The World Perspectives document which follows was originally drafted and discussed by ISA’s outgoing International Committee in early September, nearly three months ago. It was further amended by the IC and the World Congress in Germany in late November, where it was adopted. We feel that the dramatic twists and turns which have taken place since this text was drafted — most notably the reelection of Donald Trump and the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria — do not contradict, but rather fully confirm its key lines of argument. However, the sheer pace of global events has become so great that the newly elected International Political Committee, the day to day leadership of ISA, has produced this brief foreword for its publication.
We have stressed that the inter-imperialist conflict that has become a defining feature of the new era of global capitalism has at its core a long term fight for hegemony between U.S. and Chinese imperialism. This broader conflict now affects almost every other crisis around the world and leads to all sorts of unintended consequences. We have further stressed the developments and danger of escalation in several critical “theatres” of this inter-imperialist conflict including Ukraine, the Middle East and the so-called Indo Pacific region.
Most dramatically in recent days, the hated Assad regime in Syria fell with barely any resistance after years of horrific civil war. This came after the right-wing Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, in control of the North-West since 2020, backed by Turkey, suddenly made rapid territorial gains. Assad had been a close ally of Iran, in turn an important part of the Chinese — led bloc. The regime was propped up during the bloody 2011–19 civil war by Russian airpower and thousands of Hezbollah fighters. These forces became seriously constrained by the wars in Ukraine and in Lebanon, and ultimately hung Assad out to dry.
There is no other way to assess the wider international significance of the fall of the Assad regime than as a major blow to the Russian and Iranian regimes, and therefore also a significant setback for their ally, Chinese imperialism. Israeli capitalism, with its ongoing, U.S. backed murderous rampage in the region, with the genocidal campaign in Gaza still the most devastating, has inflicted serious blows to Hezbollah in Lebanon, at the cost of massive loss of life and vast destruction. A “ceasefire” with Hezbollah is now allegedly in place but the Syrian regime’s fall will have major repercussions in Lebanon since it cuts Iran’s supply lines to Lebanon and will contribute to a serious weakening of their “axis of resistance”. But an unstable, perhaps even a further Balkanized, Syria, potentially presided over by a Turkish backed Islamist regime is not a straightforward gain for U.S. and Israeli imperialism, or other reactionary Sunni regimes in the region.
In recent weeks a “missile crisis” in Ukraine has threatened to open a new escalation of the Ukraine War. This began with an increasingly desperate Ukrainian regime — a proxy of Western imperialism — facing ongoing gains by Russian forces on the ground and demanding permission from Washington to use long range Western rockets to hit targets further in Russia. They eventually got permission and launched several strikes. The Putin regime retaliated by launching a medium range ballistic missile, that normally carries a nuclear payload, into Ukrainian government territory, the first use of such a missile in the history of warfare. All of this is part of positioning by both sides ahead of a possible attempt at some sort of ceasefire but it is also extremely dangerous brinksmanship. However, it is hard to see the incoming Trump administration, despite bold claims of bringing the war to an end, being able to achieve even a serious pause to the conflict in the short term.
We have further witnessed the abortive coup attempt in South Korea, a pivotal US ally, by the president, Yoon Suk Yeol. This led to a powerful reaction within South Korean society including the declaration of an indefinite political general strike, which led to a number of more limited yet still significant local and sectoral strikes, alongside huge street protests. This forced a rapid retreat by the president and those elements of the state forces that initially responded to his call to impose martial law. Yoon had made himself deeply unpopular through vicious attacks on trade unions, public services and living standards, as well as by entering into a military alliance, at the behest of the U.S., with Japan which still refuses to acknowledge war crimes from its occupation of Korea before World War II.
In Georgia, meanwhile there have been ongoing protests and calls to depose a government which is seen as pro-Russian and suspended talks to enter the European Union. Meanwhile, the Romanian Supreme Court has cancelled presidential elections, because of the sudden emergence of a far right pro-Russian candidate as frontrunner, citing alleged Russian interference. Romania is in the European Union, has a 600 mile border with Ukraine and its establishment staunchly back Zelensky, This shows yet again the complete hypocrisy of Western imperialism’s democratic pretensions. Democracy is good when it suits the outcomes they prefer.
All powers facing crises
The World Congress discussed the question of the relative scale of contradictions and structural problems facing key imperialist powers within the overall framework of a system showing increasing features of decay and decline. These problems exist in all spheres, and while Chinese capitalism faces a particularly acute crisis, the US camp is also riddled with contradictions and problems.
But it is not just the two main adversaries that face long term structural crises and decline. As comrades discussed at the Congress this is also very much the case for German imperialism whose economic model, based on manufacturing exports to China and cheap Russian energy, is also broken. The German auto industry is in serious crisis, hastened by the capitalists failing to decisively shift away from yesterday’s soon redundant ICE technology, with Volkswagen announcing the first plant closings in its history. This has contributed to a sharp turn towards austerity and a ratcheting up of political crisis with the growth of the far right and the collapse of the current German government based on a coalition of the social democrats, Greens and the center right FDP.
Deep crisis also affects the other key power in the EU, France, with Emmanuel Macron’s latest parliamentary administration, a regime of austerity, collapsing after losing a no confidence motion, proposed by the Left and supported by Rassemblement Nationale. The latest phase of France’s political crisis has been contributed to by the country’s debt levels provoking potential EU sanctions and action by bond rating agencies. This is set to aggravate in the context of deepening political deadlock. The crisis of the Eurozone, which almost led to its collapse in the 2010s, may have returned.
This is further evidence — along with the twin diseases of inflation and deflation — of the fragility in the world economy. And a new round of trade war is almost certainly coming under Trump with threats to raise tariff levels against China to 60% and against all other countries to 10–20%. But this is not the only source of protectionism. China’s attempt to export its way out of crisis with cheap goods has led to retaliation in neo-colonial countries as well. A trade and possible currency war on the scale of the 1930s, in a global economy with no hegemon to “keep order”, would be the trigger of a much wider global downturn.
Reactionary turn by ruling class
The World Congress and the World Perspectives document correctly focused on the reactionary turn by the ruling class which is evident across the world, from Argentina to India, in the new era. The overall beneficiary of the crisis in Europe is the far right, with the AfD now the second largest party in Germany and Marine Le Pen pushing again towards power in France.
But the most significant new development is clearly the re-election of Trump in the U.S. It is remarkable that four years after the culmination of his attempted coup on January 6, 2020 which led to a strong reaction from key sections of the ruling class in the U.S., he has won with a much larger vote than when first elected in 2016. It is clear that important sections of the ruling class are prepared to give more backing to Trump’s vicious reactionary agenda as part of a wider ideological mobilization in the pre-war phase of the wider inter-imperialist conflict. Trump’s cabinet picks including open misogynists and abusers is a clear signal of how far he is prepared to go in ripping up progressive gains.
This election marks a clear shift to the right in U.S. society including within significant sections of the working class. This is also still a very contradictory situation. Trump’s second time in office promises to be a much better organized and more dangerous reactionary regime than his first term. On “day one” this will be a regime which will target undocumented workers; trans people; women; Black people; and the labor movement. It will also be far more repressive, focused on whipping up nationalism and militarism and attacking democratic rights. It is also clear that it will seek to target historic gains of the U.S. working class including potentially Medicare and Social Security. In short it will be a regime with significant authoritarian features which can be accurately described as parliamentary Bonapartism. But as our U.S. comrades stress, Trump’s current momentum does not mean that he can’t be defeated. Despite the terrible failings of the mainstream left, Trump’s attacks could provoke major struggle including decisive class battles.
Balance of class forces
While the main contradictions of this new era of imperialist conflict can only be resolved through ending the rule of capital through socialist revolution, other aspects of the character of the era are still in process of definition. The role of the working class in thwarting the imposition of martial law by an authoritarian right-wing leader in South Korea, speaks to the World Perspectives document’s assertion that the balance of class forces is not decisively determined. Strikes may have a mainly defensive character in many countries but defensive battles can also become much wider tests of class power as happened in the pension battle in France in 2023. And we are seeing regular evidence of working class pressure forcing unions to take action from Boeing workers in the US to autoworkers in Germany and Italy. At the World Congress comrades also gave examples of strikes in Norway, Sweden and Greece where the class struggle for different reasons had been quiescent.
The further spread of class struggle also poses a challenge to the far right and the bourgeois who back them because it points towards working class unity as opposed to the division and reactionary poison they promote.
We must also remember why the bourgeois finally and more decisively shifted away from neoliberal globalization. The previous economic paradigm had indeed reached its limits but they had also lost control of the narrative as a massive global revolt of working class and young people and especially young women surged in 2019. While briefly interrupted by Covid 19 this continued in 2020 and 2021. The turn to nationalism and militarism is part of the attempt to regain control. And the total failure of COP 29 underlines how capitalism now doesn’t even pretend to care or have a plan to secure a livable future for the mass of the human race.
The weaknesses of social movements and especially the left have been crucial in preventing decisive victories and opening the door to the right. But millions are still prepared to fight if given a clear lead. ISA’s World Congress was a reaffirmation of our determination to play a role in the historic battles to come.
PART ONE: Introduction
Preparations for the November 2024 World Congress are taking place in the context of a continuation and acceleration of the processes driving the 2020s, a decade which has given an unprecedented relevance to the oft-used formulation in our tradition — “sharp turns and sudden changes”. At the time of drafting, the Israeli regime’s genocidal onslaught on the Palestinian people and brutal assaults on Lebanon have brought the Middle East to the brink of a perilous regional conflagration. This slaughter and its impact is currently the dominant event in world politics, sharpening the system’s political crisis and giving an impetus to class contradictions and struggle. This occurs alongside, and is deeply intertwined with, the escalation of inter-imperialist struggle and militarism globally, a new incipient wave of social protest and revolt in the neocolonial world, and the political twists and turns of the global “year of elections” that is 2024.
However, preparations for the World Congress are also taking place in the context of a severe crisis in ISA, with the departure of a minority faction from our ranks. This moment marks a serious setback in the goal we embarked upon five years ago, when our international was renamed. This must be acknowledged, analyzed, discussed and understood, in a process which is now only beginning.
However, at the outset of this process, ISA firmly declares: we will not take the path of despair or resignation, but rather of renewed and determined political struggle to build a revolutionary Marxist international. World Perspectives is fundamental to this task. We remain firm in our struggle for political clarity centered on perspectives, while those who have walked away from ISA tend to diminish or abandon this fundamental trait of Marxism.
Moving beyond the “Age of Disorder”
A Marxist method of World Perspectives does not consist of merely listing or commenting on changes and events, as important and dramatic as they may be. Our task is to make sense of events and processes. During the past five years, we have dedicated significant time, energy and resources to precisely this task, in the midst of a cacophony of change in the objective situation, and begun to characterize a new and unique historical era. Through the pandemic, through wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and through successive ebbs and flows of revolution and counter-revolution, we have fought to develop an overarching framework of understanding, tying together manifold threads and processes of crisis and change, and forging clarity in place of confusion and disorientation.
We can stand over the main lines of our world perspectives in this new period. However, the scale and rapid pace of change leave no room whatsoever to simply be content with the ideas we have already elaborated. In this epoch, all ideas will be mercilessly tested by events, and will require deepening and updating, even if no major corrections are required.
This is the central task of this text. We do not set out to provide detailed analysis of current events — which would be impossible in any case, for a text designed for discussion over several months — or to mention every country or important development or struggle. We will focus on key processes and trends, attempting to illustrate those with relevant examples.
As part of deepening and concretizing our characterization of this epoch, some considerations regarding our internal terminology are put forward in this document. This includes the need to move beyond speaking about an “Age of Disorder‘’. This term, borrowed initially from Deutsche Bank, served an important purpose in our analysis. It emphasized the departure from the neoliberal era and the extreme volatility of what replaced it, characterized by an unprecedented “polycrisis” of the system on many fronts.
In 2024, however, this term appears overly imprecise and devoid of content. Disorder is inherent in capitalism and imperialism, and while this epoch is indeed particularly disorderly, saying so does not shed much light on its key objective, social and political components, and can in fact read as a serious understatement. A “catch-all” replacement for the term should not be sought at the expense of clarity and precision. However, ISA should move beyond this general formulation and emphasize a characterization of the epoch which more clearly spells out its key processes and features.
Processes and “nuances”
Much of the debate which has recently taken place on World Perspectives in ISA has centered on the role of “nuances”, in the context of identifying general processes. A dialectical view of course requires attention to be paid to the situation as a whole, including its inevitable nuances and the “exceptions to every rule”. However, in the method of Marxism, this should be done in order to deepen and enrich our analysis, not to undermine our ability to identify and understand the dominant motor forces, processes and trends that are driving world history. Such an approach would leave an organization disorientated, and with a perspective that limits itself to identifying “a bit of this, but also a bit of that” instead of clear ideas which assist us in intervening and preparing to intervene.
Indeed in debates in ISA, in relation to inter-imperialist struggle and to perspectives for the labour movement for example, we have repeatedly seen arguments on display, especially from comrades in the former minority faction, which fall into this trap. By focusing on the “trees”, in the form of nuances, exceptions and “countervailing trends” to what are the deep-rooted powerful trends of our time, comrades have lost sight of the woods. While generalization can be a blunt instrument, this cannot prevent us from making clear characterizations which are crucial to prepare our forces.
A system in deep rot
During WW1, Rosa Luxemburg raised the rallying cry of “socialism or barbarism”, in reference to the landscape on offer under capitalism and imperialism’s continued existence. A couple of decades later, at the time of the founding of the IV international in the 1930s, Leon Trotsky characterized the deep crisis of capitalism — with the world’s imperialist powers gearing up for WW2, against a backdrop of revolution and counter-revolution — as its “death agony”.
In ISA, we have tended to avoid these, or similar formulations. This is due to the need to make crystal clear — based on the experience of both these historical periods and events ever since — that despite the powerful historical forces unleashed by capitalist development, which propel humanity towards a socialist and communist future, there is no inevitability about a “final” or terminal crisis of the system. History speaks to both the need for, and the difficulty of assembling, the subjective factor — in the form of a mass international revolutionary party — which is necessary for the working class majority to really fulfill its historic tasks.
However, it should be acknowledged that both Luxembourg’s and Trotsky’s formulations bear relevance in the 2020s. It is difficult to overstate the rottenness of this system. Its main internal contradictions — based on private property and the nation state — are at the heart of every single one of the crises which plague people and the planet. It is a system of zero hope for the future, unable to offer optimism to any significant layer of the population, including within the ruling class itself. Its only response to crisis after crisis is to move in an even more parasitic and miserable direction. 2020s capitalism is driving a reactionary juggernaut which only working class struggle, ultimately working class power, can halt and reverse.
This is an age of imperialism, nationalism and militarism.
All past periods of inter-imperialist conflict featured, at least partially, the optimism (from a reactionary bourgeois standpoint) of a rising world power. Not so the 2020s, which underlines the extreme rottenness of the system. The global imperialist power struggle between US and Chinese-led blocs is a fight between two superpowers which are both in decline. Our international is virtually alone in the left internationally in understanding this fact. Chinese capitalism’s share of global GDP is now shrinking, from 18.3% in 2021 to 16.9% in 2023. The imperialist conflict is driven not by a chase for expansion, but an existential struggle to hold ground and not be pushed back further.
The ensuing conflict has rapidly become “full spectrum”. It has become the single most important process determining the direction of economics and bourgeois politics. While ebbs and flows are inevitable, this process is now fundamental to the internal dynamic of the system and will endure throughout this epoch of capitalism.
ISA’s understanding of this trend in world relations has thus far been expressed in the concept of a “New Cold War”. This term was very useful, expressing both the depth of the process of global division underway, and also the nature of the conflict, as one between two blocs rather than the mistaken analysis of a “multipolar” geopolitical order which has been put forward by many others.
However, the formulation “New Cold War” is no longer sufficient to describe this process. Unlike the first Cold War (between US-led imperialism and the Stalinist bloc), this is not a conflict which will be indefinitely confined to being a largely “cold” one, by a precarious equilibrium. Several years of escalating inter imperialist war in Ukraine, and the genocidal war in Gaza which is spilling over into a regional war which is firmly ensconced in the global imperialist power struggle, are sufficient to conclude that this conflict has moved beyond its cold phase and the trend-line towards escalation is clear. Moreover these and other developments have unleashed an avalanche of militarism, with the beefing up of military production and a corresponding political and ideological militarist offensive around the world.
This is an epoch of war, and the preparation of war. As well as the two main current theaters where bloody wars are raging, there are many theaters of conflict where open war is threatened. The third main global theater is the Asia Pacific, where Chinese and US imperialism’s conflict over Taiwan is both intractable and escalating. For both sides, the Taiwan question is of decisive historic importance. A US defeat or decision to stand back and allow China to annex the island would signify the end of the era of US global primacy. This would powerfully accelerate a nuclear arms race as Japan and South Korea and possibly other regional powers go nuclear in order to fill the vacuum left by Washgington’s retreat. For Chinese imperialism, the stakes are equally high: formal and final loss of Taiwan would be a catastrophic defeat marking the end of Beijing’s ability to challenge US power in East Asia, and the probable collapse of the CCP regime.
On the Korean peninsula, the two imperialist blocs confront each other at the 38th parallel, with both Seoul and Pyongyang now playing important roles in their respective camps. Detente and “sunshine policy” has been decisively jettisoned in favor of increased militarism and militarist rhetoric. Rather than immediate moves towards an “Asian NATO” a US-led web of overlapping mini-NATOs is being created that spans from India to New Zealand, while the security of China’s border with Russia, allowing Xi’s regime to focus its military policy southwards, is one of the most important benefits of the alliance with Putin.
In Europe, Serbia and Kosovo have been teetering on the brink of open conflict, part of a complex tapestry of underlying tensions throughout the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe. Africa has seen several bloody wars, including in Ethiopia, the DRC and Sudan with horrific death tolls, and military coups in several West African countries which express the crisis of the Western imperialist powers’ position on the continent. Indeed, the continent is increasingly becoming the fourth major ‘theater’ of the super-power conflict, with a new ’scramble for Africa’ with two competing blocks fighting to assert or reassert imperialist dominance. Even Latin America has seen sparks fly, with the Russian navy parading off Cuba only months after tensions flared between Venezuela and Guyana over the region of Esequibo.
However, no theater is an isolated one. The three most decisive theaters are tied firmly together in one global theater — the inter imperialist power struggle between the two competing blocs. Its fingerprints are also easily to be found all over every other theater.
The direction of travel is not only towards the deepening of this conflict, but towards its transformation from Cold into Hot, including the prospect of more direct and generalized military conflicts between the main powers. While we make no stark headline prediction of imminent World War in this document, the dynamic in this direction must be recognized and the real dangers fully spelled out. Underestimating the depravity of capitalism and imperialism in this epoch would be a grave error.
This is an age of accelerated climate breakdown
Meanwhile, dominant economic and geopolitical processes only accelerate the rush towards planetary thresholds that pave the way for ecological disaster. Report after report revises in a more extreme direction predictions for the pace and scale of global heating and the climate breakdown it is ushering in. As fossil fuel emissions break new records, 2024 saw the hottest month of July in recorded history.
The climate crisis is now a real part of working class people’s lives the world over, sometimes in a routine daily sense, and often in a much more devastating and dramatic way. In Brazil, the US, Sudan, India, Japan but to name only a few, extreme weather events have led to severe crises over the last couple of months. This problem, objectively the most pressing facing humanity as a whole, is inevitably becoming an integral part of the class struggle in many countries, and must occupy a very important place in the programme of Marxists.
Clearly, this problem calls for a revolutionary transition on a global scale based on international cooperation and a democratic plan of production and consumption. This would include a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, military armaments, the obscene excesses of the rich and capitalist wasteful consumption, towards a green and maximally energy-efficient development of all industry, transport systems, agriculture, fisheries and food processing, urban planning and housing, as well as public welfare, education and culture.
Capitalism’s trajectory is firmly in the opposite direction. Economic nationalism and protectionism, and the turbocharging of inter-imperialist struggle and militarism, have unleashed new waves of “carbon bombs”. Green transition plans are left to rot as states act to beef up, not phase out, fossil fuel extraction. Even on the political level, the faux concern and “determination to act” which dominated bourgeois political rhetoric a few years ago, has retreated considerably as “net-zero skepticism” becomes more and more prominent, especially intertwined with the strengthening of the populist and far right.
While increasingly ignoring the consequences of climate change (and never properly accounting for it in growth projections), capitalism still has to account for the concrete costs of environmental degradation. The bourgeoisie is aware of this. Governments are writing plans to prepare for the billions of losses arising from future catastrophic weather events. These losses will not disappear when the economy recovers. These deficits will present themselves in various ways, including but not limited to: days of work/school missed, increased investments in security services and armed forces, loss of infrastructure, uninsurable terrain leading to local population decline and impacts on local economic prospects following the destruction of various means of production. Lower economic output will then add to, or create new, political instability.
This rotten system, prisoner of its irresolvable contradictions, is not only incapable of addressing the climate and ecological crisis. It is also thoroughly incapable of preparing for, and then dealing with, the destruction which climate breakdown will unleash in terms of infrastructure, migration, healthcare, sanitation, healthcare etc. The capitalist class do not “control” the world. The economy is unplanned, and its internal forces cannot be bent to the capitalists’ will. Similarly, the world’s climate and ecology are beyond their control. It is impossible for the capitalist class, or for that matter humanity, to conquer nature.
This is an age of political polarization
2024’s “year of elections‘’ has shown the endurance of capitalism’s deep political crisis, and its manifestation in volatile polarization. Indeed, the general pattern of election campaigns throughout the year, from Europe to the US, to India, Mexico, South Africa and beyond has been remarkably similar: the continued malaise of the “center” (usually to be understood as a euphemism for the hated dominant political forces of the neoliberal era) and the consolidation of deep polarization.
Within this picture, it is the right wing expression of polarization which has the most momentum. This is expressed both in the growth of new and old far right and right populist forces, and in the “Trumpification” of traditional right wing parties. It has also been expressed beyond the ballot box, with the wave of racist riots which swept the UK in August a stark example. The bourgeois will deliberately use issues like immigration to foment division in the working class and ramp up polarization. The same politicians who authorize historic levels of immigration for cheap labor then will shamelessly turn around and try to blame them for social problems like the housing crisis or violence.
This scenario, which is deeply connected to the weakness of the Left and failures of reformism in the 2010s and 2020s, must be sharply addressed by Marxists today. Beyond elections, a new reactionary ideological offensive is extending like a stain, with aggressive misogyny, queerphobia, and the abuse of migrants raising their heads higher, all intertwined with the aforementioned wave of nationalism and militarism. The struggle against the far right, which is ultimately a political struggle to build mass parties with a socialist programme, must be at the cutting edge of ISA’s campaigning work in the coming period.
Epoch’s Class Balance of Forces Not Decisively Determined
While the reactionary juggernaut of 2020s capitalism must not be underestimated, it would be wrong to conclude that the new era will resemble a predetermined march into a dark age of reaction. Above all, the direction of this epoch, as all epochs, will be determined by the class balance of forces. While at this conjuncture, more momentum currently lies with reaction, in general, neither class has yet decisively imposed itself upon the other.
While it remains deeply affected and limited by the political and organizational crises arising from its weakening during the neoliberal era, the international working class is not defeated by any means. Indeed, the past few years have seen the labour movement reassert itself and the working class engage in attempts to address these crises. This goes beyond the strike waves which characterized 2022 and 2023.
All the reactionary manifestations of capitalism’s deep rot are at the same time motors for struggle and resistance (what Marx called the “whip of counter-revolution”). This has been seen by the historic mass movement against the genocidal war on Gaza, in mass movements against the far right in Germany, Belgium, France and Argentina, and in the recent mass protest and strike movement against gender violence in India. Within these, the weight of working class organizations and methods of struggle has increased.
The role of Marxists, even when our forces are small, is not separate to our perspectives. On the contrary, the task of building a revolutionary party is fundamental to the outcome of the turmoil of this epoch and will be decisive to the living battle between revolution and counter-revolution which will determine the world’s future. Our perspectives should serve as a guide for action, and their strength should find an expression in the determination and sacrifice of ISA members around the world in redoubling our efforts to rebuild our international.
PART TWO: The Dominance of “Geopolitics” and Trends in the World Economy
It is absolutely clear that the struggle between US and Chinese imperialism for global domination of markets, supply chains, finance systems, technology and critical resources is continuing to accelerate. An increasingly important part of the conflict is a developing trade war. Besides tariffs, key imperialist powers are moving to protect and invest in “strategic” sectors. The US and China are also restricting inward and outward investment in each other’s economies, especially in these strategic areas.
However, this conflict cannot be reduced to a fight over trade and investment. Imperialism arose as a definite feature of the world capitalist system in the late 19th century as a result of the increasing monopolization of key sectors in developed economies leading to the export of capital. Alongside this came the growing power of finance capital, leading to colonization, wars and imperialist conflicts. The logical outcome was the division of the entire world into spheres dominated by the key imperialist powers leading inexorably to the First World War. The “unfinished business” of 1914–8 in turn led to the Second World War, which strengthened Stalinism but also saw the US emerge as the undisputed hegemon in the capitalist world.
During the 75 year domination of the US over world capitalism, it was widely believed that the world wars between capitalist powers would never be repeated though there was certainly fear of a major war, including nuclear confrontation, between the US and the Soviet Union. With the collapse of Stalinism, that specter also seemed to be banished.
During the era of neoliberal globalization, bourgeois ideologists even pretended that the nation state itself was being transcended. But the inner contradictions of the capitalist system cannot be resolved and tended to recreate the same basic dynamic that existed in the early 20th century when a rising German and American capitalism challenged British hegemony at the end of a previous phase of globalization.
The Cold War after World War II was a conflict between two social systems with the Stalinist regimes generally seeking “peaceful coexistence” with capitalism. Of course there were still huge armed conflicts in Korea and Vietnam as Western and especially US imperialism sought to prevent the further spread of social revolution.
Today’s conflict is a battle for world domination (hegemony) between two imperialist blocs which can only end in the decisive victory of one side or the ruination of both. The only way to prevent a global war in the long run is socialist revolution within the camps. This seems far-fetched to many, but because of the massive social and political contradictions within both key imperialist contenders and the massive power of the international working class, such an outcome is truly possible, and is what our programme unashamedly points towards.
Over the course of the past several years, especially since the beginning of the Ukraine War in 2022, the two blocs centered on the US and China have cemented. In all major tests — beginning with Ukraine but then in East Asia and now in the explosive scenario of the Middle East — the countervailing tendencies have been decidedly secondary. This will continue, though of course not in an even or uninterrupted way.
The hardening of imperialist blocs can present itself in dangerous and contradictory ways. For example, there is a tendency for embattled, “little” nations to take conflict and brinksmanship further than the dominant power of the bloc would otherwise prefer. This tendency is propelled forward by the logic of the intensifying imperial rivalry between the U.S. and China. As the blocs draw closer, the dominant power needs to shore up its credibility and protect its turf. The U.S. and China must show that they will come to the defense and aid of other members of its bloc. This emboldens embattled allies, who know that their ultimate security is guaranteed by the dominant power. The U.S. and China simply cannot “cut the strings” and leave an ally alone without appearing weak. This dynamic played out during the early 20th century between Britain and Germany. It eventually led to the outbreak of World War I, a war which served neither bloc’s direct interest at the time. In our current period, we see this dynamic in Israeli and Russian aggression lasting longer and going further than the preferences of the ruling class in the U.S. and China. Though we should be wary of crude historical analogies, this tendency could spark a wider, “undesired” war in our own period.
More recently we have seen the consolidation of Iran and North Korea into the China-led bloc. These are not key economies but they have huge armies and military industrial complexes and have a major geopolitical influence within their respective regions. In the new era dominated by imperialist militarism, such allies become vastly more valuable. It is estimated that North Korea has sent 7,000 containers of munitions to Russia including 5,000,000 artillery shells in exchange for Russian help, including with the further development of its space programs and potentially even its nuclear weapons. Up until very recently, Russia was part of the international sanctions regime against North Korea, committed to helping contain its nuclear program.
Three key theaters
There are currently three key theaters of conflict between the US and Chinese led imperialist blocs. These are Russia-Ukraine, the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Of course, no part of the world is untouched by the conflict as both the US and China scour the world for supplies of critical minerals. China has developed massive trade with East Asia, Africa and Latin America and has used its Belt and Road Initiative as a tool of Imperialist domination. In response the Biden Administration in 2022 launched the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) with plans to spend $600B by 2027. The US and its allies rely increasingly on security ties as a counterweight to Chinese influence. This has also backfired spectacularly in some cases, as in the Sahel region where a series of countries have expelled first French and then American military contingents in favor of developing “security relationships” with Russia.
While the genocidal war against the Palestinians has put the Middle East in the center of attention this past year, the most developed of these conflicts is still taking place in Ukraine. After 2.5 years of attritional war, it is very difficult for Ukraine to compete with Russia’s demographic advantage and its 24/7 war economy. Among the purposes of the desperate and dangerous Ukrainian Kursk incursion was to counter falling war morale in Ukraine and internationally with surprise attacks that also exposed Russian weaknesses. Another was to stretch Russian forces to cut across the momentum of their advance in the Donbas, but this has not worked. At the time of drafting, Russia’s Donbas advance appears to in fact be accelerating.
Western imperialism is rushing in more weapons including F-16s, while Ukraine is now bringing convicts into the fighting as Russia has done since the start of the war. The invasion of Kursk is also clearly an attempt by Zelensky to bring the West deeper into the conflict as the front within Ukraine begins to collapse. The incursion was also clearly greenlighted by the Western powers. This is also part of why the Russian regime is more sanguine about the situation than might be expected.
While this was a matter of debate with the former minority in ISA, it is crystal clear that the dominant feature of the Ukraine War is that it is part of the inter-imperialist conflict. The interests of the Ukrainian people have been completely subsumed to a reactionary regime utterly beholden to Western imperialism. Its military campaign is an utterly reactionary one, which sees tens of thousands of working class people slaughtered in “meat-grinder” warfare over a few meters of ruins at a time. Only a mass independent working class force opposing both Russian and Western imperialism as well as the Ukrainian oligarchs and basing itself on international solidarity could point the way to end this war and win genuine independence and national rights for all minorities.
The involvement of China in supporting the Russian military effort, also a subject of debate in our ranks, is also indisputable. At the July 2024 NATO summit in Washington DC, the summit communiqué said that China had become “a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine through its so-called ‘no limits’ partnership and its large-scale support for Russia’s defense industrial base.” Both sides tell the truth about each other’s role in this war, but of course not about themselves. Western imperialism still wants to pretend that its intervention has something to do with the defense of democracy against autocracy while Russia and China claim to work as a progressive counterweight to US imperialism.
As we have commented previously, another impact of the war has been the reassertion of US leadership over the West, in line with the consolidation of both blocs. A further consequence of this has been the magnifying of the impact of the US internal political crisis on the evolution of this and other conflicts. This is demonstrated by the anguish which November 2024’s Presidential elections have aroused among pro-Ukraine media and political commentators internationally. While Trump’s “outsider” (of the traditional establishment) status has real implications for US foreign policy, his brand of nationalist populism should not be misinterpreted, as it has by many, as “isolationist”. Trump is very much committed to US imperialism’s battle for world domination.
His approach to NATO — for example, demanding more money from European powers — represents a desire to further assert US leadership, with American imperialism getting more “bang for its buck” and keeping its allies more firmly in tow. In relation to Ukraine, Trump is certainly personally hostile to the Ukrainian regime and has sympathies and connections with a wing of the US ruling class which sees the war as a distraction from a focus on the Pacific arena. But he has also demonstrated an awareness of what is at stake in this proxy-war, and had a clear hand in unblocking aid to Ukraine by the Republican-led Congress. A second Trump administration is certainly likely to try to force the Zelensky regime to the negotiating table with Putin, but will be far from the only factor pushing events in that direction. Already, Zelensky has shifted his rhetoric on this, seemingly opening a path towards a ceasefire deal which cedes territory to Russia, and preparation for negotiations is also a potential partial motivation for his counter-invasion of Russia.
At the same time, the anatomy of any deal acceptable to both sides of the conflict is difficult to pre-envisage. Vetoing Ukrainian membership of NATO and accepting the current frontline as a fact on the ground — ceding vast swathes of territory to Putin — would represent a huge blow to the West, despite its ability to point towards Russia’s failure to achieve anything close to its initial war aims. Any deal could be short-lived and merely pause open warfare in the region, which is becoming one of the world’s most militarized. On the other hand, a failure to agree a ceasefire deal could catapult the conflict onto an even more dangerous path of escalation, up to and including the direct intervention of NATO or other powers.
Middle East — Genocidal war breaks the status quo
The horrors inflicted on the Palestinian people by the Israeli military with the unstinting aid of US imperialism have destroyed whatever remained of the credibility of US claims to be leading a global struggle against tyranny and oppression, in the eyes of millions around the globe. The British medical journal, the Lancet, now estimates that the total deaths caused directly and indirectly in Gaza by this truly genocidal war may exceed 186,000, a staggering 7.9% of the population.
This war is different from any other flare-up in the region during the last decades: not another mere “round”, but a status quo-changing episode. The motivation for the utterly reactionary Hamas-led attacks of 7 October was to overturn the dynamic in the region, away from “normalization” of Israeli capitalism’s national oppression. The purpose of the Israeli regime’s bloody response is to deal its enemies in the region, including in Lebanon and Iran, more decisive blows than it has achieved in the recent period. The systematic terrorisation, devastation and murder of the Gazan population is also designed to destroy any remaining hope of achieving Palestinian statehood, even of a largely superficial and meaningless character. With truly brute force it aims to cow the Palestinian masses and limit future resistance. But this will fail.
The pursuit by the blood-stained Netanyahu government — correctly referred to by our Israel/Palestine section as the “most dangerous force in the region” — of unachievable and largely undefined war aims has unleashed a bloodbath with no end in sight. Despite its huge military superiority, it has failed in its stated aim of crushing Hamas, even in those parts (the majority) of the Gaza strip which it has already reduced to ruin. It has no “day after” plan for the devastated strip apart from continued occupation. Moreover, it has added to its genocidal onslaught on Gaza with increasingly brutal operations in the occupied West Bank, on a level not seen for decades.
Another significant feature of this war is precisely how clearly it has become anchored in the global US/China power struggle. US imperialism is firmly backing the Israeli state, a position that will be strengthened with any escalation, even if it, like part of the Israeli ruling class, sincerely wants to reign in the Netanyahu regime, the far right and those sections of the ruling class which are risking, or even prefer, a regional war. The historic struggle of the Palestinian people for liberation is of course not a proxy war for Chinese imperialism. However, Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah — along with militias in Iraq and Syria — are all linked to Iran, China’s increasingly close ally.
This exposes the underlying motivation for US imperialism with crystal clarity: maintaining its overall military and political dominance in the region. Israel is key to this, as well as alliances with a whole number of brutal Arab dictatorships who are also completely opposed to the regime in Tehran.
If a major war erupts between Israel and Lebanon, which seems highly likely at the time of drafting, it would likely trigger a full scale regional war with very unpredictable consequences. Despite the significant blows it has suffered in recent months, including the assassination of much of its leadership, Hezbollah is a far more formidable adversary than Hamas. It has the capacity to break through the “Iron Dome” and deliver significant blows to Israeli infrastructure and to cause massive loss of life in urban areas. But the Israeli military campaign would also inflict devastation on an even wider scale than what we have seen in Gaza. As we have pointed out, this is not what either US or Chinese imperialism want at this stage but the situation is not fully under their control.
Israeli capitalism is an increasingly volatile ally of US imperialism. While the latter cries crocodile tears and constantly claims to be confident of an approaching ceasefire, the Netanyahu government consistently acts, ever more audaciously, to drag events in the polar opposite direction. In fact, this is clearly part of Netanyahu’s calculations: conscious of the fact that backing the Israeli state is of fundamental strategic importance for US imperialism, he feels emboldened to act aggressively, reassured of the backing of the world’s biggest superpower.
The war has overlapped with and feeds into an historic level of internal crisis in Israeli society and politics, with a general strike and historic street protests rocking the country in the wake of the deaths of numerous hostages at the start of September. Coming in the aftermath of the mass movement against the “judicial coup” at the start of 2023 only months before the beginning of the current war, the bloodbath’s inevitable chauvinist backlash did not paper over deepening social contradictions.
The mass demonstrations against the government for a “Deal Now” and the general strike confirms our view that under the pressure of events, elements of consciousness can change rapidly. They also show how profoundly wrong most of the international far left is to treat the Israeli population as one reactionary mass, without appreciating its fundamental class contradictions — the sharpening of which is fundamental to any solution to the quagmire in the region.
Combined with mass struggle by the Palestinian, Lebanese and Arab masses, and the huge protest movement around the world, this general strike begins to point in the direction of what is truly needed to end this war, despite its limitations. Nonetheless, even now Netanyahu, closely aligned with the far right, retains an important base of support within Israeli society. The Israeli far right have felt emboldened by the war, with the sharp increase in attacks and killings in the West Bank and. for example, the violence that surrounded an inquiry into the horrific abuse of Palestinian detainees by Israeli soldiers.
But the recent protests and the general strike, while far from representing a complete rejection of chauvinist reaction even among the forces on the streets themselves, is undoubtedly a huge step forward. Crucially, our comrades on the ground — whose brave and principled intervention is a source of great pride throughout ISA — have reported that within the movement the more genuine antiwar pole which points towards a rejection of the occupation, while still a small minority, has gained strength. The last period has also seen some elements of an emerging left among Palestinian youth, rejecting both Hamas and Fatah. These objective elements point towards the importance of ISA’s unique internationalist class struggle-based programme to end national oppression, capitalism and imperialism in the region.
Western imperialism and especially US imperialism has been hugely discredited by its close strategic alliance with the murderous Israeli regime. Chinese and Russian imperialism are exploiting this support of the Israeli regime to gain influence in the Middle East and Global South. This discrediting can be seen in the mass protest movements, including the militant campus-based movement, which have forced a number of Western imperialist countries to take symbolic but important steps to distance themselves from the Israeli regime. Throughout the world, governments and parties have been thrown into crisis in response to the war. It was the cutting edge of successful Left-of-Labour challenges in July’s UK elections. It has also provoked mass protests that sent shivers up the spines of authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere in the region. It is also of huge significance that seven US unions — including the autoworkers as well as the biggest teachers union — at the end of July called on the Biden administration to “immediately halt military aid to the Israeli government” which goes beyond the call for a ceasefire.
While very significant, these developments do not mean, however, that there is any chance at this stage of a decisive rupture of US-led imperialism with the Israeli state because of its strategic role.
Western Pacific
In the Western Pacific, which is ultimately the most decisive theater of the inter-imperialist conflict, the buildup on both sides continues. The Philippine Coast Guard has repeatedly clashed with Chinese naval vessels in the South China Sea. A much bigger standoff with the Philippines invoking the Mutual Defense Treaty with the US to appeal for American assistance is possible in the future.
These so far small-scale skirmishes correspond to a sharpening power struggle within the Filipino ruling class, between the Marcos and Duterte dynastic factions, each aligned with different sides of the imperialist bloc conflict. Similar divisions between pro-US and pro-China factions of the ruling class are beginning to develop in other countries throughout the region. Vietnam is another state with claims on parts of the South China Sea and, after China, is the most actively engaged in building military fortifications there.
Beijing’s stance on the South China Sea is blatantly imperialist. It claims sovereignty over more than 90% of these waters — an area larger than India — not to “liberate” this from US control but to subjugate and exploit it both for natural resources and to project military power over its southern neighbors. The US strategy to isolate China behind the slogan “freedom of the seas” is steeped in hypocrisy, but has been gifted by the CCP’s often brutal actions.
While Beijing routinely steps up military activity around Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait, in reality right now Xi’s regime wants to downplay the issue, reflecting its increasing economic and social fragility. Xi even told the EU’s von der Leyen, that “the US was trying to trick China into invading Taiwan”, saying he would not take the bait. This statement also served to warn the more adventuristic elements in China’s military establishment not to overestimate China’s hand in the current complex situation. However, the war danger does not primarily arise from the thought processes in a dictator’s — or any other capitalist leader’s — head, but rather from objective conditions under the logic of capitalism.
Taiwan’s status under capitalism and imperialism means that it can never be genuinely independent, but instead must serve as a strategic foothold for either US or Chinese imperialism, enabling them to project power over the crucial East Asian region. At some point, regardless of which rulers are installed in Beijing and Washington, their struggle for hegemony means that the Taiwan question must be “solved” by force, unless the system of capitalism and imperialism is overthrown.
The two Korean regimes have become more bellicose towards each other and more integrated into their respective blocs. This shift is of course accompanied by ramped up nationalism and increased attacks on the working class and the oppressed north and south. Yoon’s government in Seoul attempts to use more authoritarian measures such as its use of the national security law to attack trade unions. His success in taking South Korea into a formal military alliance with Japan, the former colonizer of Korea, is another sign of this era’s historic shifts, while also further rattling the North Korean regime. The allied forces in both imperialist blocs are involved in the military buildup and exercises in the region.
At this stage, the basis already exists for these three theaters to merge into one much larger conflict. Such a scenario happened in the late 1930s when three significant regional imperialist conflicts developed, not initially directly linked for several years. These included Germany’s drive to conquer more territory in Europe; Italy’s drive to establish an imperial presence in North and East Africa; and finally Japan’s drive into China, Korea and other parts of East Asia. At that point, Italy, Japan and Germany were not in a formal alliance.
Nuclear deterrent?
Nuclear weapons are not an absolute obstacle to a bigger conflict as claimed by “position 3” advocates in the former minority faction. The brutal Ukraine war involving nuclear armed Russia with NATO arming the other side is proof of this. The war has a “hybrid” character with the role of “old fashioned” artillery, tanks and fighter jets but also an unprecedented use of drone and other technology. The potential of nuclear war to destroy the very basis for capitalist production, along with the massive, revolutionary movements that could be sparked by an imminent threat of it — even that of a supposedly ‘small’ tactical strike — mean the use of these weapons by either side is not the most likely scenario.
Nuclear weapons are partially seen as a form of insurance policy against a large-scale invasion of the “homeland” of the nation that possesses them. The US would have certainly been less likely to invade Iraq in 2003 if Saddam Hussein’s regime actually possessed a nuclear arsenal. To put it another way, this means that in several key belligerent countries, ruling classes can be “reassured” by the possession of nuclear weapons that they are “safe” to engage in a very big conventional war without the danger of a full-scale invasion.
This is far from the previous logic of the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) which claimed that nuclear weapons allegedly prevented serious direct conflict between key powers altogether. It is also a very dangerous idea that nuclear powers could engage in a major direct conventional war with each other (not just through proxies) and that these weapons would not be used as a desperate last resort by the side that is losing.
In addition to existing nuclear powers, which are engaged in a level of nuclear rearmament which was unthinkable in the last few decades and Iran, which is clearly close to obtaining weapons, other countries are considering trying to join the “club” including Germany, Poland and Saudi Arabia.
The Domestic Repercussions
Increasingly, in discussing the development of the inter-imperialist conflict we must look at its numerous domestic effects including within the key imperialist countries. These include growing state intervention into the economy to develop and protect “strategic” sectors such as semiconductor (chip) production. This is also about direct military buildup.
The Ukraine war has rapidly increased militarisation, both in terms of propaganda and the arms race. The US and European imperialist powers have concluded that they’re not ready to wage a wider war. They have had major problems providing the Ukrainian army with artillery shells and other equipment, which was aggravated by the need to simultaneously re-supply the Israeli military after October 7. Meanwhile China is far outpacing the US in the building of naval capacity which of course will be critical in the key theater of the Western Pacific. The Chinese bloc generally and Russia especially is far more advanced in the direction of running a war economy. However, this situation points to Western imperialism engaging in a massive project of rebuilding industrial capacity for war materiel, which has barely begun.
But the turn to a war or pre-war economy has many other implications in the Western countries which in turn have wider global implications, including for the class struggle. For one thing, it means mostly ending the pretense that there is a serious attempt to address the climate crisis through a rapid transition to renewable energy. It also means austerity and cuts to education, healthcare and social programs. The further consequences of the drive to war for neo-colonial countries, many of which are already collapsing under the burden of debt to the vampires of finance capital, whether the IMF or China’s finance arm, will be catastrophic.
This, as well as the effects of actual wars as we have already seen in the context of Gaza, will provoke massive opposition within society. This points to the potential for a global anti-imperialist, internationalist, working class centered antiwar movement. While we have called for the building of such a movement since the beginning of the Ukraine war, the mass response to the genocidal war on Gaza has begun to show how its outline can begin to develop.
The preemptive response of the ruling class is of course to whip up nationalism and promote militarism with a macho and often racist subtext. In country after country in the West, a relentless “anti antisemitism” campaign has been waged to smear and even criminalize opponents of the slaughter of the Palestinian people. We have seen increased repression for example in the US against students peacefully occupying their campus lawns. This is a taste of what’s to come.
Leading capitalist commentators in both the political and media establishments have begun to relentlessly beat the drums of war. The end of the “post war” and beginning of a “pre war” epoch has been an increasing refrain. Moves towards reintroducing military conscription have been enacted in Latvia and mooted by major parties in Britain, Germany, Italy and elsewhere, while Sweden and Estonia have extended the reach of existing conscription regimes. In Germany there has been a relentless propaganda campaign that the country has to build up its military, with Minister of Defense Pistorius stating the need to prepare for war within 5–8 years.
The ruling class’ reactionary agenda also means giving increasing support to right wing and even far right parties who promote national identity, anti-immigrant and general racist hatred. Establishment parties are following the same trend, using increasingly brutal measures to stop refugees. Capitalist are prepared to accept these policies, despite the objective need for immigration, especially in numerous Western and Asian countries that face a demographic crisis.
The trend to authoritarianism is evident in many parts of the world including within Europe and with the real possibility of a Trump 2.0 regime. Bonapartist elements (authoritarian “rule by the sword” in the interests of the ruling class) are becoming stronger worldwide, and it’s likely we will see a further increase, with liberal bourgeois democracy in crisis. This could be in the form of more coup d’etats, not only in neocolonial countries, but also “softer” bonapartist measures like “judicial reforms”, governing through constant emergency decrees or “technocratic” governments in advanced imperialist countries.
All of this stands in sharp contrast to the era of neoliberal globalization when “market fundamentalism” dominated and the goal was to reduce or remove all obstacles to the mobility of capital. It means an increasing element of state interventionism in the advanced capitalist countries.
These developments, driven by the needs of a diseased system, will have contradictory consequences. The reduced mobility of capital and elements of industrial “reshoring ” can help to strengthen the objective position of the working class in the “Advanced” Capitalist Countries. In the neoliberal era, “runaway shops” were an important feature in weakening the position of the labor movement in the US, for example, leading to widespread hatred of trade deals like NAFTA, a trend mirrored in Europe, with the deindustrialisation of parts of the EU to the benefit of German imperialism.
A strengthened state can also provide a clearer target for the labor movement and left and the ruling class can be forced to make concessions. We have already seen a significant development of the class struggle in the last few years, albeit from a very low level. But there is simply no basis in such an unstable period for anything resembling the reformism of the postwar era.
In the pre-war environment, union leaders in the imperialist countries like Shawn Fain of the UAW and Sean O’Brien of the Teamsters (who spoke at the Republican National Convention in July) in the US, Sharon Graham in Britain and others will be under huge pressure from the ruling class to toe the line in their “foreign policy” (eg supporting protectionism and the fight with China/Russia) but also under huge pressure from their members to deliver more economic gains. In a different way, support for the imperialist crusade in Ukraine and backing of Israel is currently a necessary price of admission into government in the key Western countries. La France Insoumise agreed to a clause supporting the arming of Ukraine in establishing the New Popular Front recently, adapting its previous position in the name of “governability”. The far right Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni also changed her tune, becoming a vocal supporter of Zelensky upon taking office.
It must also be pointed out that in Germany, the AfD as well as Sahra Wagenknecht both articulate an “antiwar” position particularly on Ukraine that is rooted partly in Eastern Germany and greater sympathy with Russia which exists among sections of society for different reasons. But it also reflects a part of the German bourgeoisie who had built strong economic ties with Russia and China. Again, while the overall trendline is very clear, there are sections of the ruling class that are not on the same page.
China’s woeful economic predicament — currently the most severe of any major imperialist power — is bound to open up social and political turmoil at home. As well as a massive debt crisis, the toll of this economic malaise is also being harshly felt throughout the ranks of the colossal Chinese working class, and the middle class, with rising unemployment, wage cuts, and the devastating effects of the property crash. The urban home-owning population (workers and middle class) has lost an estimated $18 trillion USD through falling house prices in the past three years. These factors are behind the economy’s slide into long-term deflation and ‘Japanification’.
As our comrades’ valuable analysis has pointed out, this deep crisis is likely to both disrupt the apple cart of Xi’s unquestioned rule within the CCP at the top, and provoke new explosions from below, as unmistakable economic regression replaces the former growth upon which, together with brutal repression, the regime has based itself domestically. Xi’s response to such unrest, in which the “stick” of tightening the screws of repression will dwarf the “carrot” of any token attempts to grant concessions, will not durably paper over the perfect storm of contradictions driving society towards tumultuous struggles.
African and Latin American theaters
Africa is emerging as a continent at the sharp edge of many of this epoch’s defining processes, and inter-imperialist struggle is no exception. It is both an arena of devastating hot wars, not least in Ethiopia and Sudan — where a bloody conflict rages on at the time of drafting — and a crucial battleground for the multifaceted power-struggle between the two blocs. July 2024 even saw the fighting in Ukraine spill over into sub-Saharan Africa, when the Kyiv regime participated in an operation against Wagner forces in Mali, one of the several countries where the remainder of this infamous paramilitary force continue to act, both in the service of personal plunder and enrichment and in that of Russian imperialism’s strategic interests. A military confrontation between Congo and Rwanda is building up, as well as the conflict between the two blocs as they compete for minerals vital to new industries.
Chinese, but especially Russian imperialism has benefitted from the new wave of anger against Western imperialism, which has spread throughout the region, in particular directed against French imperialism in Central and Western Africa. After featuring in street protests in Niger which accompanied the military coup there, Russian and Wagner flags have become commonplace on protests throughout the region, including in the most recent wave of mass protests in Nigeria, Kenya and elsewhere. This trend, which has been consistently pointed out by our comrades in the region, points towards the importance of our consistently anti imperialist programme and its role in exposing the ugly role of all the competing imperialist powers, arguing clearly against illusions in the Chinese-led bloc. Indeed, the working people in parts of the continent are developing valuable experience in what Chinese imperialist domination looks like.
In July 2024, military juntas in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, who deposed regimes backed by French imperialism, established a breakaway alliance to Ecowas (Economic Community of West African States), railing against the “stranglehold of foreign powers” over it. Their new alliance, the AES (Alliance of Sahel States) does not, of course, represent independence from imperialism but rather an alliance which leans towards a different imperialist bloc. This followed the threat by the Nigerian government, which was not implemented, of military intervention by Ecowas in Niger following the 2023 coup there.
The decline of US imperialism has been on full display since 2022, in its abject failure to drag most of the neocolonial world behind its position on the war in Ukraine, with most of Africa and Latin America taking an ambivalent position, if not a position more supportive of Moscow. The genocidal war in Gaza, which provoked mass outrage and opposition throughout these continents, further cemented alienation from Western imperialism and offers new opportunities to the Chinese-led bloc.
Latin America is another crucial battleground for US and Chinese imperialism. While it remains the most important power, US influence has long been in decline, and China has built up a powerful economic presence throughout the region, crucially gaining access to crucial raw materials. The China-led bloc also has clear geopolitical footholds in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua in particular. This was reflected in the international political response to the acute political crisis in Venezuela, where the only states to recognize Maduro’s dubious claims of victory have been located firmly in this camp.
On the other hand, the crisis of the Maduro regime, rise of the populist and far right, as well as the ebbing of the timid 2020s “pink tide” are important political developments which generally favour the US. Hatred of yanky imperialism is part of the labour movement’s DNA in the region. However, despite the role of much of the continent’s larger Left organizations, who sow illusions in Beijing and Moscow, Latin American workers are also developing a valuable experience with Chinese bosses and imperialists, in heavy and extractive industry throughout the region, as well as in environment-destroying infrastructure projects.
We are only in the initial phase of this global inter-imperialist conflict, which will profoundly affect every society in the world. Its evolution will interact with innumerable twists and turns, feeding from and in turn impacting upon capitalism’s economic, political, social and ecological crises. At its core, the key determinant of its outcome will be the balance of class forces: in essence, the question of whether or not the international working class will be capable of stopping and reversing the slide towards new bloody conflagrations.
Long-term Trends Drive World Economy Deeper Into Crisis
Global capitalism is finding it increasingly difficult to overcome its contradictions, even temporarily. Even in periods when the economy is growing, workers and the poor are getting a smaller and smaller share of the pie, resulting in historically high global inequality. A recent study by the International Labour Organization shows that the share of global GDP going to the working class and self-employed shrank since COVID, part of a longer term trend (from 52.9% in 2019 to 52.3% in 2022). This adds a further dose of chronic instability to the system and lays the foundations for inevitable mass revolts.
The organic crisis of the system has resulted in an increasingly destructive and dangerous trajectory for the capitalist economy: the increased exploitation, plunder, and devastation of nature, the ecological system and communities. The means of human life on the planet are being destroyed while climate change is accelerating faster than ever.
Capitalism is heading for a new crisis, but in a weaker position than before, even though inflation has fallen. The global economy has been further weakened in the recent period, not least as a result of the crisis in China, and there is no possibility of the system regaining any kind of equilibrium. It is a period described by economist Nouriel Roubini as characterized by “megathreats, polycrisis and geopolitical depression”. The underlying fragility of the world economy was exposed by the brief, but historic, stock market earthquake in early August, which saw over 8 trillion dollars wiped out, and the “fear index” at its highest in decades, with the exception of major recessions in 2009 and 2020.
The economic crisis in China is particularly deep-rooted. It began in earnest with the crisis in the property sector which exposed a massive bubble, which in turn undermined local government finance and exacerbated a huge ongoing debt crisis. For the past couple years, despite the completely cooked nature of China’s official statistics, it is evident that there has been little or no real growth, in an economy which has entered a classic deflationary spiral alongside mass unemployment. The two other key historical examples of an ingrained deflationary spiral in advanced capitalist economies are the case of Japan in the 1990s and the Great Depression in the 1930s. This is extremely difficult to overcome. In the case of the US it required the war production of World War II. It took Japan several decades to exit this phase.
A general deflationary tendency due to overproduction/overcapacity was a feature of world capitalism during the long decline of the neoliberal era beginning with the East Asian crisis in the 1990s. At that time, the US was able to keep world capitalism afloat by being the “buyer of last resort” — something which, along with China’s role as a buyer of last resort for commodities, helped fuel the pre-2008 boom. The deflationary trend, as well as the refusal of capitalists to invest in the real economy of expanding production, also masked the deeply inflationary nature of massive infusions into the financial markets especially in the US after 2008 (also known as “easy money” which included “Quantitative Easing”).
Much of this injected money has ended up in asset bubbles, including the stock market and property. If these bubbles burst, it could have a dramatic and destabilizing impact on the world economy. The trade war between the imperialist blocks and the pandemic disrupted globalized (over-)production and the deflationary tendencies it caused, bringing back the almost forgotten spectre of inflation. We have pointed out that deglobalization leading to the breakup of an integrated global supply chains and increased supply side shocks due to geopolitical conflict have also contributed significantly to this inflationary tendency. The inflation of the past period in key parts of the world economy in the wake of the pandemic, as well as China’s deflation, are both contradictory features of capitalism’ global malaise. China’s attempt to “export deflation“, selling excessive goods that it can’t sell at home due to low demand, is only increasing pressure towards more protectionism in other countries, which in turn would increase inflation in these.
The elements of stagnation in the world economy are no longer containable: one “fix” after another has been employed going back to the outcome of the 2008–9 crisis and even further to the East Asian crisis of 1997. For a period, the collapse of Stalinism, the restoration of capitalism, re-privatization of productive forces and the removal of barriers to the movement of capital, gave global capitalism a lease of life, with the most significant phase of hyper globalization since the late 19th century and a global increase in industrial production. But for workers in many parts of the world, including the imperialist heartlands, this was in no sense a return to the “golden era” of postwar capitalism. The capitalist economy’s features of inequality and parasitism actually worsened.
Deglobalization continues
Neoliberal globalization became a casualty of the global financial crisis (2007–2009) and that period of globalization is now over. Or as the Biden Administration declared in its new National Security Strategy states, referring to the collapse of Stalinism: “the post-Cold War is definitively over.”
The inter-imperialist geopolitical contradictions already outlined, together with the nationalism that follows in their wake, are also having an increasing impact on the world economy. Several years ago, we pointed to the breakup of one integrated global supply chain and the emergence of more regionally-based supply chains centered on the global imperialist blocs.
“Global economic ties are changing in ways we have not seen since the fall of the Berlin wall. After years of shocks countries are reevaluating their trading partners based on economic and national security concerns. Foreign direct investment flows are also being re-directed along geopolitical lines. Some countries are reevaluating their heavy reliance on the dollar in their international transactions and reserve holdings. The average weighted quarter-on-quarter trade growth between U.S. leaning countries and China leaning countries during 2022Q2 — 2023Q3 was almost 5 percentage points lower than the average quarterly weighted trade growth during 2017Q1 — 2022Q1.On average in the period after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we see that trade and FDI between blocs declined by roughly 12 and 20 percent more than flows within blocs, respectively.” (IMF: Geopolitics and its Impact on Global Trade and the Dollar, 7 May 2024).
Of course, there is still an interdependence between the major capitalist countries, but trade between US and Chinese imperialism is decreasing — China’s share in US imports dropped from 22% in 2018 to less than 14% in 2023 . Mexico is now the biggest exporter to the US — and foreign direct investment into China collapsed in 2023. Of course Chinese capital will seek “backdoors” into Western markets through investment in countries such as Vietnam, Singapore, Ireland, Mexico and Hungary. This does not fundamentally change the overall direction.
U.S., European, and Japanese capitalism have diminished trade with China and there is a considerable degree of decoupling. In turn, China has increased its trade with the Global South and, for example, Russia. In another expression of the effect of China’s crisis and its effort to use a massive export drive to mitigate the partial collapse of its domestic market, there has been a sharp reaction against “dumping” including in parts of the neocolonial world such as Vietnam and Brazil. The Western financial media is also full of complaints about Chinese “overcapacity”.
World capitalism has become more fragmented and the main trends point towards economic exchanges between countries increasingly taking place within the two blocs. This, and the lack of an overall hegemonic power also means that economic crises will be compounded and can lead to much more serious slumps as happened with the Great Depression when the British Empire had lost its hegemonic role and US imperialism had not assumed this role.
World trade, which was the engine of both the post-war recovery and globalization, has been growing much more slowly, in recent years, than the economy as a whole — which in turn is no longer growing at the same rate as before, even during so-called economic booms. 2023 marked another turning point as global merchandise trade shrunk by 2%. In the last forty years, global merchandise trade had shrunk only twice: in 2009, and in 2020, after the COVID-19 shock — the two most severe crises since the Second World War. “Against this background, the contraction of international merchandise trade in a context of global economic expansion in 2023 is unprecedented in recent times”, writes UNCTAD: Trade and Development Report update 2024. Trade growth will improve this year but will still be at half the average rate of the decade before the pandemic. In fact, by the end of 2024, global trade will register the slowest half-decade of growth since the 1990s.
In all areas, there is a relative state of war between the imperialist blocs. As we predicted, a new round of trade wars is beginning, with the Biden administration (quickly followed by Canada) raising tariffs on Chinese EV and solar cell products, with retaliatory measures likely from Beijing. In this context, it is also increasingly difficult for European capitalism to both maintain economic ties with China and at the same time walk in tandem with US imperialism. In the end, the latter prevails, even if it comes at an economic price. It is also the case that cheap EVs are a direct threat to European and US car manufacturers.
World trade is becoming increasingly regulated as “national security” is now in the driving seat. Both US imperialism and Chinese imperialism seek to position themselves as the world’s leading science and technology superpower, and this is also an integral part of the arms race. This in turn means that in the future, technology and national security will become ever more deeply intertwined in a fragmented world.
The global debt mountain has grown enormously as a result of stagnation and the increasing dependence of capitalism on subsidies and credit expansion. The world is mired in $315 trillion of debt. The figure stood at around $210 trillion almost a decade ago. This latest global debt wave has been the biggest, fastest, and most wide-ranging rise since World War II. Average total debt in the so-called advanced economies, including households and business sectors, now exceeds an unprecedented 250% of GDP.
Global public debt has doubled since 2010, reaching a historic $97 trillion in 2023. More than 40% of the world’s population live in countries that spend more on debt interest payments than on education or health.
The growing burden of debt means it will be harder for governments and central banks to respond to the slowdown by pumping even more money into the economy, although they will try. But the main thread is likely to be much more austerity.
PART THREE: Balance of class forces, reaction, political crisis and polarization
The gap between the historically acute crisis of the capitalist system and the overall level of working class leadership, organization and consciousness has perhaps never been wider. However, dramatic transformations in the outlook of the masses have taken place over the past period. An intense process of radicalisation and polarization has been well underway for some time.
The first response to the Great Recession and the beginning of the end of the neoliberal era was a wave of mass social movements, struggle and attempts to find a political way forward. An early sign of change before the Great Recession was the first “pink tide” movements in Latin America that pushed leftish governments into power. But it was after the Great Recession that struggles really broke out on a large scale. These included the “Arab Spring” revolutions, Occupy and the movement of the squares in Europe; the emergence of and the growth of some existing left forces and leaders and including Syriza, Podemos, Quebec Solidaire, PSOL, Sanders and Corbyn; an upsurge in the climate struggle; and movements against oppressions including of women, LGBTQ+ and BLM. This was a significant increase in breadth and depth of struggle compared, for example, to the years of the anti-globalization movement.
Many of these movements had a complete vacuum of leadership, or weak and/or immature leaders that did not grasp the depth of society’s crises and the necessary methods and goals of struggle. These movements ebbed and in some cases were betrayed. The COVID pandemic also cut across these struggles. After a swing towards socialist ideas in 2010s, the political pendulum has swung, for a time, to the right. Following a resurgence in socialist ideas in the 2010s, we now face an ideological offensive on the part of the political establishment. In response, there has been growing demoralization among some layers of workers and youth.
The struggles of the 2010s included movements which were the largest in sheer scale in the whole of human history. The masses, in the truest sense of the world, made a dramatic mark on events. Yet the low level of working-class organization and consciousness, and the absence of significant revolutionary, and often, with some important exceptions including Greece and Tunisia, even reformist forces, led many of these movements, despite their size, to defeat or setback. The reformist forces which did emerge or grow in this period, such as Syriza in Greece, generally failed to develop a mass activist base, and were quick to capitulate. But no struggle is wasted; the 2010s movement popularized the understanding of society’s deep inequality — the 1%. Slowly and unevenly, the process of the rearmament of the workers’ movement from the ideological and organizational toll taken by the collapse of Stalinism has begun.
However, objective necessity demands that this be dramatically accelerated in the context of the immense challenges posed by a new age of chaos and imperialist conflict. Quoting the leader of the transport workers’ union in Britain, we have used the idea/slogan “the working class is back” in our internal discussions and some public material to make a certain point. It usefully provoked much discussion and debate. Contrary to how this was caricatured by former members, we do not mean by this that the ideological and organizational disorientation that has been a defining feature of the last 35 years of class struggle is wholly overcome. This is still present, and weighs heavily on events, but the long decrease in activity and role of the unions have been broken in many countries.
Stretching back to the United States’ post-pandemic “Striketober” in 2021, and reaching a peak in the strike waves which swept through much of the world in 2023, many countries recorded levels of strike action not seen in decades during the last few years. The roots of this can be found in objective processes outlined in this document and previous documents: both the inflationary trend in the global economy and in the experience of Covid, which saw the societal role of the working class put under the spotlight in several ways. Beyond the strike waves, this trend was also reflected in mass social movements orienting towards the power of organized labour and using working class methods, i.e. strikes. Most recently, this has been further underlined by the mass contradictory protests in Israel reaching a climax in an unprecedented wartime general strike against the government, in the Indian strike movement in September, and in the demands for mass strike action which featured heavily in the mass anti-AfD movement which swept through German cities at the beginning of 2023.
What’s more, at this stage, where workers have engaged in significant strike action, struggles have not, in general, suffered clear defeats in the last period. In fact, in most cases, the workers’ movement has emerged strengthened, often having extracted important (if sometimes modest) concessions from bosses and governments. In contrast to conclusions drawn by many in the aftermath of movements like BLM or previous antiwar movements, along the lines of “protesting didn’t change anything”, this experience is sowing the seeds of much more positive conclusions in the minds of an advanced layer of workers, youth and the oppressed: that workers’ striking gets results.
This experience has also put the movement and its leaders to the test, and served as a baptism of fire in the working class struggle for layers of new generations of workers, many of whom had been participants in the mass social movements and/or left electoral efforts of the past decade. In many of the most significant industrial disputes during the strike waves, rank and file discontent and opposition, up to and including organized opposition — often rejecting tentative agreements negotiated by the union leadership — played an important role in events. In Britain, rank and file nurses organized relatively spontaneously as “NHS Workers Say No” to reject the pay deal their leadership agreed with the Tory government. Despite achieving a deal with significant advances, there was massive opposition by US auto workers to the deal recommended by the UAW leadership, including over 40% voting “No” at General Motors.
The incipient process of rebuilding the labour movement has also begun to be reflected in a swelling of its ranks in many countries. Germany’s biggest union, the public sector union Ver.di, recruited almost 200,000 new members in 2023 and in Canada, private sector recruitment to unions drove a reversal of the long-term trend of decline in the percentage of workers who are union members. While still at an early stage and faltering under the impact of misleadership, the historic struggle to organize new sectors, including sectors of strategic importance such as Amazon, is also inexorably moving forward. Our organization’s achievement in dragging one of the giants of US labour, the Teamsters, into the battle to unionize Amazon at KCVG served as an important step in this process though of course it does not guarantee victory.
These processes inevitably drive internal changes within the movement itself. Left and quasi-Left union bureaucracies have been thrust to the forefront of industrial and political struggle, as evidenced by the role of Sean Fain of the US UAW and of Mick Lynch in the short-lived but explosive development of “Enough is Enough” around the mail and rail disputes in Britain in 2022. These figures have both reflected rising working-class militancy and placed limits on it at different stages. For example, “Enough is Enough” was met with huge enthusiasm at its launch, but was shut down before its full potential could be harnessed. As new rounds of struggle develop, and discussions emerge around the tactics and strategies necessary to win decisive victories, it will be necessary to draw a balance sheet of these experiences.
These important first steps, should also be seen in the context of the long period of decline in the movement which preceded them, and the severe limitations also of the union bureaucracy, including its left wing, in this period.
Working class movements have also had a very important impact in the political arena. In France, despite failing to defeat Macron in the enormous pension strikes of 2023, the legacy of this struggle has helped set the stage for the unions to play a much more decisive role in politics — helping to secure the left’s victory over both Macron’s party and the far right in the recent parliamentary elections. In Britain, the Tories’ failure to settle disputes with key groups of workers was a major discussion point in the recent general election. At the time of writing, doing deals with union leaders is seen as a top priority for the first weeks of Starmer’s government — a key test of his leadership. In fact, the awarding of above-inflation pay offers to workers across the public sector was explicitly justified by the government as necessary to avoid a new strike wave.
While 2024 has not (yet) matched 2019 in terms of the scale of mass uprisings, the intense and ongoing pressure of cost of living crisis and economic turmoil — most acute in the neocolonial world — is bringing the working class and poor to the streets once again in what appears to be a new wave of social protest and revolt concentrated in the neocolonial world. This has already resulted in the bringing down of the Bangladeshi authoritarian government and the unleashing of a new wave of labour militancy there. In Kenya, the audacity and determination that has characterized so many recent struggles has been on full display. Parliament was stormed and president Ruto, staring into oblivion, was forced to reverse planned tax rises, with the movement subsequently continuing and moving on to demand his removal. Nigeria saw multiple national days of mass protest and strike action, which at the time of writing has provoked a severe escalation of repression — including against our organization — with attacks on unions and activists threatened with the death penalty.
In Argentina, the right-populist Milei government has faced a wave of protests including a huge 24 hour general strike in May, and recent demonstrations against his economic reforms have been violently attacked by the police. In late June, the Bolivian masses took to the streets as a general strike defeated a planned coup attempt. Farmers’ strikes and blocades, albeit with mixed ideas, have been an important development in Belgium, Poland and France.
Strong and heroic mass struggles with revolutionary features are part of this period. They reveal the real relationship of forces, with mass movements and particularly general strikes leading to the overthrow of governments and temporary concessions and retreats from almost constant attacks on workers and the poor. Many of these movements are led by the youth and often young women. The capitalist class and its governments use all different methods to bloc, divert and exhaust the movements — repression, new elections, governments and constitutions, negotiations and more. Lack of organization and unclear programs, together with few concrete results, have led to setbacks and defeats. In Iran, for example, the crushing of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests has unleashed a wave of state repression. In other countries, such as Bolivia, the mass movements are not crushed and appear again and again. While stressing the strength of the mass struggle, marxists underline the need for working class leadership, clear revolutionary socialist program and internationalism.
The manifold crises of capitalism and their reactionary expressions are all continuing to provoke such struggles. Hunger has driven new waves of mass protest in Tunisia and Angola. Gender violence and femicide saw a massive strike and protest movement shake India in August. Climate breakdown has become a feature of class struggle in the US, where air conditioning and heat protection regulations have become part of big contract battles like at UPS and small-scale workplace actions like at Amazon. This trend will continue and increase, with these issues beginning to play a role in strikes, and perhaps even more coordinated strike movements, in the coming period.
Repression and Bonapartism
The reemergence of the working class as a formidable force has become increasingly recognized by both the bosses and the capitalist state. This has been shown in an increase in repression against the trade union movement. The ITUC reports that over the past two years, the right to strike has been violated in almost 90% of countries, and that there are now record highs in key violations of workers’ rights to organize.
In Nigeria and South Korea for example, the state has targeted trade union activists and leaders with office raids, jailings and in the case of Nigeria — even threatened them with the death penalty due to their role in mass revolts over the past period. In other parts of the “advanced capitalist world” like the United States and Canada, the assault is a ‘legal’ one — using restrictive laws to mandatorily end strikes in the railways for instance or in Australia using the age old allegation of ‘corruption’ to try and take the construction unions into state administration.
Of course, this does not mean that capitalist regimes are fundamentally opposed to taking more aggressive and violent measures. However, these have yet not been necessary as, in the main, actions like strikes have largely been contained within the bounds of the restrictive measures in place (with a few unofficial actions as exception), and been weakened in their power by the role of the trade union bureaucracy. Both sides of this equation can change over the next period as each side looks towards a path to tip the scale decisively in its favor. Being “tough on the unions” can become an even more important part of the core playbook of the right internationally, and the advanced layers of the working class will push for more militant struggle, including the necessity of defying anti-working class legality.
Oppression and mass struggle
Inherent in the perspectives put forward here, which outline a deeply reactionary trajectory of global capitalism and imperialism are constant attempts to intensify all forms of oppression. This process, which is already on display, comes after more than a decade in which radicalisation and struggle in opposition to gender, racial and national oppression have gripped and mobilized millions. BLM was the biggest protest movement in US history, and quickly became a global movement, with particularly massive expressions in Britain and France. A much more long standing and geographically widespread wave of feminist struggle, which included #MeToo, #NiUnaMenos, and movements for abortion rights, saw historic struggles on all continents, of an offensive and defensive nature. Opposition to, and a refusal to tolerate, backwardness and oppression became a fundamental part of the consciousness of new generations, and drove forward massive changes in the consciousness of wider layers of the working class.
Today, this radicalisation in consciousness continues to burn brightly. . A layer of radicalising youth is drawing the conclusion that oppression is intrinsically connected with capitalism and imperialism. To the limited extent that there exist significant organizational expressions of the mass movements which exploded in the last decade, we have yet to see the emergence of a left leadership capable of connecting these struggles to the struggle for socialism, leaving room for disorientation and demoralization.
Our approach to socialist feminism and analysis of feminist struggles was a serious point of debate with the now departed Minority comrades of the ISA. Their perspective for the current era was of an ever-growing and ever more central “new feminist wave”, with all struggles against oppression increasingly analyzed through the primary lens of socialist feminism. This position led them to downplay the very real setbacks suffered in the feminist movement since its height in the 2010s, including the global growth of the far right and betrayals of the reformist left. It can also undermine our understanding of other struggles against special oppression, including a precise analysis of the fight for Black liberation.
Though the feminist wave has ebbed from its height a number of years ago, massive recent mass struggles have taken place in which women’s oppression has been central in India and Iran, and many smaller ones elsewhere. In part because the capitalists will seek to increase the exploitation of women and minorities to address the crisis, feminist struggles will be a prominent feature in the coming period, as right wing governments’ and parties’ promotion of reactionary sexist and patriarchal ideas around gender roles clash with a fierce opposition to women’s oppression among broad layers. This dynamic may have explosive potential among youth especially as a historically significant political gender gap has developed globally, with young women much more likely to be left wing than young men. As such, we’ve seen women on the forefront of not only social struggles, but in labor struggles as well, particularly in the education and healthcare sectors. Sexual violence against women, femicide, and attacks on abortion rights may serve as flashpoints for more widespread struggles to develop.
We’ve also seen important setbacks in the women’s movement, most notably the near total abortion ban passed in Poland in 2021 and the Dobbs ruling against abortion rights in the United States in 2022. It’s important to note that, in spite of these defeats, popular support for abortion remains high. This is seen in the various statewide ballot initiatives for abortion rights in the U.S. which have consistently won. However, the defeats have still thrown back consciousness around the ability to fight right-wing attacks through mass struggle. The leadership of the women’s movement in both countries has increasingly accepted as established fact the defeats and turned towards mutual aid networks rather than political struggle. In light of this, establishment figures like Kamala Harris and Polish president Donald Tusk have aimed to redirect the popular anger at the anti-abortion laws into the safe realm of electoral campaigns for bourgeois parties. These politicians will ultimately betray the movement. Tusk has already drawn anger when he leaned on the conservative Third Way alliance in his coalition government to block moves to soften the abortion restrictions. This anger could fuel a revival of a militant women’s movement in these countries.
The growth of right-wing “anti-woke” ideas is in part a reaction to setbacks or defeats of recent movements which are rooted in the relative weakness of the organized left and workers movement in this period. The unwillingness of the majority of the labor leadership to play an active role in building struggles against oppression, ties to bourgeois parties and politicians, and betrayals by left reformist leaders have been significant factors in the stalling out of many anti-oppression struggles despite broad popular support at their heights
Wrong ideas within these movements have also contributed to defeats and setbacks. During the 2010s wave of anti-oppression struggles, alien class ideas such as intersectionality and privilege theory became leading ideas in the movement. The gravitation toward these ideas reflected some positive features of consciousness, but ultimately they hold back movements against oppression from generalizing to a broader struggle against capitalism. The growth of right-wing “anti-woke” ideas is in part a reaction to setbacks or defeats of recent movements. As a result, while ideas like intersectionality and privilege theory haven’t gone away, and many in the activist layer have toxically doubled down on them, there is growing willingness to reject them. Many of the most advanced layers of youth and workers have abandoned these ideas from a left-wing direction. Others are still influenced by them, but the best are more open to Marxist critiques of those ideas. This makes it all the more important that we, as Marxists, see the struggle against oppression as inseparable from the struggle for socialism, and must directly challenge ideas in the movement that point in the direction of demobilization and individualism.
A balanced assessment
The working class, now the largest in history, is indeed coming back and we will continue to see its latent revolutionary power on display in the 2020s. However, it must also be clearly stated that the heroic response of working class people to capitalism’s reactionary juggernaut has, so far, been insufficient to fundamentally alter its trajectory. The working class movement’s enduring crisis of leadership and organization have weighed heavily on events in the 2020s, and ultimately been decisive in allowing this juggernaut to proceed thus far. Crucially, the steps being taken to address the labour movement’s enduring crises have a very low starting point, and the weakness of organized Marxism in this epoch significantly slows the pace of these fundamental processes.
But the above points are crucial for the development of a sense of proportion in the assessment of the class balance of forces in this epoch, which contain elements of an impasse. The ruling class still maintains the upper hand, but has not contrived new tools to overcome the crisis of credibility it has brought on itself and maintain its rule stably. Despite its aforementioned weaknesses, tThe working class is not defeated and its role will make itself felt on developments across the multifaceted crises of the system. And the powerful expressions of counter-revolution which mark the current conjuncture will, without exception, also drive workers’ struggle forward at given moments.
The outcome of the battle between revolution and counter-revolution in this epoch is far from pre-determined. Revolutionary Marxist perspectives rest on the conviction that the international working class can point a way out of the system’s death spiral, with a strategy of socialist revolution. Our programme to rebuild the labour movement as a mass, militant force based on class-struggle methods and with a socialist programme, and our struggle to build the forces of Marxism in this epoch are both firmly rooted in this living battle between revolution and counter-revolution.
Political struggle
In all struggles of workers and the oppressed, political questions will impose themselves. What do the masses see as the alternative to the hated regimes of today? How are movements organized and what forces are present? How are the demands of the movement articulated programmatically? What political organization exists that can take things forward?
Alongside a deep undermining of confidence in capitalism and its institutions, broad support for the idea of socialism has increased dramatically in many key countries, particularly among the young. The re-establishment of socialist ideas as a reference point is a crucial step in the ideological rearmament of the working class.
Nonetheless, our experience in interacting with these layers, and indeed delving deeper into some of the statistics available reveals that a shallowness of understanding still accompanies this renewed enthusiasm for socialism as an idea. For example, when surveys offer different definitions of socialism to participants, those which do not include clear references to public ownership tend to score much more highly in what people perceive the term to mean. One survey offered definitions of socialism to participants including “the government providing more services to people” and “the government provides a minimum level of guaranteed income to its citizens” Far more people chose these than a definition which referred to state/government ownership and control of industry. In much of the neocolonial world, broad support for a vaguely defined idea of socialism remained much higher than in the West, including in the post-Stalinist period. But again, the contradictions in how the term is understood are very great.
This is not to downplay the significance of the support that is being expressed for socialist ideas, however vaguely they may be understood. Indeed, the idea that the first steps forward in mass consciousness will be intertwined with reformist illusions is something Marxists have identified as part of the historic process.
These shifts in ideas are, at base, a representation of the deep desire that exists for fundamental change. It demonstrates an instinct to look towards socialist ideas as a way of articulating that. What’s more, the most recent period has seen the emergence of a newer phenomenon, where an important section of radical youth have begun to embrace the term “communism”. A 2021 poll found 28% of young Americans view communism favourably, for example. Of course, here too, the understanding of this term will be confused or limited. But, at bottom, this signifies deep dissatisfaction with the system, and a looking beyond the weak and traitorous reformist left, such as that represented by Sanders and “the squad” in the US.
Another key question that faces the left and the forces which want to fight back against reaction and the far right is the question of class independence. We have seen this issue in many forms in the past ten years, from Sanders’ decision to run in the corporate Democratic Party primaries in 2016 and 2020 to Sarah Wagengnecht’s flirtation with the far right and a section of the bourgeois on the question of Ukraine. It is also very evident and very central in movements in the neo-colonial world including now in Bangladesh. Allowing movements to be led by a section of the bourgeois will doom them to sterility and defeat.
This points to the centrality of our call for an internationalist, working class centered movement, on fighting militarism, imperialism and war but also the reality of diseased capitalism more generally. But we must also recognize that this can pose many tactical questions as with the New Popular Front in France or Sanders’ aforementioned electoral campaigns. One could have a formally correct “rejection” of alliances but with a sectarian approach that could isolate us from the masses. The key is to put forward a program for genuine class independence and participate in the movements that point in a fighting class-based direction in spite of various contradictions. A central demand in this approach is calling on working-class politicians and parties to break the unprincipled coalitions they’ve formed with bourgeois parties.
The historic weakness of both the trade union movement and reformist and revolutionary left, makes it inevitable that deep confusion will remain. In the mass movements of the 2010s, a huge variety of confused ideas predominated. Movement after movement came up against this wall — even in contexts where the toppling of hated governments and regimes was achieved. This is true even despite the organic way in which the masses have so often reached for and utilized working-class methods of struggle. We saw the adoption of the strike weapon by feminist movements and a looking towards it in the climate struggle. But the weakness of class politics has still created space for all manner of ideas and trends to grow in support and influence — identity politics, (left) nationalism, horizontalism, and in countries which lack any meaningful bourgeois democracy, support for liberal ideas (for example in the Hong Kong movement).
The role of Reformism
In much of Europe and America, the new left formations and figureheads that emerged and grew in support during the last two decades have by-and-large either betrayed and been defeated. Equally significant is the fact that in general, the crises of these formations have not led to significant growth, never mind mass growth, of political alternatives to their Left. Parallel to the crisis of reformism is a crisis of the “far-left”, including revolutionary organizations such as our own. This reality underlines the incipient stage at which the rebuilding of the labour movement finds itself, and the enduring impact of past setbacks.
The growth of reformism in the 2010s entwined with the wider radicalization that included revolutionary upheavals. Movements like Occupy and the Indignados had revolutionary aspirations, taking inspiration from the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. However, these movements lacked the political clarity and working-class base to win meaningful gains, let alone carry out a revolution. In response, the electoral field opened up as a place where the growing radicalization could win concrete gains. Our own electoral victories in Seattle were a product of these openings. For the most part, however, the openings were seized by reformist forces. Unlike the reformist wave of the post-World War II boom, the recent reformist wave has been motivated less by an optimism that capitalism could be reformed, and more by a pessimism in the working class’s ability to carry out a revolution. However, given capitalism’s current crisis, the objective space for sustained reforms no longer exists, paving the way for the betrayals and defeats that took place.
Syriza’s capitulation to the Troika has paved the way for even more historic and punishing attacks on the Greek working class. The current right-wing government is attempting to bring in a six day working week. Podemos has largely been discarded by the masses as a viable alternative following its participation in the Sanchez government. The so-called “squad” were Biden’s biggest fans during the few weeks in which he resisted dropping out of the Presidential election and threw their weight fully behind Harris. Before that, all but one of them backed Biden’s crushing of the potential railway strike in 2022. They have provided a left sheen for an anti-working class government and the murderous policies of US imperialism.
In Latin America the failures of the new wave of reformist governments elected on the back of mass revolts in 2019 and 2020 has given way to a continental surge of the far and populist right. As a partial and temporary exception to this, Morena won a huge re-election victory in Mexico, reflecting both the historic nature of its victory in 2018 and the continuing discrediting of the neoliberal right, for whom the bourgeoisie has still not forged an electorally-viable alternative.
However, new ebbs and flows in capitalism’s crises will see new opportunities for the Left. To the surprise of many, La France Insoumise won a partial victory in the recent elections as part of the New Popular Front, though it must also be noted that Rassemblement Nationale still won the popular vote.. At the time of writing, this is both an historic opportunity and a huge test for Melenchon. We do not see betrayal as inevitable, and the French working class — which has some of the most revolutionary traditions in the world — will have its say before this period of tumult is over. Nonetheless, the seeds of betrayal were sown into the NPF from the beginning, which includes the former social democratic and deeply compromised Parti Socialiste and “centrist” Greens.
This is already being reflected in developing splits in the alliance in the face of pressure from the capitalist establishment to ensure pro-capitalist “governability” in the fragmented French parliament. Part of what has kept it together is the intransigent opposition of Macron, reflecting the opposition of the bulk of the bourgeois, to any government which has any connection with the real left (ie LFI). While Melenchon’s response to Macron’s vetoing of an NPF Prime Minister, instead imposing the rightwinger Barnier, was combative, it focused on hopeless parliamentary maneuvers — such as an unviable proposal for impeachment — only supporting the idea of mass mobilization when pushed into it by a youthful mass movement. This fundamental defect of reformism — a lack of perspective based on the power of organized and mobilized working class — has proved decisive time and time again in this epoch.
Even where new left forces have already been defeated, the idea of a left alternative remains a strong and popular one. In Britain, despite Corbyn’s defeat in the 2019 general election and his generally lower profile compared to the height of the movement around him, he remains a key reference point for millions. His against-the-odds victory in the 2024 general election, winning his parliamentary seat as an independent, has positioned him well. Should he use this position as a launch pad for a new formation (something that would go against all his “cautious” instincts), such a project could rapidly gain enormous momentum. Whether or not this opportunity is effectively harnessed will depend on whether it roots itself in class struggle methods, as opposed to the electoralism and parliamentary maneuvering which has sealed the fate of numerous other NLFs over the past two decades.
As well as new left formations, there is also the phenomenon of old left parties, including those emanating from a Stalinist or Maoist tradition, gaining fresh life, and being able to partially fill the vacuum left by the former Social Democratic parties. Examples of this include the growth of the PTB in Belgium, the smaller and more recent upsurge for the KPO in Austria, and the significant increase in support for the Greek KKE in the 2023 election. There are, however, important ways in which these older organisations are in a different category to new left formations. They often retain an important link with a wide section of militant workers. In wider consciousness, they can also be strongly associated with key historic revolutionary struggles — something especially important in the case of the Greek KKE, Meanwhile, their generally well established top-down leaderships tend to significantly limit internal democratic life. Even an influx of new members does not easily overcome this, and forces like our own can find direct intervention into such organisations extremely difficult.
A new generation of new left formations will begin to emerge, and, especially if they come from and are organically connected to working-class struggles, they have the potential to be even more significant than the last. However, the tests they will face will also prove even more complex. Crucially, they will be defined not just by what they offer as an alternative to mainstream capitalist politics. As we have seen in France, the question of what politics is needed to answer and defeat the far-right will become increasingly pressing.
As things stand, the left in most countries is significantly behind the far right or populist right electorally. In Germany, die Linke’s vote has all but collapsed in the face of AfD’s rise, as well as that of Sahra Wagenknecht’s new formation.
The right and the far right have a better understanding of history, in the sense that the old cannot continue and the political establishment’s crisis is existential. This stands in contrast to most of the “left”, who still cling to the idea of supporting or moving towards the “center”, trying to seek a compromise between labor and capital. The ruling class, while preferring less volatile or populist leaders, much prefer the populist right to even a hint of the left. Argentina’s ruling class backed Milei, and his austerity “chainsaw”, against the centrist Massa.
At this stage, the ruling class do not face a powerful and organized working class with a revolutionary program that threatens their rule. However, they do know they are sitting on a volcano of anger fed by inequality, oppression and austerity. They fear the coming of the “pitchforks.” With this in mind they know that whatever the rhetoric, the populist right will defend capitalism, the true elite.
The base of the populist right includes the classical social base for fascism — which has been squeezed qualitatively in Western countries at least. On the streets, this element of the far-right’s support is far more dominant. Lumpenised and petty-bourgeois layers predominated in recent racist rioting in Britain, for example. — But the populist right and sections of the far-right also have an appeal which but is very much -broader than that, and includes a significant section of workers. Broadly speaking the layers of workers it draws on are older, more male and more white. Within this support, a more hardened layer has begun to emerge, which we saw on display on January 6 2021 in the US and in the even more shambolic coup attempt by Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil in 2023.
It is fundamental that we give an answer to the question of how to stop the threat of the far right. The position from the reformist left, old and new, is to appeal to lesser evilism, justifying broader coalitions with the center or even right-wing parties which leads to further concessions to the right-wing agenda, including anti-immigrant policies, making things worse. But also many groupings coming from the revolutionary left, that we encounter within the new left formations, are repeating the policies of “lesser evil”, including calling for vote on figures like Kamala Harris. An exaggerated qualification of any populist or far right figures and parties as “fascist” is used as cover for an opportunistic capitulation.
Our answer should though not be to understate the threat of reaction, but to stress that, ultimately, only a new working class mass left can defeat the far right. But weak reformist or liberal politics are not a sufficient answer to this threat. Crucial is the role of the labour movement in asserting the power of the organised working class. But also crucial in this dangerous and volatile period, is the emergence of a strong revolutionary left.
At present, it is no exaggeration to say the Left in its entirety, from mass reformist forces to the crisis-ridden plethora of “revolutionary” left organizations globally, has, in general, failed to live up to the tasks of this period. The crisis that has engulfed our tendency over the last 5+ years is also, at root, caused by the immense challenges of this era. We are a small force. But we know it is only on the basis of a clear understanding of perspectives and the development of the necessary programme, that a foundation for overcoming this crisis of the left can be laid. This is our most central task.
Political polarization and rise of reaction
2024 is the year when more people will be voting — often only “voting” — than any other in history; it is difficult to make generalizations that neatly cover all these elections but it is clear that the politics of the new era and mass consciousness have shifted in very important ways.
As mentioned in this document’s introduction, in the aftermath of the European elections in June, EU President Von Der Leyen declared that “the centre is holding” against the extremes. This was a delusional statement given that far right parties made major gains in these elections in a number of countries including France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria. In general, the past period has seen the rise and consolidation of right-populist and authoritarian political forces in a range of countries. This includes the victory of Milei in Argentina last December as well as the consolidation of Trump’s position at the head of the Republican Party in the US over the past period. Putin has consolidated his grip in Russia (which also had a rigged election) while Erdogan, Modi and Orban are weakened but holding on.
As stated already, the new era of capitalist instability has seen important sections of the ruling class in many countries increasingly promote right wing and even far right forces. Recently a significant part of the French ruling class backed the National Rally to keep the far left out. In the US, many billionaires, with Elon Musk a prominent example, are now getting behind Trump’s campaign to retake the White House. Simultaneously there is a remarkable shift to the right by establishment and “centrist” parties including social democracy in many countries. The German social democracy and its desperate lurch to the right on immigration in the face of the AfD’s gains is only the latest example. This attempt to try to emulate the anti-immigrant or other reactionary positions of far right parties often does not work out for these parties; why vote for the half hearted version when you can vote for the real thing?
There is also a section of the “further left” which has lurched to the right on social questions and immigration while having a harder line against war. Sara Wagenknecht in Germany who split from the Die Linke is for a more restrictive immigration policy, promotes reactionary anti-poor rhetoric on welfare benefits, is opposed to German militarism and the war in Ukraine and has a soft line on Putin. Her proto-party got 6.2% in the European election as opposed to Die Linke’s 2.7%, and improved on this result in Eastern state elections in September. In Britain George Galloway and his Workers’ Party of Britain won a by-election in Rochdale (greater Manchester) but lost the seat in the general election. He opposes Israel’s war in Gaza but is also against trans rights and anti-migrant. Both phenomena echo the “red-brown” political tendencies of previous periods, where sections of the Left opportunistically chase reactionary trends in the consciousness of sections of the working class.
The ruling class itself is generally pragmatic; focused on defending its interests which can be summarized as a stable basis for capital accumulation and keeping the working class under control amid the world’s instability. While it is not wedded to ideology it recognizes the need for narratives that help to reconcile a social base of ordinary people to their rule, something it currently does not have.” The complete loss of credibility for neoliberal ideas — which justified the offensive of a confrontational bourgeoisie, with privatisations and attacks on living standards — contributed significantly to the wider crisis that spelled the end of the era of neoliberal globalization. This does not mean an end to attacks on the working class, facilitated by the weak resistance from the official labour movement.
There is now a general trend towards a stronger state and a creeping authoritarianism. This is not because of a particularly significant threat from the left (in most countries rather the opposite) but because it is seen as necessary to avoid “democratic” disruption of the agenda of the ruling class, discipline the population and prepare it for a harsher world of climate disaster, austerity and militarism.
In contrast to the 1920s and 1930s when the sections of the ruling class turned to fascist forces to crush the working class and its parties because of the real threat of socialist revolution, the ruling class in Western countries at least does not face that immediate threat. However, returning to an aggressive promotion of ideas that consciously aim to divide the working class is also in well-founded anticipation of greater resistance to bourgeois rule in the coming period. The ruling class also promotes (while decrying) growing polarization that can obscure the underlying class divisions in society, as on social and cultural questions. It is the task of the labor movement to unite all the oppressed into a force for struggle centered on the social power of the working class and on the basis of a program that points the way to remove the root of the problem — capitalism.
The key element of this new ideological offensive is nationalism. We do not equate the nationalism of oppressor and oppressed peoples. But the nationalism promoted by imperialist governments, even in its more “liberal” guise — as with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — is utterly reactionary and does not hesitate to support the most vicious war crimes such as those being perpetrated in Gaza today. Furthermore, in class society, militarism is generally a very macho affair. It is therefore not an accident that we also see the rising prominence of “anti-woke” misogyny and attacks on trans and LGBTQ+ people generally.
Racist, sexist and anti-immigrant poison are indeed injected into society by the ruling class and serve their interests. But they also develop a life of their own. Likewise voting for the far right once as a protest vote is problematic but it is far more dangerous if this becomes a section of working people’s ongoing affiliation. As economic and social conditions worsen, the forces with reactionary “answers” to people’s problems are now sinking deeper roots in wider sections of the working class and middle classes.
As well as the failure of 21st century Left alternatives, the growth of right populism and far right parties is also the result of a longer process of betrayal by the historic workers parties which left many sections of the working class completely disenfranchised. In France, the shift of some parts of the industrial working class, including former supporters of the Socialist and Communist Parties, to Jean Marie Le Pen’s National Front began in the 1980s. Now, the National Rally has gained support among many, though still a minority, of those who supported the Gilets Jaunes protests several years ago.
In the US, the Democratic Party, while certainly never a workers’ party, was widely seen in the postwar period as the party of the labor movement and had the support of poorer and more oppressed sections of the working class. Today, the Trump-dominated Republican Party has the support of more white working class voters than the Democrats. But it is now also the dominant party among people with only a high school degree, a sociological marker for the wider and less well off sections of the proletariat. In Latin America, there is a traditional base for conservative parties especially among religious conservatives. But, as in Europe, the traditional right is now being displaced by far right forces that in some cases have a wider social base. Their support is heavily driven by the failures of the very tepid reformism of the second “pink wave”.
Today’s right populist and far right parties in North America, Europe and to some degree in the neocolonial world therefore have a somewhat different social base to the fascist parties of the past which Trotsky described as being based in the “enraged petty bourgeoisie” and the unemployed. The far right in many countries today has a wider base including sections of the working class, but it is usually disproportionately male. Both Trump and Bolsonaro also have minority support in oppressed sections of the working class. The Trumpified Republican Party is opposed to free market policies and proclaims itself to be a “workers party”. It opposes the “globalized elites”, promotes conspiracy theories and flirts with fascist rhetoric. As we have previously characterized, numerous other traditional right wing parties, like the Canadian Tories and the Spanish PP have to one degree or another been “Trumpified”.
It is also very alarming that the far right made significant gains in a number of countries among young people, heavily but not exclusively, among young men. In Argentina, the “anarcho-capitalist” Milei won a higher share of the youth vote than of older voters. Young working class Argentinians have known nothing but misery under a succession of Peronist governments and in desperation were prepared to try what was presented as a radical solution. In France, a section of young people bought into the National Rally’s identitarian presentation that focuses on “defending” the French way of life.
This shows what a huge challenge the left faces in rebuilding a mass base in all sections of the working class around a vision for socialist change. We must also push back on the idea that because today’s far right does not represent the type of threat that the Italian fascists or German Nazis did between the wars, that this somehow means they are not a serious threat to the interests of the working class and the oppressed.
There is also the idea that the process of entering government or trying to get into government leads such parties to shift their message to be more acceptable to the ruling class. There is some truth to this as can be seen in the case of Georgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Le Pen’s National Rally in France. They have mostly dropped their anti-EU positions for example, but not their racism or wider reactionary agenda. The AfD in Germany which is now the largest party in the former East Germany is far less likely to be “domesticated” any time soon and harbors an actual fascist wing within and around it. We also saw the historic far right riots which spread throughout Britain in August, following the electoral success of Farage’s Reform UK in July, in a campaign where all establishment parties sung to the same anti-migrant tunes.
If we look again at France, we can also see the effect the normalization of Le Pen has had over time. Last year, Macron brought forward a law on immigration so reactionary that Le Pen enthusiastically supported it, proclaiming it a victory for her ideas. It was overturned by the country’s high court. In fact, counter to the idea of the right simply “moderating”, there are indications of a further radicalisation of the right’s policies on some of their core issues. As well as demands and proposals for “hard borders”, the idea of mass deportations has become more prominent, with Trump’s running mate JD Vance proposing to “start with” deporting one million immigrants upon taking office.
But it is also not the case that the right populist and far right forces are having everything go their way. The deeply reactionary Modi and his communalist BJP which promotes the idea of India as an emergent global power, while maintaining overall control in the recent elections failed to achieve the goal of a supermajority. In reality Modi’s position slipped. This reflects growing opposition in sections of the population to vicious attacks on democratic rights of religious and ethnic minorities and against the working class.
The most consequential election in 2024 will be the US election, the results of which will be clear by the time the World Congress begins its proceedings. It has already been characterized by sharp and dramatic twists and turns. When Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt amid growing pressure on Biden to step down as the Democratic nominee, his march to reelection seemed to be near-unstoppable. However, the eventual withdrawal of Biden and his replacement by Kamala Harris, which of course in substance does not represent a significant political change, has had a major impact in reversing the campaign’s momentum, including significantly improved polling numbers for the Democrats.
A Harris victory would be a better outcome for the class struggle. Progressive working and oppressed people would breathe a huge sigh of relief, and many could draw confidence from the defeat of Trumpism, whose momentum has seemed so formidable in recent years. A “new” administration, using some progressive rhetoric but in reality deeply tied to corporate interests, which when in office will not fundamentally diverge from the reactionary policies of successive US administrations, would also provide another valuable experience for working class people, further undermining the legitimacy of the Democratic Party and dealing further blows to liberal identity politics. Harris’ doubling down on Biden’s fulsome support for the genocidal war on Gaza has already become a polarizing factor among important layers of workers and youth. In fact Harris’ move to the right on the environment, immigration and national security, along with her endorsement by war hawk former Vice President Dick Cheney points to the Democrats aligning with the global trend to the right of establishment parties.
A Trump victory is still a very possible outcome, and if it comes to pass, it will have serious effects. There is increasing focus on Project 2025, the right wing agenda for Trump’s second term which includes purging the state of career civil servants and replacing them with Trumpists. If this succeeded, this would in itself be a significant step towards an authoritarian regime. While Trump has softly distanced himself from Project 2025, it is now official Republican policy to deport “pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.” Besides this Trump calls for a massive ramp up of immigration deportations and his regime will launch a series of attacks on oppressed people and democratic rights. In general Trump 2.0 will not be like Trump 1.0, which was a very reactionary but somewhat ineffective regime. Trump 2.0 will rather start off where he left off after the failed right wing coup attempt that culminated in the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol.
As our US comrades say in their recent perspectives document, there are essentially two variants if Trump wins: “Trump’s deeply reactionary agenda will provoke massive opposition in US society. But defeating it will be a whole different matter. Trump passing significant aspects of his agenda without a serious fight would obviously be the worst outcome. But a mass mobilization against Trump’s attacks that suffers a decisive defeat would also be a major setback for the working class in the US and around the world though in no sense a permanent setback. However, in the event that a mass movement centered on the working class defeated part or all of Trump’s agenda, it would open up a whole new chapter where the ruling class would be placed very much on the defensive.”
Regardless of the election’s outcome, the resurgent US labor movement and the crisis-ridden Left, largely reeling from the collapse of the “Squad” and DSA-influenced strategy of reforming the Democratic party, will face important new challenges. Starting from a principled stand against imperialism and for working class political independence, our youthful forces will be presented with opportunities to grow in size and influence.
Conclusion
Assessing mass consciousness is a challenging task in the current situation, due to both the stratification of working class and youth consciousness, and the significant contradictions in the consciousness of all layers. Overall however, it is clear that global capitalism has not succeeded in regaining a firm social base of support or undoing the colossal damage to its credibility inflicted during what is approaching two decades of deep crisis.
Anti-establishment feeling dominates the consciousness of wide sections of working and middle class people. While leftward radicalisation remains an important factor, the pendulum has temporarily swung towards the right in the recent period, when it comes to the political forces through which discontent and opposition to the ideas and parties of the neoliberal era are expressed. This presents great dangers for the period ahead.
Neoliberalism’s dominant ideas, parties, figureheads and institutions are damaged beyond repair, and the ruling class is attempting to design a new ideological basis to justify its rule. While it has still not come up with a fully formed package, it is already clear that nationalism and militarism are central to this, intertwined with the regurgitation of countless other forms of backwardness. Amid the decomposition of liberal bourgeois society, scare campaigns about war, terror, “national interests” and “culture wars” are propagated. We see reactionaries pushing the reassertion of the reactionary pillars of the old order — nation, empire, (nuclear) family, etc.
Branding these ideas as new or radical and selling them back to working class people repackaged as “anti-establishment” is one of the ways which capitalism and imperialism will attempt to maintain its rule and fend off the threat of revolution, which while it may currently seem dim and distant, remains a part of ruling class consciousness.
Reactionary politics and the spreading of these ideas must be challenged by a resurgent and strengthened labour movement, which asserts an alternative narrative in relation to the crises facing humanity, based on a class analysis of society. We have already seen how when such a challenge is presented to the right, even within the limits of the meek neo-reformist politics of Left and union leaders, they have been successfully pushed back.
While taking mass consciousness into account, and concretely addressing it in the labour movement and, at times, in mass campaigning, Marxists in this epoch must first and foremost find a path to those who are conscious of, in struggle against, and burning with anger and opposition to, the reactionary path down which society is being driven. While still only a very small minority, the past period has produced a not insignificant layer of workers and youth who have drawn broadly revolutionary conclusions about the capitalist system, many of whom already consider themselves socialists, revolutionaries or communists, even if these ideas are still confused and not fully formed.
Marxists must reach, educate and organize as much of this layer as possible in a revolutionary party. If so organized and directed towards the class struggle, this layer can become a powerful subjective factor in the rebuilding of the labour movement along socialist lines.
Such an orientation does not mean a ditching of the transitional method, which should not be understood as adaptation to mass consciousness in any case. Marxists seek to reach those drawing advanced conclusions not in order to separate them from the wider working class, but to train them in how to participate in and eventually lead the working class and its movements, including its historical duty to overthrow capitalism.
ISA boldly calls out the rotten reactionary trajectory of capitalism and imperialism today: a disorderly system “tobogganing towards disaster with its eyes closed”, to quote Trotsky, which presents a horizon of war, climate breakdown and social barbarism. With clear campaigning focuses on war and militarism, and the fight against the right internationally, we audaciously present our revolutionary socialist alternative, making clear that the fundamental obstacles to solving humanity’s burning problems are capitalist ownership of the means of production, and capitalism’s inherent nationalism and imperialism.
As an integrated part of our programme of struggle against capitalism’s reactionary juggernaut, we should both sharpen and boldly fight for our programme in opposition to all forms of oppression, within existing struggles, and in preparation for new rounds of mass feminist, anti-racist and pro-LGBTQ+ struggle. While this programme’s starting point is the fight against capitalist reaction today, it must also be presented as a clear alternative to liberal, petit-bourgeois and reformist ideas and their representatives within these cross-class movements.
We should have a clear and conscious orientation to the labour movement, building a solid base for Marxism and explaining that only the methods of class struggle, linked to socialist politics, can equip the unions and wider movement for its tasks in this epoch. We should call for new mass parties of the working class with a socialist programme, not in a routinist way, but linked to the living needs of working class and oppressed people’s struggles.
With the correct ideas, translated into a fighting spirit among our cadre and determination to overcome obstacles, the ideas of Marxism will become a more significant factor in the class struggle during the years to come.