The world on the brink

We are not witnessing the periodic fluctuation of an economic cycle or a simple local conflict. The imperialist world order put in place after World War II by the victorious American bourgeoisie, with the complicity of the USSR bureaucracy, is collapsing, and the environment is decaying to the point of threatening the future of humanity.

Each national faction of the ruling class—in Washington, Beijing, Berlin, Tokyo, Paris, London, Moscow, etc.—has resorted to weaponry, social dismantling and even open violence to save its capitalist groups, their outlets and their sources of raw materials and energy. The inter-imperialist rivalry between the former hegemonic power of the declining USA and the burgeoning imperialism of China has reached a level of escalation where Western Asia has become the bloody stage for a global showdown that carries the seeds of World War III.

Zionism and imperialism are unleashing barbarism in the Middle East

Israel has destroyed the Gaza Strip, invaded Syria and southern Lebanon, partially destroyed Lebanon, and attacked Iran on two occasions. The United States has attacked Iran twice and continues to strangle it with its military forces concentrated in the region. The US government, which used the atomic bomb against the Japanese civilian population in 1945 and allowed Israel to acquire nuclear weapons, has no right to decide that Iran is not entitled to them, nor who should govern Iran.

Imperialist propaganda about “liberating the women” or “the people” of Iran by bombing the civilian population is a cynical lie. The real aim is to subjugate Iran and cut off China’s vital energy supply. Blinded by its “success” in Venezuela, where a simple show of force and commando action were enough to align the regime with American interests, Trump underestimated Iran. The Islamist regime born of the 1979 counter-revolution is not collapsing, but taking advantage of aggression to win popular support and bring Iran into line internally.

Economic shock: blood for oil and global impoverishment

The war has sent the global economy into a state of shock. The price of petrol has become the barometer of the international crisis. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has not only caused oil prices to surge by 50 percent, but has also cut off global production of two essential resources: fertilisers, exacerbating the catastrophe caused by the civil war between the two factions of the bourgeois army in Sudan, which could lead to food shortages in Southeast Asia; and helium, which is irreplaceable for the production of computer chips.

The costs of imperialist madness—a billion dollars a day in the US alone—are passed on directly to the working class. For capital, war is a business model; for the masses, it means a fall into barbarism.

The bourgeoisie’s authoritarian turn

In order to wage this war abroad, the bourgeoisie is opening up the home front. Even in the most developed bourgeois democracies, democratic freedoms such as the right to strike, assembly and the press are systematically curtailed. Everywhere, bourgeois parties and populist demagogues use xenophobia, religion and racism to legitimize reactionary attacks,

Everywhere, immigrants are discriminated against by the bourgeois state. Fascist-leaning bourgeois parties (Vox in Spain, Reform in Great Britain, RN in France, AfD in Germany, PR in Chile, etc.) and formerly “anti-racist” bourgeois parties (Conservative Party of Great Britain, Republican Party of the USA, LR of France, etc.) are scapegoating them. The global wave of reaction is particularly affecting women and sexual minorities, targeted by the rise of machismo and religious fundamentalism. More and more states are persecuting religious minorities, such as Muslims in India and Burma, or the Druze in Syria. Turkey, Syria and Iran repress national minorities such as the Kurds and Alawites.

Imperialist war frenzy worsens ecological catastrophe

The global ecological crisis—characterized by climate upheaval, pollution, species extinction, freshwater depletion, and the emergence of new pathogenic viruses—is inexorably fueled by the profit-driven logic of capitalism and the rivalry between states that stems from it. The environmental consequences of the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran are devastating, and can be understood as ecocide—the systematic destruction of the natural basis of life as part of the conduct of imperialist warfare.

In Ukraine, war causes unprecedented pollution. In addition to the unbridled use of fossil fuels by the armed forces (aircraft, tanks, ships, generators), 23% of war-related emissions come from forest fires triggered by gunfire. In all, more than 310 million tons of CO₂ equivalent were released, equivalent to around half the annual emissions of the whole of Germany. Huge areas are contaminated by mines, unexploded ordnance and heavy metals. The destruction of the Kachowka dam in 2023 remains one of the world’s greatest man-made environmental disasters, wiping out entire ecosystems and permanently destroying agriculture in the South.

In Gaza, the destruction of housing and civilian infrastructure has generated over 50 million tons of debris, often laden with asbestos and remnants of dangerous munitions (such as white phosphorus). With sewage and pumping stations deliberately destroyed by Zionist troops or blocked by lack of power, huge quantities of untreated sewage flow into the Mediterranean every day and seep into the ground, permanently poisoning already limited groundwater reserves. Over 85% of agricultural land has been ravaged by bombing or earthmoving, leading to long-term desertification.

Spontaneous struggles are not enough

Despite growing repression and sometimes desperate social conditions for the exploited classes, the flame of resistance is burning on every continent: in Argentina, massive demonstrations are taking place against Milei; in Bangladesh, textile workers are leading the fight against exploitation; in Kenya, huge protests are taking place against rising prices; in the US, workers have defended their immigrant colleagues and neighbors en masse against the state ICE militia.

Capitalism, in the age of imperialist reaction, cannot be reformed, become peaceful or ecological. The persistent gap between the fighting spirit of the masses and the absence of revolutionary breakthroughs is the result of the historic crisis of proletarian leadership. The old reformist parties and union bureaucracies, materially integrated into the bourgeois state and linked to the management of the capitalist order, act at every decisive moment as a brake on the movement. They preach “national unity” in the name of the crisis, ally themselves with fractions of the bourgeoisie, support the UN, or openly support the war effort of “their” bourgeoisie, and divert struggles into limited strikes, electoral deadlocks or appeals to bourgeois justice, “cohabiting” with the bosses.

In the United States, the DSA and Sanders are busy reviving the Democratic Party. In Chile, Boric’s Popular Front government has cleared the way for Katz, representative of the pro-imperialist wing of the bourgeoisie. In Nepal, the overthrow of the Congress government led to another bourgeois government, due to the discrediting of the Maoist parties and their Popular Front governments. In Great Britain, the Labour government, while remaining within NATO and tightening migration policy, is paving the way for the racist Reform UK party.

The central task is to wrest the trade unions from the sell-out bureaucracies and consciously build revolutionary workers’ parties rooted in the class struggle, whose strategy is based on class independence, the alliance of all the oppressed and exploited under the leadership of the working class, and the destruction of the bourgeois state. These parties can only emerge in conjunction with a new revolutionary international. This is the only way to overcome the crisis of leadership within the proletariat and to pave the way for the seizure of power and world socialism. Only the proletarian revolution and the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus can preserve the environment and save civilisation. For the revolutionary Workers’ International!

Workers and the oppressed don’t need to be called to struggle, because they are yet struggling. They need their struggles to be victorious, to turn into a social revolution that wrests power from the bourgeoisie. They need a program and a party. This program is the legacy of the Communist International and the Fourth International.

The Permanent Revolution Collective (CoReP) call on revolutionary groups, organizations, and factions worldwide, regardless of their political origin or language, to join their forces immediately to prevent a world war.

• Down with all imperialist wars! The right of oppressed countries to defend themselves! The right of national minorities to rise up!
• End the embargoes on Cuba and Iran! Withdrawal of all American, French, British and Russian troops, naval and air forces from the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Indian Ocean and Africa! Closure of US bases in Cuba and on all continents! Russian troops out of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldavia! Chinese army, get your hands off Taiwan!
• Against the rearmament programs of the United States, the European Union, Japan and China! No workers’ party should vote for a military escalation budget! Expropriation of all armaments companies and their subcontractors under workers’ control!
• Replace standing armies with a self-defense militia, rooted in workplaces, working-class neighborhoods, villages and youth training centers!
• End to Israeli attacks on Lebanon! Withdrawal of Zionist troops from Lebanon and Syria! End to Zionist genocide! For a unified, multi-ethnic, socialist Palestine!
• Zionists, imperialists, keep your hands off Iran! Neither shah nor ayatollahs, neither Savak nor Guardians of the Counter-Revolution! Workers’ and peasants’ government!
• For revolutionary workers’ parties, for a Revolutionary Workers’ International!

World socialist federation instead of imperialist barbarism!

Permanent Revolution Collective

(Argentina, Austria, France, Spanish State, Turkey)