The global economy has entered a “timid” recovery but still faces high risks, with some dark clouds on the horizon. (Lagarde, IMF Managing Director, 19 April)
The persistency of the economic crisis of capitalism in advanced economies and the growing ecological crisis (global warming…) are the evidence of the decay of capitalism. Evermore, in spite of scientific and technical progress, starvation still hits a significant part of humanity. Most peoples of dominated countries are thrown into misery. The decomposition of capitalist mode of production threatens humanity’s future and makes its overthrow not only possible and necessary but imperative.
To restore profit rate, the world bourgeoisie is waging a brutal class war through all continents against the world proletariat. In old industrialised countries, the capitalist class destroys the historical gains of the working class (“welfare”, union rights, etc.). Cuts aim at public health and education, unemployment beneficits and pensions. The high level of unemployment increases the pressure on workers who get a job (more tasks, less money, more hours…).
Democratic rights are constrained in old bourgeois democracies Not only fascist and clerical political parties appear again, but “democratic” governments spread jingoism, xenophobia and racism. In all parts of the world, imperialist armies and secret services are preparing for interventions and engaged in military aggressions. Western imperialisms (USA, France, Great Britain) still occupy Afghanistan, have made Libya a centre of tortures and block Syria and Iran. Meantime, Eastern imperialisms (Russia, China) support there the despots against the Iranian
demonstrations and the Syrian upheaval. While strengthening local bourgeois armies against their people and forging alliances with the most reactionary forces (like the Baas, the Islamists in Iran, Pakistan, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria…) against the exploited masses, all the imperialist governments try to mask their rivalries and their plunders by the so called “national independence” or “freedom”.
But national oppression, cuts and brutal repression generate upheavals, turmoil and rebellions. From Greece to Portugal, Egypt to Syria, Libya to USA, from China to Korea, Brazil to Chile, unfurls unrest. And this is the
unfortunate other side of the coin: while the objective conditions for the overthrow of capitalism have ripened, the subjective conditions for victorious socialist revolutions still are lacking. The working class is the only force which is able to replace the old capitalist order with a new one, the transition to world communism to abolish exploitation and misery and, after a period of necessary repression against the former ruling classes (the dictatorship of the proletariat), to secure the fading away of classes and the state. Some representatives of the ruling class are aware of the dead end of capitalist rule. They try to block the road towards socialism by looking for scapegoats as minority religions or migrant workers, hue and cry over “finance” and “speculation”. Hence yesterday “Social Forums” or today “Indignados Movements”: in Spain, the latter leaders claimed to be apolitical; in Greece, it channelled discontent to jingoism; in USA, it claimed to be pacifist… That means that the ruling class will go on ruling society. Not a surprise if some of the petit bourgeois leaders are linked with bourgeois parties (as the US Democratic Party), while others march hand in hand with the treacherous leaders of the working class who, since long, have crossed the class line and serve as safeguards for capitalist rule, former Stalinists, old social-democrats, semi-reformists (fake FI, IST, CWI, L5I…).
Stalinism collapsed, after decades of totalitarian rule in collectivised economies and abject class collaboration elsewhere. With the restoration of capitalism in 1989-1992 in the USSR, Eastern Europe and China by former privileged state bureaucracies, some layers of bureaucrats stole public property, turned into “businessmen” or “businesswomen” and became the core of the new bourgeoisie. So world Stalinism movement already weakened by USSR-China conflict, collapsed, its components either vanishing, rejoining of launching bourgeois parties or integrating the world social democracy which, since 1914, has defended the capitalist order (JCP, Die Linke, RC, PCF, Synaspismos, PCCh…). One of them, the KKE, in front of a revolutionary situation, divides forcefully Greek workers and youth, supports the ineffective “one day strikes”, calls for bourgeois elections and propels reactionary autarky.
The “Socialist International” survives as a parody of the Second Workers International, opening its doors to a lot of bourgeois-nationalist parties like ANC in South Africa, MPLA in Angola, PASOK in Greece, USFP in Morocco, Fatah in Palestine, PPP in Pakistan, PAP in Peru, PS in Senegal, CHP in Turkey, AD in Venezuela…
All social-patriots are formally still clinging to the ideals of social justice, more equality and the promise of limited progressive reforms. It is via their electoral machines and the control of the trade unions that they preserve their value for the capitalist class as belt of transmission into the working class. Both former Stalinists and traditional labour and social-democrat parties are ardent propagandists of class collaboration, nationally and abroad.

When so called reformists (social-democrats and labourites as well as former Stalinists) go to the head of the bourgeois state, they participate in the austerity-policy of their bourgeoisie. Yesterday, SPD in Germany, LP in Great Britain, SP and PCF in France, RC in Italy, PSOE in Spain; today ALP in Australia, SPÖ in Austria, PS in Belgium, NAP in Norway, SMER in Slovakia…

Everywhere, bureaucracies of the main unions are accomplices of the backlash, accepting discussion of the capitalist attacks in name of a so-called firm common interest with the bosses and shareholders, in name of a socalled common national interest with the capitalist class and its state scattering workers and youth resistance in impotent “one day strike”. With the help of reformist parties or semi-reformists organisations, union bureaucracies prevent the workers to launch general strikes to bring down the bourgeois governments, they prevent the workers from building their own organs of self-defence against police and fascists, they block all steps towards soviet-like elected committees in workplaces and communities.
Unfortunately, there is not yet a revolutionary alternative that can claim support among significant layers of the toiling masses. Most self-styled Trotskyists are revisionists of Bolshevism and liquidators or the former
revolutionary 4th International. Actually, they behave as“ fig-leafs” for bourgeois agencies inside the working class, even for bourgeoisie currents (from Green parties to Islamist parties). They propagate their own brand of class-collaboration, building up reformist parties (SSP, NPA, DL… ) or popular front coalitions (IU, Respect, Front de gauche…).
To unite and fight, workers need a new party. A revolutionary workers party should defends in all struggles the independence of the working class from all other classes, should unify the working class (men and women, citizens
and migrant, young and older, employed and unemployed…), should strengthen all elements of workers democracy, should rally around the working class all oppressed and exploited, should help the masses to take the power in the way of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian soviets of 1917. This is the only way to fight everywhere the bourgeois governments and to gain the youth and the intermediate-classes for the revolution and to tear them away from popular front, Islamism and fascism.
Therefore, the workers don’t need only a national revolutionary workers party. The latter must be a part of the revolutionary workers international, as well as every national working class is a part of the world working class. The working class is the only genuine international class. All forms of nationalism or separatism should be alien to it. Only the united workers of the world can show a way out of crisis, oppression, wars and misery – the road to emancipation and socialism.