As the war in Ukraine is about to enter its fourth year and, in the meantime, diplomats attempt to negotiate an end to that conflict, the imperialist powers are preparing for the war to come, which will be of a vastly different scale compared to the numbers and geography of the current war in Ukraine, as it is expected to be a general war, involving all the major powers, as well as the smaller ones, on a global scale. Therefore, in all the command centers of the national bourgeoisies, it appears increasingly necessary to equip themselves with the economic, political, and military tools to sustain the level of imperialist conflict. Among these is the military mobilization of masses of millions of men to be thrown into the meat grinder of war, as the war in Ukraine is abundantly and bloodily demonstrating.

Military Service Reform in Germany

The step taken by Germany is an important sign of the path it has embarked upon, of its preparations for war. In fact, on December 5, the Bundestag passed a law to “modernize” military service, the objective of which, in a nutshell, is to increase the number of soldiers from the current 184,000 to 260,000–270,000 by 2035, bringing the number of reservists to approximately 200,000. The plan is to enlist at least 20,000 young people as early as next year, with the prospect of continuous increases in subsequent years, from 23,000 in 2027 up to 38,000 per year by 2030—roughly one in eight young people each year. To meet these new needs, more than 270 new barracks will be built by 2031 at a cost of 3.5 billion euros.

This does not, therefore, mark a return to compulsory military service—which has been suspended in Germany since 2011—but rather the introduction of a semi-compulsory system for men and an optional one for women, which also aims to attract young people through financial and educational incentives.

Starting in 2026, all men and women who have turned 18 will receive a questionnaire asking about their willingness to perform military service. To encourage young people to agree to perform military service, financial incentives have been devised, such as a monthly stipend of approximately 2,600 euros—up from the current 1,800—and advanced training, for example in the use of drones, allowing service to be performed near one’s place of residence whenever possible.

However, if the number of volunteers is insufficient to meet the expected targets, mandatory draft may be reinstated. 

The current reform is a political compromise between those who want to rapidly strengthen the military without immediately reintroducing mandatory draft and those, particularly within the CDU/CSU, who believe that draft may be unavoidable if there are not enough volunteers.

Those who are certainly opposed to the new law and, in general, to the prospect of expanding draft are the young people who have protested in over 90 German cities.

This military service reform is part of a broader German rearmament plan aimed at building Europe’s most powerful army through a massive investment of 1 trillion euros—a momentous shift from the entire post-World War II era. This is a necessary choice rooted not only in the ongoing inter-imperialist conflict—particularly with Germany siding with Ukraine in the war against Russia—but above all in the changed economic conditions resulting from the severing of the advantageous energy ties with Russia following the Ukrainian conflict, which have led to a severe crisis in German industry. The expansion of war production would allow for the conversion of those struggling factories, redirecting them toward arms manufacturing.

To achieve its war-preparation objectives, Germany has abandoned its traditional fiscal discipline and requested an exemption from the “Stability Pact” from the European Union so that military spending is not subject to budgetary constraints. Germany is also moving to dismantle its welfare state; Chancellor Merz had declared, “We have been living beyond our means for years,” highlighting high public spending on social services and announcing a review of them. The direction is clear: the priority is military spending; in the future, less money for schools and hospitals, but more weapons.

The trend in other European countries

Germany’s shift toward militarism is obviously not an isolated case, but also affects the rest of Europe, where various countries are preparing plans for rearmament and the overhaul of military service.

With the end of the Cold War, starting in the 1990s, several European countries transitioned from compulsory conscription to a system based on professionalism and specialization. However, the experience of the war in Ukraine has shown this system to be completely inadequate for dealing with a major war like the one currently being fought in those territories, with hundreds of thousands of men deployed at the front and in the rear, and the need to continuously replace heavy casualties. Therefore, the European bourgeoisie finds itself urgently needing to adapt its national armies by increasing the number of soldiers. The demands of the European ruling classes, however, clash with a social reality very different from that of the last century, when masses of young peasants and workers, hardened by hard labor and deprivation, could be drafted into the military. Today’s European countries are now aging societies, with birth rates in steady decline, while, on the other hand, the spread of consumerist lifestyles and the cult of the individual make the prospect of defending the homeland unappealing. Therefore, efforts to reform military systems must take this social context into account to avoid serious political repercussions.

Currently, compulsory military service exists in the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, as well as in Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Greece, and Croatia, which reintroduced it in 2024 with two months of basic training. But as in the German case, the reintroduction of compulsory military service is not the only model being considered; at this stage, there is a tendency to favor hybrid approaches that incentivize and encourage voluntary enlistment and are geared toward forming an army composed of professional forces and reserves.

Among the countries moving toward a revision of military conscription is France, which had suspended compulsory military service in 1997 and had begun moving toward the professionalization of the armed forces, while explicitly stipulating that military service “may be reinstated at any time by law when national defense conditions so require.” We are not yet at that point, but the demands of the national bourgeoisie are no longer even concealed, so much so that the Chief of Staff of the French Army, Fabien Mandon, stated at the Congress of Mayors of France on November 18: “If our country falters because it is not ready to lose its sons […] or to suffer economically because the priority must be military production, then we are truly at risk. […] You must discuss this in your cities.”

The bourgeoisie is clearly stating that further sacrifices must be made and blood shed for the fatherland.

The current approach is not to proceed with the reintroduction of compulsory draft just yet, but to push for voluntary recruitment. “The new military service” will be open primarily to young people between the ages of 18 and 19 starting in the summer of 2026. It is expected to last ten months, with one month of training and nine months in operational units across France. The plan aims for 3,000 recruits in 2026, rising to 10,000 by 2030 and potentially 50,000 by 2035.

What sets France apart is that, at this stage, the focus is on developing a “culture of defense,” by strengthening the “Day of Defense and Citizenship,” which is held annually and is mandatory to obtain a certificate of participation—a requirement for future civil service exams and driver’s licenses. In essence, the mobilization of youth is achieved through the promotion of a patriotic spirit, but it is by no means certain that this will yield the expected results, making the transition to forms of conscription based on compulsory service inevitable.

Even in the United Kingdom, which abolished compulsory conscription in 1963, transitioning to a fully volunteer and professional military, there is a perceived need for a change of course, as evidenced by Rishi Sunak’s 2024 proposal for mandatory national service for all 18-year-olds, to be carried out in either civilian or military contexts. That proposal did not pass, but recently the British government launched a program called the “sabbatical year” to allow young people up to age 25 to spend a year in military service, incentivizing them through pay and the opportunity to subsequently join the professional ranks or find skilled civilian employment. In this way, although large numbers are not expected, the aim is to address the increasingly serious recruitment problems of recent years and meet established recruitment targets.

Italy is also taking action, with the Minister of Defense declaring his intention to propose a bill for “voluntary draft”.

The European path toward militarism does not concern only the enlistment of youth; rather, in addition to an economy increasingly oriented toward arms production, the whole of society is slowly being drawn into the vortex of war preparations. Early signs are already visible in certain initiatives involving French and German hospitals. In France, on July 18, 2025, the Ministry of Health sent a circular asking all hospitals to prepare, by March 2026, to receive up to 15,000 wounded soldiers in the event of war, anticipating peak influxes of casualties—100 per day for 60 consecutive days and peaks of 250 wounded per day for at least three consecutive days. Plans to address war scenarios are also underway in Germany. The goal is to manage a massive influx of casualties: every hospital must be ready to receive up to 100 wounded soldiers per day. 

Polish Rearmament

The European country that has resolutely embarked on the path of rearmament and troop expansion is Poland. The Polish leadership has set its sights high; Prime Minister Donald Tusk has set a goal for 2026 to make the Polish military the “strongest army in Europe,” promising significant investments in infrastructure and the domestic industry. Moreover, Poland has already allocated $41.5 billion to military spending for 2024, equivalent to 4.1% of GDP, rising to 4.7% of GDP in 2025 with $45 billion. For 2026, spending is projected to reach 4.8% of GDP, nearly $55 billion. 

Having depleted a significant portion of its arsenal by supplying Ukraine with its older military equipment, Poland has signed several commercial agreements with companies in the U.S. and South Korean military-industrial complexes, purchasing aircraft, attack helicopters, tanks, and systems from the Americans, and tanks from the South Koreans—with a plan to expand the fleet to up to a thousand units—as well as self-propelled howitzers, fighter jets, and long-range rocket launch systems.

But Poland’s goal is also to increase industrial production directly within the country; in particular, through agreements with South Korea, the aim is to develop joint production and the transfer of military technologies to Poland. The agreement with the Korean company Hyundai Rotem, a supplier of K2 Black Panther tanks, is a step in this direction; it will enable the establishment of a center for the production and technical maintenance of these tanks in the industrial town of Gliwice. 

Poland’s ambition to build the largest army in Europe is also driven by the goal of expanding the army to 300,000 soldiers. In Poland’s case, the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to a shift from the 2008 policy of suspending draft, favoring instead an approach based on voluntary enlistment. Starting in April 2022, the “Become a Soldier of Poland” campaign was launched, which resulted in 14,000 enlistments within a couple of months. Capitalizing on widespread hostility toward Russia and patriotic propaganda about defending the homeland from the enemy invader, attractive pay is drawing many young students and wage earners. Currently, the Polish army has about 215,000 soldiers, including 180,000 professionals and 35,000 territorial defense troops—roughly triple the number from ten years ago—with plans to reach 300,000 soldiers by 2035.

Europe’s War “Until the Last Ukrainian”

Europe is preparing militarily and continues to support Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, as evidenced by the €90 billion loan approved by the EU—which Kyiv will never be able to repay—and stubbornly stands in the way of attempts at peace between the Americans and Russians, rejecting Trump’s peace plan.

Beyond the stance of European imperialist powers in favor of continuing the war through economic and military support for Ukraine, on the eve of the fourth year of the war, Europeans find themselves in serious difficulty regarding military supplies, making their rearmament necessary—a process that will certainly not occur solely with the aim of continuing to send weapons to Ukraine, but above all to strengthen their own national armies. The same applies to plans for expanding European troops, whose deployment on Ukrainian territory is currently deemed possible by the so-called “willing” nations.

The attitude of European imperialists—hostile to Russian-American dialogue and consequently in favor of continuing the war—cannot be understood as an attempt to save Ukraine from the Russian advance, not least because, despite all the military support provided so far during these nearly four years of war, the Russian advance, though slow, is steady and continuous. In fact, the hand extended by the Europeans to the Ukrainians is quite weak, consisting of exorbitant financial outlays and arms shipments, without even the most “willing” being in a position to provide Kyiv with the security they so often boast about.

Therefore, it is clear that the Europeans are calling on the Ukrainians to die not for a desperate national defense but to give European countries the time they need to rearm. This is why, time and again, they intervene in the ongoing negotiations with a proposal for a truce, that is, to halt fighting at the front without laying the groundwork for a more or less definitive resolution of the conflict itself—a truce that would serve only to give Ukraine a chance to catch its breath, stockpile weapons, reorganize the army, and resume hostilities, thereby prolonging a conflict that serves to buy more time for rearmament.

The war must continue, but with the Ukrainians serving as cannon fodder!

From this perspective, the discussion regarding one aspect of Trump’s peace plan—specifically, the number of soldiers in Ukraine’s future military structure—is highly significant.

In Trump’s plan, the size of the Ukrainian army is set at 600,000 troops, while in the second plan, “agreed upon” with Kyiv, the figure is 800,000 troops in peacetime. The Ukrainian proletariat has no illusions: whether or not peace is achieved, their fate is in uniform, to shed their blood in this war or the next. But European proletarians cannot delude themselves either: the militarization of Ukraine heralds and paves the way for that of the rest of Europe.

The Overthrow of Militarism

The Ukrainian conflict leaves no doubt on this point: the frenzied race toward general war compels all national bourgeoisies to prepare militarily, including the necessity of forming a large army through the conscription of masses of proletarians. The European bourgeoisies in particular will be forced to abandon the professional army and move progressively toward the extension of military service, up to a conscript army.

Moreover, the situation in Ukraine is particularly significant from this perspective, since the need to replace enormous losses has turned the country into a vast hunting ground for men to be sent to the front as cannon fodder.

The reaction to forced mobilization is substantial; some estimates suggest at least 850,000 Ukrainians of draft age are in hiding to avoid capture, 650,000 have fled abroad, and there may be 300,000 deserters in 2025 alone, with October setting a new record for unauthorized abandonment of a military unit, with over 21,000 official cases, compared to 17–18,000 per month during the summer—extremely high numbers considering approximately 30,000 people are mobilized each month.

The tragedy is that the phenomenon of desertion, though widespread, still represents a spontaneous and individual refusal to escape the ongoing massacre, and there is a lack of organized opposition to the war.

The only way to stop the war, however, would be to fraternize at the front and turn the weapons against the internal enemy—that Ukrainian bourgeoisie which has sold its own proletariat to the American and European imperialists.

Russian soldiers should do the same; their estimated number of casualties (no official figures are provided) has been rising in recent months at a rate of 25,000 per month, bringing the total number of losses since the start of the conflict to between 250,000 and 300,000.

The militarism that is gaining ground throughout Europe carries within it the seeds of its own destruction as soon as the proletarians, enlisted in the national armies and sent to fight their brothers in other nations, refuse to submit to their own ruling classes and turn the weapons in their hands against them. It is the hoped-for transformation of war between states into class war that will be possible only insofar as it is inspired by the presence of a strong revolutionary communist party with solid foundations and organized on an international scale.

The economic decline of American imperialism is driving successive Republican and Democratic administrations to resort to military force to maintain dominance over international markets – a dominance that commercial competition can no longer ensure. By now, on many fronts, American warmongering keeps the fuse of military intervention lit, which will soon trigger a far more extensive conflict. 

On the domestic front, despite the protectionist policies undertaken by the government, the U.S. economy is heading toward an ever-deepening crisis; for this reason, the need for increasingly tight social control is becoming imperative, abandoning more rights-protecting methods and adopting those of direct repression. The United States, a nation that originated and developed through immigration, is increasingly working to close and turn away migrants at the borders, but also to deport those already on its territory. The aim is certainly not to deprive itself of that cheap labor, but to scale back its presence in times of crisis.

The campaign against migrants will, however, have the effect of keeping them in a state of illegality and precariousness, with the result of keeping wages low in the labor market—and thus also for American workers. The terror unleashed against migrants is therefore a threat directed against the native proletariat itself in the incipient economic crisis that could draw it back into the arena of class struggle.

It is a large-scale operation carried out by the paramilitary units of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) deployed by the U.S. federal government. More than the fascist squads recruited from the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie in Italy, they resemble the SS, a direct offshoot of the Nazi state, engaged in spreading anti-proletarian terror back then, in Germany a century ago. Today, the objective is the same in an America gripped by economic crisis.

A special police force, ICE is an offshoot of the DHS, the largest federal police force (250,000 employees) established more than twenty years ago after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, and kept alive by the various Democratic and Republican administrations that have followed one another. 

Recently, but even before the Trump administration took office, ICE was directed to target immigrants (not just undocumented ones), arrest them, and send them to concentration camps pending deportation (this is the “remigration” that even in democratic little Italy they want to implement). Tomorrow it will be tasked with the direct repression of all expressions of struggle by the American proletariat.

Stephen Miller, a White House advisor, announced in May 2025 the goal of three thousand arrests per day. With recruitment having skyrocketed (it now has 20,000 employees), as well as its budget (eight billion dollars a year), ICE has unleashed a hunt for immigrants across American cities, conducting raids on workplaces and homes in working-class neighborhoods, arresting and deporting entire families.

As in other cities, in Minneapolis, ICE’s federal forces have effectively occupied the territory, revealing—hooded and armed to the teeth—the regime’s ferocious face, persecuting and killing in cold blood anyone who dared to oppose them or simply document their actions.

With the petty bourgeoisie—which certainly fears the loss of the cheap labor provided by immigration—involved, massive demonstrations against ICE took place in Minneapolis and other U.S. cities. Individual workers have also participated in these protests, but the working class as a whole has not mobilized, taking up the struggle on its own initiative in response to the terror waged against migrants, who represent its most vulnerable segment. Until it rediscovers the path to its reorganization as a class, it can only suffer and succumb to the blows inflicted by the state of Capital.

We have received this contribution from Russia, which we are pleased to publish

The recent news of the arrest of several so-called “Marxists” in Russia on charges of “terrorism and conspiracy to overthrow the state” has caused a stir even in Western media circles. In reality, these individuals had done nothing more than organize a public reading of Lenin, and as members of the “Left Front” of the CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation)—a deeply nationalist and chauvinist faction—they can hardly be called “communists.”

Inspired by “Stalinism,” they aim to bring the CPRF “back onto the right path of Marxism-Leninism.” The program of this “persecuted” faction states: “…first. The primary goal of the Left Front is to build socialism in Russia. The looming political crisis could spark a mass revolutionary movement from below, aimed at creating decent and just living conditions for Russian workers. Specifically, this would mean free healthcare, compulsory secondary education and accessible higher education, a progressive tax system, and freedom of speech and assembly. In other words, it would be a matter of achieving those conditions commonly referred to as the “welfare state,” which in recent years have been the target of attacks by reactionaries. To achieve these goals, social democratic and even liberal left politicians, movements, and organizations could become allies of the communists…“.

Of course, for us Marxists, this is a blatant manifestation of opportunistic reformism that appeals to the “welfare state” and “freedom of speech and assembly” and certainly cannot pose a threat to the capitalist state. But why have they been targeted? Evidently, the mere formal reference to “Marxism” and the figure of Lenin, which evokes the revolutionary past, represents a specter that the ruling class in Russia must keep at a safe distance!

The carrot of Western bourgeois liberal democracy and the stick of Russian state authoritarianism are two forms in which the capitalist regime manifests itself, aimed at the preservation and class oppression of the proletariat that persists in all parts of the world—two expressions of the capitalist regime that are interchangeable, depending on circumstances and needs. Today in Western countries deception prevails, with the smoke and mirrors of legalism and parliamentarism, while petty-bourgeois “socialist” parties promise reforms, all the while disarming revolutionary sentiment. 

On the other hand, in Russia, there is repression of any form of opposition that dares even to express a pacifist sentiment, such as regarding the imperialist invasion of Ukraine. The ultimate goal is the same: social conservation and the class oppression of the proletariat. 

Certainly, one can argue—as with fascism—that the open repression that unmasks the bourgeois state creates the most favorable conditions for dispelling the illusion of reformism.

While, under the dictatorship in full force, the task of organizing may appear more arduous for the proletariat, the opportunist wing of the bourgeoisie—which preaches social peace and stifles the class consciousness of workers—will be less active. Thus, the open repression of trade union struggles in Russia prevents the formation of legal unions marked by class collaboration, as in Western countries. And this can dialectically create better conditions for the radicalization of the class struggle.

In this sense, Russia is proving, once again, to be the weak link of capitalist conservatism in Europe. With the prospect of a third imperialist war on the horizon, the picture is becoming clear for the Russian working class: there is no alternative to defeatism; there is no other path but revolution.

Against the “social democratic” leaders who are poisoning the well, only the International Communist Party can pave the way to the future. Only the armed revolutionary struggle can liberate the Russian and international proletariat.

In the comments and analyses of many military and political analysts, the view is gaining ground that NATO is facing a structural crisis, which is unfolding alongside a progressive and irreversible decline in the global power that has exercised undisputed leadership since the end of World War II.  For those who study and analyze the dynamics of imperialism using the tools of dialectical materialism, there is no doubt that the two processes—economic and military—are closely interrelated, and that the monolithic bloc that has guided the capitalist world is beginning to crumble under the pressure of the contradictions inherent in the mode of production that dominates the entire world. The internal forces of disintegration within Capitalism continue to operate, and its collapse—even if it takes longer that we communists have anticipated and hoped—is a historical certainty. At the same time, economic, financial, and political crises have shaken—and continue to shake, at ever-shorter intervals—the very foundations of a world built on a peace maintained through the force of arms, oppression, unchecked debt, and exploitation.

If there is a structural crisis within NATO, it is closely linked to the overall state of the United States, which has been its political and military backbone and undisputed leader for nearly 80 years. The crisis facing the USA is a financial one, stemming from the accumulated debt and ever-rising interest rates, compounded by international alliances that are no longer as strong as they once were, and exacerbated domestically by internal factors, social cohesion, and public support.

This argument is, of course, refuted by those within its ranks who hold political or military positions, as well as by political factions within the governments of the Alliance’s member States. It is an ideological stance not backed by hard evidence, but one that has only one solid justification: the lavish perks and career opportunities that allow its supporters to pursue it at any cost, including the “global visibility” it guarantees—a powerful draw in an age when appearance matters more than substance, and compel these figures to declare that “tout va très bien, madame la marquise.” In any case, this situation highlights the difficulty governments of other countries face in completely freeing themselves from their onerous obligations to the USA.

No in-depth geopolitical analysis is needed to see that the current historical phase reveals that the entire economic, political, and military framework—which for over 70 years has upheld the imperialist world order, survived the collapse of Soviet imperialism, and witnessed the emergence and rise of a new, powerful competitor on the world stage—is rapidly and irrevocably crumbling to make way for a new world order, as politicians, “opinion makers,” and the infamous breed of minstrels in the pay of the bourgeois State would have us believe.

A new order that, however, none of them has yet been able to define precisely, nor to exercise the necessary influence and control to bring it about as a clearly defined or anticipated new world order.

Bourgeois theorists and heads of state are full of good intentions; proposals for new political realities designed to curb the chaos evident in all spheres of State structures—political, economic, and military—are constantly being put forward, depending on the inclinations or political allegiances of the politician or economist in question.

After World War II, a long period of peace among the bourgeois metropolises was necessary; this was ensured through military and economic measures designed to restart the cycle of capitalist accumulation and enable the “defeated” nations to get their economies back on track. The military might of the “victors” was essential to the task of reconstruction, to prevent the resurgence of the communist movement—as had happened after World War I—and to maintain the infamous division of the world into “good” and “bad,” democracies versus dictatorships.

For capitalist States, which are constantly engaged in a covert war with one another—even when they sign treaties and alliances and swear eternal friendship—it is essential to always have declared enemies, the “bad guys,” against whom they must defend themselves. At least, that was the historical justification.

The democratic powers, which, along with Stalinist Russia, had triumphed over the European dictatorships and Japan, had clearly learned the lesson of the 1919 Versailles Conference: not exorbitant reparations for war damages, but in the bloody return to the unbridled excesses of capitalism. Keeping the producers of the revived capitalist cycle on a tight leash was essential for recovery.

All the “victorious” States and their vassals took part in this, lined up and under cover.

The establishment of that world order also made it necessary for the war front against the “defeated” to be immediately dismantled in accordance with the “new bourgeois order.” The Atlantic Alliance was a historical necessity, followed in 1955 by the establishment of the Warsaw Pact—a military alliance between the Soviet Union and its satellite States (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, and Albania)—in response to NATO “for mutual defense.” This “good versus evil” narrative wisely divided the world (in the interests of imperialism) into two distinct camps. For all other “borderline” situations, and for all military and economic conflicts, some supranational body would have stepped in, keeping the mutual interests of the imperialist powers firmly in mind. The massive rise of the Chinese giant was still a long way off on the world stage.

At that time, with the terrible war now over, our Party did not expect a third imperialist war to break out so soon. We knew, however, that such a conflict would break out only when a new general crisis in the world economy would force the choice between war and revolution onto the agenda. This danger was averted by the dissolution of the Communist International and the first State of proletarian dictatorship, and their replacement with self-styled socialist regimes in the name of “national communism”—a bloody lie inaugurated by Stalinism. Capitalism reigned supreme, unchecked and unrestrained, over the entire world, and all movements for national liberation were controlled and ruthlessly suppressed by the bourgeois States allied with the two imperialist powers.

The division of the world into spheres of influence among the so-called superpowers, based on the nuclear balance, held for many decades—at least in Europe, which was initially ravaged by war and later rebuilt economically but not politically—until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.

With the nominal collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the subsequent dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, many of its member States gradually shifted to the side of the so-called free and democratic West. The Atlantic Alliance appeared to be a stronger military institution than ever, further bolstered by a network of international alliances among English-speaking nations that ensured the United States’ political and military control over the Pacific theater as well; this was finalized in 2021, when Chinese expansionism began to pose a threat to the United States and Japan in that region.

The bourgeois world order, founded on imperialist dominance and represented militarily by NATO—an alliance that, in the dreams of Western democratic fools, would have had no further reason to exist after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its system of alliances—brought countless benefits to the States that are structurally more advanced in terms of production and trade. This was essential for the United States, which held a monopoly on the global reserve currency: a formidable “seigniorage” for trade. The American seigniorage ensured the growth of a colossal debt, which was only made possible by a military dominance that allowed for no deviation or alteration from that state of absolute privilege.

Politics, the economy, and finance have been controlled by the military apparatus that has dominated the world for decades on end. Within this framework of stability, founded on financial and military dominance, there have certainly been local and limited crises among the Alliance’s members, yet its U.S.-centered structure has never been called into question. The national interests of its member States could—and have—come into conflict, but NATO, under strict USA control, has never suffered any structural setbacks.

From the 1956 Suez Crisis, when France and the United Kingdom were forced to bow to American dictates, to De Gaulle’s France withdrawing from NATO in 1966—a move that forced the alliance to relocate its headquarters from France to Belgium (it is worth noting that France rejoined NATO 33 years later, in 2009), to the attack on Gaddafi’s Libya—decided unilaterally by the United States’ president—the past century has seen deep divisions among the Allies regarding military spending, the Vietnam War, the invasions of Grenada and Panama, and the First Gulf War. More international disputes occur in the beginning of this century, including the far more serious Second Gulf War—during which France, Germany, and Belgium opposed Article 4 of the Washington Treaty regarding the application of the collective defense clause—and operation “Desert Storm,” which was yet another action decided by the USA, even without the endorsement of all the allies.

In fact, driven by political contradictions that have deepened over time, the Alliance has been forced to expand the scope of its operations beyond what was originally stipulated in the Treaty’s provisions, thereby contradicting its purported “defensive” nature.

When the energy supply agreement between Germany—Europe’s leading economic power—and Russia directly threatened the United States’ favorable industrial and commercial position, and China’s economic threat emerged in all its disruptive force, the military policy of balance was shattered.

The conflicts that had been more or less under control over the past decade have erupted with full force, and the Atlantic Alliance has been unable to fulfill its institutional duties: collective defense and the management of European and international crises. Involvement in the war in Ukraine—aimed at definitively sidelining Russia, particularly as a partner in energy supplies where NATO plays an active role in the conflict but does not present itself as a direct belligerent—highlights the weakness of its military policy.

Added to this is the American demand that the other member States bear the enormous costs of the war by purchasing military systems from the United States, as if these were not the most important component of the Alliance. These are not signs of strength and unity among allies, but rather indications that member States have interpreted as signs of a crisis within NATO, even though no member State of the Alliance seems, for now, capable of declaring it defunct and withdrawing from it. Not even the extremely serious demand to incorporate European territories of strategic interest—due to the polar shipping routes opened up by climate change—into American territory, accompanied by the outright threat of armed invasion, led to a breakdown in relations.

On the military front, the situation appears to be at a standstill.  Even if NATO ceases to exist, we communists are convinced that the main lines of the battle have already been drawn. Of course, it won’t be some mythical European Union fielding a unified army under some unknown command, but the next possible war will see many of these States aligned with what is called the “Western” side.

While the military repercussions likely to arise from the crisis within the longest-standing postwar alliance are fairly predictable, the economic situation centered in the United States is also showing clear signs of serious difficulties, if not an outright crisis.

Here, the system—which is becoming increasingly expensive to finance—has not allowed for the same leeway as in the past, with incentives, cooperation, and guarantees of stability. American foreign policy has shifted toward the threat and subsequent use of coercive and aggressive measures, including tax breaks for European companies that relocate to the USA and tariffs intended to rebalance trade flows in favor of domestic production. The reactions included retaliatory measures, diplomatic rifts, and uncertainty regarding international trade policies. But, at least for now—and we don’t believe this will change in the foreseeable future—a definitive clash between Western nations in the economic and financial spheres is about to erupt. The clearest example is what Germany had to endure: first the scaling back, then the complete severing of its close economic ties with Russia, which had fostered significant industrial and commercial growth. Without much hesitation, it had to fall in line with the USA government’s wishes. The showdown will take place against the other major player that is making its mark on the world stage, and former Russian imperialism will have to follow suit.

A significant indicator of the severity of the American financial situation is the difference between foreign investment in the USA and USA investment in the rest of the world. To date, this gap amounts to a $27.61 trillion deficit—a staggering figure even for a powerhouse like the USA. As one of the two main components of their “current account balance,” (the other being the balance of goods and services), this is the difference between the United States’ capital imports and its capital exports to the rest of the world. Such a liability indicates that the American economy is heavily dependent on foreign capital, which must remain in the United States, and also shows that the financial system is vulnerable to the decisions of foreign investors.

This explains why the American government feels an absolute need, on the one hand, to maintain at all costs an ironclad military dominance that prevents such possibilities from becoming a reality, and on the other hand, to try to reduce the massive deficit as much as possible, thereby shifting the burden not only onto other global creditors but also onto NATO allies—a colossal contradiction.

According to a fairy tale peddled by the bourgeois regime’s newspapers to gullible peace-loving fools, all it would have taken was for a United States president to express, without ambiguity or subtlety, America’s desire for global domination to unleash such worldwide upheaval. In reality, such deadly charades have much deeper roots, and it is certainly not some bloodthirsty puppet that sets events and crises in motion.

Our doctrine teaches us that it is material facts that “choose” men, in the sense that they emerge once historical forces have taken a specific direction. After that, the “men” seem to steer them toward a voluntary outcome. American presidents—prior to the current, much-debated, and reviled incumbent—followed, for their part and given the material forces at play, the “assigned” path. Of course, each of them acted according to their own nature and inclinations, but within an already defined “framework.”

And this applies to all “Great Men” and “Leaders” who operate on the grand world stage of nations and international forums, upon whom public opinion heaps either effusive praise or horrific vilification, depending on the prevailing winds and behind-the-scenes machinations of the high priests of national Capitals.

Because of this steadfast conviction of ours, we refuse to lose faith that the heirs—who are currently unaware of their heritage—of the class that launched an assault on Heaven over a century ago will, in the near future, halt the fatal outbreak of the Third World War.

The historical roots of the conflict

The conflict between India and Pakistan has its roots in the imperialist partition of the subcontinent, formalised in 1947 under the retreating British imperialists. Colonial India, unified under British rule, was carved up according to sectarian criteria imposed from above, creating bourgeois states on religious grounds: a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. Within the framework of this partition, the principalities recognised by the British Empire were given the ‘freedom’ to choose which state to join. In the case of Kashmir – with a Muslim majority but a Hindu ruler – the decision was forced: India sent troops, enforcing annexation by military force. Pakistan responded with war. Since then, the region has been the epicenter of armed conflict and repression, with the civilian population caught between two competing national bourgeoisies. The so-called Line of Control (LoC), which emerged from the 1947–48 war, remains a de facto military border, unrecognised by either side.

To note, bourgeois nationalism was not confined to a single territory. In 1965, Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar, attempting to incite a Muslim uprising in Kashmir. In 1971, with the Bangladesh War, a new front opened up: India supported the secession of East Pakistan, contributing to Pakistan’s defeat and the birth of a new state in the region.

The Durand Line, Drawn in 1893 between India and Afghanistan by British imperialism, represents a border drawn not on ethnic or historical grounds, but by that of the force of the British military might, splitting the Pashtun people into two entities. The Pashtun city of Peshawar was incorporated into the colonial territory, whilst Afghanistan lost a traditional demographic base. Today, Pakistan’s Pashtun population exceeds that of Afghanistan, giving rise to a movement for territorial recovery that lays claim to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan (or Beluchistan); no Afghan government, whether they were monarchical, republican, or Taliban, has ever accepted the Durand Line as a definitive border.

Pashtuns, Balochis (Beluchis) and regional complexities

Thusly, the current balance of power between Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran rests on a precarious equilibrium, a legacy of artificial colonial borders and bourgeois states incapable of organically unifying their populations. The region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formerly the North-west Frontier province, is a hotbed of constant conflict. With a population of around 35 million, predominantly Pashtun, and a poverty rate of 39%, it acts as a strategic buffer between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The socio-economic indicators are alarming; female literacy stands at 27% and access to drinking water is available to less than half the population.

The Taliban themselves, having returned to power following the collapse of the US occupation, represent a form of Pashtun nationalism cloaked in religion. Whilst avoiding explicit statements on ethnic unification they maintain a structural link with the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, TTP), aimed at destabilizing the Pakistani authority in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Since 2008, the latter have been classified as ‘terrorists’ by the Islamabad, but the crackdown has not stopped the attacks.

India has historically exploited these tensions to weaken Pakistan, its strategic rival. Since 2002, Delhi has invested over three billion dollars in Afghanistan; the Salma Dam in Herat, the parliament building in Kabul, and numerous roads linking Afghanistan directly to Iran, bypassing Pakistan. Islamabad interpreted these moves as an attempt at ‘strategic encirclement’. Delhi has also maintained ties with Baloch separatist groups, offering diplomatic and financial support and, according to Pakistani sources, military support as well.

China has added a further layer of complexity with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), part of the Belt and Road Initiative, with planned investments of sixty two billion dollars. The port of Gwadar in Balochistan, managed by China Overseas Port Holding Company, has become the hub of the project. For China, Pakistan’s stability is now a priority; for India, CPEC represents a threat to its regional sovereignty.

Added to this picture is the issue of the Baloch. Like the Pashtuns, they are a divided people; the majority live in Pakistan, a minority in Iran, and a small number in Afghanistan. Pakistani Balochistan, the country’s largest and poorest region, is rife with contradictions: it possesses vast mineral resources, yet 63% of the population lives below the poverty line.

The Main Baloch groups include the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF), the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), and Jaish al-Adl on the Iranian side. In Pakistan, Baloch militants systematically attack Chinese infrastructure and projects: since 2018, they have targeted the Chinese consulate in Karachi, the stock exchange and convoys of the Chinese engineers, forcing Beijing to review the CPEC timetable.

The Nuclear Threat and the Balance of Mutual Destruction

Indian and Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons has fundamentally altered the nature of the crises in the region, introducing a deterrent that mitigates the risk of war without eliminating it. The nuclear tests of 1998 formalised this reality and, since then, every military crisis has unfolded under the shadow of potential nuclear holocaust. In this, India has adopted a ‘No First Use’ policy, committing itself to using nuclear weapons only in response to a nuclear attack. Pakistan, by contrast, rejects such a commitment in order to compensate for its conventional military inferiority, leaving open the possibility of a preemptive strike on the battlefield.

Pakistan’s nuclear programme, having been developed with China’s material support, is based on a comprehensive deterrence doctrine that involves the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, designed as weapons of war for use in limited operations. This approach aims to counter India’s Cold Start Strategy, which relies on rapid military intervention before international diplomacy can intervene. This illusion that deterrence is a factor of stability is a distortion of imperialist propaganda. In reality, armed capitalism knows no stability, but only an unstable equilibrium founded on the threat of total destruction.

The Evolution of Terrorist Networks

Recent military operations against Jihadist infrastructure in Pakistan have highlighted that the Islamic terrorist network is an integral part of the Pakistani state’s economy and repressive apparatus. Organisations such as Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) operate in a manner similar to organised crime groups, blending legal and illegal activities. Command lies in the hands of the Azhar family. Masood Azhar, released in 1999 following the hijacking of an Indian civilian aircraft, founded JeM in 2000, establishing links with the Afghan Taliban, Al-Qaeda and sections of the Pakistani intelligence Service (ISI). JeM does not operate entirely in secret. It owns Madrasas training centers, properties, front companies, media outlets, and a claimed humanitarian network through Al Rahmat Trust, which was formally banned but remains active. The Markaz Subhan Allah complex in Bahawalpur is an example of their outwards operations: formally a religious school, the Markaz Subhan Allah complex is in reality a JeM operational center, which doubled in size after 2022, when Pakistan was removed from the Financial Action Task Force’s grey list. Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), founded in 1990 with the support of Osama bin Laden, follows a similar pattern. Through its charitable front organisation, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, it runs a network of schools, clinics, and welfare centers, thereby strengthening its social roots and ensuring a steady flow of recruits.

Counter-Insurgency in India: the Privatization of Repression

Whilst analyses tend to focus on armed groups backed by Pakistan, India has developed its own para-state apparatus of repression, which is particularly evident the fight against Maoist movements in rural and tribal areas. The red corridor – a strip of territory stretching across Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Bihar, and Andhra Pradesh – has become a testing ground for a sophisticated and brutal privatization of state violence carried out by private militias.

Since 2005, as part of Operation Green Hunt, the Indian state has not only mobilised regular forces such as the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), but also has created and funded civilian militias such as the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh. Recruited from within the tribal communities themselves, often under duress or in exchange for economic privileges, these groups have carried out a scorched earth policy in villages suspected of supporting the guerrillas.

Salwa Judum, declared illegal by the Supreme Court in 2011, has been replaced by new formations as the District Reserve Group (DRG) and Battalion 241. According to reports from human rights organisations, over five hundred villages have been forcibly evacuated and at least fifty thousand Adivast – a tribal people in the area – have been displaced. In Chhattisgarh alone, more than six hundred extrajudicial killings were documented between 2018 and 2023. The operation aims to clear areas rich in natural resources for multinational mining companies, to the displeasure and resultant resistance of the local peasant movements.

In recent months, there has been an intensification of the armed conflict, which has now been ongoing for sixty years. This escalation has taken the form of a large scale military operations, resulting in the killing of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India – Maoist party-, Nambala Keshav Rao, over four hundred rebels, as well as the capture of more than seven hundred others.

The Internationalization of Jihadism

Against the backdrop of state disintegration and imperialist realignment in Asia, the recent convergence between Jihadist groups on the Indian subcontinent and global terrorist organisations points to the emergence of a transnational armed network.

In April 2025, a few days before the attack on Pahalgam, a Hamas delegation was hosted at the Markas Subhan Allah complex in Bahawalpur, the operational headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammed. The meeting was attended by members of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the head of the Pakistani-administered Kashmir government. Two months earlier, in Rawalkot, a Conference on Solidarity with Kashmir and Operation Al-Aqsa had been attended by representatives of Hamas, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizabul Mujahideen, and JeM.

The Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan has given new impetus to cross-border Jihadism. At least three training camps in the provinces of Nangarhar and Kunar are run jointly by the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Jihadist groups, welcoming recruits of various nationalities into a sort of Islamist reactionary international.

BRICS and the Myth of the ‘Multi-polar’ Alternative

The conflict between India and Pakistan exposes the internal contradictions within the BRICS+ bloc, demonstrating the limitations of its claim to represent a ‘multi-polar’ alternative to the western imperialist order. BRICS is not an anti-imperialist front, but an inter-state cartel of imperialist powers with divergent interests.

India, a founding member of BRICS, is in a state of open conflict with Pakistan, a strategic ally of China, another pillar of the bloc. This rift paralyses any prospect of military cooperation within BRICS. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) runs through territories disputed between India and Pakistan, and any escalation puts Chinese investments at risk.

Iran has attempted to position itself as a mediator, but its position is undermined by China’s loyalties to Pakistan. Russia, which is closer to India, maintains an ambiguous stance, calling for ‘restrain’ and denouncing external forces. BRICS claims to represent forty percent of the world’s population, but these figures mask the act that demographic strength does not translate into strategic cohesion.

The Attack in Pahalgam and the Escalation

On 22 April 2025, in the tourist resort of Pahalgam in India-administered Kashmir, an armed group killed twenty-six people. 25 were Indian tourist and one Nepalese national. This action was an operation designed to maximise political and psychological impact. The attackers demanded that the victims recite the shahada or prove they were circumcised, killing those who refused. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Resistance Front (TRF), a group that emerged in 2019 following the repeal of Article 370, which had granted Kashmir autonomy.

According to Indian and America sources, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is behind the TRF, supported by the Pakistani military through the ISI. The attack displayed a remarkable level of sophistication: NATO-standard weapons, synchronized movements and encrypted communications, all indicative of advanced military training. The aim was also economic; to target tourism, the driving force behind the normalisation of capitalism in Kashmir, given that in 2024, over 1.8 million tourist had visited the region.

Following the attack, Prime Minister Narendre Modi gave the army carte blanche, expelled Pakistani diplomats, closed the Attari border crossing and unilaterally suspended the Indus Waters Treaty. Pakistan responded with reciprocal measures, convening the National Command Authority which oversees the nuclear arsenal.

Operation Sindoor and the Air Battle

On 7 May 2025, India launched “Operation Sidoor”, a series of air and missile strikes against nine sites on Pakistani territory identified as ‘terrorist infrastructure’. The name, taken from the red powder worn by married Hindu women, aims to sanctify the war by linking it to religion and ‘national honour’.

The targets icluded the Sawai Nala and Syedna Belal camps (Muzaffarabad), Gulpur, and Abbas (Kotli), Barnala (Bhimber), and the strategic centers Markaz Taiba (Muridke) and Markaz Subhan (Bahawalpur). According to official sources, the operation resulted in around seventy deaths among the ‘terrorists’ and lasted less than half an hour.

Pakistan responded with Operation Bunyan Al Marsoos – “Impenetrable Wall” – claiming to have shot down five Indian fighter jets. This led to the largest air battle in South Asia since the 1971 war, involving some fifty to sixty aircraft.

The Pakistani Air Force deployed J-10C and F-16 aircraft armed with PL-15E missiles, capable of striking targets at a range of 145km. Debris from an Indian Dassault Rafale was found near Bathinda; this marks the first time a Rafale has been lost in combat.

The clash highlighted the dominance of Beyond Visual Range (BVR) combat and the widespread use of electronic warfare, creating what a Pakistani source described as “an electromagnetic fog of war”.

Ceasefire and Disinformation

On 10 May 2025, a ceasefire was announced following US mediation. Donald Trump claimed credit for the achievement, whist Secretary of State Rubio confirmed Washington’s direct involvement, citing “credible intelligence” regarding an imminent escalation.

The conflict has triggered an unprecedented disinformation war. Footage taken from video games such as Arma 3 have been circulated as evidence of attacks. Pakistan has reused images from military exercises; India has used videos of bombings in Syria, passing them off as operations in Pakistan. On social media, millions of users have shared manipulated content, making it impossible to distinguish fact from fiction.

Current Outlook

The ceasefire has brought the acute phase of conflict to an end, but the underlying tensions remain unresolved. Kashmir, strategic corridors, ethnic and religious tensions, and regional instability continue to fuel the potential for conflict. The region remains a complex arena, where Jihadist militias, separatist movements and arms trafficking intertwine with competing states.

BRICS, unable to halt the conflict between two of its leading members and paralysed by internal contradictions, has failed to offer a concrete alternative. US intervention has provided a respite that has allowed forces to regroup. The working class, in India as in Pakistan, has no interest in these wars between national bourgeoisie. The enemy is not the people across the border, but the domestic ruling class. The international class struggle remains the only alternative to the spiral of war and domination. 

Introduction

The text we are republishing is the logical continuation of the article that appeared in issue 436 under the heading “Revisiting the Trade Union Question”; the title itself encapsulates the historical assessment of an entire cycle of struggles while simultaneously—through the power of materialist dialectics—building a bridge toward the resumption of future struggles.

1992 was an eventful year in the history of the Italian labor movement: on July 31, the Triplice (three main unions federations) , Confindustria, and the government (led by Giuliano Amato) signed the first of the infamous Interconfederal Agreements on “income policy, the fight against inflation, and labor costs”; a veritable abdication of the struggles to defend the living and working conditions of the working class. The proletariat did not stand idly by and erupted in violent protests against the regime’s unions, ushering in that autumn what went down in history as the “season of the bolts.” 

Let us analyze this crystal-clear text step by step. 

The first three points establish the causes (the economic crisis that led to the collapse of the lira) that led the henchmen of capital to bow their heads once again in the face of yet another demand for “sacrifices for the good of the nation”; we then move on to reaffirm the fundamental Marxist thesis that all “armies (all state apparatuses) are allied against the proletariat,” before concluding this overview by driving home the tactical point: the Triplice has been hired by the bourgeoisie and is useless for the purposes of the class struggle, even though within the CGIL (apparently still a militant union) there is a political current known as the “union left” which in reality has the fundamental task of fooling the most militant workers (point 5). 

How should we react to this terrible situation? By rebuilding the Class Union, whose objective (point 6) can only be the uncompromising defense of every group of exploited workers demanding a piece of bread; a rebirth that cannot occur through a game of well paid jobs and silly pawns at the top , but through strikes of indefinite duration from the outset and without warning (point 7). 

How should the Union organize itself? The recipe does not arise—still and always—from an intellectual construct of a cabal of enlightened individuals, but emerges dialectically from the unfolding of the historical course and its understanding by the Party organ: not a mythical Union  of Councils with proletarians constantly divided by factory, but Chambers of Labor where proletarians can come together without distinction of job. Not an organization of professional bureaucrats but of proletarians who voluntarily dedicate their energies to the defense of their class. 

The text therefore concludes with the principles that must—because they materially must—inspire the class-based trade union, premises of such great clarity that we leave them to the reader.

A Path Toward the Rebirth of the Class Union

(from “Il Partito Comunista,” No. 205, 1992)

1. The deepening of capitalism’s economic crisis is driving the ruling class to shift its painful effects onto the workers. Now that the cycle of enormous profits for the wealthy classes has ended in all countries—profits that allowed for some minimal and fleeting improvements in wages and labor standards, obtained, moreover, through hard struggles that cost dozens of lives in clashes between strikers and police—today, capital and its state are abruptly pressing to plunge workers into misery and the most total insecurity. This attack is being waged by the states against workers simultaneously in all countries, in Europe and beyond, in the East as well as the West, in poor countries as well as in the so-called “rich” ones.

2. To prevent the workers’ spontaneous defensive reaction, all the forces of the bourgeois regime are mobilized—from the government to the police, television, and the press—which are and will always be ready to resort to any violence, intimidation, and lies to defend the privileges of the capitalists, even if it means reducing the working class to despair and starvation.

3. The trade unions officially recognized by the state—both confederal and autonomous—have become indispensable tools for countering the mobilization of the exploited, their practical actions now coinciding with those of a special police force against workers.

The CGIL, which was reborn after the war, inheriting from the fascist unions the corporatist ideology of the national interest to which all workers must submit, has in recent decades become increasingly closed off to workers’ demands for defense and struggle. Workers have increasingly had to give up these demands and endure employer harassment, layoffs, etc., or organize and strike outside of it. This gradual rendering of the CGIL useless (while the CISL and UIL have been so from the start) has now become confirmed, total, and irreversible. 

In plain sight, the CGIL-CISL-UIL and the bourgeois regime are now one and the same.

4. It is therefore imperative today for the exploited to rebuild their own strong, loyal, and combative CLASS UNION—a permanent expression of the oppressed’s hatred for their condition and of their struggles of resistance against the boundless greed of the capitalists. An organization that springs from the working class and answers only to it, which assumes no responsibility whatsoever toward the bourgeois classes, their economy, and their nation, since its declared purpose is to defend workers against them.

Faced with a coordinated and unified capitalist attack, workers find themselves divided by factories, categories, and locations: only within a broad Class Union, spontaneously disciplined in its actions, can they present a united front in the struggle.

To achieve maximum mobilization, the Class Union has always recruited not on the basis of a specific ideology, but anyone who finds themselves in the objective condition of a worker, regardless of their political sympathies. The class needs the functions of both the Union and its political Party, which are, however, distinct though complementary and require separate organizations. To propose the formation of a Union composed solely of communists, or of a hybrid organization halfway between a Union and a Party, would be to condemn it from the outset to impotence and to abandon the majority of the proletariat to its own —that is, to regime-aligned unionism. Conversely, demanding “independence from parties”—in the sense of preventing militant party members from joining or speaking out—would mean handing the union over to the “diffuse party” of the dominant bourgeois ideology, which infiltrates the workers through a hundred different channels.

5. The so-called “trade union left,” maneuvering from within the confederal hierarchies with ambiguous and seemingly combative statements, seeks to convince workers to still trust the regime’s unions. The real aim is to sow confusion to delay genuine reorganization and general mobilization. The trade union left, with its typical demand for “democracy in the union,” deceives the workers. It is not that the union has sold out to the bosses because it does not respond sufficiently to the rank and file; on the contrary, it can no longer obey the workers because it has, once and for all, switched to the bosses’ side. Therefore, inducing the workers to commit themselves to gaining a hearing from these leaders is merely a delaying tactic.

6. The PURPOSE of the Class Union is the defense of the living and working conditions of the working class. This is understood in its broadest sense as the collective of labor providers who do not own the means of their labor, regardless of the form of remuneration: it therefore includes manual and intellectual workers, productive and unproductive workers, those employed by an individual employer, by a cooperative of employers, or by the State. Excluded are members of other classes, namely capitalists—even small and micro-capitalists (artisans and farmers)—and strata spanning multiple classes (tenants, students, etc.). Pensioners and the unemployed, however, are organized, not separately but within their respective categories of origin.

The DEMANDS of workers that the Class Union traditionally takes up tend toward the defense of wages, with special consideration for the lowest levels, the reduction of working hours, and the defense of retirees and the unemployed, for whom a wage sufficient for the survival of their families is demanded.

7. The MEANS the Class Union prepares to use to impose its demands on the ruling class and its state are limited to direct action by workers in strike initiatives of unlimited scope, commensurate with the intensity of bourgeois resistance. It must be rejected on principle to entrust the condition of the working class to the outcome of referendums in which all classes participate, as well as to the vote of the bourgeois parliament and the rulings of the courts. The best deployment of the class’s strength lies in the general and all-out mobilization of all categories, in the rejection of the regulations currently imposed by the bourgeoisie and accepted by the regime’s unions—from limitations in time and space to the obligation of advance notice, minimum services, and the suspension of strikes during negotiations.

The Class Union requires a territorial organization outside the workplace (in the tradition of the Chambers of Labor) where factory representatives and individual workers scattered across small and very small production units can regularly meet, strengthen their ranks, and coordinate initiatives.

The RSUs and RSAs (fworkplace organizations) necessarily maintain a vision limited to the corporate sphere, which can be highly partial, if not in conflict with the needs of the movement as a whole: this is why it is a mistake to place them on the same level as the Class Union and to advocate for a network of various RSUs and RSAs organized independently, in parallel with, or as an alternative to, the Union. It is through union organization that workers transcend the limitations of the factory and then also of the sector and the occupational category, to mobilize as a class in defense of common interests.

8. There are no organizational formulas that guarantee the correct class orientation. In this sense, the demand for the application of the principles of trade union democracy (deliberative assemblies, consultations, and referendums) does not resolve the problem of rebuilding a class-based trade union organization. In a situation of retreat, the response of the rank and file can be highly controversial and misleading, if not outright contrary to the interests of the class; Moreover, workers in struggle cannot be placed on the same level as scabs, nor can militant layers of the working class be equated with the labor aristocracy or white-collar elite, who may seek to separate themselves from the movement to defend particular interests. It is also to be expected that the bourgeois state, when faced with a resolute trend toward class reorganization, will resort to its typical, well-tried provocations and violent repression. This process of reorganization may therefore not unfold in a peaceful or legal climate, but in an environment of open state repression and fierce social conflict that may also require appropriate forms of self-defense.

9. PRINCIPLES of the Class Union:

a) to strive for solidarity among workers of all categories to oppose the divisions imposed to their disadvantage by bourgeois society;

b) the Class Union does not take upon itself the defense of the national economy or the finances of the bourgeois state, nor does it propose alternative solutions to their crisis in accordance with a “contributory justice” that is inconceivable in this society. If the state is compelled to attack the petty bourgeoisie, let it bear that responsibility: the Class Union stands firm in the uncompromising defense of the working class;

c) it fights for wage and regulatory equality, for equal pay for equal work, regardless of age, race, gender, nationality, religion, or language; 

d) its objective is the international solidarity of workers, understood not as a sentimental or abstract statement, but as a perspective of common goals, struggles, and organization;

e) considers that the actual ability to strike and organize does not stem from rights guaranteed by laws or constitutions, but from the real balance of power between the classes: it is just as possible for a legal strike to be banned as it is for an underground union to emerge. Accepting laws on the self-regulation of strikes to obtain formal recognition from the state is a grave error because the bosses and the state will never, in practice, recognize—unless forced by force—a union that truly fights them; real representativeness can be achieved only through the membership and mobilization of workers on an uncompromising class line;

f) Trade union organization must be separate from and opposed to employer and corporate structures and must be financed solely by the workers. Collection via authorization from the employer must be firmly rejected, as it entails handing over the membership list to the class enemy and allows the union’s financial resources to pass through the employer’s hands;

g) In its true tradition, union activism is carried out by ordinary workers, after working hours at their own expense and sacrifice. The excessive use of salaried officials, secondments, and meetings held during paid working hours—but conducted under the watchful eye of the employer and his spies—only seemingly facilitates organization and is often used as a form of corruption, intimidation, and blackmail;

h) Rejecting prejudices and erroneous explanations regarding the causes of the degeneration of the regime’s unions, the Class Union must evolve into a single, national, structured, and centralized body, to which the proletariat voluntarily adheres in the pursuit of coordinated action toward common goals. For its operation, permanent executive bodies are indispensable, as they alone can ensure swift and unified decision-making in action. The necessary oversight of leaders’ loyalty to the class interest and the selection of the best union policy line is a capacity that the class must develop, but one that does not lead it to the suicidal conclusion of depriving itself of its indispensable organizational tools;

i) The Class Union recognizes that true and lasting relief from the suffering of the exploited will come only through full emancipation from wage labor, the general objective it pursues. 

The Trade Union Fraction of the International Communist Party

There is a petty-bourgeois illusion that has taken hold in the turbulent world of software: the fantasy that one can wage a small-scale anarchist-style war against capital operating in the software industry by developing and promoting open source alternatives to solutions protected by intellectual property rights, without overcoming capitalism as a whole.

Open source programs are those whose use is publicly available, and the source code is also available, allowing modifications, additions, and improvements by anyone capable of working on them to produce functioning programs or enhancements.

The idea that this conflict exists is unfounded since the capitalism is the generalized production of commodities, whose intrinsic economic laws exert an iron grip on the whole of society, transforming almost everything produced into commodities, diverting, altering, and revolutionizing every production process, and not stopping until the entire world has become a market. Computer software is certainly no exception.

The open-source movement, which developed in the 1980s, pays no heed whatsoever to the bourgeois nature of ownership of material goods and so-called “intellectual” property. The stated goal of the activists involved was to fight on behalf of small entrepreneurs against the giants and ruthless, evil monopolies like IBM, which dominated the technological landscape of those years.

Over the years, there has been much discussion about companies that “give back to the community.” To promote the development of key open-source software, many large companies today contribute financial donations through various non-profit organizations such as the Linux Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation. This arrangement benefits the status quo, as it is more cost-effective than hiring in-house developers. Today, large companies, which have the necessary capital to do so, have hired their own internal teams of workers who contribute to open-source projects. These are projects that have become so critical due to their ubiquity and have thus become a channel through which larger enterprises can collaborate on creating the tools they collectively rely on. This is the result of the centralization of capital. Open-source software has played another fundamental role for capital invested in the sector: the definition of various standards for application programming interfaces, operating system implementations, network protocols, programming languages, Internet technologies, cryptographic algorithms, and many other systems on which our society relies today.

When capital is invested in a new field or a particularly promising new technology—as happened with personal computers, the Internet, and now with devices known as smartphones—a battleground opens up over proprietary standards and related technologies. After an intense struggle among thousands of new companies, the market ultimately selects—as we see today—a few large companies that are competitors but must at the same time cooperate to some extent as business partners. This cooperation is effectively the division of labor among different companies. At the end of the phase of open and anarchic struggle, the general technical level reaches its highest point; in the realm of these “mature” technologies, to ensure interoperability in the areas where different hardware and software systems—or parts of a given system—interact, various standards have been established by multiple companies that have come together and agreed on how to implement things on an industrial scale.

Non-profit institutions such as ANSI and ISO were created by the bourgeoisie precisely for this purpose: to find common ground, dictate rules, and organize the capitalist class in every sector. This entails a number of advantages. First, it significantly accelerates the adoption of a common standard. Second, it provides the industry with a set of common open-source tools it can rely on and build upon without every company having to start from scratch. Finally, it ensures the smooth operation of systems by facilitating interoperability testing between different systems. Thus, the workforce has at its disposal this set of openly available tools, with which it is already familiar and on which it has been trained, whether during employment with another capitalist or in its free time, thereby reducing the time and costs required for training and making the free movement of labor—its absorption into and expulsion from the labor market—more fluid, wherever and whenever circumstances require it. All these factors contribute to significantly reducing costs and increasing profits.

The petty-bourgeois dream that began over forty years ago has come true, but not in the forms envisioned by those who began working on this “project.” Companies—whether trillion-dollar corporations or small startups operating out of apartments—thrive thanks to open source and the voluntary work performed for free by developers in their spare time, or through their work sponsored and collectively funded by capital via nonprofit foundations.

Although it is true that the enormous amount of work done for free solely for personal pleasure may serve as proof that work does not necessarily have to be wage labor, this does not bring us any closer to socialism: engaging in this type of work or promoting it for ideological purposes is just another form of activism. Ultimately, all software will be “free” from the chains of capital, the production of surplus value, and private appropriation only under communism, when the goal of production will be use-value rather than exchange-value—that is, serving the needs of humanity. Even though fragmentation will no longer be a problem because production will be centralized and planned accordingly, this does not mean that individuals will not be free to pursue their own exciting projects. Only communism will abolish intellectual property, which is nothing more than an aspect of private property.

Reports on trade union matters

The series of reports on trade union issues, which began at the general meeting last September, has continued with the presentation of three separate chapters.

The work begins by observing a pattern: after the Revolution of 1789, the bourgeoisie rose to power. In the following historical periods, workers’ economic associations faced many changes. Sometimes the bourgeois state openly rejected them. Later, it gave them legal status. Eventually, the state absorbed and neutralised unions, taking away their independence to stop them from being led by the revolutionary party.

Within the workers’ organisations, revisionist and reformist tendencies, opposed by revolutionary Marxism, developed progressively until, on the eve of the First World War, they became dominant in all the parties of the Second International.

With the war, the situation came to a head; the social-democratic parties joined the Union Sacrée, and it was only thanks to them that the bourgeoisie succeeded in driving the proletarians of various countries to slaughter one another on the battlefields. The cycle concluded with the complete subjugation of the trade union federations to the cause of their respective national bourgeoisies. 

With the exception of Soviet Russia, this subjugation persisted and even strengthened after the return to peace, and the trade unions were entrusted with a purely reformist role. 

This subjugation looks different in each country. Karl Radek observed that ‘the various flags covered the same goods everywhere’. Without revolutionary communist leadership, trade unions limit themselves to reformist actions within capitalism.

This does not, however, mean that communists should leave the trade unions; on the contrary, it reinforces their aim of taking the lead within them, giving them direction and purpose that goes beyond immediate demands and leads to a head-on revolutionary confrontation.

‘The trade union, even when corrupt, is still a workers’ centre. Withdrawing from the social-democratic trade union corresponds to the view of certain trade unionists who would like to establish organs of revolutionary struggle of a trade-unionist rather than a political nature.’ 

“The left wing of the Italian Communist Party has always opposed the tactic of demanding withdrawal from reformist trade unions. We have always fought with the utmost vigour against tendencies towards secession from the reformist trade union confederation by independent trade unions, supporters of the Communist Party.”

It is on these theoretical foundations, specific to the Italian Communist Party, the Comintern and the Profintern, that we have based our reports.

This study, which examines the various trade union issues that arose in Italy between the two world wars, simultaneously demonstrates that these were not purely Italian issues, but recurring ones in every bourgeois capitalist state. In practice, the problems were and remained the same.

CGdL AND FASCISM AGAINST WORKERS’ GAINS

On 9 October 1921, the Executive Committee of the CGdL proposed suspending all industrial action against wage cuts and establishing a Commission of Inquiry comprising representatives of the State, employers and workers to examine the industrial situation and, on that basis, determine whether wages should be adjusted. Such an adjustment could even have been a reduction if the Commission of Inquiry had deemed it essential for the survival of the industry.

Naturally, class collaboration could only favour the bourgeoisie and capitalism, and consequently, the path of trade union collaboration could only converge with that of fascism.

It will be interesting to examine in greater depth the direct and indirect contacts between the Confederazione del Lavoro and fascism. Indeed, between the confederal bigwigs and the fascists, there had been a dialogue at a distance—at times extremely cautious; at others more overt, marked by overtures and very carefully calculated tactical moves.

The constant invitations, albeit accompanied by threatening tones, issued by Mussolini to the CGdL demonstrate this. And in *Popolo d’Italia* he wrote: ‘Collaborators are recruited especially from among the leaders of the CGdL’. 

But the CGdL, too, sought the same result, as demonstrated by its attempts to forge links through the D’Annunzio movement, culminating in its adherence to the ‘pacification pact’, etc., etc.

A project for a ‘Trade Union Constituent Assembly’ was also launched, aimed at isolating the extremist and communist elements within the CGdL, upholding the stated aim of ‘excluding any act that might harm the nation, whose general interest must, in all cases and by all, be considered superior to the particular interests of any trade or class. Trade unions must always be prepared to offer their technical cooperation to the State, regardless of any political considerations.”

At the time of the so-called March on Rome, the CGdL rejected the proposal for a general strike put forward by the communists because this, it was said, ‘would have compromised the independence of the labour movement and hindered the process of clarifying a situation that was becoming increasingly untenable’. 

Thus, the seizure of power by fascism—a political and military organisation founded and developed with the aim of destroying any form of proletarian organisation and subjugating the working classes to supreme national interests, that is, the interests of the employers—was of no interest whatsoever to the General Confederation of Labour. And it is easy to understand why.

It is now widely acknowledged that numerous contacts occurred between confederal leaders and Mussolini in the aftermath of the March on Rome, in the hope of participating as ministers in the first fascist governments.

Throughout this report, we have listed a whole series of contacts, promises and hopes on the part of the trade union bigwigs, and above all, the repeated declarations of ‘technical’ collaboration with the Mussolini government, asserting that fascist trade unionism was implementing the CGdL’s programme.

It was the Matteotti murder that interrupted, apparently and only for a moment, that idyll between trade union bosses and politicians with fascism.

Meanwhile, whilst Communist leaders were being regularly expelled and the Labour Chambers run by Communists were being dissolved, on the other side, there was a continuous exodus of leaders and entire federations who, lock, stock and barrel, defected to the Fascist trade unions. 

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE CGdL

The CGdL, which had two million members in 1920, had dwindled to just under 200,000 by 1926.

At the end of 1925, D’Aragona resigned as general secretary of the Confederation; he was succeeded by Bruno Buozzi, who remained in the post until he quietly slipped away. He was succeeded by Maglione. 

Time passed, and it was now clear that Mussolini would never seek the collaboration of the discredited bigwigs of the CGdL; yet, their mission was one of betrayal, and their task was to destroy what had been the most prestigious Italian proletarian organisation. 

On 4 January 1927, summoned by Maglione, the Executive Council of the CGdL met, during which three proposals were put forward: 1) the outright merger of the CGdL into the fascist corporative trade unions; 2) the purely formal continuation of the Confederation; 3) its immediate dissolution.

On the following 3 February, the text of the dissolution declaration appeared in all of Italy’s daily newspapers, stating: ‘The fascist regime is a reality and the reality. This reality has also sprung from our own principles, which have prevailed: the trade-union policy of fascism is, in certain respects, identical to ours. The Fascist regime has enacted a law regulating collective labour relations, which adopts principles that are also our own. We would be contradicting ourselves if we were to oppose the corporative state or the Labour Charter that the Fascist regime intends to implement. One need only recall our past votes and proposals to establish that we are bound to contribute through our actions to the success of these experiments.’

The document then concluded with an explicit offer of support to the fascist regime by the trade union bosses, who, thanks to the fascist regime, were able to arrogate to themselves the right to dissolve the CGdL and announce the demise of the so-called ‘red unions’. 

At the same time, the creation of a ‘National Association for the Study of Labour Issues’ was announced. Rigola explained the function and objectives of the Association in these terms: ‘Our Association will have as its aim the objective study of labour issues in relation to the directives and goals set by fascism. All the reforms that the Government has implemented and is implementing in the trade union sphere are of such magnitude that no one can deny them. We have seen our long-held aspirations fulfilled; for others, it has even seemed to go beyond what we had ever hoped for. With what other programme could we refute fascism if, on the trade union and social front, it was implementing our own?’ 

It was Fascism itself that was the first to be disgusted by this ignoble servility and, on 5 February, issued the following ‘order sheet’ to the newspapers: ‘The scope and significance of the letter from the former trade union leaders must not be exaggerated to the point of turning it into some sort of sensational event. The Fascist regime has no real need for such recognition.’

THE CGdL REORGANISES IN SECRECY

Following the dissolution of the CGdL by the bigwigs of the Executive Council in Paris, Bruno Buozzi attempted to set up a sham re-founding in exile. This would have allowed him to continue receiving subsidies from the Amsterdam International.

In Italy, however, the CGdL’s federations and grassroots organisations, meeting in conference on 20 February 1927, in response to the old traitorous leaders, reorganised a clandestine trade union centre, based on the following fundamental points:

1 – Internal governance on a democratic basis;

2 – External action based on the class struggle;

3 – Organic independence from all political parties and freedom of expression for all class-based trade union currents.

By that time, the PCI had become completely Stalinised, and the Left had no chance of making its voice heard among the working masses; yet we must acknowledge that the CGdL, having been re-established as an underground organisation, carried out important organisational and class-based work. And whilst its impact was limited due to state repression and the betrayal of the trade union bosses who had handed over the largest proletarian organisation to fascism, it was the only organisation dedicated to organising and defending the working class against the joint attack of the bosses and the state.

Those organised within the new CGdL certainly spared no effort and, supported by the proletariat, developed an active campaign of struggle.

On 15 March 1927, the first issue of ‘Battaglie Sindacali’ (underground) – the organ of the new CGdL – was published; a truly well-structured weekly, covering organisational and struggle work, news of various proletarian actions, trade union news, international conferences, etc.

The best-organised and most successful strike was that held from 29 June to 1 July by the 10,000 rice peelers in the provinces of Novara and Vercelli against drastic wage cuts. During the Executive Committee meetings, the positive results achieved among the proletarian masses were highlighted; note was taken of the small but numerous demonstrations and strikes by workers; and it was decided to distribute leaflets to urge workers to oppose the bosses’ constant attacks. 

The clandestine CGdL, purged of its opportunist leaders, was revived to channel all these movements, whose pace was intensifying day by day, and to lead them to their natural conclusion, their revolutionary conclusion.”

Naturally, this was a very difficult task to carry out under the constant threat of arrest due to infiltrated informers and police investigations.

The clandestine CGdL, however, bore within it the curse that would lead to its downfall: its dependence on Stalinism and its tactical shifts, or, if you will, its sudden about-turns.

Military Question: Operation White Sword (September 1919 – February 1920)

The Soviet leadership was well aware that further efforts were needed, in addition to those already made by the Red Army, to defend the proletarian revolution, particularly in light of the gradual advance of the “Moscow Directive” implemented by the White counterrevolutionaries. To best carry out his plans, Denikin aimed to secure Voronezh and Orel along the Tula axis, home to the Red Army’s most important arsenal and military industries; according to Trotsky, the loss of these would have been more severe than the loss of Moscow. 

Meanwhile, preparations were underway for the evacuation of Petrograd, which was considered difficult to defend against a White attack from northern Finland, from the sea by the British and French fleets, and from the west via Estonia.

For Denikin, the capture of Petrograd and the imminent capture of Moscow would have meant the total defeat of the proletarian revolution. Precisely for this reason, the Red Army was called upon to make a supreme effort to defend it.

The Allied command, under heavy pressure from Great Britain, urged Denikin to launch the final attack as soon as possible, assessing the state of the civil war across the entire theater of war as favorable to them. A new front to the north against Petrograd would also relieve Red pressure on Denikin’s southern front and on the Siberian front to the east, where Admiral Kolchak was attempting to reach Moscow from the east.

General Yudenich was tasked with forming a capable army to capture Petrograd, making the best use of generous British aid in the form of weapons, ammunition, tanks, vehicles, trains, some aircraft, as well as uniforms and food. Yudenich had already fought alongside the White nationalists against the Reds in Finland and Estonia, from whom he expected aid in exchange for his support of their independence.

He thus managed to organize a force of 19,000 hastily trained fighters, though it lacked a capable and proven command structure. Against these, the 7th Red Army could field 27,000 fighters with sufficient weaponry, though it had to control an extensive 250-km front stretching from the shores of the Gulf of Finland to the southern sector of Lake Peipus, while the White front was concentrated on a narrow 145-km front. Even those Red forces lacked efficiency because their best units had been transferred to the southern front to counter the advance on Moscow. 

An initial map of the area showing the movements of the maneuvers was displayed.

The White General Staff of this northwestern army had already studied two scenarios for an attack on Petrograd. The first prioritized the time factor to prevent the arrival of Red reinforcements and proposed a direct attack south of the city via the Gatchina railway junction. The second proposed a long flanking maneuver from the southeast, taking control of Novgorod and the Moscow–Petrograd railway to completely isolate the city from the south. Then came the final attack.

Operation “White Sword” emerged from a compromise between the two options, with the key element being the maneuver to cut all railway lines to prevent any resupply. The offensive involved an attack by seven columns from different directions to confuse the enemy and divert Red forces from the main assault.

September 28, 1919: The White offensive begins toward the Pskov-Luga railway line. After a week of fighting, the railway is under the control of the counterrevolutionaries.

October 10: The various columns began moving toward Petrograd, facilitated by the disarray of the Red forces of the 7th Army, which, to avoid being isolated, had to realign with those further south of the 15th Army.

The Soviet intelligence system failed to gather adequate information to understand the Whites’ true intentions.

October 11: The general White offensive begins with a vanguard of Mark V tanks. The Russian troops had no anti-tank defenses and were forced to retreat beyond the Luga River, whose bridges had been blown up during the previous campaign in May. This halted the tanks’ advance. The naval guns of the British fleet in the Gulf of Finland covered the White advance, and the Whites occupied Jamburg the following day.

In the days that followed, the White maneuver continued successfully toward the Tosno station on the main Moscow–Petrograd railway line. Unfortunately, in this case as well, the rapid White advance was possible because the Red troops retreated or surrendered upon first contact with the Whites. We have read part of Lenin’s letter, “To the Workers and Red Workers of Petrograd,” regarding the grave danger looming over Petrograd and the revolution.

October 16: Trotsky departs in his armored train for the northern front with a clear plan based on a correct analysis of the situation, which we have excerpted from “On the Road No. 97” from his military writings. He outlines his plan to defend the city by organizing a system of trenches and barbed-wire barriers to be laid out in a well-coordinated manner to trap the White units he presumed might penetrate Petrograd, as amply illustrated in “On the Road No. 98.”

To support his plan, he brought in reinforcements from Karelia, conscripted up to the class of 1901, ordered all party members capable of handling weapons to make themselves available, and initiated the construction of trenches and barricades in the city.

October 18: The third phase of Judenič’s attack began on three fronts. The Red defenses withstood the onslaught while the foreign press rejoiced at the fall of Petrograd, which would be confirmed by the White conquest of Pushkin and Tsarskoye Selo, once the tsar’s residences just a few kilometers from the city.

The counterrevolutionary plan was working when the White commander tasked with blocking the railway line from Moscow decided to disregard orders and sent only a small detachment—which was immediately neutralized by the Reds—in order to push the bulk of his forces toward Petrograd, fearing he would be excluded from the final battle and the resulting “glory.”

Ten trains a day carrying reinforcements of men, ammunition, and food were arriving on that line. Several of these new units were sent south to cut off the Whites’ retreat.

October 21: Denikin realized his units were falling apart, lacking even communication links between them, where his orders arrived late or were lost, preventing any change in strategy. Due to the losses suffered, he realized that if Petrograd did not fall at the first assault, it would no longer be possible to capture it. Trotsky, in “The Turn” in Journey No. 99, acknowledged the Whites’ difficulties, praised their initial partial successes, and urged a final effort.

October 22: Yudenich, after the White forces’ initial unsuccessful attacks on the Red defenses—due to the impossibility of controlling the individual columns, which were now moving separately from one another—realized that it was not possible to break through the Red front. Furthermore, no internal counterrevolutionary uprising had been launched in Petrograd by the “National Center,” which was merely awaiting his arrival to facilitate his entry. Instead, he found himself with his rear exposed.

October 22: That evening, the Red counteroffensive began against the junction of two White divisions, which were unable to withstand this unexpected night attack and were forced to abandon their positions at Tsarskoye Selo and the Pulkovo Heights. For this reason, the White vanguard units that had reached the outskirts of Petrograd immediately retreated to avoid being trapped.

Trotsky celebrated the success in “The First Blow” in Issue No. 100, stating that it was necessary to crush Yudenich definitively to ensure the security of Petrograd.

October 24 – November 2: Unsuccessful White counterattacks take place to regain positions.

November 3: A fierce assault from three directions by the 7th Red Army on Gatchina, the White center of gravity, simultaneous with that of the 15th Red Army on Luga and the Pskov–Petrograd railway—both successful—puts an end to Yudenich’s plans to take Petrograd. The White commanders decided to retreat in an orderly manner toward Estonia. Active, undefeated White pockets remained.

November 14: The last White resistance near Jamburg falls. Despite the difficulties, a large portion of the remaining White troops heads toward Estonia. Others under Yudenich continue fierce clashes with the Red Army.

January 3, 1920: The Soviet command, primarily concerned with the crisis with Poland, decided not to continue the offensive and offered Estonia peace and recognition of its independence, which was immediately accepted. The remaining White troops retreated, unarmed, across the Estonian border.

January 20: Yudenich disbands his army; part of it is evacuated by the British fleet; he then takes refuge in Nice on the French Riviera.

The failure of Operation White Sword was due to the British haste to launch the offensive even though the troops were not adequately prepared and were insufficient in number. Even more significant was the fierce rivalry among the various commanders, who on several occasions acted on their own initiative in defiance of the plans assigned by Judenič. Many of them were caught up in a self-serving rush to be the first to liberate Petrograd.

They used the Mark V tanks recklessly, sending them out as advance guards without infantry support. Soon the Red soldiers managed to neutralize them and capture some. Essentially, our success was due to an effectively centralized chain of command and an efficient supply system.

The turning point of the entire civil war came on October 23, when Yudenich’s White forces were forced to abandon their positions on the outskirts of Petrograd, and on the same day on the southern front, Denikin was definitively blocked at Orel, the furthest point of his “Moscow Directive.”

The labor movement in France

In the two previous reports, we described the various economic organizations of the European labor movement between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We then examined the characteristics of the French labor movement (the revolutionary alliance between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat until February 1848, the importance of the petty bourgeoisie as a breeding ground for anarchism, parasitic finance capitalism, French imperialism, and the conquest of colonies as a source of corruption for a segment of the proletariat). 

This third report covers the beginnings of workers’ unions before 1871 up to the founding of the CGT in 1895 and the various socialist parties. After describing four periods in the evolution of the union form (1848–1871: phase of prohibition; 1871–1914: phase of expansion and subjugation; 1914–1926: revolutionary phase and the party; 1926–1945 and after 1945: phase of state totalitarianism and the state trade union), we begin by describing the prohibition phase with the first workers’ unions, up to the Paris Commune of 1871. This phase is marked by the infamous Le Chapelier Law of June 1791, when the bourgeoisie, having just triumphed over the monarchy thanks to its alliance with the proletariat, enacted a law prohibiting any association of workers. 

It took rivers of blood from the repression of June 1848 to convince the workers that the establishment of the Republic did not at all mean the abolition of bourgeois rule, but, as Marx states, that the subversion of the state form and the dictatorship of the working class were necessary. The First International was founded in 1864, but Marxists and anarchists clashed within it, which convinced Marx and Engels of the need, due to the ebb of the struggles, to dissolve it in 1872 to remove it from the influence of the anarchists. 

After the Paris Commune’s 1871 assault on heaven and the fierce repression that followed, the labor and socialist movement developed ever more rapidly due to industrial development and the growth of the proletariat. Various socialist currents emerged that defended the interests of workers. 

The first current was that of Pierre Joseph Proudhon, who advocated social change through self-management and mutual aid, but without parliament or violent struggle. The second current was that of the anarchist Fernand Pelloutier, one of the fathers of revolutionary syndicalism, who left a lasting mark on French syndicalism and the CGT until World War I. He launched the Bourse du Travail (Labor Exchanges) movement, which served multiple functions of mutual aid, education, and struggle, welcoming trade unions; these exchanges became genuine instruments of propaganda and workers’ struggle. The late 19th century was thus characterized by the development of the revolutionary trade union movement, whose base consisted of small businesses and artisans who owned their own tools of labor. The Marxist current known as “collectivist” began to develop in 1876 with Paul Lafargue, Marx’s son-in-law and translator, and Jules Guesde, who in October 1880 founded the French Workers’ Party with a program for which Marx had prepared the “considerations,” and whose working-class base was that of large industries. But other socialist parties were formed, such as the “possibilists” of Paul Brousse, advocates of achievable demands; Jaurès and Millerand founded the Party of Independent Socialists in 1890; and Edouard Vaillant brought together Blanqui’s disciples in the Revolutionary Socialist Party. The crisis of the Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906), during a period of political instability marked by anarchist attacks and the rise of anti-Semitic, monarchist, and militarist clerical movements, led most socialists, including the Guesdists, to defend the Republic threatened by a “coup d’état”—a scenario that was, in reality, highly unlikely. The Second International, dominated by German social democracy corrupted by reformism, strongly advocated for the unification of French socialist forces. Millerand, supported by Jaurès, agreed to join the liberal government alongside Gallifet, one of the perpetrators of the massacre of the Commune. And in 1905, the Possibilists, Independents, Guesdists, and a portion of Vaillant’s party united in a French Section of the Workers’ International, the SFIO, led by Jaurès, while the Guesdists by then had little influence. The French bourgeoisie had sidelined the clericals and the military and was becoming republican by subjugating the socialist movement.

After describing four periods in the evolution of the trade union form (1848–1871: prohibition phase; 1871–1914: expansion and subjugation phase; 1914–1926: revolutionary trajectory and the party; 1926–1945 and after 1945: phase of state totalitarianism and the state trade union), we begin by describing the prohibition phase, from the first workers’ unions up to the Paris Commune of 1871. This phase is marked by the infamous Le Chapelier Law of June 1791, enacted by the bourgeoisie—which had just triumphed over the monarchy thanks to its alliance with the proletariat—prohibiting any association of workers. It took the bloodshed of the June 1848 repression to convince workers that the establishment of the Republic did not mean the abolition of bourgeois rule, but rather, as Marx asserted, the overthrow of the existing state and the dictatorship of the working class. The First International was founded in 1864, but Marxists and anarchists clashed within it, which convinced Marx and Engels, given the waning of the struggles, of the need to dissolve it in 1872 to prevent it from falling under anarchist control. 

After the Paris Commune uprising of 1871 and the fierce repression that followed, the labor and socialist movement grew ever more rapidly thanks to industrial development and the expansion of the proletariat. Various socialist currents emerged that defended the interests of workers. 

The first current was that of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who advocated social change through self-management and mutual aid, but without a parliament or violent struggles. The second current was that of the anarchist Fernand Pelloutie, one of the fathers of revolutionary syndicalism, who left an indelible mark on French trade unionism and the CGT (General Confederation of Labor) until World War I. The Bourse du Travail (Labor Exchange) movement began, with its multiple functions of mutual aid, education, and struggle, welcoming the unions. These exchanges became true instruments of propaganda and workers’ struggle. 

The so-called “collectivist” Marxist current developed starting in 1876 with Paul Lafargue, Marx’s son-in-law and translator, and Jules Guesde, who founded the French Workers’ Party in October 1880 with a program whose “principles” had been elaborated by Marx and whose working-class base was that of large industries. But other socialist parties emerged, such as the “possibilists” of Paul Brousse, advocates of achievable demands. Jaurès, together with Millerand, founded the Independent Socialist Party in 1890; Édouard Vaillant would later unite Blanqui’s followers in the Revolutionary Socialist Party. The Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906), which occurred during a period of political instability marked by anarchist attacks and the rise of anti-Semitic and militarist clerical movements, prompted most socialists, including the Guesdists, to rally to the defense of the Republic, which they perceived as threatened by a coup d’état—a likely outcome in reality. The unity of French socialist forces was strongly desired by the Second International, dominated by German social democracy, which was itself permeated by reformism. Millerand, supported by Jaurès, agreed to join the liberal government alongside Gallifet, one of the architects of the massacre of the Commune. And in 1905, the Possibilists, the Independents, the Guesdists, and a faction of Vaillant’s party united in the French Section of the Workers’ International (SFIO), led by Jaurès, while the Guesdists exerted ever less influence. The French bourgeoisie had sidelined the clergy and the army and was reaffirming its republicanism by subduing the socialist movement.

Prendiamo atto che la solita innominabile “Associazione”, malgrado i nostri richiami, continua a dare alle stampe versioni pirata della nostra rivista “Comunismo”, utilizzandone illegalmente il nome, l’immagine grafica, la progressività della numerazione ed altro ancora. Scorrettezza analoga è condotta anche nei confronti del periodico “Il Partito Comunista”, con un organo identico nell’aspetto salvo una piccola modifica della testata.

Si tratta di una iniziativa che va in primo luogo a scapito della classe che si intende difendere e guidare, in quanto si crea solo confusione, e quindi sfiducia e delusione, in quei pochi proletari che in questo periodo storico sentono il richiamo della tradizione della Sinistra. Se si ha qualcosa da dire lo si può fare in qualsiasi forma che non sia quella truffaldina di intorbidire le acque di una tradizione rivoluzionaria più che secolare. 

Come “Associazione la Sinistra Comunista” non possiamo più permettere queste azioni di boicottaggio e, al fine di tutelare la tradizione della quale siamo gli unici veri portatori, siamo risoluti ad avvalerci, obtorto collo, di tutti i mezzi legali a nostra disposizione per impedirle.

A complex political, military, and social struggle is unfolding in the region between Israel, Iran, and Turkey. Alongside the menacing presence of the United States, which seeks to resolve this highly complex situation in accordance with its own interests.

Israel has conducted a brutal bombing campaign against Iran in an attempt to destroy the infrastructure needed to produce nuclear weapons, though it did not entirely succeed. In addition, a violent and popular uprising, centred mainly on Tehran, has gripped Iran and spread to other major industrial cities.

Tehran has been at the centre of many of Iran’s major upheavals. First came Mossadeq’s democratic uprising, then the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty. Later, a democratic uprising overthrew the imperial family, but it was then replaced by a theocratic government led by Shiite clerics. After the long war with Iraq led by Saddam Hussein, the religious establishment relaxed its control slightly, allowing for a limited democracy. However, current regional tensions have led religious fundamentalists to reinforce their control, bringing their political-military militias back to prominence.

Tehran and its social and political problems

Tehran, Iran’s capital, has almost 10 million residents, and the metropolitan area adds another 16 million, making it about 20% larger than New York City by population, although the areas are similar in size. This creates severe overpopulation and a high concentration of working-class people, a problem common in many developing and some developed countries. Globally, Tehran is among the least stable capitals, with a low standard of living. Environmental neglect by industry, poor infrastructure, terrible air quality, and growing conflict between workers and the wealthy are widespread.

This economic disparity is further highlighted by the meagre earnings of the average worker in Tehran. Many take home just $35–$150 a month. In some cases, workers are not paid at all. High inflation rates also make it difficult to gauge true purchasing power. 

Tehran’s working class deals with regular violations of legal workplace protections. Up to 15% of children nationwide survive through dangerous activities, such as prostitution or working in unsafe factories and on the streets. Most cannot attend school or receive healthcare, making escape from poverty nearly impossible. 

From May 2024 to May 2025, more than 2,000 people died countrywide due to dangerous working conditions, with Tehran among the worst affected. Laws protecting workers are often only formal and broad, and in practice, they are strictly enforced to protect the state and the upper middle class, not the workers. 

Another serious problem plaguing Iran is the water crisis. Tehran suffers from frequent, increasingly severe droughts due to several factors: geography, climate, and systemic issues. Located far from the main water basins, Tehran often faces severe water shortages. This year, rainfall has fallen by around 45%. The mountains around Tehran, once covered in snow, now lie bare, partly due to global warming.

Water management is hampered by outdated and inadequate techniques. Only about 12% of Iran’s territory is cultivated. Yet agriculture consumes over 93% of the country’s water resources, already mismanaged and largely neglected by the state. Only a small proportion reaches working-class households. In Tehran, the city’s five main reservoirs have fallen to just 1–13% of their capacity.

This urban strain is made worse by rural crises. Numerous environmental and economic hardships have led to a mass exodus from unusable and uncompetitive lands. Agricultural workers and smallholders move to Tehran, seeking work and a livelihood. This influx has worsened the city’s water and energy shortages, disease, thirst, hunger, and filth, afflicting Tehran’s workers with increasing frequency. In January 2025, the Iranian government closed schools and reduced working days and hours in offices and workplaces. Yet, it is the workers who bear the brunt. They freeze at night and go hungry the next day.

Since winter 2024, Iran has faced a severe energy and fuel crisis. This has caused major production disruptions nationwide. Tehran has been particularly hard hit due to its large industrial base. The critical energy situation is a glaring contradiction, given that Iran is one of the world’s largest fuel producers. Many causes underlie this crisis: conditions within the Iranian state and external political and military factors.

Iran’s economic and financial system is based on a structure in which official or semi-official organisations, centred on the Pasdaran, established after the revolution as a military force operating in parallel to the Iranian Armed Forces, have become a sort of conglomerate controlling around 30% of the economy through specific institutionalised agencies with holdings in the manufacturing, agricultural, oil, financial, construction and telecommunications sectors. The Organisation for the Enforcement of the Order (SETAD) was created after the revolution to manage confiscated property. It now answers directly to Supreme Leader Khamenei and operates without government oversight. SETAD’s control over much of the industry is marked by corruption and mafia-like management, and it manages an international oil smuggling network.

Furthermore, for years Iran has been embroiled in a state of constant conflict with Israel – at times a low-intensity conflict, at others open and violent – and is burdened by a system of sanctions imposed by the US. 

Against this complex backdrop, Iran has spent billions funding insurgent movements in the region. In the past, this included Bashar’s now-collapsed regime. Today, it means support for Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. Iran seeks to present itself as a local power, facing off against Turkey and Israel.

The suffering of the Iranian proletariat comes not only from the bourgeois and sectarian policies of the Islamic Republic. It is also caused by brutal sanctions, mainly imposed by the United States. These sanctions have hit the Iranian working class hard. Only the proletariat bears the brunt of this war-like situation, as its conditions worsen. The sanctions make jobs scarcer and expand the black labour market, where workers lose their minimal protections. This dynamic affects access to basic medical services and raises the prices of food and essential goods.

As proletarians and the petty bourgeoisie protest in large numbers, these groups remain disorganised and face violent repression. Western activities, either open or covert, undermine the internal front against the theocratic state, supporting supposed democratic reforms but really adding to Iran’s wartime difficulties. These calculated US actions to pressure the Iranian government confuse the real class direction, which is needed to guide the current movement.

The cross-class nature of this powerful movement is a tragedy within a tragedy. The Iranian petty bourgeoisie faces dire circumstances, leading to protests for democracy and basic rights. On the interclassist nature of the protests—including violent ones—that have shaken Iranian society for years, we noted in October 2022, in issue 418 of our newspaper *Il Partito Comunista*, in the article “A New Wave of Revolt in Iran”:

“The path forward for the Iranian working class is not to submit to non-proletarian movements, but to form a single class-based trade union front in which all workers’ organisations in Iran that refuse to submit to the regime can act together and independently of the other classes […] only by acting independently, without mixing with other classes, can the proletariat truly become the protagonist, to the point of taking the lead in an uprising such as the one currently underway in Iran.”

To quell the anger of demonstrators and the international media, the state made a few demagogic and insubstantial concessions. It promised to regulate the Virtue Guard. President Pezeshkian has declared that this police force “will no longer harass women” who do not wear the hijab. More women in Tehran now appear in public without it.

Compared to the previous situation, reformists might say that this is a ‘promising first step’. However, Iranian workers know full well that such a concession cannot be trusted. Especially given that Iranian women are still terribly oppressed by everything this bourgeois, theocratic state has to offer.

The reality is quite the opposite: Iranian women are systematically denied access to the labour market on the basis of their gender, and only 14% of them are economically active in society. Legally, they can be married off as young as 10–14 years old. In 2019 alone, women accounted for 30% of homicide victims in Iran, around 10% higher than the average, not to mention attacks that did not result in fatalities, such as the mass poisoning incident of 2023, which aimed to prevent women from attending school. Women’s lives are still largely tied to their husbands or families, remaining subjugated by traditionalist structures and conservative notions of femininity. Even the poor labourer, however oppressed, often finds himself in a higher social position than the average Iranian woman.

All attempts by Iranian workers to protest and demand reforms are met with the utmost violence. All forms of economic and political struggle are met with the brutal violence of the state’s special organs of power and control. Workers, already deprived of everything, are further condemned to languish in the notorious Evin Prison, which holds only political prisoners, or in other equally oppressive facilities, where torture is a daily occurrence. Those who emerge to lead the struggles for improved living conditions, for the defence of women’s rights, or who in any way oppose the state, are subjected to fierce repression, tortured and often forced to confess under pressure; they are sentenced to flogging and, in extreme cases, hanged by the Iranian justice system. This brutal coercion crushes the struggles and subdues the workers more effectively than was the case under the Shah, whose secret police, the SAVAK, failed where the ‘Revolutionary Guard’ of the Islamic Republic of Iran succeeds ruthlessly and efficiently.

At this stage, characterised as much by external military dynamics as by a powerful social movement, the bloody and indiscriminate repression has, for the time being, silenced the social uprisings, which could flare up again at any moment and which a likely new conflict with the US and Israel might well reignite. In the past, the Iranian proletariat has shown itself to be formidable, opposing the rulers of the day, and only the timely political theocracy of the ayatollahs prevented the fire from spreading beyond Iran’s borders. Those who have fought and will fight for humane living conditions, and against the state, even in its confessional form, must under no circumstances believe that their salvation can be achieved by emulating the bourgeois republics of the region. 

Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie and the parliamentarians who hold the highest positions of power in the country remain largely indifferent to the suffering of those beneath them, offering only minimal concessions, if any.

The following is taken from the aforementioned issue 418 of *Il Partito Comunista*, in “A New Wave of Revolt in Iran”:“… it is unlikely that the Iranian bourgeoisie will relinquish the powerful instrumentum regni of the theocratic regime, which, under the pretext of religion, imposes an omnipresent and extremely oppressive regime of police control over the working class. […] To oppress and keep the class subjugated, it is necessary to oppress and humiliate Iranian women, just as it is necessary to torment the country’s numerous ethnic minorities […] Any new bourgeois regime would soon have to reconcile itself with religious, conservative and nationalist ideologies. As in neighbouring Turkey”.

Iran is therefore subject to a dual crisis: an internal one, involving the popular strata, the petty bourgeoisie, bazaar merchants and the proletariat, as in the ‘revolution’ against Shah Reza Pahlavi; and an external one, caused by specific factors; the ‘local’ imperialist will in a theatre particularly critical to the global balance, disrupted by military and social clashes in the vast oil-producing region whose exploitation shapes states, alliances and alignments; the confrontation with local imperialism represented by Israel; and the United States’ hegemonic claim to control oil extraction and the oil market.

The interconnection of these momentous events has shaped the past, present and future of this great nation.

In the current historical cycle, the war that had been halted by hastily concluded agreements now seems to be flaring up once more. It is by no means certain what impact this will have on a resurgence of social struggle.

Militarily, following the recent bombings of nuclear sites and the missile response against the Israeli attacker, open conflict has once more been suspended in an armed truce, as if awaiting the United States to make the first move towards war or for a negotiated status quo to be found. It is, however, indicative of a highly uncertain situation regarding broader war alignments that, despite the many bases scattered across the Persian Gulf region, these cannot, at least for now, be utilised because the coastal states will not grant permission for a military attack on Iran, even though Iran certainly has neither allies nor sympathisers among the Arab states, having fomented nationalist and separatist movements. It seems clear that all the states in that area fear the outbreak of a conflict which, even if localised, could spread to the entire Middle East.

At present, a US naval force is stationed in the Gulf with the dual aim of increasing pressure in potential negotiations and laying the groundwork for a direct attack, should the negotiations fail to proceed in the manner and timeframe demanded by the US. This imposing fleet, however, also represents a position of weakness, given that Iranian missile systems, bolstered by supplies from China and neighbouring Russia, pose a real threat to the ships. At the time of writing, the negotiations appear to be facing serious difficulties, as the Iranian leadership is absolutely unwilling to abandon the development of nuclear weapons; the outcome cannot be predicted with certainty.

The current phase highlights a situation of dynamic equilibrium between the United States and Iran, which is certainly not a weak and disorganised state like Venezuela, where a commando operation captured the elected president, defended only by his Cuban bodyguards. Joint naval manoeuvres involving Iran, Russia and China are currently taking place in the Strait of Hormuz, whilst the US fleet is anchored in the Gulf off the Iranian coast.

Militarily, Iran is in a league of its own, and the active presence of Russia and China is a far cry from that in derelict Venezuela, where the only casualties were the Cubans of the presidential guard, whilst the rest of the army did not fire a single shot at the US helicopters and aircraft involved in the commando operation which, in defiance of all international law, captured the Venezuelan President.

For its part, Israel remains menacingly ready for military action, which it will not, however, carry out without American approval, in order to definitively eliminate, having already resolved the Palestinian issue with an inhuman and terrifying massacre, the threat posed by Iran, which has no intention of backing down from the development of nuclear weapons. This, too, is the subject of the ongoing negotiations. Another crucial issue is who will decide how much oil to extract and to whom to sell it, with the caveat that an excessive amount of oil on the markets – and the US already controls the Venezuelan market – could drive down the price to the point where extraction from oil shale becomes unprofitable, plunging a critical sector of the US economy into crisis.

But this entire complex and deadly mosaic lies solely within the realm of US capitalism and imperialism and is of no concern to the Iranian proletariat, which needs only the help of its brothers and sisters around the world, and the guidance of the revolutionary party, to put an end to the suffering and bereavement.

When class division first appeared in human history, war became a recurring phenomenon, its causes always being of an economic nature. But it was only with the advent of capitalism that war became a mechanism indispensable to its survival, particularly in its peak phase of full development: the Imperialist phase.

We wrote in 1946

It is to the credit of the Marxist school, which has remained faithful to the dialectical method, that it has identified, in the current stage of development of the capitalist mode of production, the fundamental causes and tragic inevitability of war. 

The national wars effectively brought to a close the era of individualistic economy, the waning of which had laid the groundwork for the nascent accumulation of capital. The colonial wars would later being to a close the classic era of the race to conquer the export markets needed to absorb ceaseless overproduction of the capitalist countries. 

The first World War certainly ushered in a period of repeated imperialist wars. In economic terms, what was merely a trend yesterday has now become a living reality; the process of centralisation has led to the monopolistic organisation of the economy, with high finance wielding unchallenged control over its levers of power. This is no coincidence; anonymous and unscrupulous finance capital has supplanted traditional capitalist technical expertise from the helm, and or has subjugated it, for the contest between colossal international monopoly complexes that demand firm political power in the hands of those in charge, or for the capacity for initiative and manoeuvre in the vast and turbulent seas of global economic policy, or the readiness and decisiveness to ward off setbacks, or to embark on this or that venture capable of ensuring a high rate of profit. In any case, profit is defended by conquering and securing firm positions against the forces of economic competition on a national and international scale and, above all, by increasing and centralising that political power, police and military, which alone can provide capital with the material means to counter the danger of a decline in profit, thereby cutting workers’ wages.    

At this stage, the interplay between political forces is reduced to its simplest form. Whatever their origins, programmes, or immediate and ultimate objectives, political parties will serve the cause of imperialism and bow to whatever demands are made of them or they are inexorably cast to the margins of national life and even physically wiped out if they dare to take an active stance and engage in any form of resistance.

Trade unions, which are directly or indirectly subservient to the state, cease to be organs of the class struggle or class defence and become effectively organs of collaborations between the two classes. 

The press becomes that perfectly organised chain, with a government department acting as its hub, entrusted with the grave and delicate task of steering public opinion and whipping it into a frenzy, preparing it mentally for the need to make greater and greater sacrifices of money, freedom, and blood. 

In schools, cultural centres, the traditional forms of democracy – the parliament – and wherever there may be free exchange of ideas, there is the intervention of the state, imposing, from above, a uniform discipline, the weight of a hierarchy, and the stamp of a fundamental, obsessive, idea: one that subordinates everything to the preservation of capitalist privilege. (a translation of “Alle radici della guerra”, Prometeo n.1, 1946)

Thusly, far from arising from ideological conflicts, it is common practice to portray armed conflicts as a struggle between civilisation and barbarism, between freedom and slaver, between justice and tyranny etc., wars are rooted in the pressing need of individual national economies to continually expand their productive capacities, and therefore to constantly find new markets for their products and new opportunities to exploit their capital: the unbridled competition to which they are compelled in order to survive inevitably lead to the brutal act of war. Once, of course, the possibilities for ‘peaceful’ competition have been exhausted.

It was inevitable that the capitalist economy would evolve towards its monopolistic, or imperialist, phase, during which its structure reaches its peak of development, pushing itself to the extreme, while, at the same time, exacerbating and revealing the very reasons for its own decline.

The irreconcilable contradictions inherent in the capitalist system, present from its very inception, accompany it throughout its early development through its prodigious rise, until it looms large in its final and decadent phase. The capitalist economy never frees itself from its dual tendency: a constant decline in purchasing power relative to the growing general capacity for production, from which, derives a corresponding decline in the consumption of the goods produced.

Capital seeks to escape this gnarling contradiction that grips it by expanding production on an ever larger scale, something accumulation readily allows, and by providing markets capable of absorbing this increase output. But, while the technical production process proceeds without pause or limitation in its own development, the world of consumption inexorably reaches the point of saturation. Growing overproduction is thus met by a growing scarcity of outlets.

This is the calamity inherent in the capitalist economy, which will force the only two radical solutions: war or revolution, both of which are the political manifestation of the irreconcilable conflict of interests between the two opposing forces, capitalism and the proletariat. Thus, far from being accidental, war functions as a mechanism for the restart and regeneration of the capitalist economy. The only way for capital to resolve its intrinsic limit of over accumulation and restart the cycle of accumulation is the physical elimination of accumulated capital in the form of commodities, means of production, and infrastructure.

The choice to go to war, however, is not merely Capital’s last ditch attempt to remedy its intrinsic material contradictions through destruction and subsequent reconstruction, but also the frantic and desperate political attempt by the bourgeoisie to defend itself as the ruling class against the fury of the proletariat, driven by the lowering of living condition and having been vainly promised by capitalism an even more prosperous existence. The ruling class fights for its very survival so fights to strip the only class with the historical role of opposing war, the proletariat doing this through its opposition to capitalism, of any capacity to fight, and it does fight with every means at its disposal, including democratic corruption, fascist force, and coercion, and it does not shy away from provoking and fuelling wars through which it draws the attention of the masses with the aim of diverting them from the political and class issues that directly concern them, as well as the previously discussed destruction of over production. The moment the ruling class succeeds in interrupting the historical course towards a revolutionary outcome and has sent the proletariat to the front lines, it has found the solution to its crisis.

In the imperialist phase, the oppressive machinery of the modern state ruthlessly fulfils its role as guardian and political protector of the economic monopoly complex. It becomes the most deadly weapon at the service of the bourgeoisie, necessary for the preliminary and complete annihilation of the forces of revolution, thereby paving the way for war: it is the time of the blind fury of decadent capitalism and its ruling class, gripped by the despair of feeling within themselves the irremediable growth of the causes of their own historical demise.

We wrote in 1943:

War is therefore also the supreme manifestation of an insoluble crisis within bourgeois society. It breaks out when every possibility of peacefully resolving the social crisis has been exhausted, within the countries most directly concerned with world domination and in their mutual relations. Capitalist society is then faced with the dilemma of either revolution or war. And war breaks out precisely because the revolution has not taken place; in turn, it is the extreme means to which the bourgeoisie resorts to abruptly halt the course of a new revolutionary wave; to ideologically destroy the proletariat through the corruption and disarray that accompanies war, and physically through massacre. In this sense, all the belligerent countries have a common interest: the annihilation of the proletariat as a class. ( a translation of “La guerra vista de noi – La guerra, espressione massima della crisi borghese – La guerra, supremo tentativo di difesa del capitalismo”, Prometeo n.2, December 1943)

The forces of capitalism, having entered the infernal vortex of war between opposing imperialist powers, in our view as Marxists, cannot in any way be divided into opposing forces where some are progressive and others reactionary; we therefore harbour no sympathy for either side of global imperialism.

The Communist Party must do everything in its power to free the proletariat from the ideology of war, bring it back to the terrain of the class struggle, and channel as much of its strength as possible into exploiting any favourable situation that might enable it to raise, in concrete terms, the question of transforming the imperialist war into a social war.

War is nothing more than the continuation, on a different plane and by different means, of the same bourgeois capitalist policy: it is therefore inconceivable that the proletarian Party should direct its forces alongside those who lead it. And if this were to happen, war would become the inexorable slippery slope that causes the proletarian vanguards themselves to slide towards counter-revolution.

The proletariat, under the leadership of its Party, can and must seize the bourgeois war as an opportunity to fraternise with the proletarians of the, stated, opposing camp, to unleash civil war and strike the blow of revolution, convince them of the certainty of the impossibility of reforming Capital to meet the living needs of the workers and convince them that the only solution for achieving an existence in line with the Species-Being is the radical and definitive overcoming of capitalism. The violent seizure of power and the consequent establishment of the proletarian dictatorship, a temporary yet indispensable necessity of the workers’ state in the complex transition from the capitalist to the socialist economy, will lead to Communism, a classless, stateless society, free from the mercantilist essence of the societies that preceded it, the primary need of the human species for its genuine and free realisation, for its survival and peaceful continuation.

“Independent” Korea

During the Second World War, Korea was still under Japanese colonial rule, which had begun in 1910. The Japanese imperial regime intensified the exploitation of the Korean peninsula to sustain the war effort, transforming its economy into an appendage of the Japanese military-industrial machine. Korean natural resources, particularly coal and metals, were massively extracted to feed the Japanese war industries, while the population was subjected to increasingly severe forms of social and cultural control.

The policy of forced assimilation reached its peak during the war years: Koreans were compelled to adopt Japanese names, to speak exclusively Japanese, and to practise Shinto rituals. Simultaneously, hundreds of thousands of Koreans were deported as forced labourers to Japanese industries and mines, while tens of thousands more young people were forcibly conscripted into the imperial army. This massive deportation and militarisation of the population would have profound demographic and social consequences in the post-war period.

The Korean economy, already distorted by the demands of colonial rule, was further subordinated to Japanese military needs. Light industry, primarily textiles, was expanded to produce uniforms and war materials, while agriculture was oriented towards rice production for export to Japan. This colonial economic structuring, characterised by dependence on raw materials and light industry, would profoundly condition Korea’s possibilities for development in the post-war period.

The end of the war and the division of the peninsula

Japan’s surrender in September 1945 marked the end of colonial rule, but did not bring about Korea’s immediate independence. Under the post-war agreements, the peninsula was divided along the 38th parallel into two occupation zones: the northern zone under Soviet control and the southern zone under American control. This division, initially conceived as temporary to facilitate the disarmament of Japanese forces, rapidly transformed into a permanent fracture.

The two superpowers imposed different political systems in their respective zones of influence. In the north, the Soviet Union supported the establishment of a national-communist inspired regime led by Kim Il-sung, which initiated agrarian reform and the nationalisation of industry. In the south, the United States initially retained many officials from the Japanese colonial administration, creating tensions with the Korean population that aspired to genuine decolonisation.

The division had devastating economic consequences: heavy industry and electrical power were concentrated mainly in the north, which was rich in mineral resources and equipped with hydroelectric plants, while the south was predominantly agricultural and housed light industry. This economic complementarity, shattered by the political division, exacerbated the economic difficulties of both parts of the peninsula. The end of the war thus left South Korea in a condition of profound economic and social transformation, with a dispersed population, an economy fully integrated into the now-collapsing Japanese imperial system, and the need to reconstruct a national identity and an independent economic system under American military occupation.

In this study, we shall focus primarily on the developments in South Korea, which has undergone a powerful process of industrialisation and transformation from agricultural colony to imperialist power.

The demographic and social transformation of the post-war period

Despite the flight of capital, Korea’s population would register a significant demographic increase with the repatriation of 1.8 million people from North Korea, 120,000 from China (mainly from Manchuria), and one million from Japan, in addition to other populations arriving from various zones. The most relevant characteristic of these human masses, for the purposes of our analysis, lies in the fact that the majority of them were composed of proletarianised workers or workers in the process of proletarianisation. The result was the formation of a numerous, impoverished working class, still undisciplined from the standpoint of the capitalist organisation of labour.

In 1947, approximately half of the 10 million workers were employed. This represented approximately 54% of the active Korean population.

The Chaebol, the Japanese legacy, and the influence of the United States

It is worth noting that some of the Chaebol, the great Korean industrial conglomerates, had originated during the period of Japanese rule. Kyungbang Ltd, a chemical and textile company founded in 1919 during Japanese imperialist rule, continued its operations up to the present day.

The struggle between factions of the Korean bourgeoisie was never more evident than in the opposition to the expansion of Kyungbang, suspected of supporting the Korean Democratic Party (KDP). This constituted the principal political opposition and would ultimately lead Korea to the coup d’état of Park Chung-hee. The KDP represented American interests in general, as it received substantial investment and aid from the United States, following the measures adopted by the Rhee government to curb its expansion, and highlighted Korea’s general dependence on American investment, particularly with regard to the supply of raw materials such as cotton for textile production. The textile industry would represent the main bourgeois sector supported by the United States, and its dependence on American capital as opposed to Korean capital would subsequently play a fundamental role in the coup d’état of 16 May 1961.

From the Bank of Joseon to the Bank of Korea

We can now examine the origins of the Bank of Korea (BOK), which played a decisive role in this entire process of capitalist transformation. After decolonisation from Japan, Korea possessed only the remnants of the Japanese banking apparatus for its money-transfer systems. Consequently, the general circuit of the exchange of goods and commodities was partially interrupted during the early years of the American military government until the founding of the BOK.

Thus, the BOK obviously did not arise from nothing, but found its origins in the Japanese colonial state capitalist trusts, in particular the Bank of Joseon. The Bank was the principal commercial bank of Japanese state industry on the Korean peninsula during imperial rule, and continued its operations until 1950. It is important to note that, in North Korea, the Bank of Joseon was immediately replaced under Soviet occupation. During this period, the Bank issued the won instead of the yen, which served the interests of the American bourgeoisie in many ways.

The BOK would be principally responsible for the circulation of a vast influx of currency. Considering the demographic factors and South Korea’s underdevelopment already mentioned, the increase in currency circulation caused the devaluation of the currency and a general rise in prices before the Korean War, a phenomenon that would continue even after the conflict.

General commodity prices across the entire productive sector rose in all sectors in Korea from 1948 to 1952 (see table), as the quantity of the means of circulation (the won) increased due to the general law of the depreciation of commodities in the long run. At the same time, prices appeared to decline in October 1952, also due to changes in the velocity of circulation following the disposal of Japanese assets and the destruction of capital caused by the Korean War.

Source: Kim Dong-Wook, “1940s-1950s Korean Inflation and Stabilization”, PhD Dissertation, Department of Economics, Yonsei University (1994), p.124

The agrarian reform and the redistribution of capital

Thus, the process of economic transformation was set in motion following the massive influx of newly proletarianised workers into South Korea and the expropriation of rural lands by the state. A flight of capital indeed occurred across all productive sectors following the Japanese exodus, although a large portion of this capital would subsequently be acquired independently by the nascent chaebol. During the period of Japanese rule, large sectors of the economy were still controlled by the landowning class, reflecting the underdevelopment of the region during the imperial era. Over the course of the 1950s, Japanese capital was systematically liquidated in various waves.

This elimination of capital and the influx of currency into circulation constitute two sides of the same phenomenon of Korean economic advancement. The landowning class, which had previously owned a substantial portion of particular industrial sectors, typically those of food production, was expropriated quite rapidly when the Korean capitalist class took control of the South Korean state and began purchasing the lands of the landowners, who had been, in the majority, collaborators and clients of the Japanese imperial economy.

This coincided, similarly, with the vast influx of labour power to feed the nascent Korean industries. 53.2% of capital transfers in the form of purchases of Japanese assets took place between 1951 and 1953, coinciding with the agrarian reform, which led to the expropriation of the landowners — a well-known characteristic of developing capitalist economies. The agrarian law was amended in 1950, providing for state purchase and redistribution of lands. The reform was also conceived to reduce the influence of the northern guerrillas on the poor peasantry, who were often dazzled by the demagogic prospect of North Korean-style reform, which envisaged expropriation without compensation and the free redistribution of lands.

The American imperialist strategy

As the centre of international trusts and cartels and, by extension, of international finance capital flows, the United States began seeking to secure its interests in Asia after the failure of the Chinese civil war. South Korea, in its developing phase and intent on winning a position in the Asian textile industry and in a key market for the United States, would be the next challenge upon which the United States would seek to secure its imperialist interests.

This would lead to a much more direct approach to prevent the Korean peninsula from falling into the sphere of influence of Soviet capital, as had occurred with China. Through the advantages of an integrated circuit of Asian capitals, comprising mainly Japan and Korea, the objective of the United States was to unify all the new vassal-allies into a single imperialist bloc. The objective of finance capital was to use the leverage of such a bloc to further expand its influence into the poorer zones of Asia, ripe for further profits derived from manufacturing production.

Here the Americans encountered significant problems. The United States failed to improve the situation with their strategies, although the imperial psychology of the United States in this period reveals how little their strategy would change in the decades that followed.

The First Republic and its structural failures

Thus, beginning with the American occupation, the First Republic that we are discussing was established in South Korea. This republic found itself in a rather difficult position, as it had to contend with the conflicting interests within its own bourgeois factions and with the conflicts between its own bourgeoisie and that of the United States.

This conflict, initially not particularly heated, would worsen due to the series of crises that would strike Korea. Syngman Rhee was the American choice as the new figurehead of the Korean bourgeoisie and president of the Assembly, but he proved to be a total failure from the standpoint of the interests of finance capital. He was unknown to the various bourgeois factions and apparently failed to consolidate the interests of nearly all factions of the bourgeoisie, particularly the American bourgeoisie and its clients in Korea. Consequently, he failed to obtain the support of broad sections of parliament, and his government quickly fell, weakened by factional disputes.

What was the crux of these disputes? One of the principal failures of the American choice of Rhee was his absolute refusal to collaborate with Japan, which the United States sought to strengthen in order to consolidate their Asian bloc and to satisfy the industrialists’ demands regarding exports. Naturally, these attitudes reflected a national economic situation that lagged behind the whims of the more advanced capitalist centres of power of the era, but this would be rapidly overcome when Korea, having passed through the crisis of the civil war, would enter a new East Asian order.

continued

A few printed volumes produced by the party over the past few decades are still available. These are texts that, given the topics they cover, are and will always remain relevant.

THE COMMUNIST PARTY IN THE TRADITION OF THE LEFT

In addition to documenting the party’s history that led to the reformulation and presentation of its postwar theses, this text, drawing on the powerful teachings of the masters of Marxism, serves as a compendium of the theory of the proletarian party, which is revolutionary in both its nature and its actions.

The 270-page book is on sale for €10, plus shipping.

THE COURSE OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM IN HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE AND IN MARX’S THEORY, 1750–1990

This volume reproduces the transcripts of the reports delivered at party meetings, from the 1956 meeting in Cosenza to the January 1958 meeting in Florence, as they appeared in *Programma Comunista*, from issue 19 of 1956 to issue 7 of 1959, under the title “The Course”. This reissue also includes all other articles on topics related to the world economy published during those years, in particular: “World Steel Production Over the Last Four Years,” in *Programma Comunista* No. 21, 1956; “Economic Structure and Historical Development of Capitalist Society,” in *Programma* Nos. 3 and 4, 1957; “America 1956—Economic Review” in issue 5 of the same year, supplemented by “A Few More U.S. Figures” from issue 6; “Trajectory and Catastrophe of the Capitalist Form in the Classical Monolithic Construction of Marxism,” in issues 19 and 20 of 1957. The extensive statistical data from the original reports has not only been verified and reorganized based on subsequent publications from official sources, but the time series has also been extended to include the most recent data available. In addition to the 23 tables in the text, 49 new statistics have been included; drawing on the most comprehensive data currently available, these further confirm the Marxist framework. 

The book, which is over 600 pages long, is on sale for €20, plus shipping.

The book, which is over 600 pages long, is on sale for $23, plus shipping.

THE MARXIST THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

This book’s topic is addressed from six key perspectives:

I – The Communist Party and Its Doctrine; 

II – The Communist Society; 

III – Knowledge of the Human Species, which makes up Volume 1, and:

IV – Critique of Religions; 

V – Critique of Science and Technology;

VI – The Charlatan’s Conquest of Space, included in Volume 2. 

The 6 volumes contain 115 documents chronicling the Party’s history from its reestablishment immediately after World War II to the present day (some documents were drafted much earlier, although their final versions date from that period).

The Preface to the Work is centered on a series of quotations dating back to the birth of our Doctrine—and thus to the founding of the Party—in 1848.

The two-volume work, totaling 850 pages, is on sale for €30, plus shipping costs.

The two-volume work, totaling 850 pages, is on sale for $35, plus shipping costs.