Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Syria, the massacres keep spreading. The horror of capitalism accelerates, deaths pile up. A continuous carnage that no one seems able to stop. Capitalism in utter decomposition is dragging the world into generalised barbarism. The use of chemical weapons as in Syria today is unfortunately only one of the instruments of death among many others. But there is nothing inevitable about this perspective, which left to itself will result in the destruction of humanity. The world proletariat cannot remain indifferent in the face of all these wars and massacres. Only the proletariat, the revolutionary class of our epoch, can put an end to this nightmare. More than ever humanity is faced with one choice: communism or barbarism.

The situation in Syria continues to worsen. Israel has attacked a military facility outside Damascus. Both government and opposition stand condemned for their use of poison gas. The Syrian government is accused of having used at least 200 chemical missiles. A UN expert has said that the opposition has used sarin, the very potent chemical nerve agent. Since March 2011 more than 70,000 people have died in the conflict. More than a million refugees have fled the country.

Not for nothing has CNN (10/5/13) described the conflict as “a vicious whirlpool dragging a whole region toward it.”

Just how quickly a modern capitalist state can descend into a devastating imperialist hell-hole is demonstrated by the war in Syria. We horror we view the growing death and mutilation of men, women, children, endless atrocities and the destruction of whole areas on televised reports; these are followed by the thoughts of 'experts', the think-tanks that inform the governments, then the nauseating speeches and policy decisions of politicians; and not only is there no end to all this carnage and the hypocrisy surrounding it, but it threatens to get worse.

Recently, the Turkish agenda has been shaken by the possibility of war with Syria; a situation which is still, more or less, intact. Following the deaths of five civilians as a result of the shelling of a town called Akçakale, near the city of Urfa, the government rapidly included Syria in the new bill it was preparing, giving it the right to militarily intervene in Iraq. It was altered to give the government the authority to militarily intervene abroad in general. It was also declared that Turkey had started shelling Syria. As the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and members of his Justice and Development Party started openly expressing the possibility of the war option, death dealers quickly appeared among the Turkish bourgeois press, going as far as accusing those opposed to war of cowardice.

The inbuilt tendency of capitalism is towards war – ever more destructive generalised warfare. Looking at Syria today massacre follows massacre with up to 20,000 killed; whole districts are destroyed; millions of people are displaced, with many living in overcrowded, insalubrious refugee camps in Turkey or in tents in the Jordanian desert in the  middle of constant sandstorms. Instead of the masses unifying across lines of division, they are now retreating behind them.

In Syria, every day brings new massacres. The country has joined the other theatres of imperialist war in the Middle East. After Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, now it’s Syria’s turn. Unfortunately this situation immediately poses a very disquieting question. What’s going to happen in the period ahead? The Middle East seems to be on the verge of a conflagration whose limits are difficult to foresee. Behind the war in Syria, it’s Iran which is the focus of imperialist fears and appetites, but all the main imperialist brigands are ready to defend their interests in the region. This is a part of the world that is on a war footing – a war that could have irrational and destructive consequences for the whole capitalist system.

After eight months of protest, originally part of a regional and international movement against oppression, unemployment and misery, here involving Druze, Sunnis, Christians, Kurds, men, women and children, events in Syria have continued to take a darker turn with new, dangerous developments

In mid-March, in line with the ‘Arab spring’, the Syrian population began to protest and demand the removal of its leader and a ‘democratic’ regime. In the face of this popular movement expressing its discontent with the living conditions imposed by the regime of a clique descended from Hafez al-Assad, the “Desert Fox”, there has been a violent crackdown that has continued to intensify. There are already 1,600 dead, no one knows how many wounded, and 12,000 refugees principally in Turkey, but also in Lebanon, where hundreds of people have fled recently from the brutality of the Syrian army.