The offensive of U.S. imperialism
U.S. imperialism, which emerged hegemonic within the global capitalist system after World War II, is now in decline in the face of rising rivals, especially Chinese imperialism. A fraction of the American bourgeoisie, rallying behind Trump, has thus decided to use brute force, discarding any concern for world order.
The postwar global order is not just outdated; it is now a weapon used against us…. Eight decades later, we are called to create a free world out of chaos once again. This will not be easy. And it will be impossible without a strong and confident America that engages in the world, putting our core national interests above all else once again. (Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, January 15, 2025)
This policy is carried out brutally, shaking old alliances and trampling on the sovereignty of weaker countries: an all-out trade war, territorial claims, a search for an agreement with Russian imperialism at the expense of Ukrainians and the plundering of Ukraine, full support for Israel’s massacre and expulsion of Palestinians. This aggressive foreign policy is mirrored at home by massive and coordinated attacks on migrants, public sector workers, public health and social security, civil liberties, the rights of women and minorities, environmental protections, disaster prevention, universities, science and research, …
A decisive front in the class struggle at the heart of the United States
For internationalist communists, only the mobilisation of the entire American working class—rallying oppressed minorities and a majority of the student youth—can defeat this offensive, around the slogan: Hands off immigrants, union rights, minorities, women’s rights, students, public services, social security, and all civil liberties! Active defense of the environment against the predatory interests of the major oil, gas, arms, chemical, and tech corporations!
Down with border militarisation! Continued military aid to Ukraine! No to the colonial treaty project to loot Ukraine’s resources! Not one weapon, not one dollar for Israel! Close all U.S. military bases abroad and bring home all troops, ships, and aircraft! Not one dollar to maintain the global domination of U.S. imperialist militarism!
No territorial claims or threats of annexation over Greenland, Canada, or Panama! Break the trade unions and organisations of the oppressed from bourgeois parties (Democrats, Republicans, Greens…)! For a united workers’ front to organise and centralise resistance. Workers’ self-defense of demonstrations, strikes, workers’ and students’ assemblies, against cops and fascists! To make this perspective a reality, activists in the U.S. who seek to build a revolutionary workers’ party must urgently regroup.
The attempted carve-up of Ukraine between Russian and U.S. imperialisms
On the Russian side, Putin has implemented a war economy at the expense of the working population. He intensifies repression. The Russian proletariat has no interest in fighting its Ukrainian neighbor. It could stop the imperialist war waged by its own bourgeoisie. What it lacks is a revolutionary organisation that reconnects with the Bolshevik Party of 1917, that gives a lead to the struggle against Putin. Free all antiwar prisoners! Restore democratic freedoms! Withdraw Russian troops, return conquered territories to Ukraine! Frontline soldiers, turn your weapons against your generals, impose an immediate end to hostilities!
Revolutionaries unconditionally support Ukraine’s right to defend itself against Russian aggression. But the Zelensky government wages war with the methods of a comprador bourgeoisie—mixing chauvinist ideology, profiteering, servility to U.S. imperialism, special privileges, restrictions on democratic freedoms, and all sorts of pressure on the proletariat.Democratic rights including for soldiers! Repeal Zelensky’s anti-worker laws! Cancel privatisations! Military training and arming of workers, direction of war and peace negotiations under the control of workers’ and peasants’ organisations! Appeal to the Russian proletariat and to proletarian internationalism to stop the war!
Israel resumes its genocide in Gaza
Israel no longer bothers maintaining the fiction of the Oslo Accords, which had allowed it—on the basis of the PLO’s capitulation—to continue its colonisation while hiding behind the mirage of a “two-State solution.” Its goal is the full annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the massacre and expulsion of Palestinians, the permanent military occupation of the Syrian Golan and of southern Lebanon. Western imperialist States continue to send weapons to Israel, which has resumed bombings of the Gazan population, massacres of civilians, and mass destruction—after cutting off again all access to food aid and destroying the last power plant that made water desalination possible. Workers’ united front to organise the boycott of weapons shipments and of any logistical support to Israel! There will be no peace in Palestine without dismantling the Zionist State and establishing a democratic, multiethnic, multilingual, secular, and socialist Palestine. For a workers’ and peasants’ government in Palestine! For a socialist federation of the Middle East! This is the path forward for the Palestinian proletariat as well as for the Jewish proletariat, which must break with Zionism.
The trade war hastens global economic crisis and foreshadows military confrontations
Trump ignited the trade war, exacerbating contradictions with other bourgeoisies and within the U.S. ruling class itself. The result is a chaotic economic policy centered on tariff hikes, inevitably leading to the dislocation of international supply chains, a decreased global production and trade, and a resurgence of inflation. Chinese imperialism, already facing overproduction and now virtually banned from the U.S. market by 145% tariffs, will inevitably engage in even fiercer competition to sell its goods. It is above all the proletariat—both in imperialist metropoles and in dominated countries—that will bear the brunt. All reformists who don’t challenge capitalism but instead, together with their bourgeoisie, advocate defending “national” or “regional” production by introducing tariff barriers, only encourage this descent into crisis. Trade war precedes all-out war.
Militarism has a devastating ecological impact. Future generations risk not only immediate destruction of human life, mutilations and psychic trauma caused by violence, the destruction of homes, infrastructure, and farmland, but also long-term pollution.
Everywhere, to finance military expenditures, the ruling classes escalate their attacks on the working class, all social gains, all public services, and the majority of the petty bourgeoisie. Nationalism and protectionism, xenophobia and racism, clericalism and religious fundamentalism, male chauvinism and hostility to women’s rights, hatred of minorities (religious, ethnic, sexual), continued destruction of the environment, conspiracy theories, and anti-vaccine obscurantism… these are the banners of reaction. Traditional bourgeois parties are becoming ever more reactionary, they are themselves challenged by the rise of fascistic or even fascist parties. Bourgeois workers’ parties that once claimed to be reformist can no longer deliver meaningful reforms. The fate of oppressed peoples (Palestinians, Kurds…) and of ethnic minorities (Black people in the U.S., Turks in Germany, Arabs in France, Alawites in Syria, Kashmiris in India…) tends to get worse.
The main enemy is in our own country
Workers produce all the wealth in society by transforming nature. They can stop the catastrophe. To xenophobia, racism, nationalism, and protectionism, let us oppose the complete freedom of movement and settlement for all migrants, the abolition of borders, proletarian internationalism, and the building of world socialism! No national unity, no “sacred union” around bourgeois governments and their military budgets! Workers’ united front of all organisations claiming to represent the working class—against military budgets! Not one parliamentary vote for the war budget!
War on the imperialist war! It is possible to bring this rotten system to an end, to limit the environmental crisis, and to prevent world war—if, across all borders, the vanguard of the working class unites in a revolutionary workers’ international. In every State, this international will help build a Bolshevik-type party to lead the fight against all oppression, to expropriate big capital and destroy the bourgeois State, and to establish workers’ governments based on councils.