational needs: translations (to which all are called), site management, newspaper, dissemination and proselytizing.

All comrades are invited to strengthen themselves as writers, propagandists, agitators, organizers, managers, editors, and in the necessary technical skills.

The editorial work to produce “The Internationale Communist Party” is developing. We managed to print and distribute issue 59 (a month late), taking ownership of the whole process from start to finish. With more experience we will be able to give ourselves more defined systems and time frames, made transparent to all comrades. Young and old will work together on editing and layout. The work for the paper was discussed in section meetings.

For distribution, in the Party, to subscribers and bookstores, a special address book is maintained, the updating of which is entrusted to two comrades.

The comrades all feel strongly united by our doctrine, program and method, committed to continuous work for the Party, in the service of the great and final proletarian revolution for communism.

We heard the Party’s cumulative cash flow statement, summarizing the various section accounts. Also highlighted the most significant spending commitments.

Reported then on the responsiveness of the Party’s website and social media to requests from readers, divided by country of origin, and on new contact requests received at the central address. Each was answered promptly.

The dispatch of newsletters, announcing press releases and the Party’s various stances, continued. The address book is divided by language. Since the last meeting in May we have sent out 6 newsletters, reaching number 229".

The exposés we heard were:

- Global war in the Middle East

- Clash of empires in Ukraine

- Draft thesis on the women’s issue

- Report on union activity in Italy

- Report on union activity in the U.S.

- Labor struggles in Latin America

- History of the labor movement in the United States

- Burkina-Faso’s independence on trial

- History of the Communist Party in Turkey

Below we print all of them, but the first part of the report on the History of the Labor Movement in the United States, already published in our magazines “Communism” and “Comunismo”.

The asymmetry in the war between the State of Israel and Hamas in Gaza does not define the nature of the conflict. Two fronts of imperialist powers are fighting for their bourgeois objectives and using the population for these purposes, speculating on their suffering. The victims of the October 7 massacre in the southern kibbutzim at the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants are useful to the bourgeois regime in Tel Aviv in its attempt to regiment the Israeli working class to the imperialist policies of Israel and the powers that support it.

Not unlike the way the Israeli regime exploits the victims of October 7, the thousands of Palestinian victims of Israeli air force bombs serve Hamas to maintain control over the proletariat and dispossed masses of Gaza, as well as to the regional powers that support it – first and foremost Iran and Turkey – to divert the anger of their respective working classes against the external enemy – the “USA-Israel” binomial – preventing them from directing it against their own national bourgeoisie, to divert the class struggle onto the reactionary terrain of war between states.

The openly bourgeois policy that denies the class struggle and wants the working class in every country to be in solidarity with its own national bourgeoisie, in competition and war with the workers of other countries, is supported and falsified by the opportunist politics of the fake workers’ parties that transform the class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie into a struggle between nations of the North and South of the world. An anti-communist ideological mystification that was the original work of Fascism, which contrasted the so-called proletarian nations with the demo-plutocracies, and which has been inherited by opportunism in its various shades, from statolatry to anarcho-syndicalism.

The Israeli government’s declared objective in the invasion of Gaza is the destruction of Hamas and, more generally, of “terrorism”. However, assessments of the actual degree of Hamas’ destruction are by no means unanimous. A former Major General of the Israeli army stated that “soon we will no longer be able to carry out these repeated raids, because with each passing day the Israeli Defense Forces are weakening and the number of deaths and injuries among our soldiers is increasing”. On September 17th he reiterated: “The continuous fighting has lost all purpose and the war of attrition is destroying everything that is good in Israel: its economy, its international relations, its social fabric and the motivation of its fighters. Many reservists refuse to be called up again and again... Because the IDF high command has reduced the ground forces by 66% compared to 20 years ago, it doesn’t have enough troops to remain in any conquered territory for a long time, nor does it have troops to relieve those who are fighting. Consequently, the IDF is forced to leave any territory it conquers, as happened in Gaza and as will happen in Lebanon” (Haaretz, September 17).

On a military level there is an obvious difference between air and land actions, and between these if they are outside or inside an urban environment. Social control of the territory also involves different difficulties, requiring vast numbers and resources, which are exhausting for any state. For a small country like Israel these difficulties are greater, given that it has a population of just under 10 million, of which a fifth, about two million, are Arab-Israelis, who are not called up to serve in the army.

For this reason, unless it resorts to a policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing, Israel will have to entrust the social and political control of the masses to local bourgeois parties. This is the reason why, even if it achieves its objective of completely destroying Hamas, it will not be able to prevent the formation of similar political organizations.

Hamas is a party: it cannot be eradicated, at most it can be momentarily limited through the operations in progress and the elimination of its leaders. This doesn’t mean that the world bourgeoisie won’t arrive at the “solution” of the Palestinian question in the future through genocide or ethnic cleansing. But this barbarism, although presented as consistent with the specific Zionist ideology, will be part of the historical course of capitalism, in the context of an imperialist conflict towards which world capitalism is heading, just as it was with the Holocaust, a product of the descent of imperialism into the Second World War.

Therefore it is not at all certain that genocide and ethnic cleansing will not happen tomorrow with the roles reversed, with the Jews once again succumbing. If Gaza is a ghetto for two million and 100 thousand Gazans, the State of Israel is just a bigger ghetto.

The third world imperialist conflict is maturing in the womb of capitalism. Every city will be a proletarian ghetto and the present of Gaza in ruins is the future promised by the capitalist society to most of the world’s metropolises, like and worse than what happened in the Second World War for Europe and Japan.

And even today only the international revolution of the proletariat will be able to prevent the repetition of similar massacres.

The difficulties already encountered by the Israeli army in ground operations in Gaza are already having an effect on the internal control of the population. This reached a peak on September 1st, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities, a protest that for months has been calling for a change in government policy and an agreement with Hamas aimed at freeing the hostages. There is growing discontent over the continuing war, the hostages, the death of soldiers, and the economic difficulties that are weighing on companies and affecting their employees.

Although Israeli society and the working class are still chained to the bourgeois politics of the State, as expressed by successive governments, these demonstrations are against the war in Gaza. On the day of the big demonstrations on September 1st, the Histadrut union, the largest trade union confederation in the country, called a general strike in support of a negotiated solution that would bring the hostages home.

The Histadrut has a deeply rooted tradition of class collaboration. The general strike of September 3rd was supported by the country’s industrialists. But for the workers, the motive for the strike was their conditions, crushed by the war. Furthermore, the strike brought Arab-Israeli workers closer to Jewish workers, breaking down the wall erected by the Israeli and Arab bourgeoisie to divide them. Some deputies presented two bills, one to prohibit strikes in essential services and the other to hinder the unionization of workplaces.

With the shift of the center of gravity of military operations from Gaza to the north against Hezbollah, fears of an extension of the conflict to a regional scale have resurfaced.

Only the return of the class struggle of the international proletariat can prevent war, uniting workers above ethnic, religious and national barriers. In Lebanon – but also in Iraq – in recent years there have been signs of protests that cut across ethnic and religious divisions. Strikes have also been taking place in recent weeks in Iran.

The national bourgeoisie in the Middle East can only keep the working class under control through a constant state of war and periodic massacres.

It’s now been more than two and a half years since NATO and Russia invaded Ukraine, bringing war back to Europe. The consequences have been devastating for the Ukrainian proletariat, but also for the Russian one. The economic effects are spreading to Europe, especially to the countries most economically linked to Russia.

The Ukrainian side attributes the outbreak and development of the war to Russian expansionist policy. But the Ukrainian bourgeoisie is not fighting for freedom and national independence, as its propaganda claims. The Ukrainian proletariat is sent to the front to defend the economic and political interests of Western capital, while the Ukrainian bourgeoisie has sold itself to the capitalists of America and Europe. And the Ukrainian proletariat, after having shed its blood in the war, will have to repay the debts accumulated by its own bourgeoisie, today to buy weapons, in the coming decades for “reconstruction”.

The war had been brewing for some time, necessary to vent imperialist tensions, which rise hand in hand with the recurring economic crises. The clash between NATO and Russia had been prepared by NATO since 2014. A proxy war, fought by sending the Ukrainian proletarians to the slaughter. The United States’ intention was not only to weaken Russia, but also Germany, an ally but a fearsome competitor on the international markets. Russia’s wealth of raw materials has allowed Berlin to develop its industrial potential in recent decades, making Germany one of the world’s leading exporting countries. Germany, the leader of a united Europe, is an imperialist competitor for the USA, together with China. The sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines was a significant development of the USA’s desire to break the link between Germany and Russia.

The impact that the war is having on Russia is different. The arms industry is working at full capacity; manufacturing, food production and the agricultural sector have been paradoxically protected by Western sanctions. The export of fossil fuels has shifted towards Asian markets and Turkey and the export of natural gas to European continues. This war is neither progressive nor truly defensive. It is an imperialist war on two fronts: the Russian front and that of its allies, and the Ukrainian front and that of its allies. It is a war against the international proletariat, a war that prepares the way for a more general clash between the major imperialist powers.

The German government, which appears to be subjugated to the impositions from across the ocean, is however expanding its already important military industry, a sector that doesn’t fear crises of overproduction and that is destined to grow enormously in the next few years, even if currently it isn’t sufficient to bring the country out of the economic crisis. On the other hand, the attempt to exclude Europe from Russian gas has not been entirely successful, given that it still accounts for about 15% of the Old Continent’s needs, and outside of Europe, Turkey is positioned as a hub for Moscow’s liquefied natural gas.

The United States, which still has 36,000 heavily armed soldiers in Germany, is still the master of the world. But their hegemony is progressively weakening. Their main enemy is China, which can’t help but expand its sphere of influence. But the USA is now railing against its European allies and Russia, which represents a lesser form of imperialism, mainly economic, but risks pushing it into the arms of China. Beijing is now the world’s largest commercial power and has a production apparatus second only to that of the United States. However, it has come to present itself as a global power when the world was already heavily occupied by other imperialist states, primarily the United States. China is therefore in a position of weakness from a strategic military point of view at this historical juncture. Its diplomatic action is therefore not aggressive, calling for the opening of the world market, dialogue and collaboration between states – “multilateralism” – and the avoidance of conflicts.

This is the same policy followed by Washington in the 1920s, when Great Britain was still the master of the seas with its fleets of gunboats. The United States, with the strength of its young industrial apparatus, was waiting to become dominant on the world market.It is the same logic of capitalist profit that, instead of strengthening it, has put the United States war industry in crisis. Tomorrow it will happen with China as well.

The Russian offensive in the Donbass region continues. Having mobilized new troops in recent months, it now has a larger and better armed army than the Ukrainian one: the Ukrainians have barely 250,000 soldiers, the Russians more than double that number. The Ukrainian soldiers paint a bleak picture of the situation. The difficulties in replacing losses at the front are becoming increasingly evident. Industry is on its knees, having lost 90% of its production capacity due to Russian bombing, especially of power stations. Recalling soldiers from the rear to the front, and hunting down those who fled abroad and those who are reluctant to return have also been unsuccessful.Furthermore, “The constant decline in the quality of the Ukrainian military, also due to reduced training times, is leading to ever higher losses, also favored by the fact that the Russians are able to fire six or seven times more shots” (Analisi Difesa, June 8).

Recent news from the American CNN talks about a strong demoralization in the Ukrainian armed forces and reports that desertions are growing at a dizzying pace. “In the first four months of 2024, military prosecutors have opened proceedings against nearly 19,000 soldiers who abandoned their positions or deserted. This is probably an incomplete figure because many officers do not report desertions and absences in the hope that the soldiers will return voluntarily without incurring punishment. This is so common that Ukraine has decriminalized desertion and absences if committed for the first time. “The new soldiers, seeing how difficult the situation is, struggling with the numerous enemy drones, artillery and mortars, assigned to a position, if they survive they never go back. They refuse to go to fight, or find a way to leave the Army”.

The lack of a class-based party, the absence of an organized labor movement, the prevailing counter-revolution, and rampant individualism, prevent this refusal to fight from taking on a collective aspect, from transforming itself into a movement against the imperialist war that, starting from the trenches, involves the proletariat of the Ukrainian cities, taking on classist and anti-capitalist connotations. But it certainly represents a first step in this direction.

There are also difficulties on the Russian side in this respect, albeit to a lesser extent since Russia has more than twice the population of Ukraine. “The New York Times reported that in May, Moscow’s forces lost an average of more than a thousand soldiers every day, including both dead and wounded” (Analisi Difesa, July 2). On September 16th a decree increased the number of men in the Armed Forces to 1.5 million, up from the previous 1.32 million. Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, Russia has enlisted over 600,000 contract soldiers and, according to Ukrainian and Western sources, continues to recruit 30,000 a month despite the fact that the Russian labor market is at full employment and offers increasing salaries.

The war in Ukraine is highlighting the increasingly destructive nature of modern warfare. Destroy as much as possible is the mantra imposed on generals, with bombs, missiles and drones of ever-increasing destructive power. It seems that the Ukrainian Armed Forces need more than 200,000 bullets a month, which cost an average of $4,000 each. The Russians will certainly use even more, but it seems they cost $1,000 each! A real bargain for Atlantic capital! But the western military industry is currently unable to meet the quantities required. “The European Union has had to postpone until the end of 2024 the delivery of one million artillery shells promised to be supplied within a year to Kiev in March 2023. Production limits are also linked to the shortage of raw materials, with a lack of nitric acid and nitrocellulose. The bellicose proclamations of European political leaders do not seem to correspond to any concrete ability to support them».

Western countries are committed to increasing their arms production capacity, and also to reviewing their industrial policy choices in this field, which will have to focus more on quantity than on quality. But in order to make investments, the military industry wants guarantees that the war will continue, so as not to risk that an unwanted peace will lead to warehouses being filled. The proletariat, both in Ukraine and Russia, massacred in recent years due to the warmongering policies of their governments, will learn the right lessons and will turn against the criminal masterminds; the bourgeois regimes and their States. The only real hope for lasting peace is the transformation of war between states into war between classes for the overthrow of the capitalist regime and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which opens the way to communism.

Comrades studying the topic proposed this draft of a first part of theses, presented at the meeting, related to the history preceding capitalism.

1. We call family the set of reproductive and kinship relations. Just as the earliest communities were arranged for productive labor, on the basis of rudimentary technology, so were they arranged with a view to mating and procreation as well as the education and protection of children. The family is thus, in its various forms, a productive relationship, suited to different environments and available productive forces. The economy encompasses the whole vast complex of human activities, with influence on the natural environment. Economic determinism concerns the entire history of the species and explains both the so-called public and domestic spheres. Just as private property and the state are not eternal, the current mode of sexual and kinship relations, the patriarchal, hetero-normative and monogamous family, is also not eternal. This purported fundamental social value, which characterizes societies based on private property, is only a transitory institution. Having no basis outside material determination, it will be destroyed by the victory of communism: materialist theory has analyzed the totality of its development and has already condemned it.

2. The earliest form of prehistoric society, called savage by past scientific literature and currently of hunter-gatherers, has been called primitive communism by Marxism. In this vast period, the human species knew neither private property and exploitation nor the state. It was the period when humanity’s appropriation of products in their natural state predominated; the products of human art were mainly tools that assisted this appropriation. The main activities of this era were hunting and gathering. Most hunters were male, most gatherers female, but some were hunters and gatherers, and being a hunter or gatherer was not determined by sex. The opposing roles of male and female, and the associated limitations, had not yet appeared.
     Polygamous sexual and amorous relationships tended to be between hunters and gatherers rather than between the male and female sexes, but neither were excluded between hunters and between gatherers. The choice of partners was essentially based on the sharing of skills necessary for material survival. Consequently, hetero-normativity had not yet appeared.
     So-called barbarism had three stages: lower, describing the first anatomically modern humans; intermediate, beginning with the use of fire; and higher, marking the rise of homo sapiens with the invention of the bow and arrow. The family relationships of the first two stages have been called the consanguineous family, in which marriage groups are separated according to generations and only ancestors and progeny, and parents and offspring, are excluded from love and sexual relationships.
     During the higher stage, what has been called the punaluan family (from pun aluan, meaning dear companion) emerged and gradually spread in the species, in which siblings on the mother’s side are excluded from reproduction. Here appeared a kinship relationship called gens, which consisted of sisters and their children, together with brothers on the maternal side, and in which women were given the functions of responsibility and decisions, both in the home and in the affairs of the tribe. The family forms that existed during the age of barbarism were matrilineal, and finally matriarchal as the gens developed.

3. Savagery was followed by barbarism, the period during which humanity learned to breed domestic animals and to practice agriculture, and acquired methods of increasing the supply of natural products by organized human activity. Barbarism too had three stages: lower, which dates from the introduction of pottery based on the productive use of high heat to transform raw materials; middle, which begins in the Eastern Hemisphere with domestication of animals and in the Western, with the cultivation, by means of irrigation, of plants for food; and upper, which begins with the smelting of iron ore, and passes into civilization with the invention of alphabetic writing. The lower and middle stages of barbarism, like savagery, were primitive communist societies. A new form of family, called the pairing family, appeared with the advent of the early stage of barbarism.
     Sexual relations for a longer or shorter period between the same individuals already occurred in earlier family forms; they became more stable as the gens developed and the number of “brothers” and “sisters,” between whom marriage was excluded, became larger, which led to the prohibition of marriage between all relatives. At this stage the couple lived together, but the marriage bond could easily be dissolved by either partner, and after separation, the children still belonged, as before, to the mother. The couple relationship was still not exclusively heterosexual reproductive, but of the type inherited from barbarism, although the opposition between the social roles of men and women were gradually beginning to develop. The couple family, itself too weak and unstable to make separate housing necessary or even imposed, did not replace the communal home inherited from earlier times. The communist household was based on the supremacy of women in the home and the continuation of matriarchy.
     In the transitional period between the middle and upper stages of barbarism, however, the monogamous family developed from the couple family. It differed from couple marriage in being defined on socially defined gender concepts of man and woman and in the much greater strength of the marriage bond, which could no longer be dissolved by the will of either partner but only by the man.
     Monogamous marriage drew women into violent submission to the will of men. Thus patriarchy was born, and with it the first form of slavery. On the basis of the monogamous family, the modes of production called despotic, Asiatic or slavery appeared during the higher barbarism. Along with private property, the institution called the state became necessary. “The first class opposition to appear in history coincides with the development of antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male sex (...) It is the cellular form of civil society, in which one can already study the nature of the oppositions and contradictions fully active in that society” (Engels).

4. Barbarism was followed by civilization, that is, the succession of class societies. Increased production in all sectors had given human labor-power the ability to produce greater quantities than necessary for its maintenance. At the same time the amount of labor required increased. War provided it with these new labor forces: prisoners of war were turned into slaves. Thus was born the division of society into two classes: masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited. The distinction between rich and poor soon appeared alongside that between free and slave. Finally, property inequalities between individual heads of households came to break up the old domestic communities, where they had still managed to survive, and with them their common cultivation of the land.
     Alongside wealth in commodities and slaves, alongside wealth in money, there now appeared wealth in land. Thus the mode of production called slavery, the peculiar form of the ancient world, evolved from the despotic mode of production and became dominant. The existence of slavery, alongside the monogamous family, marked patriarchy from the very beginning. Monogamy, always for the woman, was often not imposed on the man. Love and sexuality, at first a free activity of species life, were subjected to the strict moral norms of the class order, leading to widespread habitual and legal repression.
     Alienated sexual instincts became a tool in the hands of the ruling class. Men in war were promised women and children to rape or enslave. Prostitution of women of miserable status and social position was born, although there were exceptions. The rigid and exclusive opposition of man and woman had the late consequence of the emergence of homophobia and transphobia, hitherto unknown in human communities.
     Legal wives were confined to the home, excluded from public life. Even the small number of reigning queens who emerged in this era ruled in the name and defense of patriarchy.
     The form of family that corresponded to civilization, and with it was definitively established, was the patriarchal, hetero-normative and monogamous family, with the dominance of man over woman and father over children and home, as well as the definition of predefined gender roles and the transformation of human beings into private property.

5. Feudalism is a mode of production based on serfs bound to the land instead of slaves belonging to a master. It arose as a consequence of the clash between slave and barbarian civilizations. It had already appeared in antiquity, but became dominant only with the breakdown of the old slave societies.
     Patriarchy intensified during feudalism. It was in the lord’s interest for his serfs to reproduce, because their children would increase the number of his workers and increase his income. The feudal lord had almost unlimited power over his serfs. In many feudal societies he could force any man and woman of age to marry, and dictate who they should marry, even in the case of widows and widowers. As lord of his subjects, he considered himself entitled to engage in sexual relations with his servants.
     Meanwhile, prostitution grew; brothels, whether municipal, state, or ecclesiastical owned, were operated in the cities, the profits from which went to replenish their respective coffers. However, persecution of prostitutes, sometimes vicious, came from the very men who demanded and maintained prostitution.
     Religious ideology preached current morality and spread fear and guilt among women, along with homophobia and transphobia, thus maintaining and strengthening the institution of the patriarchal family.

6. Patriarchy and civilization imposed themselves on a world that had lived in primitive communism for hundreds of thousands of years. The emergence of exploitation and oppression led to the revolt of the exploited and oppressed. Ancient civilizations were shaken by great rebellions of slaves and medieval ones of peasants, in both of which women actively participated.
     There were philosophical currents, both ancient and medieval, that expressed dismay and disgust at the condition of women, lamenting the immense waste of human potential caused by their domestic captivity. Not surprisingly, the same philosophers who rejected the monogamous family also called for the abolition of private property and dreamed of a communistic future for humanity. They were the precursors of modern utopian socialists, thus also of Marxism, a link in the millennial trajectory connecting the ancestral tribal human to the member of the future harmonious community.
     Although the great rebellions of slaves and peasants gave rude and fearsome assaults on social preservation, in ancient and medieval societies the conditions were not ripe for the victory and emancipation of the exploited and oppressed; consequently these movements were defeated without exception. Since these were still economies of scarcity, neither a return to primitive communism nor an advance to modern communism was possible. The emergence of a movement potentially able to seize power and advance human society toward communism was only possible with the emergence of the modern proletariat, the exploited class of a world that was finally producing in abundance while still failing to meet the needs of the many.

While the bourgeoisie talk about economic growth in the countries of the region, wages continue to fall and labor instability, unemployment, food insecurity and poor access to clean water, electricity, health services and so-called “social welfare” continue to grow. Governments focus on fiscal measures, inflation control and the reduction of welfare spending.

Governments that call themselves “leftist” or “progressive” are the most aggressive and do not hesitate to use repression against their opponents. Prominent in this are: Venezuela, Brazil and Colombia, where the “anti-neoliberals” impose increased exploitation and reduced fiscal deficits.

The labor movement in Latin America displays all the well-known erroneous and opportunist positions that have historically driven workers to class conciliation, paralysis, division and disorganization, leaving them disarmed and defenseless in the struggle for their demands. Traitorous union centers dominate the scene, integrated into the bourgeois state, subservient to governments and laws.

Only sporadically do we see disgruntled workers waging struggles, united at the grassroots, escaping the control of union leaderships. But even in these cases, traitorous unions seize the first opportunity to boycott struggles and reach downward agreements with the bosses.

It is relevant that these spontaneous struggles have focused on demanding wage increases or improvements in working conditions and environment. In these spontaneous struggles, where workers went beyond treacherous management, the labor movement adopted the strike as a form of struggle, focused on class-based economic demands and united beyond artificial divisions such as union affiliation, nationality and trades.

And when workers mobilized spontaneously, despite the conciliation of the union leaderships with the bosses, we saw how governments reinforced the criminalization of protests, accusing the struggles of being part of “terrorist plans,” “coup,” “destabilizing,” “treasonous,” and “criminal” in nature.

An “anti-fascist congress” has been held in Venezuela and the government is pushing through a law “against fascism,” which already has as its precedent legislation “against terrorism” and “against hate.”

In general, they want to promote throughout Latin America the false opposition between democracy and fascism, despite the fact that they are two faces of the regime of bourgeois domination. Into this trap is intended to make so-called “public opinion” fall, imposing a new version of the political polarization between bourgeois factions fighting for control of governments, is actually directed against the wage-earners and their organizations of economic struggle.

Workers are subjected to a psychological and ideological warfare that, through the media and social networks, governments and various parliamentary and electoral parties distract, confuse and disorientate them, inviting them to embrace bourgeois-democratic demands: defense of the vote, the Constitution, the homeland, the national economy, in a class conciliation with the bourgeoisie. Even in this context, workers manage to escape this great ideological coercion to wage their own economic struggles.

The real demands of the working class thus remain buried under the democratic-bourgeois claims and diluted in movements with a poly-class or petty-bourgeois orientation and generally subordinated to the interests of political groups vying for control of the government.

Our Party insists on the call for the formation in all countries of a Class Union Front, expressing unity of action in the economic struggle and overcoming the artificial divisions associated with nationality and trades. We also insisted that in struggles workers must unite even if they are affiliated with different unions. This front should emerge in a climate of multiplying the struggles of wage-workers as a way to break free from the chains of betrayal by the regime’s union centers. There is a need for the class union movement to resume agitation for a general strike as the only way to impose workers’ demands on the bosses and their governments.

In Brazil, the strike of the workers of the National Institute of Social Security (INSS) stands out; since July 10 they have been engaged in a struggle to demand better wages and working conditions. By the end of September, this strike will have been ongoing for about 11 weeks (by September 23 it had reached 70 days). Workers have organized locally and rejected various government offers. They rejected an agreement signed by the unions and remained on strike. But the government remained unyielding and declared that the workers are infiltrators of “Bolsonarism,” accomplices and followers of former President Bolsonaro’s “coup d’état.”

Regardless of the results of this strike and the weakness of some of its demands, we have seen once again how when workers join the base and throw themselves into the struggle, despite the passive and conciliatory attitude of the union leadership, the movement tends to approach the methods of class struggle and organization: debates and decisions in the assemblies, indefinite strike without minimum services, concentration on proletarian economic demands, and breaking any kind of artificial division in the movement.

As long as the employers’ government remains intransigent, it is predictable that the struggle movement will tend to wear out and, in order to move forward, will have to seek contacts with other sectors of the workers to extend the strike. The bourgeois Superior Judicial Court has been trying to use legal measures to intimidate workers, the imposition of a daily fine on unions and limiting strike membership to only 15 percent of rank-and-file workers, guaranteeing a “minimum service” of 85 percent. The bourgeois press is trying to turn service users against workers. Scabs have been used in some municipalities.

In Colombia so far, the government has succeeded, with the support of traitorous unions, opportunist parties and so-called social movements, in keeping workers passive, waiting for an offer of reforms presented to parliament, but which leave aside workers’ basic economic demands.

The Colombian government is trying to eliminate subsidies of various kinds and implement neoliberal policies that have a social impact. A “strike” of truck drivers took place between August 31 and September 6. This was not an action by workers, but by small, medium and large entrepreneurs in the transportation sector. They were protesting against an adjustment in the price of diesel fuel. The government finally succeeded in forcing the liberalization of fuel prices, despite the impact it will have on public transportation for workers, food and service prices, without anyone raising the issue of wage increases.

In Venezuela, the effect of the campaign continues on workers’ struggles, which tend to demobilize. This effect has been prolonged because of the struggle of bourgeois factions and their parties over whether or not to recognize the results of the July 28 presidential election.

Workers, in addition to being distracted by the media offensive, are frightened by repression at the time of making their demands and starting their struggle. There are no class unions to defend workers. Labor inspectorates are in favor of the bosses and apply procedural delays and administrative silence, lengthening the time until the worker gets tired or is forced to look for another precarious job to survive him and his family.

The government keeps the minimum wage and bonuses frozen in the public sector; in the private sector it only pays higher bonuses. But in general, workers are getting wages that do not cover the cost of living.

School workers, who staged massive mobilizations for wage increases in 2023, abandoned by union federations, got nowhere. However, they imposed the same timetable implemented during Covid 19: not receiving a pay raise, they concentrated the 36 hours per week of the contract in 2 or 3 days a week and in order to do a second job to supplement their insignificant salary. But with the start of classes this October, the government has threatened to fire those who do not comply with the schedule. The workers, without the support of union federations, are disorganized and we do not know if they will be able to stand up collectively and resume the struggle.

In Argentina, on September 2, President Javier Milei vetoed the law on adjusting pensions to inflation. Since then, older workers have demonstrated in the streets to the point of harsh police repression. The government will only pay a bonus of 70,000 pesos. Pensions had already been devalued by more than 60 percent during the Macri and Fernández governments. Once again the government and parliament join forces to legislate against workers, and the labor confederations continue to take no action or call a general strike.

Meanwhile, the wave of public sector layoffs continues: 65,000 more are announced by the end of September.

Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, bordered by Mali to the north and Ghana to the south. Economically, it is a backward country, with much of the activity centered on agriculture, which employs about 80 percent of the labor force, with a substantial portion devoted to subsistence farming. There is a large peasant population in the North, while capitalist industry is concentrated in the South, near Ouagadougou, the new seat of government. The South is home to services, which accounted for 48 percent of GDP in 2023, while manufacturing is less than 10 percent, according to the World Bank. The country’s GDP per capita was only $774.84 in 2019; the population, estimated at 21 million as of 2020, is growing at the rapid rate of 2.86 percent annually.

The mercantile economy has historically been based on cotton cultivation. Gold exports have gained great importance in recent years. In 2018, gold and cotton accounted for 85 percent of exports.

Despite this, most of the rural population remains impoverished, particularly women, who have limited access to land and decision-making power. Although poverty has decreased from 47 percent in 2009 to about 40 percent in 2014, it remains widespread, especially in rural areas. The main causes of peasant poverty are: shortage of arable land, inadequate transportation and communication networks, climate, and low agricultural productivity.

Due to low levels of mechanization and limited crop diversification, Burkina’s agriculture remains vulnerable to climate change, particularly drought, making agricultural productivity volatile and dependent on international market prices.

Between 2010 and 2016, Burkina’s was one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, with average rates of 6.82 percent. However, in 2019 growth dropped to 5.68 percent due to a combination of increasing security threats from Islamist groups and the Covid-19 pandemic.

The collapse of French imperialism in the Region first manifested itself in Mali, where two coups in less than a year demonstrated the decline of French influence. This departure of French dominance has paved the way for Russian involvement, particularly through the Wagner Group and other Russian private military companies (PMCs), which have since reorganized into the Africa Corps, which has established a presence in the Region. The bulk of these forces are in Mali, fighting Tuareg separatists.

The discontent that fueled these coups was not only due to the previous regimes’ inability to combat jihadist insurgencies; dramatic increases in food prices and widespread social instability also played a role.

By 2023 more than 2 million Burkinabes were internally displaced and nearly 150,000 had sought refuge in neighboring countries. The United Nations reports that nearly half of Burkina Faso’s territory is now out of government control, and the two main Islamic extremist groups-the al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal- al Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS)-are exploiting the chaos to expand their influence, particularly in the Northern Regions, where the peasant population is concentrated and where there are also large numbers of unemployed youth. These two groups often compete with each other for territory and influence, but have been known to cooperate against government forces.

Conditions for peasants in the north are particularly dire. As Islamist groups such as JNIM have tightened their control, peasants have found themselves caught between violence from these groups and harsh reprisals from the army. The north has seen some of the most brutal attacks. These include the execution of 223 civilians by the Burkinabe army in April 2024: authorities blamed this on Islamic fighters, claiming they often disguise themselves as soldiers.

In 2020, before the coup, previous President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, after a terrorist attack on a mining convoy a few months earlier, formed the Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland (VDP), a citizen militia separate from the army created specifically to fight Islamist insurgents. After the coup, the junta government claimed to have recruited 90,000 troops. Islamist groups in the north often attack and ambush villages suspected of joining the VDP or the army.

Because of the conflict, the process of proletarianization has accelerated in Burkina Faso, with many peasants forced to abandon their land. As villages are overrun by Islamists or destroyed by military operations, these peasants have no choice to seek work but to migrate to urban centers or cross borders into neighboring countries. This migration is often driven by the need to send remittances to their families, who remain trapped in increasingly desperate conditions.

The Burkinabe junta has tried to militarize society as a solution to the crisis, but this has only exacerbated the suffering of the working class and peasantry. The state budget, strained by military commitments, led to the imposition of new taxes, exacerbating the dire conditions of the proletariat. The compulsory enlistment of union members in the army, as denounced by the Unité d’action syndicale (UAS), reflects the regime’s desperation to strengthen its military ranks.

Despite these efforts, the army’s effectiveness remains in question. In June 2024, the JNIM killed 107 soldiers in a single attack; in early August, more than 200 people, including 50 civilians, were killed in another ambush by the same group; later in the same month, it killed about 200 people in another attack. These continued military losses have weakened the legitimacy of the junta and its leader Traoré, who came to power on the basis of assurances that, unlike the previous administration, he would confront the Islamist insurgency. Not surprisingly, the government appears to be foiling an increasing number of coup attempts by internal and external forces.

Alignment with Russia has brought with it a new form of imperialist exploitation. The arrival of Russian military advisers and the delivery of grain from Russia are not signs of liberation but indicators of Burkina Faso’s continued dependence on foreign powers. As we have observed, “once again war becomes a way of sculpting society in the image and likeness of capital, framing the labor force with military discipline, creating proletarian reserve armies by depopulating rural areas, intercepting investment and aid from outside imperialist powers.” Increased Russian influence, especially in the form of military aid, has increased the militarization of Burkinabe society, with disastrous consequences for the proletariat and peasantry.

The recent heat wave in Burkina Faso, which has seen temperatures soar to over 45 degrees, underscores the environmental vulnerability of this nation, exacerbated by global capitalism, not least that of the large capitalist states, and its relentless exploitation of nature. The crisis has reached catastrophic levels. By the end of 2023, 42,000 Burkinabe were suffering from extreme food insecurity and millions more were close behind. The situation is severe in the blockaded cities under Islamist control, where restrictions on movement prevent aid delivery. More than 6,100 schools have been closed and health facilities are severely inadequate, leaving 3.6 million people without access to medical care.

The ongoing conflict and the junta’s militarized response have also fueled a surge in drug trafficking through the Sahel, with Burkina Faso becoming a transit land for narcotics destined for Europe. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that 1,466 kilograms of cocaine were seized in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, and Niger in 2022, in sharp contrast to only 13 kilograms seized between 2013 and 2020. This surge in drug trafficking highlights the inability of Sahelian states to control their borders. In Burkina Faso, as we have said, the junta government controls only half of the country.

Popular support for the junta, particularly among the proletariat and petty bourgeoisie, is largely the result of the regime’s nationalist and “anti-imperialist” rhetoric. However, this support is fragile and depends on the junta’s ability to deliver on its promises of security and stability. The recent 60-month extension of the junta’s rule under the guise of “national dialogue” has further extended power in the hands of Ibrahim Traoré, allowing him to run in future elections and consolidate his regime.

In a move that indicates greater control over its natural resources, the government nationalized two gold mines, but at great cost. The mines had been the subject of a dispute between U.K.-based Endeavour Mining and Lilium Mining, a subsidiary of the U.S.-based investment firm Lilium Group. The agreement reached calls for Lilium to transfer ownership of the mines to the Burkinabe government, while Endeavour receives $60 million and a 3 percent royalty on up to 400,000 ounces of gold produced at one of the mines. While nationalization affirms Burkina Faso’s sovereignty over its resources, it also highlights the country’s continued dependence on foreign capital for revenue generation.

The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) approved a €6 million concessional financing package from the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) for the construction of an 18 MW solar power plant in Dédougou, 250 km west of the capital Ouagadougou. Although the deal was originally agreed upon before the junta’s seizure of power, the West African and European bourgeoisies seem to have adapted to the new Sahel governments, seeing opportunities for profit in it. The solar project, owned in part by the AfDB and operated by French renewable energy company QAIR, intends to sell power to the government at a fixed price, as agreed before the coup.

Last year, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso-each of which has suffered coups in recent years-formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), with the main goal of strengthening security cooperation against Islamist groups and ethnic insurgencies destabilizing the region.

This year, the alliance evolved into the Confederation of Sahel States, with the expressed goal of further deepening economic and political ties between member countries. The ambition of the AES is to give itself a common currency. Discussions on sharing sectors such as agriculture, water and energy are part of broad plans to achieve “economic sovereignty.” AES has decided to withdraw from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), accused of not providing adequate support against Islamist threats. It also declares to oppose the imperialist domination of Western powers, particularly France and the United States. However, as history has shown, true economic independence is impossible under capitalism, as these nations remain embedded in the global imperialist system dominated by more powerful imperialisms.

However, the formation of the Confederation would mark a significant development in the Region, the closer fusion of the Sahel states represents a progressive development: unifying the economy, infrastructure and institutions of different countries means unifying the working class as well. This is so even if the confederation comes to benefit the imperialisms of other countries, such as Russia, China, Turkey or Iran.

However, the trajectory of this new confederation remains uncertain. It remains to be seen to what extent this progressive element will be realized. It could evolve into a proxy for Russia in Africa, as an alternative to Western oppression, or it could collapse under external pressures, through coups, Islamist insurgencies or induced instability. Or the Confederation could prove merely symbolic and ineffective, quietly acquiescent to foreign powers and dependent on them as before, despite the rhetoric of “sovereignty” and “anti-imperialism.”

In 1922 the influence of the Communist Party of Turkey reached its peak. During this period the opportunist and conservative faction of Resmor opposed the presence of women comrades in meetings for patriarchal reasons, forcing the old guard of the party into opposition. In the regional sections of the party a leftist and revolutionary faction formed around Ruşen Zeki, while the central leaders of the left were Navshirvanov and Hacıoğlu. Meanwhile the Eskişehir section of the Socialist Party of Turkey, which had 2,000 workers, asked to join and many were admitted on an individual basis.

Under the influence of the Communist Party of Constantinople, thousands of Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Jewish and other workers joined their unions, such as the International Workers Union, and celebrated May Day in Constantinople. In 1924 Ginzberg described the events of the demonstration in Constantinople: “The Communist Party of Constantinople had the mass of the workers under its influence, as demonstrated by the demonstration of May 1, 1922, despite martial law, the military tribunal and the special prohibition order. This party managed to bring over 6,000 workers of different nationalities onto the streets under its absolute leadership (...) The union organization included more than 4,000 workers and strong communist groups in almost all the unions that led them (...) The Social Democratic Party was completely wiped out by the Communist Party and no longer existed as a party”.

But the left in Constantinople didn’t only have to face government repression. After the May Day demonstration, the anarchists in the International Workers’ Union became alarmed by the growing communist influence and decided to act. Ginzberg described the events as follows: «After May 1, 1922, a bitter struggle began between the anarcho-syndicalist tendency and the communist one (...) The general secretary asked for the withdrawal from the Red Trade Union International at the June plenum. However, they were in the minority in the face of the activity and energetic attitude of the members of the Communist Party of Constantinople. In the elections that followed, the members of the Communist Party of Constantinople were elected as general secretary, in the Central Committee and in the newspaper”.

The Communist Party of Constantinople pushed for the formation of a General Confederation of Labor and invited the circle of the magazine “Aydınlık” (Clarity) – composed of the remnants of the Socialist Workers’ and Peasants’ Party – in order to extend its influence over the Muslim masses. In the aforementioned report, Ginzberg describes the events: «The conference opened on July 15. Twenty-three delegates representing 22,000 organized workers participated. The first two sessions were devoted to reports on the state of the organizations and to speeches. In the third session it was unanimously decided that all the unions should merge and dissolve into a General Confederation of Labor (...) We were thinking of calling a general strike to force the government to accept the IWU as the General Confederation of Labor (...) But Aydınlık refused to engage in practical activity.

The government outlawed the Congress of the Communist People’s Party of Turkey because the participants included foreign delegates from the Comintern. On August 15 and 16, the Second Congress of the Communist Party of Turkey was held illegally near Ankara. The Constantinople branch was unable to attend. The Party prioritized the organization of the labor movement throughout the country, leading to the formation of the Red Unions of Anatolia.

The draft program of the Party stated:
   “The Party considers it its duty to spread the ideals of class struggle, social revolution and communism among the masses of workers and proletarians.
   “The Party will organize the masses of the working people and use all the forces at its disposal to defend these aspirations aimed at guaranteeing the interests of the working class and poor peasants.
   “The attitude of the Communist Party towards bourgeois and petty-bourgeois organizations, with an idealistic worldview and a conservative character, is based on the following point of view: to fight relentlessly against all kinds of pro-Western groups, to establish relations and cooperate on some political issues with populists and other parties and groups that defend the interests of middle peasants and intellectuals.
   “The People’s Communist Party of Turkey is not a party of individuals, but of the most progressive sectors of the working class and peasantry, with a steely, persistent and determined internal organizational discipline, ready to sacrifice everything for the liberation of the proletariat and the peasants. Armed with the invincible Marxist methods, the Party invites all conscious proletarians of Turkey to take the field of class struggle for the liberation of all working humanity from ongoing exploitation and oppression”.

Ruşen Zeki, a member of the most leftist and revolutionary faction, and some other comrades warned the Comintern not to consider the Grand National Assembly of Turkey a revolutionary government. M. Golman, delegate to the Congress, reported: “(Some comrades) warn us in very harsh language not to consider the Turkish Grand National Assembly a revolutionary government and not to help it, because with our gold the police can do their work, and with our gold and our weapons the government can shoot at Turkish workers and peasants”.

Soviet Russia gave the government of Mustafa Kemal 3,065,000 gold rubles and 100,000 Ottoman gold in 1920, 9,400,000 gold rubles in 1921 and 4,600,000 gold rubles in 1922, for a total of 10,791.42 lira, as well as 37,812 rifles, 324 heavy and light machine guns and 44,587 cases of ammunition. The Anatolian Left’s criticism that Soviet Russia had given all this gold and these weapons to the Kemalists, without the communist movement benefitting from it, was shared by the Left of the Party in general.

However, despite disagreeing with the objections of the most radical militants of the Anatolian left on the advisability of supporting Kemalism, the Comintern supported the left against Resmor’s supporters. During the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, 1922, the decision was made to merge all organizations belonging to the Comintern in Constantinople and Anatolia. The protests of the delegates of the Communist Party of Constantinople, such as Ginzberg, against these decisions of the Congress were excluded from the stenographic records.

The delegate from Aydınlık, Sadreddin Celal, also criticized the support given to the Kemalists. Hacıoğlu’s letter to the Eastern Section of the Comintern expressed the general mood of the Party on the matter: “The recent attack and offense suffered by the Communist Party of Turkey in Anatolia at the hands of the national bourgeoisie, which has acquired its influence over the class as a result of the financial and political aid of the Soviet government, however intense this may be, cannot force the communists of Turkey to bow down before the national bourgeoisie, nor can it interrupt the currents of social revolution in Turkey.

At the Congress, the response to this general feeling of the Turkish left was given by Karl Radek: “We do not regret for a moment, having told the Turkish communists that their first task, after organizing themselves as a separate party, is to support the national liberation movement in Turkey (...) Even in this moment of persecution we say to the Turkish communists: In the present situation, don’t forget the immediate future. The task of defending Turkish sovereignty, which has great international revolutionary importance, is not finished. You must defend yourselves against your persecutors, you must strike blow after blow, but you must understand that historically the moment of the liberation struggle has not yet arrived; you will still have a considerable way to go with the revolutionary forces that are already beginning to crystallize in Turkey.

In fact, the Comintern was very unclear about the real situation in Turkey, whose capitalist history and national revolutionary movement were not taken into consideration and the potential of the class movement was ignored. On December 12, at the Second Congress of the Profintern, the International Workers’ Union of Constantinople, which had about 10,000 members, and the Red Unions of Anatolia, which also had 10,000 members in other cities, merged, forming the League of Red Unions of Turkey. The IWU, under the direction of the Communist Party of Constantinople, took action against the provocations and aggressions against non-Muslims following the Kemalists’ capture of Smyrna. In his 1924 report, Ginzberg described the general attitude of the left towards the Kemalists since the end of the war and its reaction against the feeling of nationalist frenzy:

“To enlighten the workers about their class interests and the meaning of Kemalist ’victory’, the Communist Party of Constantinople printed a declaration in Turkish: ’The working class welcomes every blow struck against imperialism. However, the Kemalist bourgeoisie has compromised with the imperialists with the Mudanya armistice. The Kemalist bourgeoisie will not realize the material aspirations of the workers. Whereas before it was the British, French and Italian police, under the command of foreign imperialists, who repressed the strikes, today it is the Turkish police, under the command of the Kemalist bourgeoisie, who are repressing the tram drivers’ strike against a French company a few days after their “victory”. Both the Turkish and foreign bourgeoisie are enemies of the working class. Only through struggle and force can the workers impose their rights on the bourgeoisie of all kinds. The Turkish bourgeoisie is trying to weaken the ranks of the workers with chauvinist demagogy. Turkish, Greek, Armenian and Jewish workers are brothers and have a common enemy: the bourgeoisie as a whole. The unity of all workers, regardless of race and nationality, is the struggle against the Kemalist bourgeoisie and imperialism. Taking advantage of the large street demonstrations, this leaflet was distributed among the protesting workers and stuck on almost every wall in the city.

“At the same time there was a tendency to massacre the Greeks. In every neighborhood we secretly formed committees of Turkish, Greek and Armenian workers whose task was to transform a possible racial massacre into a class struggle. The Greek, Armenian and Turkish members of the IWU participated together in all the street demonstrations. A very significant phenomenon: while the masses took the hats off the heads of passers-by and harassed those who did not wear a fez, the Greek, Jewish and Armenian members of the IWU, with their hats on, together with their Turkish comrades, walked undisturbed among tens of thousands of demonstrators and participated extensively in the action of breaking with stones the windows of the houses of bourgeois of different nationalities in the rich neighborhoods”.