Faced with war and capitalist destruction, only one way out: class struggle!

The last few months have confirmed the brutal acceleration in the decomposition of the capitalist mode of production, with the multiplication of tragedies that have struck the world, particularly as a result of the war in Ukraine. Ongoing destruction, such as that at the Kakhovka dam, and the actions of the Wagner group in Russia, halfway between rebellion and abortive putsch, are fuelling further destabilisation and chaos.

Increased chaos and destruction

Now on the brink of implosion, despite the "return to calm" in Rostov and Moscow following surreal negotiations, Putin's clique has been severely weakened. In the long term, other warlords are bound to add to the worrying instability of Russia as a nuclear power, sowing chaos beyond the borders of Europe and, at the end of the day, possibly leading to the break-up of the Russian Federation itself. Following on from the collapse of the USSR in 1990, this is a new phase in the process of dragging Russia's proletariat into deadly confrontations. This latest disastrous episode highlights more clearly the growing dangers posed to the world by the deadly dynamic of decaying capitalism. A destructive dynamic that continues to grow.
The war in Ukraine is fuelling other dramatic events on a global scale:

- This conflict is accelerating the mass impoverishment of the proletariat, including in the richest countries, which are financing the war and the armaments pouring into Ukraine. Access to food, heating and decent housing have become increasingly difficult for a growing proportion of the working class, particularly the most precarious.

- The war is also one of the factors considerably worsening environmental degradation, directly through large-scale destruction (the Kakhovka dam, explosions at arms depots and factories, etc.), and indirectly through the increased reluctance of the governments involved in this war to take the slightest action against climate change, which is jeopardising their haemorrhaging economies, driven by a growing need for armaments.

Large-scale destruction, the loss of human life on the battlefields and the terror of populations left to fend for themselves, whether in conflict zones or 'peace zones', are taking a long-lasting hold. The number of refugees fleeing conflict zones or zones that have simply become unliveable is reaching record figures. People are being transformed into living spectres who languish in inhuman camps, prey to mafia networks and the brutality of governments. Others collide with barbed wire walls or drown by the thousands in waters around the world. With the increasing bunkerisation of "democratic" borders, corpses continue to wash up or disappear into the abyss.

While pandemics continue to threaten, and governments are proving less and less capable of coping with the ever-increasing number of disasters, the unprecedented droughts of spring are now giving way to monstrous fires, as in Canada, where Montreal has become the most polluted city in the world. In other parts of the world, catastrophic floods have recently hit Nepal and Chile. Record temperatures are already exposing populations to deadly heatstroke (as in Asia and Latin America). With cyclones and storms piling up south of the United States, the summer period augurs even worse.
All these ills are part of a spiral linked to the bankrupt capitalist mode of production, part of a rotten society in which producers are driven into poverty and increasingly exposed to death, prey to worries but also, and above all, to legitimate anger.

The living breath of the class struggle

This anger is all the more profound because the economic crisis, amplified by inflation, is a powerful stimulus for the development of class struggle. As witnessed by the continuing attacks on the working class in all countries, the economic crisis is preparing the ground for new responses from the proletariat. The development of massive struggles in Great Britain has indeed initiated a phenomenon of "rupture", a profound change of state of mind and a new surge of combativity within the world working class. This dynamic was confirmed by struggles just about everywhere in the world, and above all by the major demonstrations against pension reform in France. Rediscovering our own class identity in the struggle, getting back in touch with our own fighting methods, is only the first step, fragile though it may be, but it is fundamental for the future.

While strikes are still going on in the United Kingdom, the end of the demonstrations in France in no way signifies despondency or a feeling of defeat. On the contrary, the anger that is still present is fuelling reflection among working-class minorities on how to continue this fight. If we need to draw the first lessons today, it's that we need to prepare the new struggles to come and face up to all the obstacles and difficulties that stand in the way, in particular the risks of engaging in sterile violence, such as that of confrontation with the forces of law and order, which a section of the precarious youth engaged in during the spectacular riots in France, and which are radically opposed to the proletariat's methods of struggle. Another danger is the disappearance of the struggle of the working class onto the terrain of the bourgeoisie, that of the "defence of democracy" against "fascism" and "authoritarian excesses" or the obtaining of illusory "rights" for this or that minority.

Faced with the enormous global challenges and the increasingly palpable threat of the destruction of humanity by capitalism, this necessary first step by the working class is not enough. The proletariat will have to develop its consciousness well beyond what it was able to produce during the great strikes of May 68 in France and everywhere else in the world, well beyond the mass strike it was able to engage in Poland in 1980.

The central role of revolutionary organisations
Revolutionary organisations play an essential role in this context. They have the political weapons to make it possible to enrich workers' memory, to defend the revolutionary perspective and an internationalist point of view in workers' struggles in the face of nationalist propaganda and the reactionary policies of the bourgeoisie. On the basis of solid traditions, those of the Communist Left, revolutionary organisations have the responsibility of keeping alive and passing on a method, the method of marxism, to defend the principles of the proletarian struggle.

In the face of confusion and doubts, in the face of ideological campaigns which hinder the development of consciousness in the working class, this struggle inherited from the traditions of the workers' movement must make it possible to identify concrete perspectives and to defend uncompromisingly the principles and methods of workers' struggles. Starting with proletarian internationalism in the face of the war in Ukraine and all the militarist propaganda.

In the face of insidious ideological campaigns on the theme of the "defence of democracy", in the face of the ideological exploitation of the indignation aroused by the methods of Putin and Prigozhin, in the face of the ideological exploitation of the recent riots and the despicable behaviour of the police, vigilance and the fight for proletarian class consciousness must tread a difficult path. But there is no other way forward. The future struggles of the proletariat must therefore gradually become politicised in order to take on, in a clear, united and conscious way, the goal of the world revolution: a revolution destined to overthrow capitalism and establish a society without class or war.
 

WH, 8 July