The International Communist 1

2024

The more than century-old history of our political current has seen moments of internal difficulty, where the clarity of our direction has been partially obscured by the emergence of attitudes that were at odds with our political theses, our doctrine, and our practical tradition handed down through generations of comrades. Such tendencies, which first manifest themselves in a concealed manner and later become increasingly overt, were most often the fruit of a faction formed around the party’s operational center. For this reason, we have already, on other occasions, talked about “factionalism from above.”

We must acknowledge that our party has recently gone through a difficult period, and that its result was a split, forced on us as the only alternative to submission towards the personalistic opportunism that had taken hold within the organization. Once more, we must note that moments of weakness in our political party seem to recur with similar characteristics, as if the alarm clock of history was powerless to stop the periodical ring of opportunism and ideological conformity of the times.

Such crises, as painful as they are, have been and will be at least in part inevitable, up until the domination of man by capital has been overturned everywhere by the proletarian class through revolution. This phenomenon of incipient internal degeneration is, in fact, the natural consequence of the influence that bourgeois ideological poison still manages to insinuate into our ranks during these times of prolonged and bleak counter-revolution. Certainly, we have always aimed to organically create an environment that is fiercely anti-bourgeois. Our ranks are a compact group of communists united in the struggle of bringing forth both the immediate and historical interests of the proletariat. However, we are also aware of the practical difficulties in creating this theoretical picture that must clash with the hostile present reality.

In the Communist Party, which we persistently regard as the prefiguration of the future society, the militant finds an environment in which what we call “fraternal consideration” is not merely an aspiration, but an essential condition. This means that, in the party, only the truth is spoken, and comrades are assumed to have only constructive and sincere intentions which are without ulterior motives or backroom politicking. In these conditions, the party is strong and indestructible. But if, for any reason, this attitude weakens or risks being lost, it becomes the duty of the entire party to work towards restoring the proper balance and harmony. These weaknesses can sometimes arise from the very center of the party and cause the type of damage that, in the long-term, undermines the internal life of our organization. Si parva licet, this is what happened in Russia in the 1920s, and what happened to this Party in 1973: it is factionalism from above, and the consequences are always grave. It was the same story this time around, too.

In a text from a few decades ago, referring to a crisis that had passed through our party with grave consequences, we wrote: “We maintain that the most efficient way of utilizing the party forces as a whole lies in unitary methods of work which rely on ‘fraternal solidarity and mutual consideration among comrades.’ We therefore finally relegate to the museum of prehistory, to that of proletarian organization as well, those nowadays destructive methods (which were only ever present in the movement due to historical immaturity) of ‘struggle’ between comrades and fractions, where not only the weapons of democracy and numerical head counts are used, but exaggeration and polemical excess as well; to the point indeed that the Left faction would have to put up with personal attacks, slanders, gossip, maneuvers between prominent leaders, and manipulations of the much adulated rank and file.”

The reasons for communism are stronger than every attempt at burying them, even when those attempts come from those who agree to pass off as ridiculous our scientific critique of the commodity, wage labor, political economy, and thus the political state. We have stripped away the idolization of the State, exposing it as nothing more than organized violence by the dominant class over the dominated class. Our program, as well, will require revolutionary violence and the dictatorship of the proletariat to be realized. But even insofar as the transitional society visibly resorts to features of the old world, a senseless cult of violence will certainly not become the model behavior. As Marxists, we find the words “authoritarian” and “libertarian” to be alien, and we affirm with certainty that once the proletarian dictatorship has passed, no political authority can sustain itself.

Aware of what lies behind the scarecrow of authority for authority’s sake, we know that the best antidote to any personalistic disarray will be a communist party organized on the basis of authentic organic centralism. In it, the discipline that makes the ranks of our company march compactly and united will be the fruit of communist passion and the sense of responsibility of each comrade. Each comrade’s awareness and certainty will grow in the party, and will make the ritual calls to order by the aspiring corporal of the day superfluous. We will overcome any ridiculous recourse to disciplinary measures.

Deviations from the course of organic centralism always arise as a result of different proposals on the tactical plane, where it is more difficult to find a single solution. It is difficult, but not impossible. Our history, our texts, from Marx onwards, already have all the answers, you only need to put the work into finding them. This is what our masters taught us. When, instead, we expect the best answer to come from a high and unquestionable interpreter of doctrine, and the organization to conform to their directives on the basis of simple and corporal calls to discipline, we are outside of the Left, we are with Stalin.

Communists are eager to fight, and they know how to discipline themselves so that the Party can face its violent and ferocious class enemy. But the world they want, and which will invariably come, will be without classes and political authority. Communists want to participate, to some extent, in this bright future right here and right now. Such a future, incidentally, already acts amidst the rubble of the bourgeois world, which is going to die because it must die. The possibility of experiencing a renewed organic and harmonious community is now being offered to the militia in the ranks of their Party, to the International Communist Party, which today still finds itself on the same road as always.

1974

From “Il Partito Comunista” 1 (September 1974), first published in English in “Communist Left” 34-35 (June 2013).

The newspaper Il Partito Comunista, and the organised network of militants gathered and still gathering around it, are the result of a selection which occurred in the course of conducting “the hard work of restoring the revolutionary doctrine and party organ in contact with the working class, outside the realm of personalized politics and electoralist manoeuvrings”; a job undertaken by the Communist Left in Italy after the collapse in 1926 of the Communist International, the victim of Stalinism and the distorted theory of “Socialism in One Country”. The story of the real reconstitution of the revolutionary class party is inevitably marked by these periodic selections which, in the organisational sphere, express the clarification, definition or simply the placing on the agenda of the major questions of theory, of program, of tactics and of the party’s internal organisation and functioning, which reality itself, not men’s will, forces the party to face up to, to reassert and to formulate in an ever more precise way.

The Communist Left in Italy set out on the road to the restoration of the party after 1926, first of all by reasserting the full significance of the elements which had underpinned the victory in Russia and the formation of the 3rd International at its 2nd congress in 1920. Absolute necessity of the class political party organised on a global scale in a centralised and non federalist manner and founded on Marxist theory and doctrine, considered as invariable; necessity of violent revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, led in the first person by the class party; reaffirmation, against the prevailing Stalinism, of the thesis, very much alive in Lenin’s time, that the victorious proletariat in one country must subordinate its entire effort to achieving proletarian victory on a world scale, with the consequent hierarchy of the global communist party having to be: Communist International—party in power—proletarian State. In reasserting those key positions, the Left necessarily had to march against Stalinism, but separate from other positions and groups which had drawn the lesson from the collapse of the International that the centralised party and the one party dictatorial state should be opposed; “anti-Stalinist” positions and groups which in fact marked a return to the KAPDist positions which had been defeated at the 2nd Congress.

Another of the Italian Left’s fundamental positions was that the series of objectively unfavourable events which marked the course of the proletarian revolution between 1917 and 1926 wasn’t the only cause of the degeneration of the International. There had also been a number of subjective weaknesses, which may be summed up as: a set of lacunae in the process of the formation of the International and of the parties belonging to it, a process which the requirements of the immediate battle had rendered imperfect; a lack of elaboration and order in the field of tactics, compared to the Bolsheviks’ magisterial effort in restoring the theory and the program; an incorrect organisational practice from the 4th Congress onwards, denounced by us as dangerous and the harbinger of organisational disintegration (mergers, infiltration, sympathiser parties, etc), and finally; an incorrect method of running the party and organising its work, which had started to gain ground around the time of the resolution of the German problem in 1923 and came to prevail in the International under the aberrant term, “Bolshevisation”. The Left drew the lessons of this historic tragedy by drawing up a critical balance sheet of the whole of the International’s work from 1920 to 1926; a balance sheet, incidentally, already contained in our Lyons Theses at the 3rd Congress of the Italian Communist Party in 1926.

This approach to the question necessarily provoked another parting of the historical ways, between our current and Trotsky and the Russia opposition’s which rejected our balance sheet for material reasons and certainly not through any lack of will on our part. In 1945, with the passage of Russia and the Stalinized parties to the counter-revolutionary camp a fait accompli, also in the physical sense, the reconstitution of the revolutionary communist party, on the abovementioned basis, was back on the agenda. By this time the road we had taken, and the road taken by the Trotskyist ‘International’, and by those who had relapsed into spontaneism, had diverged in all respects and there was now no going back. It wasn’t therefore possible to use the generic anti-Stalinism of the various regroupings as the basis for the new organisation. What was put forward instead, in the 1945 Political Platform, was the historical experience of the Italian Left and on this road, equipped with a fortnightly newspaper Battaglia Comunista, and its review, Prometeo, the “hard work” would begin.

The post Second World War period forced the party to confront a number of specific problems regarding tactics and its general perspective. The crucial point in this mammoth task, conducted between 1945 and 1952, was the drafting of the party’s Characteristic Theses in 1952 which constituted the basis for joining the party itself. Those who didn’t accept the Characteristic Theses en bloc found themselves automatically outside of the organisation. No-one had to expel them. Since they didn’t agree with the conclusions which the party had drawn in its various spheres of activity they left of their own accord. They could, in the words of our 1965 Theses, take any of the other paths which diverge from ours. They took one and are following it still, and at what distance from the party is none of our concern.

Although, as far as the revolutionary crisis was concerned, the situation in 1964 was amorphous and completely dead, the very fact of the growth and consolidation of the party organisation around the fortnightly publication Il Programma Comunista, which was on an international scale, placed back on the party agenda the need to deal with problems which were related to its perennial tasks and the way the organisation functioned internally. Once again it would be circumstances rather this or that person’s will which would bring certain problems to the fore, which although already covered in a hundred and one  enunciations dating back to 1920 now had to be settled once and for all, namely: the organisational problems faced by the reconstituted party, with its now much reduced network. This necessity we tackled in our usual way, taking into account not the opinions of individuals or groups but looking instead to the past, and to the future, for answers to today’s and tomorrow’s problems. Between 1964 and 1966 we undertook an assessment of the organisational experiences of the world communist party between 1848 and 1926, and aligned it with the Marxist method by reinstating the various factors which define the essence of the communist party: theory, program, tactics and organisation. Out of these experiences objective and definitive conclusions were drawn which were summarized in the 1964-66 Theses, which again you either have to accept or reject en bloc because they represent not the results of somebody’s questionable deliberations, whether of a leader or a rank-and-file member, but derive from the whole of the Left’s way of thinking over a span of fifty years.

With this new milestone on the road to the reconstitution of the party now set in place, the organisational repercussions of this act were in a certain sense secondary and didn’t really matter. Some, maybe quite a few, left. They as well were free to go down any road they chose. No action was taken either to push them out, or draw them back in. Our paths diverged and diverge still, and the divergence is summed up in a monolithic block of theses and statements that typify the Left.

In the 1964-66 Theses, in which the history of the party is sketched out and summarized, a description of the party’s organic dynamic is summed up in the following terms:

“The screening of party members in the organic centralist scheme is carried out in a way we have always declared to be contrary to the Moscow centrists. The party continues to hone and refine the distinctive features of its doctrine, of its action and tactics with a unique methodology that transcends spatial and temporal boundaries. Clearly all those who are uncomfortable with these delineations can just leave. Not even after the seizure of power may we admit forced membership within our ranks; all terroristic pressures in the disciplinary field are therefore out of the correct meaning of organic centralism; they even copy their vocabulary from abused bourgeois constitutional forms, like the faculty of the executive power to dissolve and reassemble elective formations – all forms that for a long time we consider obsolete, not only for the proletarian party, but even for the revolutionary and temporary State of the victorious proletariat” (Theses on the Historical Duty, Action, and the Structure of the World Communist Party, 1965).

So, for Marx, Lenin and the Left, the task of honing the party’s theoretical, programmatic and tactical cardinal principles could always bring about organisational rifts and splits as a consequence. When a split occurs on this basis it is the result of divergent political positions having appeared, and it is a natural, organic and historically positive fact. But in the organic centralist scheme, that is, a correctly Marxist conception of the party’s internal dynamics, the use of organisational pressure as a way of resolving internal differences is viewed as a method which, little by little, corrupts the very nature of the party. It is a view the theses have no hesitation in sanctioning as one derived from historical experience.

Between 1970 and 1973 history has placed various problems on the party agenda. According to our classic method we needed to engage in a rational and objective search for the solution, which would prompt either unanimous agreement on the part of the entire organisation, or a clear delineation of contrary positions and consequently a spontaneous, natural and organic organisational split. But a whole series of material reasons has prevented the method we have always defended, codified back in 1965, from being put into practice. What was necessarily used was the opposite method, putting back on the agenda, inside the organisation, the practice of political struggle, of ideological terrorism, and of organisational pressure on militants who had declared themselves in absolute agreement on the bulk of the party’s fundamental positions and who totally accepted executive discipline within the organisation. The use of these methods ensured that the selection which now gave rise to the newspaper Il Partito Comunista had come about, for the first time in the party’s history, not as a voluntary departure of elements who disagreed about some fundamental position, but as the official expulsion of elements who had declared their acceptance of the entire tactical, programmatic and theoretical patrimony of the Communist Left.

The use of these methods contravenes in a practical sense the party’s theses on organic centralism; which means that it contravenes, given that these theses are not a theoretical luxury, the one method history has chosen to construct in practice the strong, compact revolutionary organisation needed by the proletariat to achieve its emancipation. It is not by such methods that the party constructed; with bloody lessons historical experience has taught as much. On the contrary, once it loses one of its main “guarantees” that it will keep on the correct path, its internal working practices—the third aspect of the resurgence of opportunism in the Moscow International denounced by the Left—the party lays itself open to deviations in the programmatic and tactical spheres as well.

Not our will, but material facts have plotted our course to this point; open defence of all of the Left’s classic and unchanging positions as the sole basis on which the organised network of the class party can be put back together and made compact and powerful. Forced to record the existence of two organisations, which we neither caused nor wanted, we have nothing to inscribe on our banner apart from our complete loyalty to and faith in the tradition of Marx, Lenin and the Communist Left, codified in the body of theses known respectively as the Rome Theses, Lyons Theses, Characteristic Theses of 1952, and the 1964-1966 Theses on Organic Centralism. And we must lay claim to the fact that it was only on those unchangeable and inviolable foundations that the International Communist Party arose and grew, and only on that basis can it survive, and become stronger.

The grave Japanese financial crisis has long since passed its preliminary stage, and is now coming into the light of day through the cracks left open by the embarrassment of state media and private investors. The nature and implications of the events that unfolded since the beginning of August have created a situation that cannot be resolved simply by scapegoating the government. In fact, it has rather hastened the fall of the Kishida government. This latest event should be seen in the wake of the search for a credible new approach to deal with the slowly worsening crisis. There are several key aspects that need to be highlighted to explain the situation from which this financial instability arose, often portrayed by the media as a passing storm, far less worrisome than a tsunami warning, no longer even worthy of second or third place in the evening news broadcast.

These factors, which are to be regarded as preconditions for the actual development observed in Japanese finance and economy, can be divided into two groups. The first dates back to July 2024. The second, more remote, has been in place since at least the first half of 2023.

As of July, Japan’s corporate and financial capital had lost confidence in the idea that the state sector would be able to buy back the full amount of its public debt from the market.

This undermined a crucial element of the accumulation process in terms of its connection to financial stability. Until then, the Japanese bourgeoisie had been able to rely on this fact in order to gain greater trust from private investors.

This development significantly undermined the “public secrecy” surrounding the operations of Japanese financial institutions. These operations had allowed them to stay afloat in the global market, revealing their critical flaw for the first time. They consisted of widespread and regular recourse to carry trade operations. This type of operation consists of borrowing sums of money in foreign countries where interest rates are lower and then investing it in other countries with higher interest rates. This way, higher returns of investment can be obtained, achieving extra profit. Japanese capitalists have historically been accustomed to this kind of behavior, aided mainly by the ironclad stability of the yen, which has long made it a safe haven for many investors.

For many years Japan had no significant inflation, which meant a prolonged absence of the primary factor that traditionally prompts central bankers to raise interest rates. The phenomenon of zero inflation was, in turn, the result of the weak growth in the Japanese economy and the yen. Japanese capitalists took advantage of the extremely low interest rate (sometimes even negative, at -0.1%) to become the main source of cheap capital for buyers interested in speculative investments, both in the G7 and elsewhere.

Coincidentally, Japan was also considered a “suitable alternative” for Western capitalists unwilling to invest in mainland China.

In the comparison between the second quarter of 2023 and the second quarter of 2024, Japan’s GDP fell 1.3%. This drop was due to weak consumer demand, which also caused a sharp drop in investments and household spending. Household spending, in particular, continued to decline in three of the four quarters examined. Around the world, bourgeois economists kept their eyes out for the second half of this year. They expected to see a disruptive effect on domestic demand growth, thanks to a weak currency and simultaneous improvement in wages. The real “main course” for workers was but a paltry increase after the conclusion of Shuntō, the spring wage negotiations.

The envisioned stability was based on two assumptions: the Kishida cabinet still in power and the Biden administration.

The reality, however, has been far more bitter. The grim outlook for the global economy—driven by low industry profit rates and the uncertainty caused by ongoing conflicts, which lead to sharp fluctuations in energy prices—has derailed plans for increased development and investment growth in the country. Japan, lacking access to cheap energy, has been forced to purchase liquid natural gas even from the Russian Federation. This situation, which threatens to push the Japanese economy into stagnation once again, reinforces the policy of low interest rates. It underscores a bourgeoisie trapped in the parasitic management of fictitious capital, which uses the carry trade as its main tool for making large profits without doing practically anything else but generating money from money itself.

Household spending had already contracted sharply on an annual basis by 6.3% in January, with a subsequent small annual contraction observed in May (1.8%). Overly optimistic estimates of real wage growth (+4.7%) had succeeded in persuading outside observers that household demand was set to increase in the short term, thanks to the “predictable” increase in workers’ purchasing power. What was truly “off the radar” of economic analysts was the need for an aging population —forced to rely on a declining public healthcare system and depend on private pension plans—to offset their widespread social insecurity by saving. The Kishida cabinet was faced with a persistent shortage of workers in the healthcare sector (doctors, nurses, caregivers to the elderly) and the relative weakness of the yen discouraging the arrival of immigrants, especially Vietnamese, who covered labor shortages in many sectors.

Meanwhile, spending on light, water and fuel increased 6.6% in May from a year earlier, and food prices rose 4.3%. On the flipside, the decline in spending on culture and entertainment plummeted to -9.6% year-on-year.

As if that were not enough, the projected wage growth is accompanied by a decline in productivity, which in turn leaves consumers in the least desirable position. In order to offset the needs of businesses to maintain their profit margins under continuing inflationary pressures, consumers now have to pay higher prices for the same services as before. Meanwhile, the import price index rose 6.9% annually in May. The weakness of the yen is the most exaggerated factor behind the rise in prices of imported goods and is at the same time the source of the high financial status and wealth of Japanese capitalists.

Because currency exchanges are not centrally and directly monitored by the authorities, the extent of the practice of carry trading actually remains unknown. Its influence is therefore more easily detected in the light of day through closer observation of the market in which those who borrowed capital operate, rather than the country in which the loan was made. Without too much surprise, such a market is the US, namely the technology stocks at the center of the NASDAQ. Investors driving these stocks are accustomed to buying and selling with cheap money that, very often, comes from Japan. Although this habit has been established throughout the zero-rate era, it has re-emerged more blatantly and directly in the current era of “chip fever” running ever higher on Wall Street. At such times, however, such investors can no longer trust Japanese institutions not to raise interest rates.

The trigger for the crisis was, in fact, the poor reception of economic data by some US Big Tech companies on the first Friday in August, including a disturbing forecast on job cuts. When, at the same time, the US and Japanese stock markets reopened on Monday, August 5th, their performance continued to bear the brunt of the crisis, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock market index plummeting to its lowest level since 1987 with a loss of -5.8% in the Friday, August 2, session and -12.4% on Monday, August 5th.

For a quick comparison, let’s also look at US indices. The S&P 500 fell 3% in the same two days, while the NASDAQ Composite lost nearly 5%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost at least 1,000 points, down 2.6%. On the other hand, the VIX index, which measures volatility expectations for the coming month, literally exploded. Other technology focused stock market indices, such as Australia’s ASX 200, South Korea’s KOSPI and Taiwan’s Latex, closed Monday at -3.7%, -9% and 8.4%.

This trend makes sense when considering the main event. The Bank of Japan (BoJ) made the decision to make the yen more expensive by raising rates once again. To better understand where carry trading fits into the equation of this financial crisis, let us consider the practice not as a contract between individual capitalists, but as an interbank transaction between two participants. We have a Japanese bank offering a yen loan, another foreign bank, and finally a third party, usually another bank or a financial company. The Japanese bank would offer a convenient loan to the foreign bank in a cross-border transaction that, as mentioned earlier, is a transaction about currency trading, thus subject to greater opacity than a purely financial transaction. In addition to allowing aggressive leverage on profits, this practice is also often used to protect investors from large losses, such as those all but rare in the industry called fintech, where risks and gains are often spectacularly high, both in the same transaction.

Japanese investors also rely heavily on foreign reserves without paying attention to the potential even catastrophic consequences that lurk in every BoJ policy change. The change in strategy was set in motion by the latter just when the phenomenon currently under our attention had already become unmanageable, just like a snowball. Public funds, such as the Government Pension Investment Fund, have been allocated about half of their value ($1.6 trillion in total) in foreign stocks and bonds. This fund has a presence in the U.S. stock market, but could be expelled from it if the BoJ decides to make one or more interest rate hikes. The net international investments of Japanese investors amount to 487 trillion yen ($3.4 trillion). It should be added that the BoJ has put all its eggs in the same basket of foreign investments of a financial nature. The search for a cheap way to sell Japan as a market for venture capital has come at the cost of lifting the lid on what is at the heart of Japanese capitalism and its central bank. In the absence of more meaningful observations, the entire Japanese state can be seen as a giant carry trade powerhouse that also benefits client economies. A key indicator of this conclusion comes from an indirect parameter, Japanese banks overseas lending, which can be monitored through data provided by the Bank for International Settlements. As of March, it exceeded the $1 trillion mark, a sharp increase of 21% over 2021.

On the trade union repercussions of the crisis, Rengo, that is, the country’s largest trade union confederation, faces a rather complicated situation after its disastrous handling of the wage negotiations. Now the Rengo has to defend the “triumph” of having obtained a 5% increase in average wages paid by big industry, since Nippon Steel ltd, Toyota and others have agreed to meet part of the workers’ demands and decided to raise wages, in the case of Nippon Steel ltd going even beyond what the union demanded. The issue lies at the heart of how the economy operates according to Kishida’s model, one step away from a money laundering scheme, where wages were raised from a weak yen as the basis for negotiations. The rate increase was already in sight, with all parties involved in the negotiations obviously aware and in cahoots with each other against the workers. This outcome is difficult for Japan’s top unions to use the moment to let smaller unions take the lead and fail miserably in their attempt to persuade medium-sized companies (i.e., those where they historically have the most presence), to raise wages with current rates, inflation, and the value of the yen at the time, and then suffer a predictable loss in purchasing power, which would once again strengthen the Rengo and make it easier for the bourgeois class to work in intensifying exploitation.

The world economy is edging ever closer to a new generalized recession, while ongoing conflicts are intensifying and expanding, involving new actors and affecting ever larger areas. The war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East continue amid bloodshed, redefining new power relations among the great powers and straining the imperialist hierarchy. In the history of modern capitalism, the centuries-long struggle for the control of the market has never allowed changes at the top of the world pyramid without an accompanying wave of unprecedented violence, as a new global hegemony rises. Although such a change does not currently seem imminent, the contradictions generated by the slow but inexorable decline of U.S. power continue to accumulate.

In the Middle East

We know that certain major historical changes never present themselves as the result of gradual, linear processes. Our dialectical view leads us to see and predict that the rise in economic power of a younger capitalism does not immediately and mechanically translate into a proportional increase in political influence and military strength. China’s economic rise, which has been sustained for decades without significant setbacks, could only ever lead, in the long run, to assert a greater strategic role in the Middle East. It is here that its energy supply flows, and it is also the most important route in its trade expansion.
It is therefore not a coincidence that Beijing is attempting to change the game. Chinese capitalism stretches its tendrils by positioning itself as a simple arbitrator in the Middle East. This comes at a time when China leaves behind its initial, impetuous accumulation. Now, the nation finds itself advanced to maturity, an advance that came so quickly that it already shows the first signs of senility. Still, by 2024, China’s industrial output will account for 31.6 percent of the global total, nearly doubling the 15.9 percent of its runner-up—the United States.

From the U.S. perspective, the roots of the war in Ukraine can be viewed as an effort to limit the ties between European industry and Russian energy resources. Simultaneously, it serves as a warning to China. The war in the Middle East, on the other hand, is a consequence of Beijing’s ambitions to increase its influence in a geo-historical area. This region spreads over an ocean rich in oil and gas, whose fabulous wealth was born from the spell of rent. The agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, signed in Beijing in March 2023, was a blow that neither the United States nor Israel could tolerate. It is for this reason that Western pressure on Riyadh to reach an agreement, along the lines of the “Abraham Accords,” between Saudi Arabia and Israel intensified. But that possibility faded a year ago, when a violent burst of scalding hot steam blew the lid right off the pressure cooker that the State of Israel had sealed the Gaza Strip in. A violent conflict ensued, led by a vicious and obscurantist bourgeois leadership that ultimately mirrors its Israeli counterpart.

The ingredients for endless carnage were in place long before the October 7 attack was carried out by the so-called “Palestinian resistance.” If the attack were really a struggle for independence of an oppressed people, it would probably not have been so ruthless in striking indiscriminately, making no distinction between the military and civilian forces on the other side of the front, among whom the proletarians of Israel and other nationalities stand out in number and importance. In this regard, how can we forget that the “leftist” proponents of bourgeois war, lined up under the banner of Islamic fundamentalism and interclass “pro-Palestine” demonstrations, failed to mention the dozens of Asian workers killed and taken hostage by Hamas militants?

The deadly devastation in Gaza, with more than 40,000 confirmed Palestinian casualties in this past year, has been accompanied by what journalistic hypocrisy describes as a “low intensity” war. In the West Bank, there are more than 600 Palestinian casualties, and on the borders between Israel and Lebanon, some 450 Hezbollah members have died. These two outbreaks look more and more like a ticking time bomb, threatening to blow up the entire region. The combined forces of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran are posing themselves as an “existential threat” to the so-called “Jewish state” (for us, the state is always a capitalist state, and Israel is by no means a benevolent master for the Jewish proletariat).
But as always, each bourgeois force has its own interests and follows its own agenda. In this sense, the unity of this front is far from monolithic.

However, the Israeli government has its own good reasons for taking such an “existential threat” seriously, since its state could indeed pay the price of a shift in the balance of power between the major imperialist powers. We must include an important fact. In the third week of September, Israel launched a deadly surprise attack on the entire command center of Hezbollah’s military organization. This was done by detonating the communications equipment–pagers and radios–supplied to the Lebanese Shiite militia network. Although we cannot exactly say how debilitating this was, it was nevertheless a severe blow to Hezbollah’s military strength. Israeli also sought to reaffirm the myth of their invincibility by recalling the success of June 5, 1967. That was when Israeli forces launched a preemptive military strike against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, initiating a blitzkrieg that became the greatest triumph in Israel’s military history.

But there is one element we continue to rely on to end the carnage in the Middle East: the strength of the war-weary proletariat. In Iran and Israel, i.e., the main actors in the ongoing tragedy, perhaps something is beginning to stir under the heavy weight that oppresses the proletarians in every nation. In Iran, strikes and street demonstrations were held in several cities and industrial areas of the country. The city of Arak, considered the industrial capital of the country, has been the epicenter of these struggles. Across the country, moreover, pensioners have been demonstrating against the high cost of living that makes their already meager pensions even poorer. Moreso, they are against the costs of the proxy war fueled by the expansionist aims of the government in Tehran.

In Israel, for now, opposition to the government’s conduct in the Gaza war remains as an interclass facade. But the Israeli proletarians have also paid a high price: more than 1,600 dead, more than 13,000 wounded, and 200,000 displaced, now reduced to about 60,000. Worker discontent is bound to simmer under the ashes of interclassism when Histradut, Israel’s main regime union, had to call a general strike in early September in an attempt to vent proletarian anger.

In Eastern Europe

Recent events on the Russian-Ukrainian war front also point in the direction of a further escalation of the conflict as a result of the escalation of imperialist confrontation. The aggravation of the ongoing confrontation is well illustrated by the issue dominating the public debate this mid-September: the debate among Kiev supporters over whether the Ukrainians should be allowed to strike deep into Russian territory. Ukraine is pushing for a green light to deploy long-range missiles (over 300 km) on Russian territory: the United States has so far refrained from enacting this request, but has left other NATO members with these weapons free to do as they see fit. The use of such missiles, due to their technical and operational characteristics, would necessarily require the direct intervention of Western specialists. In response, Putin stated in a recent public speech that from a Russian perspective, authorizing their use would be tantamount to a direct NATO intervention in the conflict, thus making it a combatant party.
The propaganda of the warring bourgeois powers is often far from reality. Beyond whatever Putin might say or think, there is the reality of a proxy war. A proxy war in which major powers might see the conflict spread to their own national borders.

In a context characterized by the gradual rupture of any intermediate barrier separating regional wars from the general war of capital, the European Union also claims to have had something to say. But while the various countries move in (a scattered) order, and claim to profess certain positions, this unity is merely cosmetic. Even the useless and impotent European Parliament, in a non-binding resolution adopted on Sept. 19, calls “on EU countries to lift restrictions preventing Ukraine from using Western weapons systems against legitimate military targets in Russia.” However little a vote of the European Parliament counts, the moment of grave danger must be understood by the European proletarians: the representatives of the bourgeois parties accept the risk of slipping into a war with Russia, because the workers will be the cannon fodder!

As for the effectiveness of direct strikes on Russian territory with ultra-long-range missiles, more than one analyst is skeptical about their actual effectiveness on the ground. However, the political significance of relaxing such a restriction should not be underestimated, as it carries the risk of crossing the proverbial red line. Such a move could be dictated by the degree of desperation which Ukraine’s military leadership finds itself in. The September 18 attack on Toropets in Russia’s Tver region, which hit a huge depot of rockets and artillery shells, reflects the plight of the Ukrainian home front and marks another step toward all-out war.

In an effort to overturn a tide of war, a tide which currently favors Russia, Ukraine has a very strong interest in widening the conflict by directly involving its supporters in the war against Moscow.
The Ukrainian military operation on Russian territory in the Kursk region can be read in this light.
The rationale for such an operation, brilliant from a strictly tactical point of view but poorly understood from a strategic point of view, could be dictated precisely by the desire to show that the Ukrainian army is not in disarray. This action demonstrates that expanding the war to NATO countries could also be a realistic outcome.

On Aug. 6, a strong offensive by the Ukrainian army, which started from Sumy and developed impetuously for dozens of kilometers into Kursk territory, at the point where Russia’s defensive border forces were evidently weakest. This development led to a new situation in the overall war picture. The best available troops and warfare equipment were used in the attack. The very sparsely populated area is rich in forests, which allowed for reasonable dispersion of the occupying forces. This was a clear success in terms of morale as well as propaganda. It was an obvious blow to the Russian military, which failed to anticipate the assault or immediately contain the Ukrainian advance.

We can assume that this operation aimed to relieve pressure on the Donbass front by forcing troops to shift from attacking Ukrainian territory to defending Russian territory. However, this does not seem to have occurred. On the one hand, pressure on the Ukrainian front line has not diminished. On the other, Russian attacks on areas of strategic interest have not decreased in intensity. These include the bombings over Poltava, carried out with hypersonic rockets, which destroyed a military base in the city center, home to a large contingent of foreign soldiers and instructors.

Meanwhile, the advance of Russian forces continued in the Donbass. As early as February, Russian troops had captured the Avdiivka area, a strategic stronghold protecting logistical routes into the Donetsk oblast and a foothold for recapturing the lost Donetsk territories in the east. In recent weeks, the push has been polarized in a northwesterly direction in the same region. Eventually, it reached near another major Ukrainian stronghold, Pokrovsk. The city is the backbone of Ukrainian logistics on the eastern front, along with Kramatorsk located further northeast. Beyond developments on the battlefield, both armies have a common problem: they face the need to send new cannon fodder into the slaughterhouse of war. On the Russian side, a recent decree resulted in an increase in the army’s manpower from 1,320,000 to 1.5 million, with the addition of another 180,000 men. This is the third such measure since the onset of the war against Ukraine. The choice not to withdraw forces from the Donbass can be seen as a sign of increased recruitment efforts for conscripts, including teenagers. The situation for the Ukrainian army is even worse, as it resorts to actually kidnapping fighting-aged men off the streets of its cities to replace significant losses at the front.

Although such news is well hidden under the blanket of deafening media hubbub, desertion, draft dodging, refusal to fight, and sabotage are rampant. The instinctive reaction against the continuing immense slaughter remains limited in number and unorganized. But these anti-militarist reactions keep alive the hope of a collapse of both armies and the home front.

In Ukraine, as in the Middle East and everywhere else, the only chance to stop capital’s wars lies in the workers’ unwillingness to submit to the military framework imposed by the bourgeoisie to reassert its class rule. This will only be possible if the proletariat of every nation unites for its immediate interests and its historical task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and realizing the integral program of communism, under the leadership of the International Communist Party.

The growing international tensions and wars brought about by the escalation of imperialist contention could not help but be reflected in the growth of the manufacturing sector dedicated to arms production. In the past year the global manufacturing industry has stagnated substantially, with only a modest 2.5% increase in production volume. But things have been going quite differently for that consistently flourishing industry, which is aimed at the destruction of human beings and that which is produced by human labor. In 2023 world arms spending grew by 6.8%, marking the largest increase in a decade and reaching an all-time high of $2.4 trillion. This is an impressive sum, comparable to the GDP of a medium-sized capitalist country like Italy. This aspect fully reaffirms the validity of Rosa Luxemburg’s words in The Accumulation of Capital (1913), written more than a century ago: “From the economic point of view, militarism appears to capital as a first-rate means of realizing surplus value, that is, as a field of accumulation.” This production sector is extremely profitable, especially when industry can benefit from the large portions of state budgets allocated to military spending. This growth is supported not just by the increase in domestic demand, but is stimulated by government contracts in the producing country. Another driving factor is the expansion of defense spending by the purchasing countries, which, drawing from state coffers, excessively fuels the global demand for armaments.

One element that seems to indicate a turning point not only in absolute terms, but also in its distribution by geographical areas, is the fact that in 2023, for the first time since 2009, there was an increase in military spending on all continents.

The countries that have invested the most in the arms industry are, in order: the United States, China, Russia, India, and Saudi Arabia.

In first place is still the United States, which has accounts for 37% of world spending, followed at a considerable distance by China, which has stopped at 12% for now. Here, it is noteworthy how the two powers that are the main antagonists on the global stage, put together, reach 49% of global arms spending. Completing the picture of this power comparison are figures concerning NATO member countries, which spent $1.341 trillion on armaments in 2023, accounting for 55 percent of global military spending. Here too, the lion’s share is held by the United States. The US spent $916 billion, which is an increase of 2.3%. This is 68% of NATO’s total military spending, while the European member countries have spent 28%. The war in Ukraine significantly boosted military spending in several European countries, particularly in Russia and Poland. In these two countries, we see a notable shift towards economic militarism. This fact is bound to have repercussions on the global arms market. Suppliers from the warring countries travel around the world, and are found in the most remote corners of the globe. Russia, since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, has tripled its military spending. This spending has reached $100 billion, or 6% of GDP. However, this share might actually be much higher. According to the Financial Times, a quarter of Russian state spending is not made public and therefore escapes statistics. In two years, Russia’s military branch enterprises, which are working around the clock, have grown from 2,000 to 6,000. They now employ as many as 3.5 million people; half a million more than in 2021. Some of these enterprises, due to labor shortages, even offer workers exemption from military service. The economic implications of this soaring growth are conspicuous. Employment growth is high, and the current unemployment rate, 2.8%, is the lowest it has ever been in the history of post-Soviet Russia. This rearmament-induced economic prosperity also sees significant growth in wages for workers in the “defense” sector, which have risen between 20 and 60 percent.

Poland has the highest growth in military spending in relative terms. Between 2022 and 2023 it grew by 75%, which is by far the largest increase among European countries. Moreover, if one looks at the statistics for the past ten years, the countries that have increased their military spending the most are: Ukraine (1,272%), Poland (181%), Denmark (108%), Romania (95%), and Finland (92%). Not surprisingly, four of these countries border Russia, Belarus, or Ukraine, a sign that the ongoing war in Eastern Europe had been incubating for quite some time. This situation of rearmament along the fault line in Eastern Europe—preparing for a large-scale regional war—may shed light on developments in East Asia. In particular, it highlights the tensions surrounding Taiwan, which has become the focal point of China-US contention in the Pacific.

Trends in military spending in Asia, beyond episodic swings and slowdowns, also confirm a general picture of sustained arms growth.

Arms imports in the Asia-Pacific had suffered a partial setback as they declined by 12 percent between 2014-18 and 2019-23. However, this decline is to be ascribed to the decrease in imports by China. Moreover, this geographical area remains one of the highest volume of arms “imports,” with six of the world’s top 10 importing countries: India, Pakistan, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and China. The latter in the last five years has reduced imports by 44 percent. But this figure in no way contradicts the increase in the budget reserved for military spending that was set at 1,665 trillion yuan (over 213 billion euros, which is around 232 US dollars), which marked the ninth consecutive annual increase. The explanation lies in the fact that Beijing, in terms of armaments, has begun to domestically produce much of what was previously imported.

The Land of the Dragon’s rearmament is countered by the arms race of other imperialist powers in the region. Japan’s increase in military spending is significant. The Kishida government has promised to increase armament spending to 2% of GDP by 2027. A very rapid increase, that, if in 2023 military spending, would have been $50.2 billion, or 1.2% of GDP. Already in 2024 the armament budget will rise to $52.67 billion.

South Korea’s budget growth deserves special attention. With a military budget of $47.9 billion, it ranks 11th in the world for armament spending, just behind Japan. More impressive is the fact that South Korea has seen a remarkable 12% increase in exports. The performance of this country’s arms industry therefore deserves to be examined in more detail. In 2000, South Korea ranked 31st in arms exporters in the world. By the 2018-22 five-year period, it was already ranking ninth. Military industry sales jumped from $7.25 billion in 2021 to over $17 billion in 2022. This figure will certainly increase in 2023 due to sales of fighter jets to Malaysia and vehicles to Australia. Korea is now the second-largest arms export power in Asia. In July 2022, Seoul signed a landmark contract with Poland totaling $12.4 billion. It is the largest military deal ever reached by South Korea in its history. Among other things, the agreement calls for the supply of hundreds of Chunmoo rocket launchers, K2 tanks, K9 self-propelled howitzers, and FA-50 fighter planes. The openly stated goal of the Korean authorities is to become the world’s 4th largest exporter of deadly devices by 2027. Whether this will be possible will be due substantially to two factors: the more than 70-year conflict with North Korea and the war in Ukraine. While the former aspect has allowed the consolidation of a domestic arms industry capable of holding its own in contention with its North Korean neighbor, the war in Ukraine has become a major business opportunity. This confirms a trend observed in other countries such as Iran and North Korea. Arms production, supported by government procurement, for domestic “defense,” has as a non-secondary spillover effect the increase of a country’s share in the global market.

In India, too, military spending is growing steadily and at a rapid pace. In this absurd ranking that only capitalism can conceive, India ranks fourth with $83.6 billion, a 44% increase over 2014.

Although the Modi government has increased arms production through the “Make in India” program, the Indian giant remains the world’s largest arms importer, with a 4.7% increase over the last five years. It should be noted, however, that although Russia remains the largest supplier with 36%, the last five-year period was the first since 1960-64 in which Moscow’s share fell below half of imported arms. In 2009-13, arms imports from Russia were 76 percent, but had already dropped to 58 percent in 2014-18. We have already described this trend in our articles. This diversification of suppliers is also due to agreements with the United States, from which 13 percent of Delhi’s purchased arms come. Even greater is the role of France whose supplies have reached 33% of Indian military imports. It should be noted that France is the world’s second largest arms exporter surpassing Russia.

According to the ranking of conventional warfare capability prepared by Global Firepower by analyzing military, demographic, financial, logistical and geographical aspects (but without considering the availability of nuclear weapons), the Indian army, which has 1.5 million active duty military personnel, is considered the fourth most powerful army in the world.

Pakistan, India’s historic enemy, is also following the general trend of rearmament. Arms imports grew 43% between 2014-18 and 2019-23, thanks to strengthening ties with Beijing, from which 82% of armaments now come.

The United States, thanks to the Chinese threat, has become the leading supplier of arms in the Asia-Pacific, covering 34% of imports, followed by Russia with 19%, while China stands at 13%. It is noteworthy that although imports to Taiwan have dropped by 69%, some major deliveries are planned over the next five years, including 66 combat aircraft, 108 tanks, and 460 anti-ship missiles, all from the U.S. side (SIPRI data).

Southeast Asia, generally, is experiencing a sharp decline in military spending, but some states are showing a clear trend toward rearmament instead. The Philippines, for example, has seen a 105% increase in arms imports.

The general rush to rearmament, however, does not exclude attempts at mediation between historically rival countries, which often only try to buy some time. On May 27, 2024, the first tripartite summit between South Korea, Japan, and China met in Seoul. The main purpose of the meeting was to strengthen economic cooperation and discuss possible free trade agreements. The opportunity was also taken to talk about the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, which is completely utopian in the capitalist regime. During the summit, the three countries declared that they “reaffirm” their “commitment to peace and stability in the region, and to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.” Pyongyang’s response was immediate: “Talk of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula constitutes a serious provocation and a violation of North Korea’s constitution, which explicitly provides for nuclear weapons.” These diplomatic attempts, while appearing as signs of détente, actually conceal the perennial imperialistic tension between powers, whose maneuvers are always geared toward maintaining their economic and military dominance, and not toward real conflict resolution.

In this macabre game between capitalism and imperialism, China has taken a deliberately ambiguous position. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, it engages in a constant search for impossible balances. On the one hand, it has condemned Pyongyang’s latest nuclear tests and supported sanctions aimed at limiting the development of new weapons. On the other hand, it has not failed to reiterate that the rise in tensions in the region is due to joint military maneuvers between South Korea and the United States. It thus removes some of the responsibility from North Korea. This position reflects China’s complex strategy. China aims to maintain an apparent neutrality on the international stage, which preserves its regional interests and seeks to balance its relations with both the United States and its Asian allies.

In completing this rough sketch (and thus inevitably incomplete) picture of the growing global arms race, we cannot simply reiterate that general war between imperialist powers represents the inevitable horizon of the capitalist system. Instead, it is necessary to recognize how this prospect is entering an increasingly accelerated phase of preparation. Faced with increased war commitments, the bourgeoisie will be forced to shirk the costs of rearmament onto the working class by imposing new tax levies, increasing both direct and indirect taxes. However, in this context, the ruling class will face an increasingly pressing dilemma. On the one hand, the bourgeoisie will increasingly feel the need to prepare its military apparatus, draining resources and strengthening social control. On the other, growing social tensions, fueled by deteriorating living conditions, will make it increasingly difficult to ensure a stable political order. Any attempt to impose further sacrifices will risk triggering resistance and reaction from the proletariat, which will be unwilling to passively endure the intensification of its exploitation. Thus the delicate balance the bourgeoisie must pursue between preparing for war and trying to maintain social peace will become more unstable and precarious every day.

The bourgeoisie will do everything in its power to obtain the active cooperation of opportunist parties and corrupt trade union leaders. These parties and leaders try and stifle the discontent of the working class in exchange for political advantages and economic gifts. In this effort, the ruling class will put the increasingly sophisticated propaganda tools at its disposal to use. The result will be an obsessive, almost military-style, control of the media. The media will be geared to support shameless disinformation campaigns and to control the most surreal narratives. All of this will aim to promote the “sacred union of classes” under the deceptive banner of nationhood, thus legitimizing rearmament plans.

This use of propaganda, coupled with the alliance with opportunist parties and collaborationist trade unions, is aimed at keeping the working masses under tight control. They try and stifle any impulse for rebellion, they try to get them proletariat to accept the sacrifices necessary for war preparations. They mask it with deceitful promises of security and justice among nations, as well as stability and prosperity for all. However, this fragile construction is bound to crack in the face of real conditions of deepening exploitation and misery.

The approaching imperialist conflict will prepare a social scenario similar to the one already described by Rosa Luxemburg, in the above-mentioned text, on the eve of World War I: “[C]apital, thanks to militarism, wipes out, at home and abroad, the non-capitalist strata and depresses the standard of living of all the working classes, the more the daily history of capital’s accumulation on the world stage turns into a continuous chain of political and social catastrophes and convulsions, which, together with the periodic economic catastrophes represented by the crises, make the continuation of accumulation impossible and the revolt of the international working class against the domination of capital necessary, even before, on the economic terrain, it has gone to crash against the natural barriers of its own development.”

We communists rely precisely on the revolt of the international working class. Under the leadership of its organ, the International Communist Party, the proletariat will succeed in overthrowing the infamous and deadly domination of capital. It will put an end to the hellish cycle of capitalism’s false “peaces” and of its wars.

As of February 2nd, 2024, after an announcement the day prior for the strike’s extension until February 10th, the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) reached an in-principal agreement with the international logistics company, Dubai Ports World (DPW).

The in-principal agreement concluded the months-long pay dispute against one of Australia’s largest privately-owned port-operators of Brisbane, Fremantle, Melbourne, and Sydney terminals. This agreement, which will be in effect for four more years, will replace an earlier agreement that had expired in September 2023. The MUA says it is a ‘four-year term [that] delivers fair pay, safety and fatigue management measures, and provides job security and a fair work-life balance for Australian wharfies.’

They celebrated this win by saying ‘wharfies perform hard, physical work on a 24-hour, seven day working week, in all conditions and all seasons. They are amongst the hardest working, most productive, and most flexible workforces in the Australian economic landscape.’ The end of this strike has ensured that the ‘industrial action has been withdrawn and [union members] will return to work.’

Although the end of this dispute will not be the last (at least not in the foreseeable future), the stand-off, and its success for the workers, is the latest and longest sign of rising workers’ power in Australia. In fact, the Australian Bureau of Statistics claims that the country has seen the number of industrial disputes rise steadily since 2020, a trend which has been reflected in other nations.

The agreement for the 1,800 dock workers will provide a four year plan for annual salary increases of: 8%, 7%, 4% and 4.5%, plus an additional AUD2,000 bonus.

The planned industrial actions, involving about 1,500 dockworkers from DPW, were ‘overwhelmingly’ supported by workers in September 2023. This response was a reaction to the ongoing ‘wage-cutting’ measures implemented by DPW, which occurred alongside doleful pay increases and significantly higher workloads.

The federal Fair Work Commission, in support of the workers, dismissed DPW’s bid at attempting to suspend the union’s legally-protected industrial action. This, in conjunction with the company’s supposed ‘No, No, No’ stance to ‘non-contentious clauses’ is the expected response from the bourgeois system. Even when the union presented more lenient proposals, DPW would dismiss them, showcasing their disregard for the very workers upon whom the company relies upon to make their billions in profits!

This attitude on the part of the government is certainly not due to the goodwill of those in political power. If anything, it is merely an expedient to try to guarantee social peace, and perpetuate the current capitalist relations of production. Our party already wrote in the Theses of the Communist Abstentionist Fraction (1920), ‘Capitalist relations of production cannot be modified by the intervention of the organs of bourgeois power.’ With our relentless effort to stand on the plane of materialist analysis, we know that the defence of the working class through state organs, which represent bourgeois class dominance, has not and will never represent the proletariat. This will not change, even with legislative or reformist actions taken by the current political institutions. In short, living and working conditions will become more and more intolerable to the workers.

Let’s take at a look at Rassegna Comunista, No. 2 of 1921. We discussed the devaluation of the party’s role by revolutionary syndicalism, which exalted the role of workers’ coalitions under the pretext that they encompassed a greater number of workers. We stated that such an attitude was ‘an unconscious respect for that self-same democratic lie which the bourgeoisie relies on to secure its power by the means of inviting the majority of the people to choose their government.’ Over a hundred years later, the bourgeois state assumes the function of defending the unions in order to dampen labour disputes and prevent them from escalating into open class struggle.

As expected, Dubai pushed their losses from the ‘inefficient ports’ onto the consumer. ‘Dubai Ports… is putting up prices [by] 52% for Australian businesses and wants a 14% pay cut for Australian workers’ said the secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. In fact, thanks to the months-long union strike forcing its hand, the country’s cargo backlog had risen to more than 50,000 containers even several months after.

From a historical point of view, international trade, dominated in recent decades by multinational corporations, has shaped the economic, social, and labour landscape of Australia. The country’s economic and cultural development has been necessarily tied to its major port cities, which have acted as vital hubs for foreign capital and trade. Due to its relatively small domestic market and vast geographic extent, Australia has historically relied on foreign investment to fuel its economic growth. This reliance is particularly important given the prevalence of capital-intensive sectors vital to the economy, such as agriculture, mining, and manufacturing. This dependence on maritime trade has fundamentally influenced various sectors of the economy. However, it has also led to challenges for Australian maritime workers. Because of their vital role in maintaining the flow of international trade, these workers often face harsh exploitative conditions. They are subjected to extremely long working hours, receive low wages, and operate in unsafe working environments where serious, often fatal, accidents frequently occur. The Australian economy’s dependence on maritime trade has traditionally placed these workers in a particularly disadvantageous position, as the ruling class has had little difficulty justifying the maintenance of the national social order. All they have to do is point out the need for the efficient and continuous functioning of the port infrastructure of coastal cities. Consequently, the historical dependence on maritime trade has been a key element in the intense exploitation of maritime workers.

The union states that they ‘will also not allow them to tell us what Australian workers should accept for wages and conditions when their track record overseas is so poor,’ and, ‘… [we] will not tolerate this blatant mistreatment of our members by this international, multi-billion-dollar company.’ It should be noted in this context, DPW is a multinational corporation based in the United Arab Emirates, which in 2023 had a revenue of 18.25 billion dollars and employs more than 100,000 people. The history of this company, which was founded in 2005, characterises it as a central instrument of the foreign policy of the UAE. The DPW plays a significant role in supporting the aggressive capitalist militarism of the Gulf countries. This makes it available to support the most adventurous turns of other imperialist powers. Further, DPW has never hidden, beyond its blatantly anti-union stances, its intent to break the workers’ spirit by subjecting them to hellish working conditions. Particularly telling is the company’s position on free trade agreements in the United Kingdom, especially in the wake of Brexit. DPW lobbied the UK government for the establishment of ‘free ports,’ designed as ‘special economic zones’ exempt from labour rights, regulations, and taxes.

The negotiation process between the wharfies and the company has always been purposefully prolonged and an arduous chore for the workers. The last contract negotiations, which began after the expiration of the contracts prior, lasted two and a half years. The workers finally voted in favour of the new enterprise bargaining agreements in February 2021, following a previous in-principle deal reached in October 2020. Negotiations had been gradually winding down since late August 2020 when both sides reached an agreement on part of the bargaining agreement.

The MUA led the negotiations on behalf of the workers. Representing 14,000 maritime and related industry workers, the MUA is part of the Construction, Forestry, and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU), which boasts 120,000 members in total. The MUA is also affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions, with 1.5 million members, and the International Transport Workers’ Federation. Although firmly rooted as a bourgeois union hiding amongst the ranks of the Australian labour movement, it could not help itself but to indulge. Supporting certain worker-led initiatives, ‘proving’ itself to be somewhat effective. This was the case with the recent strike by Australian dock workers.

Turkey’s economic outlook looks bleak with no way out for the proletariat. In May, inflation touched 75 percent, and as of August, it is holding at 62 percent. This trend, which exploded at the beginning of 2022, peaked at 85.4 percent in October of that year, then dropped to 38 percent in June 2023. However, a new increase has brought inflation back to current levels, suggesting that there are no immediate solutions on the horizon.

In the context of an already acute crisis, in February, Turkey was hit by a devastating earthquake that claimed more than 50,000 lives and forced three million people from their homes. The consequences of this natural disaster, combined with galloping inflation, caused prices of essential goods to quintuple within just 18 months, exacerbating the situation for the proletarian population.

The government in Ankara, through the policies of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has refused to raise interest rates, which is one of the most common tools used by central banks to fight inflation. Calling the hike “the mother and father of all evils,” Erdoğan kept interest rates artificially low, causing the Turkish lira to collapse. Today, the national currency exchange rate has plummeted to 34 liras to one USD, compared to 5.5 liras just five years ago. This devaluation has made companies’ foreign loan costs unsustainable, increasing difficulties for domestic industry.

Behind this economic choice is a failed attempt to solve Turkey’s chronic trade deficit by relying on an undervalued currency to boost exports. However, exports have not increased, while imports have continued to grow, further exacerbating the problem. Domestic economic actors, in an attempt to protect themselves, began accumulating non-financial assets, contributing to the inflationary pressure.

In 2021, the government introduced special savings accounts to compensate savers for losses from the weakening lira. Today, such accounts amount to the equivalent of $102 billion, representing a ticking time bomb for the state budget. To further complicate the situation, the Central Bank began printing money to finance government spending, triggering a spiral that further pushed the lira toward the abyss.

Gold has become the main refuge for speculation, coming to account for one-third of Turkish imports. The government itself, through propaganda, encourages citizens to buy gold instead of converting lira to dollars or euros. This phenomenon has become intertwined with foreign policy. Much of the gold is purchased from Russia, bypassing international sanctions imposed as a result of the war in Ukraine.

The Turkish crisis worsened to the point that the United Arab Emirates intervened, signing an agreement in 2022 to strengthen Turkey’s foreign exchange reserves. However, international investors are fleeing: foreign participation in the Turkish government bond market has plummeted from 25 percent in 2013 to less than 1 percent in 2023, while more than $7 billion has been withdrawn from the stock market.

Turkish banks and businesses are now in deep distress. Non-financial companies’ foreign currency liabilities exceed their foreign currency assets by more than $200 billion, signaling a far from rosy future.

On the social level, inequality is growing exponentially. About 21.3 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, with wealth distribution equaling countries such as Brazil and South Africa: the richest 10 percent hold 32.5 percent of national income. Moreover, Turkey boasts the highest youth unemployment rate among OECD countries, a sign of an explosive situation that can only lead to further social tensions.

The minimum wage, set at 8,506 liras per month for 2023, is well below survivability: as of January 2023, the “hunger threshold” was estimated at 8,782 liras, while the poverty line reached 30,379 liras. In this scenario, the Turkish proletarians have no choice other than class struggle. This is their sole means to resist the oppression of the national bourgeoisie and its old habit of “crying to the bank,” which is typical of every bourgeois regime.

In a massive demonstration of struggle, teachers in Sulaymaniyah, the Kurdistan region of Iraq, embarked on a long strike in October 2023 that was destined to last for four months. This struggle was not only economic in nature, but also represented a direct challenge to the political power firmly held by the two largest parties of the Kurdish bourgeoisie in Iraq: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

The teachers, organized by the Council of Dissident Teachers–a grassroots body that grew out of the workers’ struggle–demanded full and timely payment of their salaries after the government failed to meet both payment deadlines and amounts. This strike, the longest in the region’s recent history, highlighted the systemic exploitation of public sector workers. These workers have long been manipulated by patronage networks run by the ruling parties.

These networks are instrumental in maintaining the capitalist order by employing workers in state apparatuses in exchange for their subservience to a ruling party. However, this widespread clientelist practice has long demonstrated its increasing ineffectiveness in ensuring social peace.

Faced with delayed and almost never full payment of wages, due to austerity measures imposed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the teachers’ demanded direct payments from the federal government of Iraq. This reflected a broader critique of the role of the autonomous region, in which the pretense of promoting the interests of the local people increasingly proved to be a mask to hide the most unmentionable interests of the capitalists. The teachers’ strike has seen significant participation, with tens of thousands of people, including those outside the profession, joining the weekly protests. This illustrates the potential power of the working class when it unites to defend its economic interests.

In some cases, this solidarity has been expressed through strikes, as with traffic police on January 28th of this year. Due to the government’s inability to pay its employees, workers in different categories of the public service joined the strike in several areas, reinforcing the teachers’ demands and widening the struggle. Meanwhile, the leaders of the unions close to the ruling parties did their best to downplay the extent of the crackdown and denied, against all evidence, the harsh sentences imposed on the striking teachers.

Despite the repression, particularly in KDP-controlled areas where protests have often been met with arrests, the movement showed some ability to move forward. Striking teachers in Sulaymaniyah faced the entry of security forces, who arrested some of them as they tried to march to the residence of PUK leader, Bafel Talabani. This response was part of the usual repressive tactics of the bourgeois state to stifle working-class dissent. The demonstrators then denounced the heavy security measures without being intimidated.

Later, the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court decided to transfer responsibility for Kurdistan’s salary payments from Erbil to Baghdad—a move aimed at addressing the Kurdistan Regional Government’s habitual failure to meet its obligations. However, the KRG’s new “My Account” initiative, which forced civil servants to receive digital payments, sparked further anger among workers, who saw it as another mechanism of control by the ruling patronage elite. Nevertheless, this measure was part of a general framework to modernize payment systems and encourage workers to open bank accounts and make electronic payments. This line was also followed by the central government in Baghdad, which adopted similar measures. Not surprisingly, it was in the Iraqi capital that gasoline workers took the lead in protesting the proliferation of self-service stations.

A few days ago it was announced that the KRG intends to contract 38,000 precarious teachers with regional funds. This will be an opportunity for the local authorities to revive their patronage network through the instrument of contractualization, after the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court’s decision that partially disempowered the local government. The young workers, who are probably destined for a long period of precarious work, will be forced to have a bank account to receive their meager salaries, while the financial flows in the banks of Kurdistan will continue to swell like overflowing rivers for the benefit of the bourgeois class.

The workers’ economic struggle is an essential aspect of the Communist Party’s work. It is decisive work for two closely related reasons. 1) It is, as Lenin rightly put it, the proletariat’s “school of war” since it enables the penetration of the Party among the proletarian masses as a result of its constant contact with them. This is by virtue of the Party’s ability to point out the most consistent demands and the most effective methods for achieving the class’s own interests. 2) The relentless economic struggle of the proletariat is a stumbling block for capital as it tries to solve its crises by intensifying the rate of exploitation, reducing direct and indirect wages, and increasing the organic composition of capital (increasing constant capital to the detriment of variable capital, i.e., labor) with the consequent expulsion of labor power from the production cycle.

Besides, since the time of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), we have known that “now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes.”

Thus the central, fundamental result for the party is to foster the connection between the various sectors of the working class, and the proletarians’ perception of their existence as a mass with the same interests and goals – hence as a class, opposed to that of the exploiters. The material result of the individual struggle, even if positive, is always temporary, and it is defenseless against subsequent and inevitable attacks of the bosses and their state.

What, then, are the union activities? Where are these actually possible? What should the Party do with regards to the workers’ economic struggles?

The expression “trade union work” should not be understood as being limited to work that takes place exclusively within trade unions (with the usual liturgy of the democratic election of delegates and the winning of leadership positions within the various trade union organizations). It must refer to all economic struggles of the working class, wherever and however these take place. Party members are part of unions whether or not they can influence that particular union in the short term, or get democratically elected to leadership positions. The aim is to be involved in the economic struggles of the working class on every possible occasion, and according to the forces of the party. This will continue even if, on some occasions, they are represented by non-proletarians. This is to maintain and strengthen contact with the class, so that it will always have the party’s indication as to the best way to conduct the struggle, which we know is the most adequate to achieve the objectives. At the same time, in the appropriate situations, we present to the proletarians the only final solution to their exploitation: the revolutionary one.

The party must always have a clear idea of its task, and what means it can use, depending on the actual situation it faces, in time and space. And this is because our doctrinal positions are never fully set out; they must be continually developed by successive generations of communists, even regarding the clarification of the limits of tactics within which one can operate. Even for general doctrinal issues, the sculpting (a continuous and progressive clarification of the party’s unavoidable path) is always a fundamental work of the party, in light of acquired historical experience. This is all the more true in the field of practical activities, and notably that of the trade union: “The tactical limits are not drawn by theory, but by reality.”

In order to define our tactics for the current putrid situation, and especially for the future resumption of struggles, we must reaffirm the cornerstones of party action, as is tradition, by returning to the basic principles and experiences of our past: Marxism, the Comintern, the PCd’I, which first posed the question of the “united trade union front,” and the Profintern of the 1920s. Of course, the experience in different countries varied due to reactionary capitalist forces and their agents in the proletarian organs, as well as the different trade union structures at that time. But the directions issued by the important international organizations and our party have general value.

In those years the rank-and-file organizations of the working class had, even in normal times, what today would be called a gigantic “revolutionary charge,” and this was not, as it will never be, even in phases of high social tension, the product of the acquisition of a “consciousness” of the ultimate aims and objectives of proletarian movement. This is rather the product of pressing material necessities. This is as true for the class as it is for the individual; the formula is not “consciousness first and action later,” but “economic drive, then action, and finally consciousness.” This consciousness is not realized in the individual, but in the party, which has the task of reversing the course, using that consciousness to lead the class, both in the field of economic struggles and in that of armed political struggle.

After World War I, we witnessed the historical phenomenon whereby the state shifted from tolerating workers’ organizations to conquering them. A phenomenon that was particularly visible in Italy with fascism, but which actually occurred in all capitalist countries in different times in different ways.

The fascist unions appeared as one of many union labels, bearing the tricolor in opposition to the red, yellow and white ones—but the capitalist world was now a world of monopoly, and that fate was inevitable in the presence of a retreating labor movement. Thus the state, the collective manager of capital’s interests, was in charge of controlling workers’ organizations. Not by absorbing them into its structure, let’s be clear, but by ensuring that, even while controlling the unions, they appeared as independent bodies. The Corporations were a structure of the Fascist state, but the bourgeoisie soon understood that formally incorporating the trade unions would nullify their effectiveness, since it would become clear that they were not organizations capable of defending the interests of proletarians. That is why after World War II we wrote that the new trade unions born out of the Resistance were tailored “on the Mussolini model.” We also wrote that “this great new fact of the contemporary era was not reversible.”

However, the unions continue to have the characteristic of being composed only of wage earners. Therefore the participation of revolutionaries, even if at certain junctures they are expelled or conditions arise that make it impossible to work within them, is an unavoidable necessity – we never voluntarily give up working within them.

Monopoly capitalism can no longer tolerate the independence of trade unions. It demands that reformist opportunism and the working-class aristocracy, who pick up the crumbs from its lavish table, become its political police vis à vis the proletariat. If this goal is not achieved the opportunist leadership can be removed and replaced by the fascist method. It goes without saying that all the efforts of trade union opportunism in the service of imperialism cannot, in the long run, save it from its inevitable end.

Today’s trade union situation therefore diverges from that of 1921, not only because of the lack of a strong Communist party, but also because of the gradual elimination of the content of trade union action. They’ve replaced rank-and-file action with bureaucratic functionality: assemblies, elections, party factions in trade unions, professional officials in place of elected leaders, etc. However, we repeat that we are convinced that in a moment of crisis and intense economic struggle, the trade unions will pass into the hands of those who are genuinely dedicated to class interests. Finally, it will fall under the leadership of the Communist Party.

Thus the party guides its actions based on the specific principles that we established in 1962:

• No economic conquest is lasting, and does not serve the general interests of the class unless it results in growing solidarity among the exploited.
• The abandonment of the general strike without time limits and without distinction of factory, sector, and category, not only fails to secure immediate economic gains, but also erodes and destroys the future and general possibilities of the proletarian attack on the regime of capitalist exploitation. Consequently, the party favors the most widespread possible strikes, in every situation, time, and place, ultimately aiming for a general strike.
• The “tactics” of articulated bargaining, of claiming additional qualifications per category, productivity bonuses and company incentives, of striking in a fragmented way and for very short periods, increases rather than reduces the competition among workers, and worsens their isolation from each other.
• The theory of the “apolitical nature of the union” actually conceals the union’s abandonment of class politics in favor of a policy that supports the central bourgeois power.
• There are no “particular” issues that can be resolved outside the general vision of the historical interests of the working class.

Given the party’s meager strength, and until it is much greater—it is unknown whether this will be before or after the resurgence of broad-based economic class organizations—the party cannot, nor should it, proclaim a boycott of company unions and workers’ agitations. Nor can it proclaim its presence everywhere and always in factory union elections, with its own lists. Nor can it, even where it is powerful, openly agitate for a “boycott” calling on the workers to not vote, not to join the union, not to strike, etc.

In 1974, the reconstituted Party in Italy recognized that a substantial part of the most combative workers had left the CGIL. The Party rightly oriented much of its activity toward workers’ militants organized in rank-and-file committees (CUB) and resolutely defended this expression of class struggle.

In the following years, several acronyms of rank-and-file unions emerged, which were also called “conflict unions.”

In view of this growing phenomenon, the Party adopted, in Italy, the slogan working “outside and against the regime unions.” This was a necessary tactical remedy to the regime unions’ collaborationist maneuvers, in conjunction with the so-called “EUR Turn.”

This slogan was a defense against the subordination of trade union bodies to the demands of capitalist restructuring which tightened, like a noose, around the proletariat’s interests and needs even more visibly than before. The formal acknowledgement of the abandonment of class struggle was merely the result of a practice de facto established after the end of a period of economic prosperity. This was a phase in which the workers had been more inclined to struggle, and the regime unions couldn’t help but pander in part to workers’ initiatives of struggle and demands; otherwise, they would have lost control over a very disobedient working class. This choice by the Party was also influenced by the fact that it had now become almost impossible for dissenting voices to express themselves within the normal activity of the CGIL, and thus made it impossible to maintain the relationship with the class—except during street demonstrations.

At the present stage it will be appropriate to take stock of this approach and watchword, which should not be understood as a fundamental and principled feature of the party, but rather as a tactical line in union work. This is, by its nature, not immutable.

This “evaluation,” based on the experience of the past decades, will have to examine the current and future role of trade unions, whether regime or rank-and-file, not only in Italy, but internationally on the general terrain of class struggle.

At least until there is a generalized resurgence of the class struggle, pointing to a union direction rigidly defined and supposedly valid for every country risks making the party’s union work ineffective, if not extremely tenuous. Even if in Italy the attempt to take the workers’ struggle outside and against the regime unions must remain among our objectives, this should not result in a rigid approach that paralyzes the work of comrades within the CGIL. Doing so, especially in situations where the overwhelming majority of workers still recognize themselves in the regime unions, could isolate us from the mass of the proletariat. What’s more, in the case of Italy, it is still necessary to assess the difficulty of working even in some of the self-styled rank-and-file unions, which often reproduce the defects of the official ones: power struggles, failure to unite organs of struggle in order to defend personal privileges, political careerism, and so on, all without significantly improving the quality and intensity of struggles. In fact, several decades of counterrevolution have helped to distort their character as spontaneous organizations formed by fighting workers to defend their immediate and class interests. Moreover, these unions are not entirely immune to the allure of homegrown chauvinism—think of the frequent calls for nationalizations to save failing industries. Nor do they shy away from trysts with bourgeois state alignments, such as the BRICS, or with regimes that, at least in talk, claim to stand against the hegemonic imperialist bloc.

In general terms, on the other hand, considering the global landscape of the class struggle, the party’s attitude toward economic struggle could be summarized by the formula that workers’ struggles must take place “outside the control of the official unions” (i.e., regime, state-registered and pro-boss). If such struggles escape the domination of the trade union apparatus serving capital, the working class will set out on the path of its own class independence, which will only be truly realized when the Communist Party takes over the leadership of the proletariat.

We do not limit our agitation to organized opposition within this or that sector or trade union, but aim at the unification of workers beyond the sectional and individual control of trade unions. We must always keep in mind the distinction between tactical issues and the general strategic goals of the Party for the class as a whole.

This or that tactical claim may or may not lead to positive responses from workers and their minority organizations, and the absence of immediate success is not in itself a reason to abandon such claims. Agitation can always be reviewed and refined once the struggle has reached a certain degree of maturity. However, tactics should not be elevated to the level of strategy, because when an organization’s overall strategy fails, the organization faces serious objective problems in reorienting itself. Our party, which is a jealous party, and is fiercely protective of its own political isolation, claims our own “sectarianism.” We shun any alliance and coalition with other parties, and we likewise disdain every inclination towards “union sectarianism.” We do both by virtue of a consistent and dialectical vision.

The road to the united class front must go through a long and complex process, culminating in the exclusive political leadership of the Communist Party over the proletariat. To walk this path, we must treat with great skepticism, and frankly revulsion, any notion that our organization should become the promoter of new unions, or of small, scattered trade union agglomerations. Though they are few in numbers, the latter remain infested with shady leftist grouplets—our insidious and unrelenting enemies.

The experiences of class struggle in different countries, both victorious and defeated, are of vital importance and will have different weight and importance in different countries. Moreover, demands—except those that we deem universally valid in all times and circumstances, like wage increases, decrease of working hours, wages for the unemployed—can be articulated differently from one moment to the next, and across different countries and continents.

We recall here, by way of conclusion, two points contained in the Characteristic Theses of the Party (1951):

“The Party will never set up economic associations which exclude those workers who do not accept its principles and leadership. But the Party recognises without any reserve that not only the situation which precedes insurrectional struggle but also all phases of substantial growth of Party influence amongst the masses cannot arise without the expansion between the Party and the working class of a series of organisations with short term economic objectives with a large number of participants. Within such organisations the party will set a network of communist cells and groups, as well as a communist fraction in the union.
“In periods when the working class is passive, the Party must anticipate the forms and promote the constitution of organisations with immediate economic aims. These may be unions grouped according to trade, industry, factory committees or any other known grouping or even quite new organisations. The Party always encourages organisations which favour contact between workers at different localities and different trades and their common action. It rejects all forms of closed organisations.
“[…]
“The Party does not hide the fact that when things start moving again this will not only be felt by its own autonomous development, but by the starting up again of mass organisations. Although it could never be free of all enemy influence and has often acted as the vehicle of deep deviations; although it is not specifically a revolutionary instrument, the union cannot remain indifferent to the party who never gives up willingly to work there, which distinguishes it clearly from all other political groups who claim to be of the ‘opposition’. The Party acknowledges that today, its work in the unions can be done but sporadically; it does not renounce however to enter into the economic organisations, and even to gain leadership as soon as the numerical relationship between its members and sympathisers on the one hand, the union members or a given branch on the other is suitable, so long as the union in question does not exclude all possibility of autonomous class action.”

And in 1962 we added:

“Let us therefore take care to carry out serenely, methodically, continuously our work of penetration and proselytizing among the proletarian masses, without allowing ourselves to be seized either by discouragement over failures that we must foresee and discount in advance, or by the hysterics of ‘doing for the sake of doing,’ and above all without indulging in the illusion that the time of revolutionary recovery can be accelerated by tactical recipes or organizational expedients that isolate the conventionally called trade union work from the general and political work of the movement”.

This is why the International Communist Party is still walking on the same road as always for workers’ economic struggle, by relaunching the integral formula of the united class trade union front of the whole proletariat.

The Conjuring of Rent

Since the dawn of humanity, mining has been a fundamental part of every economy of every society. The metals extracted from the earth have defined eras of human development. Even today, some five millennia after the end of the Copper Age, this precious metal remains a vital force, powering our electrical connections and forming components in almost all electronic devices. Yet there are certain aspects of modern mining operations that the capitalist mode of production has subsumed. Everything that is extracted from the bowels of the earth or that grows from it, also thanks to agricultural activities, on the surface of our planet, intertwines with what our movement has termed the “conjuring of rent.” This “sorcery” that is consummated in the capitalist market allows those who control these particular productions to also take possession of shares of surplus value that are produced by other sectors of the economy. In fact, the market price of agricultural or mining products is not linked to the amount of labour required to produce them, but to the production costs that weigh on the less fertile soils or mines that are less rich in minerals and metals intended for sale. This can be explained by the fact that, just as the population’s need for food, the need for metal for industry and for the development of infrastructure, determine a demand that the bourgeois economists call “inelastic.” This can be satisfied by exploiting the less fertile land or mines where productivity is fairly low. Thus, the market price of certain products will be determined by the least fertile soil or the least mineral-rich mines. The production of these things must also be exploited in such a way that the overall supply of food or raw material is not less than the demand. For if the market price of a particular metal or food product were lower, the least fertile farmland or the mine least rich in metal would immediately be put out of the market and the overall demand for foodstuffs or metals and other raw materials will no longer be satisfied.

It is no coincidence that even the great capitalist powers wage wars, often through proxy mercenaries, when it comes to seizing underground resources. A particular case is the now decades-long war that is desecrating the Kivu region in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the main prize is coltan, a tantalum-rich mineral essential for producing hardware for computers and cell phones. These exported conflicts arise as the mines and land acquired multiply the capital invested in them to an extent that industry cannot offer under any circumstances. As Marxist theory explained more than 160 years ago, the rate of profit of these primary sectors of the economy has a tendency to fall. However, the rapacious international bourgeoisies, perturbed to invest when faced with the prospect of a meagre return, swarm like locusts whenever they catch a glimpse of the mirage of doubling or tripling the profit on invested capital. Yet inherent in the very process of capitalist accumulation lies its own undoing: the capitalists’ profits are never fully secure from the indocility of their enemy class—the proletariat.

BHP in Chile

The Escondida mine in northern Chile is the largest in the world. About 400,000 tons of copper ore is extracted from it per day, which accounts for about 5% of the global production of that metal. But there’s another world record linked to this mine: the BHP Group, which owns it, is also the largest mining company globally. This multinational company, headquartered in Melbourne, is involved not only in copper but also in the extraction and processing of iron, diamonds, bauxite, and oil. It has facilities in 25 countries and employs 36,000 people. Like Rio Tinto—the world’s second-largest multinational in the global mining sector— the BHP Group is a product of the internationalization of the Australian economy. This global expansion is mainly tied to Australia’s major port cities and due to the difficulty of finding outlets for capital in a very small domestic market, despite the vast geographical expanse of the continent.

Copper Fever

In recent times, the BHP Group has seen a significant increase in profits thanks to the surge in copper prices on the global market. However, this has brought no improvement to the living conditions of the Chilean miners at Escondida, who, after several years (the last significant union action at the mine took place in 2017 and lasted 44 days), have gone on strike. On August 13th, the miners walked off the job following the failure of negotiations with BHP’s top management. These negotiations, between the company and the workers, who were primarily represented by Union No. 1, occur every three years. However, this year they resumed after the failure to reach an agreement created tension between the company’s management and the workers.

The strike quickly proved its effectiveness when the company softened its stance and, after three days, signed an agreement that included some wage and contract improvements for the workers. A union leader celebrated with perhaps too much enthusiasm by proclaiming, “It’s an absolute victory: the company gave us everything we asked for.” However, a 2% wage increase above the consumer price index isn’t much to celebrate over. Another so-called “concession” by the company was a contractual vacation bonus of 25,000 pesos—just over $27. This leads us to think that, once again, the workers have been deceived by their union, which quickly found an excuse to call off the strike.

Mining Disruptions May Have an Impact on the Market

At a time when the world industry is “hungry” for copper and the price of it is soaring, the miners’ strike posed a significant threat to the BHP group’s profits. The work stoppage of the Escondida workers was enough for the world price of copper to rise by more than 2%, proving how remarkable the strength of the proletariat has even as a small number of workers—just over 2,000 miners—take decisive action through an all-out strike. Despite the patience and calm exuded by financial analysts and company spokesmen, and despite what until recently appeared to be a relatively stable market, the bourgeoisie is perpetually beset by the nightmare of workers’ struggle. The union itself stated that workers at other facilities were closely watching the fight and awaiting its outcome. Union unrest in such a critical sector of the global economy consistently poses challenges for the Chilean bourgeoisie and their trading partners in the United States and China. The effect on the market is, of course, where the concerns of the bourgeoisie end. The workers, on the other hand, have more pressing concerns, such as the general rise in the cost of living, precarious working conditions, and a widespread sense of discontent affecting broad sections of the international working class.

A Scab in Sheep’s Clothing Is Still a Scab

The union’s negotiating delegation, after rejecting the company’s requests to delay or suspend the strike in order to avoid halting production, accused the company of not allowing enough time even to consult with union members. Furthermore, Union No. 1, prior to the strike, had denounced the company’s “anti-union practices,” as it had attempted to impose a contract without the legally required government supervision over labour contracts. The union later also accused the company of using scabs to circumvent negotiations and prevent any loss of profits—an entirely predictable move by the company—highlighting the fact that Chilean law prohibits such practices, even when strikers are replaced by internal company employees. But we know that these so-called “legal protections” are deceptive, and it is an undeniable fact that the bourgeoisie frequently breaks the very laws it has implemented to keep workers in check. After all, bourgeois law exists to protect private property in the long term, even if it may appear to side with workers in the short term.

Moreover, the production stoppage at the Escondida mine cost BHP an estimated 25-30 million dollars per day, and if the strike had continued, it would have impacted Chile’s national GDP. What’s more, inflation has once again disrupted the capitalist economy, wars have thrown off normal trade routes, and basic necessities are becoming increasingly expensive and difficult to obtain. How, then, could anyone believe that the bourgeoisie would hesitate to fall back on the age-old use of scabs?

The company insisted that the skeleton crew it deployed to keep the mine running during the strike were not scabs but simply non-unionized employees, mobilized as part of an emergency plan to prevent production—and the company’s profits—from coming to a complete halt. Generally, in order to respond to the anti-union strategies of the company, workers must prolong the strike and extend it outside the company confines.

The Possibility of Extending the Struggle

The protest at Escondida was also accompanied by labour unrest at another copper mine in Caserones, owned by the Canadian multinational Lundin Mining. One of the three unions representing the workers at the Caserones mine had also called for a strike after wage negotiations failed. But these two strikes were not merely abstractly connected. They took place within a vast network of interconnected industries: the copper miners in South America extract the ore, which is then sent for further processing in smelters in China, where 60-70% of the production flows. This is just a small detail, a tiny segment of the global economic system, that gives us an idea of the level of extreme economic integration that the capitalist mode of production has now achieved on an international scale.

The Barriers Against Generalizing the Struggle

Of course, there are many barriers that prevent the generalization of the class struggle to the entire proletariat. The bourgeoisie employs a variety of tactics to repress, intimidate, and threaten the working class.

An important factor that works in favor of the bourgeoisie is the separation of workers from one another, the atomization process that separates them. The bourgeoisie dreams of every worker feeling like an isolated island, and at times, it succeeds. The limited spread of union struggles across different regions of the world puts the proletariat in a precarious and dangerously weak position.

Copper miners in Chile face the endemic exploitation and alienation of capitalist social relations. Similarly, smelters in China operate under similar exploitative conditions. Moreover, the working class must contend with the opportunism of union bureaucrats and the fragmentation of their economic organisations, which hinder the development of a united class union. Even the Caserones mine is organised by three separate unions!

The Proletarian Solution Against the Bourgeoisie and Capitalism

Workers must come to believe that a working class united by a collective spirit and strong cohesion poses a lethal threat to the entire bourgeois mode of production.

The International Communist Party urges workers to fight for the unification of all their struggles, overcoming barriers of company, sector, and nationality. What is needed, then, is a generalized workers’ struggle that continuously brings in new masses of proletarians.

Our Party eagerly awaits the day when the workers of Escondida will return to the struggle, perhaps joining forces with those at Caserones, and eventually, the miners will be joined by the workers of the Chinese smelters. But we will not stop there. We will not stop until workers at every stage of the production chain are organised to defend their immediate economic interests and, tomorrow, rise together to bring an end to the ignoble capitalist regime.

The eruption of anti-government protests in Kenya this June, and the bloody repression that followed, have by no means obscured the spectre haunting Nigeria. In Africa’s most populous country, where the younger generation of proletarians are experiencing the worst cost-of-living crisis ever seen, the embers of class insubordination are being rekindled. A formidable strike unfolded that could threaten the peace across the entire African continent. On May 31st, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), the largest trade union organizations in Nigeria, called for an indefinite general strike. This nationwide strike manifested in response to the government’s indifference on the issue of the minimum wage. The trade unions demanded an increase from 30,000 Nigerian Naira (just over USD 18 at the current exchange rate) to 494,000 Naira (about USD 300). This mobilization reflects the growing resolve of workers to challenge capitalist domination, both nationally and internationally.

Although Nigeria is not among the poorest countries in the sub-Saharan region, the living and working conditions of its proletariat are among the harshest. Workers in the declining textile industry endure 12-hour shifts, producing luxury items for mere pennies an hour. The economy, heavily dependent on volatile oil prices, is plagued with corruption and suffers from inefficient management. This year the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs has seen $640,000 disappear from embezzlement and various misappropriations. The patronage economy is thriving, with brand new public entities emerging overnight to offer prestigious positions to the underbrush of the already parasitic political class. Many young people, now disillusioned about their future life prospects in overcrowded cities, are increasingly turning to banditry and religious extremism. For the others, they swell the ranks of the industrial reserve army, intensifying the competition for jobs and, in turn, further depressing abysmal wages.

Nigeria is a country endowed with natural resources that has experienced sustained economic growth in the early years of this century. While for us Marxists, GDP figures aren’t the most significant for describing a country’s wealth; for more developed countries it is much more important for us to assess their industrial production. In the case of Nigeria, we are dealing with a country in which the bulk of national wealth depends on oil revenue. Oil comprises more than 90% of exports, and it also accounts for 80% of the national budget. The country’s nominal GDP was $470 billion in 2022, but IMF estimates for 2024 to place it below $253 billion. In 2015, it had reached its peak at $574 billion. In addition to the loss of over two hundred billion in nominal GDP over nine years, the challenging economic situation must also consider the substantial population increase, which grew from 184 million in 2015 to over 229 million in 2024. However, the situation does not seem as catastrophic as the nominal GDP figures might suggest. In fact, the GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power parity, has dropped by about a fifth since 2015, which would indicate significant impoverishment, but still not as drastic as one might infer from the nominal GDP. The continuous devaluations of the Naira have conspicuously contributed towards this, with its exchange rate against the dollar more than halving over the last year.

In this context of this chronic economic crisis, the harsh economic reforms of President Bola Tinubu have only worsened the difficulties faced daily by the proletarians and semi-proletarian layers, who make up the vast majority of Nigeria’s population. These reforms include the removal of fuel subsidies, which tripled prices, and an increase in tariffs.

Nonetheless, the workers reacted to these new attacks on their living and working conditions. A sudden and widespread wave of struggles have upended the country since the first week of June. Unionized workers in the electricity and airline sectors crossed their arms on June 3rd, causing a complete shutdown of both the national electrical grid and air transport across the countries. Scabs in the electricity network who did not join the strike were forcibly removed from their workstations, some being beaten. With the electricity grid down, Lagos and Abuja airports came to a standstill, schools closed, and hospitals could no longer function, all as a result of the Nigerian proletariat’s determination to fight. Electricity and water supplies were also cut off at the National Assembly, confirming the proletariat’s disdain for the sordid bourgeois bivouac of a parliament, while protesters blocked the gates of the building. These actions effectively paralysed all government functions. Striking workers were also seen ordering Nigerian Revenue Agency officials out of their offices. Banks and hospitals remained closed, with one doctor stating that the Nigerian health system was “on the verge of collapse” as hospitals could no longer function without electricity. The school sector unions showed their solidarity with their mobilization announcing strikes, demanding stolen back-pay, and denouncing the government’s indifference to their economic plight. The oil industry unions also threatened to strike, but the government had failsafes and enforce the continuation of oil extraction.

As the strike evolved, the government thought to wait out the workers’ resolve with their reserves of capital, all accumulated at the workers’ own toil. However, the international bourgeoisie intervened, with the World Bank loaning $500 million to support Nigeria’s faltering electricity sector. This interim measure underscored the severity of the crisis.

During these palpable weeks, the government was forced to make concessions on demands, eliminating the huge increases in electricity and fuel tariffs that had reduced workers’ purchasing power. After six weeks of strike action, negotiations with the government came to an agreement that set the minimum wage at 70,000 Naira (USD 42), far less than what the unions had demanded. The government also promised to review electricity tariffs and to consider their impact on poorer consumers, as well as pledging to increase investment in transport infrastructure and renewable energy. The NLC and the TUC to this compromise both gave their consent and workers were sent back to their jobs, but now with an additional 40,000 Naira (24 dollars) more in their paychecks.

War is returning to the gates of the European capitalist metropoles with dramatic attention, bringing with it the ancient disease of patriotism which, even in the distant past, diverts a part of the labor and union movement away from the struggle for their proper class interests. Such a disease was the cause of a long series of historical defeats for the working class from which it is still struggling to recover, even after such a great length of time. This nationalist swerve, in its time, affected a very significant portion of the parties and labor unions which, 110 years ago, was conquered by this nefarious virus and took sides in the First World War, putting themselves under the deceitful banner of their bourgeois fatherlands. This was the first great defeat of the labor movement in the imperialist historical phase of capitalism, which persists to this day. Therefore, in order to attempt to prevent this horrible screenplay of war preparation from reaching its dramatic epilogue, we must investigate the profound causes of that treachery wrought by the leaders of parties and labor unions. These leaders offered the proletariat, tied at its hands and feet, to its class enemy. They ensnared it in a stifling social peace, all in order to make it support its own bourgeoisie in the war effort.

Even if this process took on different shapes and sizes, across all advanced capitalist countries, labor unions and parties played a very important role in strengthening the homefront during the course of the conflict. Furthermore, the (at least apparently) different ways in which the labor movement reacted to the call for unity of the fatherland did not stop the outcome from still being the same, which was simply catastrophic for the proletariat. The case of Germany was a model example in this sense, as the Social Democratic Party exercised an almost absolute control over the labor unions, and so the decision made by its parliamentary group to vote on war credits had the effect of bringing with it, almost without opposition, the classification of workers as a part of the national front. Even in France the majority of the SFIO (even though its name meant “French Section of the Workers’ International”) voted for war credits, and, even though the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) was not controlled in the same way by the Socialist Party, the wave of patriotism managed to impose itself. Sometimes it did this with more ferocious methods, as was seen with the case of the assassination of Jean Jaurés. In the Italian case, the subordination of the labor movement to the war became mystified by the deceptive position taken by the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) leadership of “neither support nor sabotage.” Hidden behind this slogan was the necessity of dealing with a working-class base less willing to slavishly follow the standard-bearers of the bourgeois fatherland. If this were the case, it was because the set of institutions and social devices which, in Germany, had favored a greater political submission of the working class to the bourgeois regime, had not yet developed in Italy. Weighing into this was the relative backwardness of Italian industrial development compared to Germany, where a different degree of integration of the more “affluent” strata of the proletariat (those which Lenin called the “labor aristocracy”) into the bourgeois regime had been achieved. For this reason, the component of the labor movement which was most enthusiastically seduced by the patriotic spirit was that of revolutionary syndicalism. This tendency was organizationally connected with the Italian Syndicalist Union, and broke with the latter precisely on the issue of war. With regard to the interventionist orientation of Sorelian trade unionism in Italy, the thesis that it played a role of some significance in precipitating the events that led to the war, cannot ultimately be considered unfounded. However, this does not mean agreeing with the narrative that sees rejecting membership in unions dominated by the Socialist Party as the cause of what weakened the formation which was opposed to intervention in the war. The case of Germany is a very eloquent example of how the bourgeoisie managed to win over the union and labor movement for war, even in a country where there was a larger socialist-inspired party and in which the control exercised by this party over the unions was even stronger.

If, even in the case of Italy, no internal force within the proletarian movement was able to simultaneously stop the process of mass adhesion to the war effort and to impose its own class interests (including that of not being slaughtered for the benefit of the capitalists!), this should be explained by searching for analogies with the conditions that had been created in other European countries. It is therefore necessary to evaluate how many of these mechanisms, which have had a detrimental influence within the proletariat, are still present in today’s society and the world of labor. These mechanisms are of course simultaneously political, economic, and ideological.

The formula of the so-called “national interest,” agitated by every bourgeois faction and every opportunist political formation within the labor movement, beyond its fallacious and deceptive character, condenses within itself a core of horrifying “truth.” This is the case to the extent that it describes, through the lens of bourgeois ideology, the fact that, at a certain point in their development, the imperialist powers of old Europe found themselves facing each other in a contest. This contest had transferred from competition between companies to the higher level of competition between states. Monopoly capitalism is the formula that summarizes this tendency, which has pushed bourgeois politics to interject between itself and the proletariat the diaphragm of the “welfare state.” This is done in order to prevent the sharpening of social conflict and any revolutionary overthrow that would support a process of transition to socialism, whose material prerequisites have already reached a notable degree of maturity. In fact, in state-monopoly capitalism, the social character of labor, which sees the cooperation of growing human masses, is taken to its extreme consequences. Then, on the side of distribution, individual appropriation remains. But in a monopolistic context, thanks to such individual appropriation, it becomes increasingly difficult to hide the character of capital as a “relationship between men mediated by things.” The so-called “welfare state” fulfills, in this case, a multitude of functions in an economic, social, and ideological sense, the result of which is the maximum mystification of reality. On the one hand, the surplus value extorted from workers is partially returned to them in various forms of assistance. On the other hand, public spending becomes the element that mystifies the class character of the state. The state is then deceptively proposed as this neutral entity with respect to the different components of the social body. The “welfare state” therefore acts as a vehicle for bourgeois ideology, which imposes itself through the corruption of the proletariat. The more prosperous a country’s economy is, the greater the resources that the bourgeoisie leading the state will be able to devote to corrupting its proletariat, both materially and ideologically.

Let’s put on our seven-league boots and move forwards a few decades. We can say that in both post-war periods the social mechanism of the welfare state, whose embryo had already formed in the last decades of the nineteenth century, has never ceased to expand and grow in importance in the large capitalist countries. This growth, especially in the three decades of economic prosperity following the Second World War, has modeled union and political life on the paradigm of corporatism.

The reformist parties of the labor movement had undergone a genetic mutation through the two imperialist wars. They arrived at a program of regulating the bourgeois political economy and its crises. Meanwhile, the unions reborn from the ashes of the European conflict have accentuated their characters as, de facto, an element of the state apparatus.

To tell the truth, the process that led the union to become an instrument of the nation and its state, and to become a powerful vehicle of bourgeois ideology within the proletariat, was supported by certain characteristics which had accompanied it from its birth. Let’s look more specifically at the Italian case, and in particular at the history of the Italian General Confederation of Labor (CGdL). We can observe how from the moment of its foundation in 1906, the cornerstones of this confederal organization were the trade federations that had taken over the then-widespread reality of labor chambers, even back then.

The latter had the advantage of being grounded in territory. This allowed it to bring together workers from different factories and workplaces, protecting them from the hierarchy and networks of interests that lurked within those companies. At the same time, they brought together workers from different trades, bringing forth an awareness that they belonged to a single social class, even if it was not without internal articulations. Of course, even today the CGIL (with the I standing for Italian), which is different from the CGdL, contemplates the existence of labor chambers in its statute, but it is no mystery to anyone that the union has always put them in second place compared to trade federations, and that currently they are nothing more than a dull simulacra of what they were over a century ago.

Regime unionism, which developed under the bourgeois republic as the legitimate heir of fascist unionism, is the result of the intimately corporatist character of the structure of regime confederations. These regime confederations played an essential role preventing the unification of the working class outside of individual trades, and, especially after the end of the era of prosperity, even outside of individual companies. They did this especially in those trades destined to be divested. Nonetheless, it was precisely in response to the Hot Autumn that, with the adoption of withholding union contributions from paychecks (the famous “delegation”), companies were offered a tool for direct control over workers. All this did was expose them to employer blackmail and police control. This delegation has proven, over time, to be one of the most effective tools for ensuring the subservience of the unions to the logic of capital. It has been the trap that even rank-and-file unionism has not wanted to or even been able to completely escape. Such unionism fails to put up an effective fight since it has (willingly) adapted to the certainty of a monthly income assured by this deduction from paychecks, that no voluntary payment of dues could have guaranteed.

Another important aspect of the corporatist structure of republican Italy was the growing importance assumed by labor laws. The more workers saw the possibility of collectively defending their interests through struggle fade, the more they developed a tendency to appeal to the work courts. They began to entrust their own cause, for a fee, to the care of a lawyer.

The legal assistance offered by unions to workers in navigating labor laws is, to put it generously, a blunt weapon. It has fostered the illusion that the courts of the capitalist state could be the right venue for defending their interests. Behind this trap lies hidden the very dangerous mystification of the state as something intended to be a neutral body, above classes. Thus, workers, often even in perfect solitude, are coaxed back to the decrees of the bourgeois judge. Labor laws act thusly as a safe method to mature in the worker the conviction of their own individual powerlessness. The antidote to this state of affliction can only be found in collective action, which instead demonstrates what extraordinary latent force is endowed within the proletariat as a whole. However, the aim of regime unions, after the end of the times of economic prosperity, was to harness, discourage, and isolate all collective activity of the workers.

The segmentation of the proletariat through trade contracts played a fundamental role in the subordination of the class to capital and its state, while rhetoric about the “general interests of the nation” filled the mouths of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) politicians and the tricolor unionists. In fact, in the language of petit-bourgeois chauvinism, this national interest was nothing more than a fetish behind which the interest of national and international capital was hidden. Say that a section of the workers were to demand better working conditions and improved economic treatment, perhaps by reclaiming some of the relative surplus value taken by technological advancements and the rise of the organic composition of capital. They would have immediately faced an anathema against these “corporatist” attitudes, and inevitably against the “general interest of the nation.”

How many times did the Stalinist and ultra-opportunist PCI of the 1970s claim that certain sections of workers demanding wage increases were unleashing “corporatist interests,” labeling it as the “entryway to fascism?” This represented a kind of “Freudian displacement,” diverting attention from the inherently corporatist nature of the trade federations and the entire union, which was gearing up for the turning point in EUR, Rome. The petit-bourgeois chauvinism advocated for by the reformist left has had a prominent function in pushing the workers’ struggles towards non-class objectives, through the moderation of wage requests and the acceptance of the flexibility of work.

From the EUR turning point of February 1978 to the open contentions of the 1990s, more than a decade has passed. During this time, some sections of the working class distanced themselves from the tricolor unions. They initiated struggles that were beyond the control of the regime’s bigwigs. At one phase, these struggles seemed to hint at the opening of a new season.

Contentious unions have experienced some downsizing. However, this has not completely annulled their role as a “social glue.” They still manage to keep a considerable part of the proletariat hitched to the bandwagon of the bourgeois nation.

On the other hand, the birth and development of rank-and-file unions arose from the workers’ perceived inability to utilize the Triple Alliance. They felt this limitation prevented them from effectively defending their working conditions, real wages, and employment itself. The possibility of doing without tricolor unions gave many workers hope for the rebirth of an authentic class-based union. The most combative workers’ disputes in recent decades have generally had to rely on rank-and-file unionism.

But today, more than four decades after the birth of rank-and-file unionism, due to the poor overall development of the class struggle, we must make a balance sheet of the positives and negatives. To the extent that rank-and-file unions have not been able to adopt an organizational model consistent with the aims of the workers’ struggle, they also have accepted the anti-proletarian practice of delegation, while subordination to the dominant ideology has imposed demands on the ground of “rights” rather than on that of needs. This often puts demands for wage increases and reductions in working hours in the background. In these long years in which struggles have been limited or absent, even the rank-and-file unions have appeared to be following a path that has brought them closer, in many ways, to the regime unions. A discourse that is especially valid for the Base Trade Union (USB), which has agreed to submit to the 2015 law on union representation.

Generally speaking, rank-and-file unions have seen the growth of a manifold bureaucratic apparatuses in connection to their number of members. They have multiplied the number of union detachments in many companies and in the public sector, and they also offer services such as Fiscal Assistance Centers (CAF), patronage, etc. All these aspects do not have much to do with the class struggle; rather, they enable these apparatuses to survive and perpetuate themselves, without having to rely too much on the recovery of the workers’ movement.

At times, in order to meet workers’ requests to save their jobs in companies undergoing restructuring or divestment, the two most important rank-and-file unions in terms of membership, the USB and the CUB, have invoked the life-saving solution of nationalization.

Many rank-and-file union militants seem completely unaware of the pitfalls that lie in this appeal to the bourgeois class state to save workers from unemployment. Even the very possibility—often only illusory and ideological—that unemployment can be avoided thanks to the intervention of the state, is another important factor towards nationalism.

In fact, if the imperialist contest is described, in a simplified way, as an economic competition between nations, then the completely erroneous belief takes root that the guardian of workers’ interests is the state to which they belong.
Even a position taken by a rank-and-file union on the side of a formation engaged in war, even one apparently far away in space, is a fact that can lead to the accumulation of flammable material. Material which, by the way, serves to light the pestilent fire of nationalism. For example, the attitude of the SI Cobas and the USB in the face of the war in Gaza is partisan behavior in the bourgeois sense. It confuses the righteous indignation about the genocide of the Palestinians and the harsh conditions of national oppression with adhesion to a camp that includes Russia and Iran. The word “Zionist” simply becomes a slur, and the existence of a Jewish and non-Jewish Israeli proletariat is denied. In this, the political directions of these “union-parties” of pseudo-Marxist orientation, open the way to bourgeois interventionism in every war.

The SI Cobas has always tried, in vain, to overcome the unbridgeable gap that separates its once strongly ideologized leadership from its rank-and-file, which is composed mainly of immigrant logistics workers. The attempt to transform these workers, who are capable of very generous struggles, into “perfect” Marxist militants has proven to be unrealistic and counterproductive for the union itself. The mid-term results have been the cessation of the growth of the SI Cobas and the induction of the union leaders to side unconditionally with Hamas in order to please their rank-and-file, which has within it a considerable portion of Muslim workers.

The USB has made a choice that mirrors the campist tradition of the so-called “Network of Communists” (RdC) group that leads the union, which has gone over the years from strictly pro-Sovietism to one-way anti-imperialism that demonizes the United States and its allies—as if there is no working class in those countries. This frontist attitude in Middle Eastern conflicts has led these unions to join those who rejoice in the massacres committed by Hamas on October 7th. Meanwhile, the majority of the proletariat is horrified by these massacres, just as they are by the carnage in Gaza. One gets the impression that, in a general situation where the international proletariat is docile, these sorcerer’s apprentices view the sending of Palestinian masses to slaughter under the banner of nationalism and obscurantism as a good substitute for class struggle. We will not have to wait too long before the disastrous results of such blatantly interventionist and anti-proletarian attitudes become apparent.

In such a situation, the need to struggle against the germ of nationalism, which manifests as a campist attitude of respect, that is taking root in some elements of rank-and-file unionism becomes clear. It is necessary to reiterate the need for the working class to reject any appeal to sovereignism, any flag-waving that serves the deceitful fetish of the nation, and any alignment within the wars of the bourgeoisie. We recognize the bourgeoisie as an international class that uses the national state to better oppress the proletariat. The working class is also an eminently international class and must achieve unity to put itself in a position to fight only for itself. That is, to fight for its own contingent and historical interests that prefigure a world without classes, without capital, without exploitation, and without borders.

The party’s text No. 1, The Communist Party in the Tradition of the Left, is, in many ways, the fundamental text of the party. It draws together all of the historical lessons of the numerous events that had occurred to the party up until 1974. Right off the bat, we can say that this lesson was nothing more than the confirmation of assumptions that were already contained in our historical doctrine. In 1974, just a few months after a painful split that had reduced the party’s membership to a few sections, it was deemed necessary to retrace the path of study of our tradition. We found, in that tradition, the confirmation that we were on the right path: the path for all time. Most of the quotations that we utilize are taken from this text, which is considered “the fundamental party text.” This is not just to boast about orthodoxy, but rather to help comrades and readers deepen the points that we merely touch upon. If we refer to it as fundamental, this is because it brings together the entire written tradition of the Left in more than 200 pages of quotation. It is then joined by a commentary that is itself the flesh and blood of our doctrine, which clarifies and synthesizes what is set forth in those quotations.

Nothing in the party is ever taken for granted as far as adherence to tradition is concerned, and it is the task of comrades to continuously return to the roots of doctrine. This is both to find continual confirmation that they are on the right path, and because with successive generations such work is the indispensable training ground for the revolutionary communist militant.

The very reference to tradition is indicative: party doctrine is more than historical experiences, theses, and organizational precepts. The party’s mode of existence is also, and above all, made up of a series of behaviors that are not easy to classify. Nevertheless, they constitute the backbone of the party, its guarantee to not slip, through disregard for tradition, into behaviors that are not our own. In time these behaviors can, almost inevitably, lapse into improper theorizing.

This is why our doctrine always makes references to categories which are inadmissible, incomprehensible, or otherwise inapplicable to class society, such as “tradition” or “fraternal consideration among comrades.”

Unfortunately, improper theorizing can occur over time, and over the course of a century there have been some. The most critical point is always the tactical field, when choices are foreshadowed that seem obvious and advantageous, but instead fall precisely outside doctrine and tradition. These are the attitudes, theorized or not, that we have called opportunism. From deviation to its theorization, the step is short, if not countered. “With the Left we know for certain that the party alters under the impulse of its own action; we know that indiscriminate use of tactics corresponds to changes in the organisation. Inevitably, then, any ’model’ of the party gets shattered into a thousand pieces.” (The Communist Party in the Tradition of the Left, ed. 1986; Foreword 1974. Below will be only “The Communist Party…”).

It was this domain that was “the starting point for some of the party’s most dangerous deviations. Many party structures founded or re-founded on very solid doctrinarian and organizational bases, and even on the wave of a victorious revolution, have been distorted out of all recognition in the space of a couple of years because they thought that possession of ‘sound principles’ made the use of any maneuver permissible, or worse still, that a ‘strong and disciplined’ organization made any tactical about-face permissible. That the painful corollary of such a tactical ’dégringolade’ is that it is then inevitably accompanied by a degeneration of relations within the Party, by the appearance of fractionism from above, by methods of organizational coercion and by out and out political struggle; this is something the century old history of the ‘Party’ class organ has taught us; and it is a definitive lesson.” (The Communist Party…)

Thus the party is constantly under attack from outside, subject to attempts to divert it, to have it deviate from its path, attempts often made in good faith (“the road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” as Lenin put it), but nevertheless dangerous to its existence. Not for the physical existence of the organization (although often those who left the party were short-lived), which may very well survive. The problem is its survival as a party of the Left, as a revolutionary communist party, the sole heir of the uncorrupted revolutionary tradition that we synthetically represent as an unbroken line from Marx-Engels, to Lenin, to the Left founder of the Communist Party of Italy, to the Fraction Abroad, to the organizational revival of the Party in 1951. Perhaps a unique case in history, the party that is publishing Il Partito Comunista, a continuation of the Il Programma Comunista since 1974, has existed for more than 70 years without changing a comma of its positions, its way of working, or its tradition.

Surely there is nothing like it in the landscape of far-left parties, not even in those most apparently similar to us. No one else has remained so stubbornly attached to the tradition and theoretical positions of the Left. Not to mention, of course, the hodgepodge of “communisms” that go out of their way to lure the working class under their banners.

The most important duty in this historical moment, when the revolutionary assault to power appears to be objectively distant in time, is to keep intact the theoretical patrimony of the Left. We must make it available for the class when the conditions will be adequate. “From then [1951] on, the party’s task has been to preserve this sentiment, and this science of subversion. In the amorphous present, the party’s task is to seek the confirmation of its theorems in contemporary and past events rather than trying to find new exceptions to them…. [K]eeping the conscious proletarian organization alive is both the most important revolutionary action of all, and a scorching theoretical defeat for our enemy towering above us.” (The Communist Party…) A preservation that cannot be merely the preservation of sacred texts, of unchanging positions, like Vestal Virgins perpetuating the sacred fire. The task of the party is, yes, to preserve its theoretical, tactical, doctrinal heritage, but this task, which our masters taught us, cannot be accomplished by sprinkling books with rat-poison, nor by endlessly republishing the sacred texts. Certainly, our heritage must be safeguarded. But in order for it to be a weapon and not a mere collection of concepts, it is necessary for the party to keep it a living doctrine by the continuous work of studying it, of reconfirming it in the light of historical events, and of transmitting it between generations. This work does not change the substance, but makes it alive and current, work that we call “sculpting.”

Although we are in the age of Artificial Intelligence, no machine, no matter how educated, can replace the passion, the sensitivity, the dialectic of the revolutionary working on our huge body of texts, the result of generations of militants.

That is why the party, if it is to survive in the sense we that we have described, must secure a continuous and uninterrupted turnover of men and women, of militants who learn the art of revolution.  These militants must apply themselves to the work of studying and sculpting the doctrine.

“The party cannot and must not restrict its activity either to conserving the purity of theoretical principles and of the organizational collective, or to achieving immediate successes and numerical popularity regardless of the cost. At all times and in all situations, this activity must incorporate the following three points:

“a)     Defence and clarification of the fundamental programmatic postulates in the light of new facts as they arise, that is to say of the theoretical consciousness of the working class;
b)     Assurance of the continuity of the party’s organizational unity and efficiency, and its defence against contamination by extraneous influences that are opposed to the revolutionary interests of the proletariat;
c)     Active participation in all of the struggles of the working class, including those arising from partial and limited interests…” (Lyon Theses, 1926)

It follows that the process by which, in this historical period, the party strengthens itself or simply ensures a physiological turnover with new militants is simply vital. It is paramount among its various activities.

Thus proselytizing and propaganda of the theory and program are necessary and permanent tasks of the party. The party directs its propaganda toward individuals of all classes, in all circles, and by all means.

In deciding on the methods, channels, and the proper proportion of our forces to be engaged in proselytizing, the party must not forget that the extent and timing of the healthy numerical growth of the party, a social-natural phenomenon, are independent of its will. Therefore, no significant numerical increases in the party’s membership are to be expected in the absence of a resumption of extensive economical struggles of the proletariat.

The party’s propaganda consists in presenting itself to the outside world, its strict continuity in the fields of doctrine, practical directives for action, modes of relations, and internal work.

Since the adherence of individuals to the party is always determined more by needs, intuitions, and feelings than by individual consciousness or comparison between the history of the parties and their doctrines, the best propaganda is that which approaches by the call of militia and disciplined communist work, not opinion. In the case of the proletarians, this is further enforced by stating the right directives for immediate action. The sequence for individuals could be formulated as follows: you see, you join, you listen and work, and in time you will understand something.

Experience with militating in other “left-wing” groups is not an advantage for those who approach the party and ask to work for us. If anything, it may be an obstacle to be overcome.

The target of party propaganda is individuals and not groups of any kind. Party membership will always be on an individual basis, and we will never admit pre-established groups.

Who are the militants that the party accepts to organize in its structure?

“The party organizes those militants who not only have chosen to struggle for the victory of the revolution, but who are also aware of the objectives that the party is pursuing and know the methods that are necessary for their accomplishment.

“This does not mean that individual consciousness is a condition for admission to the party, which we rule out absolutely; nevertheless this fundamental and principled thesis implies that every organic party relationship ceases to exist when explicit, or worse, diplomatic methods of physical coercion are used within its ranks, which we rule out before, during and after the revolution. This thesis also demonstrates that the members of the party should be considered not as raw material that should be subjected to propaganda and agitation, but as comrades with whom a common effort for the common revolutionary preparation is carried out.” (The Party’s Preparation for Revolution Lies in its Organic Nature…, 1985).

The party has always made a distinction among the men and women orbiting it, according to their degree of involvement in various activities, since its origins in the old Italian Socialist Party. We have information about these categories in our party press from throughout the past century. We also have experience of comrades who have stayed with the party throughout much of that century, and who still (2024) militate in this very party today.

The first figure is the reader. A person who is interested in the party, who buys and reads its press, who attends rallies, conferences, and various events organized by the party. He does not necessarily share its aims and methods, and avoids any involvement in its activities.

An evolution of the reader is the sympathizer. They manifest sharing in the party’s goals and methods, may participate in some party activities – including theoretical meetings open to sympathizers, dissemination of leaflets and newspapers, drafting reports suitable for publication, etc. They may even contribute financially through extemporaneous or regular payments. Contact with the party allows the sympathizer to understand what the party is about, and for the party to assess the characteristics a militant must have. The sympathizer cannot belong to other parties or other schools of thought.

In the past, the figure of the candidate was also mentioned, which today isn’t normally distinguished from the sympathizer. The candidate is a sympathizer who, having acquired some knowledge of the party, decides to commit themselves as a militant. They express a willingness to be organized and let the party know that they are willing to perform all related duties.

If the party deems that the sympathizer/candidate possesses the suitable characteristics, it welcomes them as a militant. This means participation in all theoretical and practical party activities, as well as committing themselves to pay a regular fee that they determine according to their own situation.

Not only that, the sympathizer, like the militant, must also agree to discipline themselves to the party. This is how it was described in the Communist Party of Italy:

“The bourgeois concept that the militant of a party merely pledges his ideological adherence and political vote and pays a periodic fee in money is replaced by the concept that those who join the Communist Party are required to continuously give their practical activity according to the needs of the party. This is accomplished by the organizing of all members… militants or candidates.” (Il Comunista 21/07/1921)

“Military preparation and action demand discipline at least equal to the Communist Party’s political discipline. One cannot obey two separate disciplines. The Communist therefore, as well as the sympathizer who feels truly attached to the Party (and those who do not militate in the Party because of ‘disciplinary reservations’ do not deserve the definition of our sympathizer) cannot and must not accept dependence on other military-type organizations.” (Il Comunista 14/07/1921)

So not only full party members, but also sympathizers and candidates, were bound (even before joining the organization) to the discipline, including military discipline, of the party.

The party organizes public meetings for readers and sympathizers, and sometimes also for a less qualified audience. In these meetings, it addresses topics of more or less general interest, approached with its particular and unique perspective and key of interpretation. This presentation is assisted by leaflet dissemination, poster sticking, and nowadays infographics. These are events in which the party expounds its way of interpreting facts and history, and in which no debates are allowed. However, the speaker may answer questions aimed at better explaining the concepts expounded.

What characteristics must an individual possess to qualify for the role of militant, full party member, and how does the party regulate itself in this regard? The question is not simple, and it involves the very essence of the party and the role of the militant.

Certainly not on the basis of greater knowledge of the doctrine of revolutionary communism.

“Our thesis is that not only are rational comprehension and action inseparable from one other, but, as far as the individual is concerned, action always comes before understanding and consciousness. And so it is for individuals who join the party too…Consciousness doesn’t reside within the individual person either before or after they join the party, or even after a very long time as a militant, but in the collective organ which is composed of old and young, educated and uneducated, and which performs a complex and continuous action in line with a doctrine and a tradition which is invariant. It is the organ ‘party’ that possesses class consciousness, because this possession is denied to the individual, and this consciousness can only exist in an organisation which is able to align its every act, its behaviour, its internal and external dynamics to the pre-existing lines of doctrine, programme and tactics, and which is able to grow and develop on that foundation; which is accepted en bloc even without having been preventively understood. Having a ‘mystical’ side to joining the party is a notion that only scares the Enlightenment influenced petty bourgeois, convinced, as he is, that everything can be learned from books.” (The Communist Party…)

“The basis of discipline comes in the first place from the ‘class consciousness of the proletarian vanguard,’ i.e., of the proletarian minority gathered in the party; Lenin then immediately goes on to draw attention to the qualities of such a vanguard using ‘passionate’ rather than rational language, by pointing out, like in many other of his writings (What is to be Done?) that the communist proletarian joins the party instinctively rather than rationally. Such a thesis had already been defended by Italian socialist youth back in 1912 against the ‘immediatists’ (who like the anarchists are always ‘educationalists’) in the battle between the culturalists and the anti-culturalists, as they were called at the time. In this battle the latter, by requiring faith and passion from young revolutionaries rather than exam results, proved to comply with strict materialism and with the rigour of party theory. Lenin, who’s holding an enlistment rather than teaching in an academy, refers to qualities of ‘devotion, tenacity, self-sacrifice, and heroism.’ We, his distant pupils, have recently, with dialectical resolve, dared to openly refer to the fact of joining the party as a ‘mystical’ occurrence.” (“Left-Wing Communism”: Condemnation of the Renegades to Come, 1961).

“Within the party, ideas are understood and clarified by participating in the complex collective work, which is carried out on three levels: defence of and ‘sculpting’ of theory, active participation in mass struggles, and organisation. Comprehension and understanding cannot be attained without participating in the actual work of the party. Inside the party we engage in a continuous work of theoretical preparation, of close examination of the party’s programmatic and tactical features, and of explanation, in the light of the doctrine, of events taking place in the social arena, and contemporaneously and seamlessly we carry out the practical, organisational work of penetrating the proletariat and battling alongside it. The militant learns from actively participating in this complex work and by becoming totally immersed in it. There is no other way to learn, and our theses have always asserted how deadly it is to place theoretical and practical activity into separate compartments, not only for the party but also for each individual militant.

“Having described the way in which the party-organ transmits its revolutionary theory and revolutionary traditions from one generation to the next, and allows itself to be permeated by said theory and tradition, we can see that it is plainly incompatible with the type of educational scheme according to which young people drawn to the party should first of all be indoctrinated as quickly as possible by expert teachers of Marxism and invited to attend ‘short courses’, and only after that move on to become party militants and participate in real battles. We envisage instead a collectivity, that studies whilst it fights and fights whilst it studies, which learns in the study and on the battlefield; we envisage, that is, an active collectivity, an organ whose survival depends on partaking in a complex and varied activity whose various aspects are inseparable the one from the other. And young people are attracted to and become committed to this complex work, become immersed in it, and, organically find their role within it, precisely by getting involved and taking part in it. Nobody needs a degree either before or after they join, and neither need they sit any exams: everyone is tested instead by the work they do, which selects individuals in an organic way for particular tasks.

“To join the party it requires more than a ‘Marxist’ education and a personal knowledge of our doctrine; it requires those gifts that Lenin described as courage, abnegation, heroism and a willingness to fight. It is through verifying these qualities that we come to discriminate between the sympathiser or prospect, and the militant, the active soldier of the revolutionary army; and we certainly don’t define the sympathiser by the fact he doesn’t yet ‘know’, whilst the militant does. Were this not so the entire Marxist scheme would collapse, because during times of revolutionary tumult the communist party is an organisation which has to organise millions of people who don’t have time to attend courses on Marxism, whether short or not, and nor do they need to; they will join us not because they know, but because they feel, “in an instinctive and spontaneous way, without attending even the briefest of brief courses of study which mimic educational qualifications”. And it would not only be anti-Marxist but just plain stupid to consider that these “late arrivals” should serve as “rank-and-file” whilst only those who had had time to “learn” and “prepare themselves” should be leaders. You get yourself ready in one way, and one way alone: by taking part in the collective work of the party. As far as we are concerned you don’t have to know all about the doctrine and programme to be a party militant; a party militant is someone who “has managed to forget, to renounce, to wrench from his heart and his mind the classification under which he is inscribed in the registry of this putrefying society; one who can see and immerse himself in the entire millenary trajectory linking the ancestral tribal man, struggling with wild beasts, to the member of the future community, fraternal in the joyous harmony of the social man.”  (Considerations…, Il Programma Comunista, no.2/1965, point 11)

“One thing is for sure, those who think you need to know everything and understand everything before you can act, or who see the party as an academy for training ‘cadres’, have wrenched precisely nothing from their hearts or minds. They are still up to their necks in the most putrid myth of this putrefying society: the one which holds that the individual, with his miserable little brain, can learn about, or make decisions about, anything other than that which has already been dictated by those astute manipulators of culture and ideas: the ruling classes.” (The Communist Party…)

…to be continued