From Every River to Every Sea, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

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.