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MORE ON THE TRANSITION TO COMMUNISM
Fredo Corvo, who publishes frequently on the council communist website Left Wing Communism, sent us a lengthy reaction to our debate with IDA on the transition to communism. So we added his text to the ongoing debate which you can read HERE. 1 Fredo agrees and disagrees with arguments on both sides of this debate, which was about how production and distribution could/would be organized in a post-capitalist world. His main point however is that a “lower phase communism” would be inevitable and that IP is guilty of idealist moralist utopianism when it thinks otherwise.
Fredo warns against underestimating the formidable difficulties that would accompany the birth pangs of the new social formation. He’s right in doing so: It does no good to look at the historical challenge through rosy glasses and ignore the very real obstacles. The question is whether these obstacles require the so-called lower phase of communism and what the consequences of that would be. Fredo writes that this lower phase “is the name for the fact that communism emerges from capitalism and still bears its marks”. But the term implies more than that. It was used by Marx who defined communism in his “Critique of the Gotha program” as “from each according to ability, to each according to need” but added that this was not yet possible because humankind’s productive forces were not developed enough. So, in his view in 1875, in the short term something less was inevitable after defeating the bourgeoisie and Fredo thinks that is still the case today. Marx was sketchy on what that ‘something less’ would entail beyond a mode of distribution of goods based not on need but on contributed labor time, of which he recognized that it would not do away with the core abstraction of capitalism, value based on labor time, nor with the inequality it implies. Fredo recognizes that as well. In his view the lower phase of communism is a “long transformation” during which “wage labor, value, classes, the state, the opposition between mental and manual labor, and the subordination of individuals to the division of labor” continue to exist, as well as money, banks and monotonous, dirty labor. What makes all this ultimately disappear, what keeps society on a course towards that moment when it “no longer needs capital, wage labor, value, classes, or a state standing above society”, is the control of the workers councils, which for this heir of the German-Dutch Left communist tradition has the same fetish power as the Party has for the heirs of the Italian Left. But isn’t it utopian to think that the form (workers councils) will make it possible to establish communism if the content remains capitalist at its core and the abolition of value, classes, the state etc, is not seen as an immediate necessity but as something to be accomplished in the long run?
We emphasized, with Marx, that the proletarian revolution is not only necessary to overthrow capitalist rule but also to change the proletarians, so that they become fit to transform te world. Through the experience of prolonged collective struggle and being forced to reinvent their social practices to survive, proletarians throw off “the muck of ages” as Marx put it, the weight of capitalist and pre-capitalist ideology and practices. Fredo thinks it is utopian to put that much “faith in revolutionary transformation of attitudes”. But isn’t it utopian to think that the revolution can succeed without attitudes and social practices being thoroughly transformed?
Fredo writes: “The working class makes the revolution while still carrying contradictions produced by capitalism. These contradictions are overcome only through the process of struggle, organization, self-education, and material transformation.” That is true. But isn’t that precisely what the revolution is, a “process of struggle, organization, self-education, and material transformation”?
Not according to Fredo. He sees it as a political process, preceding any material transformation and following a determined set of stages. He reproaches IP “a utopian neglect of the stages through which a revolution must pass: from a proletarian stronghold, through civil war and international extension, toward the global power of workers’ councils, and only then toward more developed communist relations”.
Of course we cannot know what the communist revolution, if it occurs, will really be like but Fredo seems pretty certain that he does. The picture that he paints looks a lot like the revolutionary wave of the early 20th century, but this time successful because led by workers councils instead of the Party. So the first stage is defeating the bourgeois state somewhere and establishing a ‘proletarian bastion’ in an otherwise hostile capitalist world, while confronting a civil war at home. Exactly like Russia 1917. But the world has changed a lot since 1917. Isn’t it utopian to think that a proletarian bastion could survive in today’s world if in the rest of the world capitalist rule remains in place? Wouldn’t it be crushed immediately, economically and militarily? Fredo doesn’t think so. He even foresees trade relations between the proletarian bastion and the surrounding capitalist world, which is why he thinks money would still be used. No problem, in his view, as long as this happens “under strict council control”.
We do not pretend to know how the revolutionary process will unfold, what stages it will go through. We don’t even pretend to know whether or not it will happen. But what seems clear to us is that if it does, the context of that process will be one of capitalism’s economic breakdown on a global scale (not that such a context automatically would lead to revolution) during which the proletariat, also on a global scale, not only will be compelled to wage a political struggle against the capitalist state but also, in order to survive, to begin to transform its productive activity, abolish the existing relations of production and fundamentally alter the content and purpose of work. In other words, the abolition of classes, of value and labor, is not something that will happen after the revolution has gone through all of Fredo’s stages, but it will be an immanent aspect of the revolution throughout its course.
Of course the abolition of labor does not mean the abolition of productive activity nor of the need to economize, even though Fredo seems to ascribe such an opinion to us. Rather than replying to this by repeating ourselves, we refer the reader to the text Fredo criticizes. But we want to reiterate that the abolition of labor is is a crucial aspect of the revolutionary transformation, not only a direct necessity to survive but also a process that will have an indispensable transformative impact on those who participate in it. Isn’t it utopian to think that the proletariat will have a strong enough motivation to engage in and continue its revolutionary struggle if this does not radically change its life and work?
This point is powerfully made by Raoul Victor in his text “Contribution to the discussion on “labor””, which was part of a debate on the same subject in the now defunct “Reseau de Discussion”, a French-language internationalist discussion list which was quite lively from 2007 until 2020 (it had an English-language counterpart called Intsdiscnet, which also was a forum for discussing pro-revolutionary ideas in the same period). We added this text to the debate file, as well as another one that Raoul sent us in reaction to our debate with IDA, also written as part of the discussion in the ‘Reseau’. He sees this text, “On the Necessity of Developing the Productive Forces”, as critical to the position expressed in the IP article, that “Capitalism is forced to grow, but post-capitalist society will have to ‘ungrow’”. Raoul argues that in the post-capitalist society a great development of the productive forces will be necessary. We agree. We think the creative focus on human needs will undoubtedly have that effect. But we also think we will have to ‘ungrow’. Growth is now intrinsically bound with increasing energy consumption, which still means increasing consumption of fossil fuels. It is an illusion to think that thanks to ‘clean energy’ the decoupling would be easy2. So to continue growth would be disastrous, suicidal even. Capitalism produces more waste than it under-produces for needs. There’s lots of room to ungrow.
The challenge will be to grow and to ungrow at the same time. In capitalism, ‘ungrowing’ means economic death, growing is not a choice but an obligation. When that is no longer the case, growing is no longer the central issue. The main issue will be how to transform the technology, the ways of working and of living inherited from and shaped by capitalism. On this, I think Raoul, Fredo, IDA and us could all agree.
IP
6/20/2026
1 Since this reply was written, IDA published another critique of “Internationalist Perspective’s Idealistic View of Communism”, written by Herman Lueer. You can read it HERE. Because Lueer’s arguments are similar to Fredo’s, we don’t address them specifically in this text.
2 See our article on this: Hope or hoax
ON THE TRANSITION TO COMMUNISM
The following text is our latest contribution to a discussion we’re having with the group IDA about the revolutionary transition to communism, and specifically about the question how productive activity and the distribution of goods could be organized. The complete conversation between us and IDA can be found on a new page on our site, called “Debates”.
Dear S and A,
again, sorry for the delay. Our reply has become longer and took more time than anticipated. We have titled it:
WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?
We take the last sentence of your latest message as our point of departure. You wrote: If you can’t tell people what communism is, why should they fight for communism?
We assume the question is rhetorical, but it is indeed difficult to tell people what communism is. It is not a system of government that exists or existed, nor is it a recipe in the cookbook of the revolution. It is a movement rather than an ideology and thus by definition non-static, hard to pin down. A movement that is a material force resulting from the class struggle and thus conditioned by it. The working class struggle contains communism as an inherent dynamic that pushes for the abolition of classes, itself included, and the abolition of the economyi, an outside force that imposes its law on us, and for replacing it by communal and conscious deciding what we make, how we make it and how we share it, based not on property but on human needs alone.
Communism’s force or weakness is tied up with that of the class struggle in general. So it’s quite weak at the moment. When it strengthens, it is not so much because more people think “they should fight for communism”, rather, the class struggle’s growing strength takes it into a communist direction. The ways in which it is expressed are necessarily conditioned by the horizon that is visible at the times of that expression.
It is difficult to capture communism in a few sentences without sloganeering but it is also difficult to describe it in detail. The latter is what the GIK tried to do and what you try as well. And we share the concerns that motivate you: it makes sense to try to foresee the problems that will come up, the challenges that will need to be addressed, and to think of possible solutions; and also to show that when capitalism is defeated, a human community is a real possibility, and to warn against the pitfalls, especially against a state-based vision of the transitional period. We think it’s useful to think and discuss about these issues like pro-revolutionaries have done in the past. We appreciate our dialogue. We can accept differences of opinion because the question, now, is in its hypothetical stage. However, we cannot accept that a text such as the GIK’s Fundamental Principles becomes some kind of orthodoxy. Like you wrote, “this theory is just a theory and in reality everything may develop in totally different ways”.
The horizon of our imagination
Because we have no existing example of communism, and because the lessons of the aftermath of the 1917 revolution are mostly negative ones (What not to do …), to project what it would mean in daily life, we necessarily need imagination. But the horizon of our class imagination is drawn by the conditions of the times in which we live.
What did Marx and Engels think communism would mean in daily life when, in 1847, they wrote the Communist Manifesto? The first step, according to their view at the time, was “the conquest of democracy” by the proletariat. Then would follow measures such as “a very progressive taxation”, “centralization of credit in the hands of the state”, “centralization of all transportation in the hands of the state”, “increase in the number of national factories”, “equal labor duty for all”, “formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture”, “abolition of factory labor by children in its present form”. What strikes us when we read that list today is not only the fact that even these giants of communist anticipation still had illusions about conquering democracy and the state (their outlook would only change after seeing how the revolutionary workers and soldiers of Paris in 1871 did not take over the state but casted it aside) but also how modest the changes are that they foresaw and how little relevance they have today. Most of them don’t require a fundamental break with capitalism. Given the social conditions at that time, the enormous poverty, the shocking disrupting rhythms of the industrial revolution, it is understandable that these measures were seen as steps towards communism, but today, I think we would agree that they are not even that.
A quarter of a century later Marx coined, in his “Critique of the Gotha program” (1875), a great succinct definition of communism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. But in the same textii he stated that it was not possible yet. Achieving this goal required more development of the productive forces. After overthrowing capitalism there would have to be a lower phase of communism, in which the rule would not be, to each according to his needs, but to each according to his time-measured labor contribution. It would still be an unequal society. Again, given the relative underdevelopment at the time, it is understandable why he would think so. The GIK based its “Fundamental Principles.” (1930) on Marx’s ideas on the “lower phase” of communism. Here too, the historical context (now the counter-revolution in Russia and the onset of the Great Depression) is the background for the vision they elaborated. No-one is free from the limits of the period he/she happens to live in.
We are as time-bound as Marx and Engels and the GIK were but today the horizon of our imagination is quite different and so are the challenges we’re facing. The main challenge is no longer to expand industrial capacity to make to each according to his needs possible at some point in the future. Capitalism is forced to grow, but post-capitalist society will have to ‘ungrow’. Not expanding but radically changing production is in order. Huge chunks of the capitalist economy will cease to exist. This is not only an urgent necessity because of the climate crisis inherited from capitalism, but it will also be the result of the changed purpose and content of production. According to the 2026 data of the International Labour Organisation more than 2 billion people are currently unemployed or experience some form of labour underutilization (underemployed, discouraged, or trapped in low‑quality informal work). Add to that figure the workers in industries that will disappear (such as arms production, to name but the most obvious one) and the hundreds of millions that now work in administrative jobs that will disappear (bureaucracies, finances, insurances, politics, etc.), the many other jobs that must disappear (surveillance and control, crime and crime fighting, military personnel and police, etc.) and the many that can disappear when automation, including AI, are used not for profit but to serve human needs… add all that up and there can be no doubt that the majority of all the jobs that exist today will be gone, either during or shortly after the revolution that overthrows capitalism.
Of course, the focus on human needs would give rise to many new occupations, would expand some existing ones such as in construction of housing and infrastructure, and would vastly increase the number of people who work in health and other care giving. The need to restore the health of the natural environment and de-poison agriculture would also be a gigantic undertaking requiring the efforts of a great number of people (whose contribution would be hard to measure in labor time). We can name other activities that will likely expand or be invented, but the point here is, it is not realistic to assume that they will be able to absorb the billions of people displaced during the collapse of the old world order. The idea that the revolution would result in a world in which everyone is a worker who receives the equivalent of the labor time he has given, is already absurd for this fact alone: it would be impossible to make everyone, maybe even the majority of the population, a worker.
Nor would it be needed. You may recall the famous “fragment on Machines” in Grundrisse (1857-58) in which Marx writes that “Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth”. Marx noted that capitalism, “On the one side calls to life all the powers of science and of nature, as of social combination and of social intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the labour time employed on it. On the other side, it wants to use labour time as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created”. He observed how, as a result of capitalism’s inner dynamic, the source of real wealth creation was shifting from living labor to social knowledge, to what he called “the general intellect.” “In this transformation, it is neither the direct human labour he himself performs, nor the time during which he works, but rather the appropriation of his own general productive power, his understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a social body – it is, in a word, the development of the social individual which appears as the great foundation-stone of production and of wealth.” He was probably thinking more about our times than on his own when he wrote “Labour no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather, the human being comes to relate more as watchman and regulator to the production process itself… He steps to the side of the production process instead of being its chief actor.” It was clear to him that the production process would require (relatively) less and less living labor. Today’s automated reality makes it easy to see he was right. The production of goods necessary for the reproduction of society could not and would not need to absorb a large part, maybe not even the majority, of the fit to work population.
So what would happen? Since we both abhor the nightmare scenario of a “proletarian state” (whether or not controlled by workers councils) that would assign everybody his or her place in the global production chain, we can imagine, on the one hand, that the dislocated masses, especially at first, would consume goods without contributing themselves much or any labor time to the production of goods, and further that most would, probably rather quickly, find meaningful activities to do, whether or not those are deemed to be socially necessary (and who would determine that anyway). We can expect an explosion of creativity but that doesn’t mean that we can imagine it. Nor that we can imagine how it will fit in with the need for global planning, or how communication and decision making will take place. But what seems clear is that it would be a dangerous mistake to restrict access to goods to those who have contributed council-approved socially necessary labor time. The human community will take care of the human community.
The human community does not exist today, although the term “the international community” is often used in the media. It is used to paint a picture of a world in which nations are truly concerned about “our shared planet”. A world with a conscience that does not exist, an illusion that stands in stark contrast to the real world in which the need to win the competitive game overrides all good intentions and all attempts to address global problems, in which all real communities are destroyed by capitalism which is dragging the real world to war and other catastrophies. But in the working class’s struggle for survival, which more and more will be forced to confront the destructive logic of capitalism, a real human community can emerge. Indeed that it is the purpose of the revolution which cannot succeed otherwise. We reject the voucher system not just because it is complicated and impractical but because the kind of restrictions it implies are antithetical to what communism means.
But the political defeat of capitalism will not happen suddenly. More likely, there will be a long period in which the proletariat fights the capitalist state and starts constructing a new world at the same time. And even when defeated politically, capitalism will probably continue to survive in pockets here and there. In the midst of the chaos some of the dislocated may start up production on a capitalist basis. Even if there is no official money, they might invent one and start to exchange and accumulate. Furthermore, we don’t know in which conditions a victorious proletariat would find this world. It may be that capitalism’s destruction of the environment and the damage left by its wars are so severe that they seriously slow down what can be achieved in the short term. During the period of collapsing production of capital and expanding production for needs there will be shortages. We can discuss how the scarcity should be managed but this is certain: present day conditions are not the same as in the times of Marx or of the GIK. They emphasized that a development of the productive forces was necessary to overcome scarcity, to make “to each according to his needs” possible. But today, we don’t need the productive forces to grow, we need them to change in content and purpose. The fact that there is so much unmet need is not because society lacks the capacity of feeding the hungry and housing the homeless and so on. It’s not a technical problem; the social knowledge, resources and technology are there but they’re in the service of capital. If they would be focused on meeting all the basic needs of all humankind, that purpose could be achieved fairly quickly. Once liberated, the development of the information and communication technology, including AI, which now is moulded for competitive advantage and profit, will surely accelerate the transition.
Or maybe meeting all the basic needs could not be done that quickly. It is impossible to foresee all the social disruptions, all the technical problems that will occur and even less to know how quickly they could be overcome. We should not underestimate the difficulty of reconfiguring global production logistics and the hardships that this could bring along. The disruptions could create local shortages of needed goods. But such problems would only be exacerbated by gating consumption on the base of contributed labor time. And what sort of body would enforce this gating, and would it be subject to local political differences… this becomes grim quickly.
Getting rid of the ‘muck of ages’
You wrote: We’re truly sad – probably more than anyone else – about the fact, that food, clothing and housing just don’t drop from the sky…
Indeed they don’t. So does a distribution system that makes basic consumer goods freely accessible for everybody not risk to collapse from abuse? Would it not mean that some would prefer to be lazy, to contribute nothing and live off the work of others? And that some would indulge in mindless greedy consumption of free goods, just because they can?
Yes, probably. But they would be a minority which likely would not represent a heavy burden on the community. We cannot believe that a revolutionary post-capitalist society would condemn people who don’t participate in production to starve. Not even if the distribution of goods would be based on labor vouchers, as you think it would be. The basic needs of the non-working population would be met through a general fund, the part of the social product not distributed through the vouchers system. Then the question is why not meet everyone’s needs that way, instead of making the complicated and maybe unworkable detour of the voucher system? The standard of living of those receiving free goods or rations would have to be considerably lower than that of the voucher receiving workers, otherwise the vouchers would no longer be the incentive to work they’re meant to be. So the labor accounting system would create a two-tier society instead of a human community.
We think the revolution would skip that so-called “lower phase” of communism. Lazy workers and greedy consumers would not pose a serious problem, not only because of the communist society’s productiveness but also because people would not be the same as today and neither would work. Producing would not remain labor.
People would not be the same because being part of the revolution would change them. That is what the revolution is for, according to Marx: “this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.” [The German Ideology, 1848]
Let’s not underestimate the change in attitudes when production is oriented directly to human needs and this orientation is collectively agreed upon. Even in capitalist society, most people don’t like to do nothing for an extended period, they want to do something meaningful with their life. Rid of ‘all the muck of ages’, the proletariat that has overthrown capitalism and that is no longer a proletariat will feel this desire to participate in meaningful activities a hundred times stronger. There will be no need to force them to be productive. The social atmosphere created by the fact that the means of production have become common goods, will generate an enthusiasm and a collective spirit which are the most powerful motivation to participate in production, without a need for individual economic coercion.
As Raoul Victor wrote on the voucher system:
“Measuring the contributions of individual producers is deemed to create (or maintain) a motivation to participate in social production. But as such, this “motivation” is based on the old bourgeois principle: if you don’t work, you don’t eat; if you don’t work enough, you won’t have enough, and this independently of the existing social possibilities. Yet to learn how to participate in social production in another way than under the whip of the blackmail of hunger seems an urgent priority as soon as the collectivity will possess the main means of production.”
The communist revolution, if it arrives in the nick of time to prevent humankind’s suicide, is a seismic event that changes everything. It is difficult to imagine it but it will leave nothing untouched. People will change. In the heath of the struggle for survival, proletarians will come together and become the self-conscious collective worker, which he/she already was but didn’t know it. All human relationships (between producers, family members, men-women, young-old, teachers-students and more) change in the process. The entire way in which society reproduces itself changes. Work changes. It is no longer means labor.
The end of labor
You wrote: We don’t think it’s possible to “abolish labor“ as such, as you seem to demand. Instead, we want to “abolish wage labor”. Our understanding of labour is inspired by Marx, who described it as the metabolism between humans and nature. Labor in this fundamental sense can of course never be abolished, as long as human beings are also natural beings. What indeed can and should be done is different products and services.”
When Marx argued that “the communist revolution is directed against the preceding mode of activity” and “does away with labour” (German Ideology, Part I, 5), or when he wrote that “the abolition of private property will become a reality only when it is conceived as the abolition of labour” ( On Friedrich List’s Book Das nationale System der politischen Oekonomie), he certainly did not mean that the metabolism between humans and nature should be abolished. He wanted to point out that this metabolism is not something static but qualitatively changing over the course of history. “Labour” had a very specific content for him, different from “work”. According to Engels he complained that the German language did not make that distinction. iii It’s true that even in English people often use the words interchangeably but the dictionary says “work” is a more general term, referring to any purposeful activity, mental or physical, paid or unpaid; whereas “labor” is more specific, referring to the production of goods and services, paid or part of an economic exchange. ‘Work’ is a concrete productive activity, but ‘labor’, as the historically specific mode of work in capitalist society, is abstract, yoked to labor time accounting, measured by socially necessary labor time, subject to the diktat of the clock. The revolution must abolish it immediately.
The concrete process of production can and must be organized by the producers themselves. They will organize it not only to make things for others (including the different products and services you look forward to), but also with their own wellbeing in mind. To transform productive activity so that it becomes satisfying will be their priority from the beginning. That’s why they will like work, why it will not be labor anymore, why people will neither need nor accept to be coerced to work. It will be satisfying, because of its new purpose (real needs instead of profit), because of the new relationships between freely associated producers, because of the control that they now have over their means of production, their methods and their product. Maybe not every task can become fun that way, or maybe it can. That too is a revolution we can expect and hope for but that remains beyond the horizon of our imagination.
It is telling that the only change you foresee in regard to labor is : “What indeed can and should be done is different products and services.” New products for the consumers, but nothing worth mentioning on how they are made. And indeed, the voucher system does not change the content of work nor its measure (labor time). Yet it is precisely that content that must be transformed.
You seem to accept as a given ( and it’s true that Marx did as well) that it would be a hallmark of communist society that the working hours would be reduced as much as possible in order to increase free, disposable time for everyone. But that implies that work time will still be unfree time, time in which people are forced to do something while they’d rather be doing something else. A dreadful but necessary activity which they do because they must, because they have to eat, because they need their vouchers. In other words, as long as the division between work and the rest of life remains, work is still alienated labor. In contrast, we think it will be a hallmark of communist society that the distinction work – leisure will disappear. Work will be rewarding in itself and leisure will often be creative, productive. And since it would become impossible to distinguish the activity “work”, which alone would give one the right to obtain consumer vouchers, from other activities, it also would become impossible to measure labor time proper, as the voucher system requires. So this system would be a real obstacle to communist transformation, as it would perpetuate a reality which must be overcome as quickly as possible.
The end of Value
You wrote: we want to emphasize that labor time accounting is not value-production. To see it as a form of value because measuring of labor time takes place and people get paid for their work is a quite primitive understanding of value theory (…) and is not a Marxist view.
That confirms that Marx was not a Marxist, as indeed he once sarcastically stated. On the subject of labor time accounting he wrote in his Gotha Critique: “Clearly, the same principle is at work here as that which regulates the exchange of commodities as far as this is an exchange of equal values.” He recognized “… a given amount of labour in one form is exchanged for the same amount in another.” The substance of value remains the same: labor time. As before, the labor time he/she performed determines the worker’s share of the social wealth.
So if you work long hours, you’ll get more vouchers and you can consume more. If you work less, you must consume less. Unless you cheat and pretend that you worked more but then you might get caught by the department of labor time control and get a sanction. Sounds fair? Marx conceded such a system isn’t fair, that it would cause inequality because it ignores the qualitative differences between the skills of producers and between the needs of consumers. However, “right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.”
So, like in the Communist Manifesto, he settled for something that seemed reachable, something still resembling capitalism in many ways. But today, it sounds like a recipe from a by-gone era (from a man who famously wrote that he didn’t want to give “recipes for the cook-shops of the future”). At least workers would no longer be exploited, no surplus value would be stolen from them, as they would receive the full equivalent of the value that their direct labor produced. Except, of course, for the part that must be deducted for investment and for meeting the needs of people who can’t work.
State capitalist regimes also claimed that in their system workers are no longer exploited because the means of production supposedly are no longer privately owned but belong to the workers’ own socialist state, so that all the surplus labor that workers perform for the state, they perform for themselves. The three main differences with the system proposed by the GIK is that the latter would be under the control of the workers councils, which presumably would prevent the emergence of a state-based privileged ruling class, that the value of goods would be determined neither by the market nor by the state, but by an ‘exact, objective’ calculation, and that no money would be used in the exchange of goods and labor time.
But it would still be processes of exchange that regulate production and consumption. Exchanges that are possible because of what makes work comparable to other work and its products comparable to other products. Obviously, there are many ways in which all kinds of work are different from each other. They differ in intensity, in difficulty, in talent and skill, in the degree in which the effort is individual or collective, to name but a few characteristics. The only thing that they have in common is that they can be measured in time. The same is true for the products of labor. These might be shoddy or perfect but what they have in common, what makes them comparable, is that a measurable quantity of labor time went into their making. Consumers too are reduced to what they have in common. They all possess a quantity of value (a quantity of labor time, expressed in vouchers), regardless of the differences in their needs and circumstances.
That invalidates the claim that the vouchers system makes an exact calculation possible. Given these qualitative differences, it wouldn’t really be possible to measure the average social labor contained in each product or the labor time provided by each individual producer. Also because, as Marx wrote in Grundrisse, “the product ceases to be the product of isolated direct labour, and the combination of social activity appears, rather, as the producer.” The product is social, made by ‘the collective worker’, and it has become impossible to determine what each individual worker has contributed to it. In today’s production processes, computer chips and digital software are everywhere and are essential at all stages of production. Calculating how much of the labor time that they contain is transferred each time they are used, would not be very practical. Marx thought it is untenable to continue to use labor time as a measuring rod when living labor is no longer the main source of real wealth. In Grundrisse, he situated the roots of capitalism’s systemic crisis in that contradiction. According to him, it becomes an absurdity which triggers historical change. So we wonder: If the measure of wealth by direct labor time is already such a problem in capitalism, why continue to organize production and distribution on this basis after capitalism is defeated?
Labor time accounting would take away the producers’ control over the process and means of production in various ways. One such way would be that it would promote standardization. The need to measure the individual labor times that went into the products of combined social activities would require to break up the work processes into uniform standardized tasks whose duration could be determined. This is where the cleavage between the collective worker and their product takes place. The producers would be under pressure, not only to accomplish the tasks in the allotted socially average time but also, in order to stay within the time limit, to accomplish the task in a given, standardized way. They would remain subjected to the clock and have no agency over how they use their means of production.
The transitioning society may encounter serious scarcity problems but labor time accounting is not the only possible way to address them. A dynamic rationing system that is based on an equitable distribution of goods according to need and that can quickly be adapted to changing circumstances seems a much better solution than a system that continues to treat everyone and everything as a quantity of labor time. What Marx proposed in “Gotha”, what the GIK elaborated in “Fundamental Principles” amounts to value exchange without money.
Labor vouchers are not money because it would not be possible to accumulate them or to use them to mediate exchanges of goods. At least not in theory. How that would be enforced in practice is another matter. The question is whether, in an economy organized on the base of exchanges of equivalents, money could be absent. If indeed labor vouchers would not be allowed to take on these essential functions of money (circulating goods, saving, accumulating…) they might be functioning as imperfect money and the functions it can’t fulfill would be taken over by something else. In other words, the market would survive, informally and perniciously as black market.
You make the argument that labor time accounting would be necessary to plan production. Indeed it will be useful to take data on labor time into account for planning, but only as one of several parameters. It would make more sense to calculate the parameters of production and distribution on the basis of concrete physical quanta. As Raoul Victor wrote: “The measure of human needs, on the one hand, and of the actual possibilities of production, on the other, in physical terms (e.g., the quantity of gallons of milk per child, on the one hand, and the number of dairy cows on the other), are far more simple to make than any assessments based on average social labor time.” And he emphasizes that the development of the information technology can make such planning a lot easier, precise, flexible and efficient.
Whatever advantages labor time accounting might have for planning, they pale against the backdraw that the proletarians’ would still be ruled by the clock, the very thing that made them resist capital in the first place. As Gilles Dauvé wrote: “If the regulator is labour time, this entails the imperative of being productive, and productivity is no servant : it rules over production. The shopfloor would soon lose control over its elected supervisors, and democratically designated co-organizers would act as bosses. The system of councils would survive as an illusion, and workers’ management result in capitalism, or rather… capitalism would never have disappeared. We can’t have it both ways: either we keep the foundation of value, or we dispense with it. The circle can’t be squared.”
The end of the state
You wrote: “it would be very naive to suppose that the state will suddenly just disappear in a revolutionary process.”
What makes this sentence correct is the word “suddenly”. A sudden collapse of the state is indeed unlikely. But take that word away and we say: yes! The state will disappear in the revolutionary process, because that’s what this process is all about.
The capitalist state has continuously grown, regardless of ideological shifts, regardless whether the regime was democratic or authoritarian, liberal or (pseudo)communist. The reason is that capitalism, under the pressure of its own contradictions and of class resistance, has ever more need for coercion and control. That’s what the state is for and that’s what the proletariat fights against.
You wrote: “Labor time accounting theory tries to find solutions for these problems, to prevent a fallback into state economy – which seems at the moment, in fact, the most probable scenario during a revolutionary situation”.
Not having a crystal ball, we don’t know if that’s true but we share your fear. If the revolution leads to nothing more than a political takeover of the state, it will have failed. It will have dug its own grave. Maybe then the scenario will be what you call “state economy”. The GIK wanted to show that that was not inevitable, that communism did not have to be like Stalin’s USSR. They defended revolutionary positions in a very dark period. Their struggle is ours. But that doesn’t mean that the solutions they proposed “to prevent a fallback into state economy” would accomplish that purpose. If you start from the premise that people must be forced to work to consume, you already implicitly say they must be monitored. Labor time accounting is still based on coercion and requires control to make it work. Coercion and control require an apparatus to enforce them, to impose the laws and regulations of the economy on society, to punish cheating, abuse and other infractions. That is the state, even if there is a structure of workers councils standing above it.
Would such a state “wither away”? Or would it be the locus from which the capitalist mode of production would reassert itself? The fact that the value form would survive, that the reproduction of society would still be based on labor whose pace and modalities escape the direct control of those who perform it, suggest that the latter possibility would be the more probable one. Alienated labor would still stand at the core of society, and because it is alienated labor it would have to be managed. It would require a division of labor from which a ruling class could emerge, whose managing responsibilities would expand over time, from supervision of the labor time accounting system to imposing rules and practices which the economy requires. It might focus on the expansion of surplus labor even to the detriment of necessary labor (work to meet the needs of the producers themselves). Its expansion might include extra-economic social functions like repressing private capitalists, integrating the disconnected, containing society’s centrifugal tendencies and other tasks that should not be entrusted to state or proto-state specialists.
The state must die and not be resurrected. The persistence of the value form in labor time accounting could allow its return. It would lead to the emergence of a separate class to manage the value system and would create new pathways to accumulation. Even if the form of a state is based on the dictatorship of the workers councils, with delegates elected and revocable by the workers who elected them, that could not fundamentally change the content of its practice.
This does not negate that the workers councils, or a comparable structure that would involve the whole of society in setting global priorities and making other decisions of global impact, would be essential. The revolutionary transition would not be disorganized. On the contrary, organized life will likely flourish as never before. As the collective worker opens the door to the human community, communal consciousness will sprout countless organizations. Whether based on proximity, shared activity or shared opinions or interests, they will have agency. And the information technology, when liberated, will provide them with means of communication Marx and the GIK could not even dream of.
Among all this spontaneous organization the need for mass organization during the revolutionary insurrection and afterwards stands out. In the past it manifested itself in the formation of workers assemblies, soviets, workers councils. It seems reasonable to assume that a revolutionary mass organization of tomorrow would bear similarities to those. How they were organized and how they should be organized has been much debated but what is clear is they can only be a mass organization if the mass is fighting. And the mass is only fighting if it has agency. Workers (or when the classes are abolished, producers) must feel they have choices, that, together, they have power over their life. If that goes away, the best organized council structure becomes an empty shell. So since the labor time accounting system impairs the agency of the producers, it weakens the base on which the council structure rests.
A global council-like structure would be indispensable, given the global challenges facing us. We have to be able to decide collectively what to do. But it would be a mistake to imagine a hierarchy of organized power with the global council on top, like a proletarian version of parliamentary democracy. The ways in which communication and decision making happen will likely be more horizontal than hierarchical, communal rather than one side imposing its will on the other. It’s beyond the horizon of our imagination to see and describe how precisely that will be organized. But we know we will not get there if we replace wages by semi-wages, money by semi-money and the state by a semi-state. The argument that we will need those because of the underdevelopment of the productive forces no longer counts. We can skip the “lower phase of communism” which isn’t communism at all and go straight for the real thing. Because we must and because we can. It is more possible and more urgent than ever.
S.Y. and Sanderr
NOTES
iNaturally the communist society would have to be ‘economic’ with its resources. But it would abolish “the economy” as a separate sphere, an autonomous machine that society must obey. As Gilles Dauvé wrote: “Communism is the end of the economy as a separate and privileged field on which everything else depends while despising and fearing it”.
Economy, as a field, came into existence in the 18th century. It accompanied the rise of capitalism, adopted its world view, became its ‘scientific’ apologist. Marx’s Capital has as its subtitle “a critique of political economy”. In communism there would be neither politics nor economy, since Politics implies that political power is something that exists over and against the community; likewise Economy implies that the fruits of the community’s labor exists quite apart from them. In communism, there certainly will be ‘things’ but these things will not be “congealed activity”, that is, activity which has come to a halt in a production process thereby gaining its own “ontological status” (i.e. a commodity). Eventually, in a post capitalist society production and consumption will not be separate spheres of account but organic moments in a continuous human creative activity. This will be especially so once all basic human needs are met.
ii which was in the first place an attack on reformism and its view of the state as a class-neutral instrument that could be conquered by the working class.
iii “One of the finest researches of Marx is that revealing the duplex character of labour. Labour, considered as a producer of use-value, is of a different character, has different qualifications from the same labour, when considered as a producer of value. The one is labour of a specified kind, spinning, weaving, ploughing, etc.; the other is the general character of human productive activity, common to spinning, weaving, ploughing, etc., which comprises them all under the one common term, labour. The one is labour in the concrete, the other is labour in the abstract. The one is technical labour, the other is economical labour. In short—for the English language has terms for both—the one is work, as distinct from labour; the other is labour, as distinct from work. After this analysis, Marx continues: “Originally a commodity presented itself to us as something duplex: Use-value and Exchange-value. Further on we saw that labour, too, as far as it is expressed in value, does no longer possess the same characteristics which belong to it in its capacity as a creator of use-value.” Friedrich Engels: How not to translate Marx https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885/11/translation-m
Yes, It’s War
Barely three weeks into the Gaza conflict, Brazil’s president Lula declared “It’s not a war, it’s a genocide.” “End the genocide. It’s not a war,” Francesca Albanese told a UN committee in November 2024. “There is no war. It’s a misnomer to call it a war,” said the genocide historian Omer Bartov in April 2025. More than two years into the devastation of Gaza, the refrain has become a formula. It is repeated by generals and presidents, by jurists and historians, by aid workers standing over the bodies of their colleagues, by columnists and street marchers. This refrain is meant to register the scale of the slaughter and the asymmetry of force, and to refuse the sanitizing language of self-defense and military necessity. But the refrain is wrong. Gaza is a war. Seeing that clearly is part of seeing the world that produces it, and only from there can any real struggle against that world begin.
The “not a war” formula is an appeal to courts, sanctions, humanitarian intervention — to the international order, as if somewhere in it there were states willing and able to stop this. But the states with the power to act are the states facilitating the war: their diplomats publicly urge restraint in Gaza while their defense ministries renew Israel’s weapons contracts. The order was designed not to prevent violence but to regulate which states may exercise it. Two and a half years in and more than a hundred thousand dead[1], the order has produced a few symbolic restrictions, a few ministerial condemnations, and no willingness to cross Washington. The order to which the formula appeals was never going to stop this war.
What kept the major powers from fighting each other after 1945 was not the international order but nuclear deterrence: the certainty that direct war between them would be annihilation. The institutions built in the shadow of that threat took credit for a peace they did not produce. The wars continued anyway, displaced onto proxies and client states across three continents, but the great powers themselves did not fight. The USSR’s collapse ended the deadlock. For a few decades the United States ran the system alone, waging its wars under the old humanitarian vocabulary. That unipolar era is now over. The US no longer bothers to dress its dominance in the language of international law; it competes openly for hegemony, and so do its rivals. What were once suppressed rivalries are now open contests, and Gaza is one of them.
When the pretense of a rules-based international order is dropped, what remains is war. The “not a war” formula does not escape this war but takes one side in it. It strips the conflict of its political content in a particular way: Israel is reduced to a killing machine, Gaza to its victims. Hamas dissolves into the mass of Gazan suffering. Armed factions, class divisions, foreign patrons all vanish, and what remains is babies, mothers, families, the People as such. This image depends on a mystification: that the ruled and their rulers are united in a single national interest and political will. But Hamas is the government and army that rules Gaza, with its own war aims, its own backers, and its own willingness to sacrifice those under its rule.
The militant form of this mystification elevates Hamas rather than dissolving it; its violence becomes the authentic self-assertion of a subjugated people. The mirror image of Israel’s doctrine of self-defense is the ready-made line that an oppressed nation has the right to achieve statehood by any means, and that the killing of a thousand Israelis[2] was therefore a revolutionary act. “It’s not a war,” said IDF general Itai Veruv within days of the October 7th attack. “It’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre.” Both sides identify Hamas with Gaza as a whole: one to justify armed resistance, the other to justify collective punishment. It is the same nationalist ideology wearing a different uniform. One side fights for national security, the other for national liberation; both require the exploited to die for their rulers’ aims and to desire the enemy’s obliteration as the very object of victory. The working class — of Gaza, of Israel, of Lebanon, of Iran — has nothing to gain from any side of this war.
A war, then. Not because its violence is legitimate, symmetrical, or bound by the rules international humanitarian law claims to enforce. War is no duel between gentlemen. Overwhelming asymmetry does not make it something other than war, nor does the fact that most of the dead never held a rifle. War is organized armed conflict pursued for political ends by states and the armed organizations that serve or challenge them. Gaza meets that description on every count. Naming it a war does Israel no favors. It is a refusal of the pretense that this systematic mass murder belongs to some other, incomprehensible disaster, some catastrophic break with the normal functioning of this world.
And this is the normal functioning of the world. To call Gaza “not a war” is to treat it as exceptional, as if the killing there were fundamentally different from the killing this world treats as normal. Sanctions starve hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq and Syria under the label of diplomacy.[3] The drone strikes of the “war on terror” — legally reclassified as counterterrorism to facilitate the frictionless administration of death — killed people in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan for two decades. Border policy kills migrants by the thousands every year, turning deserts and seas into graveyards by design. People are crushed in warehouses and killed in the fields they pick, poisoned by the air they breathe and the water they drink, and consigned to die from the routine diseases of deprivation — and none of it counts as violence because no one fired a gun. None of this is an aberration. It is capitalism’s peace.
Nor is Gaza an isolated war. It is one front among many. Israel is simultaneously razing Gaza, tightening its hold on the West Bank, invading Lebanon, and bombing Iran. The October 7th attack helped scuttle the normalization deals between Israel and the Gulf states; Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz threatens the world economy; the US drive to maintain hegemony in the Middle East is tested in Ukraine at the same time; Russia and China probe every crack in the same unstable field. This war is driven from elsewhere: in capitals, markets, and treaty rooms far beyond the strip. That elsewhere is not the backdrop; it is where the killing is decided. This is what it means to say modern war is interimperialist. The states competing within the system of global capital throw their weight onto every local conflict and convert it into a node in a planetary struggle for control. They move through arms contracts, basing agreements, currency flows, and the calculations of staff officers in distant capitals, and end in a particular apartment block in Khan Younis.
None of this requires denying that what is happening in Gaza is genocidal. But the legal machinery that distinguishes genocide from war does not exist to protect the people being killed. That definition exists to sort atrocity — to determine which mass killings will be prosecuted and which will be tolerated as the routine cost of doing business. The political aims driving the destruction of Gaza, the states and blocs backing it, the war economy sustaining it — none of these change depending on whether a court classifies the killing as war or genocide. It is the same conflict, driven the same way, producing the same dead. The reasons are not legal but historical.
In the twentieth century, war and genocide became intertwined through the development of capitalism’s accelerating capacity for destruction. The infrastructure of industrial war had been growing since the 1860s.[4] What the First World War added was not the technology but the scale. For the first time, the productive capacity of an entire economy determined whether a country could keep fighting. The front consumed ammunition faster than peacetime industry could produce it[5], and every warring country was forced to turn its civilian economy into a munitions operation, conscripting labor and directing production at unprecedented scale.[6] The military conclusion followed directly: if the war effort begins in the factory and the bakery, then the machinist and the baker are both targets.
The Second World War put this conclusion into practice. Cities and their populations were deliberately destroyed as a means of breaking the productive base that sustained the enemy — a line that runs from Guernica through Hamburg and Tokyo to Hiroshima. By 1945 the distinction between combatant and noncombatant no longer constrained how wars were fought. Strategic doctrine could designate a whole society as a target, but producing the social will to carry out that destruction required something more. Here the logic of nationalism reached its extreme: entire societies were cast through racial categories as existential enemies whose destruction became not just a strategic but a moral necessity. The same process binds the attacking population together: shared hatred of the racial enemy is one of the most effective mechanisms for producing the national unity that total war demands. Genocidal racism and extermination are not deviations from capitalism’s normal functioning. The concentration camps are the hell of a world whose heaven is the supermarket.[7]
That hell has not closed. Gaza is not alone. The camps multiply. In Sudan, rival military factions have turned a war for control of the state into ethnic extermination in Darfur, with starvation deployed as a weapon and entire communities burned out. In Tigray, the Ethiopian government besieged an entire region and waged a war of annihilation against Tigrayans. In Myanmar, the military has been displacing and liquidating the Rohingya for years. None of these wars has been stopped by the institutions that claim jurisdiction over genocide and war crimes. All of them have long been called what they are: war, genocide, mass atrocity. The naming has not produced intervention, prosecution, or an end to the killing. Taken together with Gaza, they show that the twentieth century’s convergence of war and exterminatory violence has only deepened. The world’s powers are competing harder, over shrinking margins, with more weapons, and the wars they produce are growing more destructive.
The war with Iran makes this unmistakable. The excuse of Gaza’s density collapses in Iran, a country of eighty million with distributed cities and a standing army, where the same methods are producing the same carnage. In Minab, an American bomb hit an elementary school on the first day of the war and killed at least 175 people, most of them children.[8] Russia has made Ukrainian civilian infrastructure a primary military target. Israel leveled Gaza’s hospitals and schools over two years. Now the United States is doing the same in Iran, and its defense secretary is dismantling the institutional restraints that were supposed to prevent this: firing the military’s top legal advisors, closing the offices designed to respond to civilian harm, boasting about eliminating “stupid rules of engagement.” These restraints are being taken apart deliberately, because they are obstacles to the kind of wars these states intend to fight.
The great powers are arming themselves at scale. The war in Ukraine has ground into an industrial attrition contest decided by shell production, and Russia has built a war economy it cannot demobilize without triggering an economic and political crisis of its own. China has been preparing for years, massively expanding its navy, doubling its nuclear arsenal, and engineering its civilian industry to be a war economy on demand. Current wars have drained US munitions stockpiles, and the Pentagon is scrambling to rebuild mass-production capacity hollowed out by decades of preference for high-tech, low-volume systems. The shortfall is so great that the US is cutting back security commitments and pressuring its allies to rearm at a pace unseen since the Cold War.[9] The great powers are not yet at war with each other, but they are arming and preparing as if they expect to be, and the wars they are already fighting show what that preparation is for. The world is producing more Gazas, faster, with fewer restraints, and with larger wars on the horizon.
We say it is a war. We say so not to domesticate the horror or file it away as one more conflict among others. We do it to reject every position that treats this war as separable from the system that produces it. The campist identification with the resistance champions the local face of an imperialist bloc. The institutional appeal petitions a collective authority that has no means of enforcement independent of the states that arm the war. Calls for intervention, sanctions, or correct legal recognition are addressed to the UN; the great powers simply ignore them.
Every camp represents its campaign of destruction as necessity, defense, revenge, civilization, or even peace. Opposing the war by choosing a side in it is not opposition. It is recruitment. The internationalist position is a refusal of all these camps. No camp in this war, or in any of the wars now multiplying, represents the interests of the people fighting and dying in it. No army liberates the population in whose name it kills. Nationalist ideology — whether it calls itself patriotism, resistance, solidarity, or security — is how rulers get their subjects to willingly fight and die for them.
The forces producing these wars are enormous, and the present capacity to interrupt them is almost nonexistent. In a period of low working-class activity there is little use for strategic proposals. We are pro-revolutionaries; we cannot say how the final struggle would begin from where we stand, but we can say what is a dead end. A struggle that would actually threaten these wars could not be a campaign for a better international order, a coalition of “progressive” states against the dominant imperial bloc, or even a “workers’ semi-state” that marshals the proletariat[10] under a red flag. Each of these leaves intact the conditions that produce these wars. Only the working class can end what produces them: the state, capital, and the class relation that sustains both.
So long as capitalism persists, there is more of this to come. There will be more Gazas, more wars dressed as police actions or security operations or humanitarian interventions, more destruction of civilian life as the routine method of conflict between states whose rivalries intensify and whose restraints are being stripped away. The enemy is not this or that state, not this or that army, but capitalism itself, which destroys life in both war and peace. Every war depends on the willingness of the exploited to fight it. Every collective refusal — every mutiny, every strike against the war, every crack in the nationalist ideology that binds the working class to its rulers’ wars — is a crack in the machinery of war itself. The struggle against these wars requires the clarity to insist, against every camp and every flag, that what must be fought is not this or that war but the system that produces them: capitalism.
HK
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The official death toll records only identified or otherwise registered deaths and necessarily excludes many bodies still buried under rubble, deaths not reported to health authorities, and indirect deaths from hunger, disease, lack of clean water, exposure, and the destruction of medical infrastructure. By October 2025, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported more than 67,000 killed and 169,000 injured; public-health researchers have repeatedly argued that this substantially undercounts both violent deaths and indirect deaths. A 2026 Lancet Global Health study estimated more than 75,000 violent deaths in the first sixteen months alone, with additional indirect deaths from malnutrition and untreated illness. On any accounting that includes siege-related mortality, the toll is plausibly well above 100,000. ↑
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Approximately 1,200 people were killed in the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, primarily civilians and foreign nationals. While the vast majority were killed by the attackers, the IDF in several locations invoked the Hannibal Directive, a protocol to prevent abductions (and the resulting negotiation leverage) “at all costs.” The use of heavy weaponry against targets where militants and hostages were intermingled resulted in the “friendly fire” deaths of at least fourteen Israeli civilians. ↑
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UNICEF estimated in 1999 that the UN sanctions on Iraq (1990–2003) had caused roughly 500,000 excess deaths of children under five. Sanctions regimes on Syria and elsewhere have been credibly linked to mass humanitarian crisis and substantial excess mortality, though causal attribution is complicated by the simultaneous effects of war, government policy, and infrastructural collapse. ↑
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The industrial logistics of modern war were visible decades before 1914. The Crimean War (1853–56) combined rifled artillery, the railway, and the telegraph, allowing supplies and information to move at speeds that reshaped operations. The US Civil War (1861–65) was fought between two industrializing economies of unequal development (the North’s greater industrial capacity was decisive in its victory) and ended with Sherman’s March to the Sea, a campaign designed to destroy the South’s productive base and the population’s willingness to sustain the war. The Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) showcased Prussian railway mobilization at unprecedented scale and speed. What the First World War added was not these capacities but their systematic integration under state direction. ↑
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Britain’s 1915 “shell crisis” is a useful shorthand for the moment when industrial capacity became visibly inseparable from military success. The crisis followed severe shortages of artillery shells on the Western Front and helped bring down the Liberal government, produce a coalition government, and create the Ministry of Munitions under Lloyd George. The lesson drawn by the state was that modern war could not be supplied by ordinary market coordination or peacetime procurement: labor, raw materials, factory output, and civilian consumption had to be subordinated to the needs of the front. Contemporary parliamentary debate already framed munitions as a national production problem, not merely a military supply problem. ↑
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The state’s wartime command of production did not disappear with the armistice. The Ministry of Munitions in Britain, the War Industries Board in the United States, Germany’s Kriegsrohstoffabteilung, and similar apparatuses in every major belligerent pioneered techniques of labor direction, price control, and industrial planning that became permanent features of twentieth-century statecraft. After 1918 these apparatuses were partially dismantled but never fully dissolved; they were reactivated during the interwar depression and fully remobilized for the Second World War, after which state-directed capital allocation became the permanent condition of capitalist economies — whether under Soviet central planning, fascist corporatist direction, New Deal liberal-democratic management, or postwar social-democratic developmentalism. Tendencies toward concentration, monopoly, and state involvement in production predated 1914, but the First World War forced their consolidation into the institutional forms that have structured capitalism ever since. ↑
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La Banquise, #1, 1983 ↑
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“U.S. and Israeli Strikes Have Damaged Hundreds of Schools and Health Facilities in Iran,” The New York Times, April 22, 2026. ↑
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NATO standards require member arsenals to conform to specifications that in practice mean buying American weapons, so the more Europe rearms, the larger the market for the US military-industrial complex. Trump’s various threats against NATO have been instrumental in extracting a European commitment to a 150% increase in military spending over the next decade, at the expense of the social wage. See Sanderr, “Is He Just Mad or is There a Strategy?”, Internationalist Perspective, February 2026 https://internationalistperspective.org/staging/3363/venezuela-greenland-minneapolis/ . ↑
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The class that can be conscripted to the factory can be conscripted to the front. Any revolution that preserves labor as the condition of access to the social product preserves the dispossession that makes both forms of conscription possible. ↑
A CRITIQUE OF FEMINISM AS IDEOLOGY
At a pro-revolutionary summer camp last August and a subsequent meeting we were confronted with a kind of feminist ideology which, in our view, is a real obstacle to free discussion. We think a debate on feminism is necessary. The following text is an in-depth contribution to it. It is a slightly abridged translation of an essay by the Argentina-based group Cuadernos de Negación. It is part of its issue # 15, which is entirely dedicated to issues surrounding sex and gender. The original text can be found HERE.
P.S. After we published this text, the OC (Organizing Committee) of that summer camp told IP that we were no longer welcome at the camp this year.
A CRITIQUE OF FEMINISM AS IDEOLOGY
Feminism is inevitable, not because of a sudden widespread awakening of consciousness, but because of the increasing prominence of women in the workplace, as well as in the academic, political, and legal spheres. That is, it gains astonishing momentum at a particular moment in the history of capitalist society, based on new working and living conditions that particularly affected women, and the struggles that arose in response over decades. These struggles were both reformist and disruptive, even revolutionary. However, since there has been no revolution, it is the dominant, official feminism that also represents the legacy of revolutionaries. The same is true for other expressions of workers struggles, the unemployed, racialized groups, and sexual minorities.
The lack of understanding of the particular forms of oppression and exploitation led to a specialization in these matters within the proletarian movement , so that today there are almost as many partial struggles as there are differences among proletarians themselves. But feminism is not simply proletarian. Nor can it be precisely defined as to what it represents today for millions of human beings who take to the streets under its banner. For some, it is a fully developed ideology, openly interclassist, but for many, it is a concept that unites them in a shared struggle and feeling against male oppression and exploitation in its most sexist forms.
The lack of class demarcation has been and continues to be a problem in overcoming the current state of affairs. When the unity of women and other identities is conceived in a corporatist way (with their own separate interests) , it is very difficult to engage in self-criticism because any criticism is understood as a collective as well as a personal offense. The same happens with workerism, racism, and even with anarchism or communism understood in an ideological way.i
“When we criticize this or that ideology, when we denounce this or that force that we consider part of the enemy, we don’t consider what each proletarian will think of it, what each one imagines about what we say. We believe that revolutionary criticism (both “theoretical” and “practical”) cannot be based on these premises. (…) Of course, there will be many comrades who feel attacked, who do not understand that what we are attacking is an entire alienating conception of the struggle, but we think that the struggle against positions that hinder our progress is more important than these individual and immediate concerns. It stems from the same social struggle, of which it is merely an expression. Of course, this does not mean that there are no other ways to express criticism.” (Proletarios Internationalistas, Critique of the Insurrectionalist Ideology)
While this critique is important for those who consider themselves feminists, it is not intended solely for them. What is presented here stems from the class struggle, and therefore, it is directed at our class and its struggles. In this situation, the feminist movement, in a still broad definition, is relegating women to dealing only with “women’s issues,” which have become “gender issues”. This is a problem for all social movements, in which millions of proletarians limit themselves to participating as citizens. It’s true that they focus on a real problem but one that, when it is addressed in a partial manner, obscures the possibilities of emancipation.
“We believe that today, feminism is relegating women to dealing only with ‘women’s issues.’ This is causing, in our view, women to be absent from certain spaces, or even to stop thinking about other topics, if gender issues are not being addressed. It seems that when women participate in the world, they have to speak as women, or from a woman’s perspective, or about women’s issues. Thus, while we consider it important to ground our discourse in who we are and to visualize women in different positions and roles, in order to broaden the unconscious archetype we have of what a woman is and what a woman should do, we also perceive that we are sometimes confined to this gender cage and that we are valued or promoted as women, and not as individuals. From an anti-sexist perspective, we believe that we should not accept these biases, these poisoned privileges. When we sing, when we write, when we act, feminism often labels us as feminists simply for the fact of being women.” (Various Authors, Together Against Sexism and Oppression)
Feminism has equated being a rebellious and combative woman, and even simply being a woman with feminism. It’s inconceivable to some that women who want to end sexism might not be feminists, or even that they might openly criticize feminism. Just like some people can’t grasp that some of us demonstrate against the bosses, but also against trade unionism, and that, moreover, we are not leftists. And, above all, that this is a constant in the history of our class, that we are not inventing anything new.
This comparison is not made frivolously. Feminism, as an ideology and official movement, is to sexism what trade unionism is to the question of labor. A series of organizations and positions that present themselves as the only option in the face of a real problem. Regarding labor, trade unionism has dominated the social landscape to such an extent that any form of organization related to the workplace is labeled a union or something like that. Something similar is happening with feminism encompassing every response or struggle concerning women’s issues under a single banner, which already has its own color. This wouldn’t be dangerous if it were simply a matter of nomenclature; however, these movements with supposedly general interests have their leaders, their programs, and predetermined paths. It is an organizational perspective that embraces some demands arising from concrete needs and develops struggles, but always framing them within a limited sphere.
In this way, many feminist proposals resemble those of trade unionism: minimal demands, pressure, acceptance of the dominant ideology, projecting the problem onto a personalized external enemy outside the movement, without understanding the problem as a social relationship (a double, not a one-sided, relationship). And in its most institutionalized extremes, it involves the search for a political space within the State. The slogan “We want to be alive and free” has already been transformed by some into “We want to be alive, free, without debt and part of the government”.
For their part, supposedly revolutionary voices, under the pretext of repositioning “the women’s question” within the social whole, have completely neglected it. And the feminist movement, by perpetually asserting the specificity of women, perpetuates the separation otherwise maintained by traditional movements.
Let’s not deceive ourselves; this is not a matter of form but of substance. Protests, even violent ones, can reinforce the existing society if they do not attack its foundations, merely pointing out to those in power the contradictions they need to manage.
If we want to share some critical reflections on feminism, we will be told that this is wrong because there is not just one feminism but many. Following this logic, there would be almost as many feminisms as feminists, and therefore we would have to criticize each and every one of them, which is impossible. The reason it is possible to criticize feminism in general is because there is a common denominator among all the “feminisms”: not only the exaltation of the feminine, but a partial response to a social problem conceived as a particular problem.
On the other hand, if feminism can encompass everything, from the rise of women in the state or in corporations to the organizations and struggles of working-class women that have existed for centuries, then this label is not very useful. Or perhaps that is precisely why it’s used.
Similarly, the ideological representation of the working class became its enemy, assimilating all the real and important questions, rendering them through the filter of ideology, not to solve the problem but to perpetuate it. In the same way, the real problems we are discussing here are assimilated into feminism, like the defense of the Earth is assimilated into environmentalism. But it is worth bearing in mind that not only did the representation of the class become its enemy, but the very weakness of the proletariat is expressed in that representation. It is the representation of its weaknesses.
This problem transcends feminism. We have already discussed it elsewhere in relation to Marxism and anarchism as ideologies. The destruction of the State is not the sole task of anarchism, nor does every effort to destroy the State, even in a revolutionary way, turn its participants into anarchists. Similarly, Marxists are neither the inventors nor the sole proprietors of the struggle against Capital. It is also worth mentioning that, throughout their history, the vast majority of the official representatives of both movements have made enormous contributions to maintaining the existing order of things.ii
Feminism is the expression of an existing problem that has evolved into an ideology. The strength of any ideology lies in the fact that it originates from a real issue, and is therefore dynamic, but it then returns to that issue burdened by the dead weight of what has become rigid and fixed. If the outward appearance and the underlying reality of these issues coincided directly, there would be no need for these reflections.
We do not use the term ideology in a positive sense. We understand ideology, as it has long been understood by revolutionaries, as the set of ideas that attempts to explain the world according to the prevailing mode of production. And we assume, with Marx, that it is not human consciousness that determines one’s being, but rather, on the contrary, it is social being that determines one’s consciousness.iii
Feminist ideology in particular is defined today by what predominates and guides it, namely, a victimizing, oversimplified and reactionary discourse. This does not mean that all those who support this ideology are only that; we are defining the ideology itself, not its adherents. However, this discourse is adopted and promoted by both proletarians and bourgeois alike, whether they are social democrats, liberals, or anarchists. Not to mention the constant advertising campaigns carried out by government ministries, NGO’s and corporations. This unanimity constitutes the dominant ideology we are referring to, and as a dominant ideology, it “forgets” to denounce capitalism, and when it does, it’s merely empty rhetoric.
It’s better to call things by their proper names.If they want us to believe that capitalism is a lesser evil,this is not the time to remain silent, no matter how much we have to go against the current.
Today we find ourselves at a point where criticizing capitalism without prioritizing sexism as its cause or its most crucial manifestation, is, in some circles, grounds for automatically being suspected of misogyny. The perception of reality has been inverted to such an extent that, within the feminist movement, criticizing the State requires resorting to statements such as “the State is the abusive male.” And a government official can be denounced as sexist, but the criticism is not understood if he is only referred to as an official, an agent of the state.
Within the current landscape of beliefs, feminist ideology is highly respected, and several of its tenets are even mandated by governments. Surely, this official endorsement magnifies its aura of prestige by decree, and daring to question it, or simply expressing doubt, leads to accusations of sexism and suspicion of gender-based violence. For these reasons, progressives from across the political spectrum jump on the bandwagon of political correctness, regardless of whether they actually agree with it or even if it contradicts their own personal lives.
The weight of discourse is so great that it is confused with actions and even overshadows them.
When it is discovered that a certain politician, artist, or lawyer who promotes “campaigns against gender-based violence” is in fact a woman abuser, it is forgotten that this is not just a matter of his conduct, that these individuals had to adopt a feminist or pro-feminist stance to keep up with the times. In the same way that a businessman who despises all those who are not heterosexual may have to set aside such opinions to find a way to enter a new market. And let’s not forget the most important thing: all these “politically correct individuals”, whether or not they are consistent with their discourses, are the ones who produce and reproduce a society that is based on sexual division, sexism, and racism.
Beyond the demands of political correctness, any claim to emancipation that does not radically and actively question the commodity, labor, sexism, the State, law, and private property—that is, the very foundations upon which this society is built—can only be mere progressivism, an accommodation within the existing society, which means perpetuating what is supposedly being fought against. To emancipate ourselves, we must fight against everything that prevents us from doing so, even if it’s done in the name of emancipation.
We are not saying that feminism lacks anti-capitalism. Unlike those who argue that feminism, environmentalism, anti-fascism, or even veganism would be incomplete without a critique of capitalism, we consider it wrong to portray these movements as unfinished. The point is not to add adjectives to existing labels, but to be and act against and beyond them.
We need a new common action for our emancipation. One that rejects the rhetoric and practice of this feminism steeped in academicism and legalism, and incapable of separating itself from the groveling and gloomy language of officials, judges, bureaucrats, and professional political activists. This does not mean collaborating with a reactionary antifeminism or a liberal post-feminism.
The workers movement has failed, among other things, because it clung to the dominant mode of production. And because it pointed, whenever possible, to the employer as the sole culprit for their discontent, no longer even blaming the bourgeoisie, and without understanding their own active participation in the development and perpetuation of capitalism. The feminist movement seeks its scapegoat in the “abstract man,” so befitting the world of laws and commodities. Presenting themselves and perceiving themselves, just as the labor movement and the left did and still do, as absolved of any responsibility for participating in a society that should be thrown into the trash.
Presenting women in general as victims of men in general only serves to reinforce competition and hostility and thus reinforce Capital and its State, class society. Feminist ideology makes visible the aggression of a husband against his wife, but it naturalizes that of the employer against the employee, it renders invisible the violence that many mothers exert against their children, and it condemns the authority of a father, but not the transmission of his property in the form of inheritance.
There is a constant and depersonalized oppression imposed by capitalist rules, and this capitalist abuse, in most cases, is not simply because they are women, although it is undeniable that a particular form of oppression and exploitation exists. The capitalist dynamic does not aim to inflict cruelty on any particular human group (although it does!), its dynamic is geared towards its own reproduction based on profit.
But let’s be even clearer: women are not victims nor can they participate in society solely as women. That is impossible, unless one wants to deny not only their existence in society but also their human reality. It would mean considering women to be mutilated and inferior beings, irresponsible for their actions and lacking a free will. And from there stems the demand for paternalistic laws and policies. Feminism adopts the typical dichotomies of the dominant ideology. It fights against “the masculine” from the perspective of “the feminine” (or “the non-masculine”), as if one pole of the relationship could subvert the other. As if certain behaviors were essentially attributable to “masculinity.” Violence, competition, and inequality are not exclusive to men, nor are they in their genes.
The central problem supposedly is the domination of men over women and those who are not men. This then implies, for example, that advertising displays female bodies in order to denigrate women, while the real purpose is to sell merchandise. Forgetting that, in the light of Capital, all bodies are objectified, and not only in a sexual way, can lead to the assumption that it is men who benefit from the exploitation of women, or that it is better to sell oneself withclothes on than without them. Similarly, it leads to thinking that the indoctrination of boys and girls is to strengthen an abstract patriarchy and not a concrete society, primarily capitalist and statist.
Feminism is the response to a particular situation. Its starting point is to turn everything that can be particular about the exploitation of proletarian women by Capital, into the a general condition of “woman in general”, thereby transforming the proletarian revolt is into an interclassist movement whose creed is that “men in general”, exploit “women in general”. In this way, official feminism is a decisive instrument of Capital for multiplying exploitation, which, under the guise of equal rights, also contributes to pushing proletarian women to assume a more active role in the direct production of surplus value and even in imperialist war.
Contemporary feminism has not forgotten the class struggle because it has become obsessed with the “gender issue”, it’s the other way around. Its obsession with the “gender issue” stems from the neglect or rejection of theexistence of class struggle, something that the majority of the social movement had already done in recent decades. But social antagonism is a reality that does not disappear by ignoring it and calling ourselves citizens.
When the impossibility of a revolutionary transformation is endorsed, capitalism is accepted as inevitable, in order to fit within it. A clear example of this is the approach proposed when considering what to do about domestic violence. In general, the attempt is made to end the problem without ending the conditions that make it possible. We anticipate the pseudo-criticisms and reply that we do not assume that we have to endure such things “until the revolution arrives”; as those who would never fight for revolution (and therefore speak of it “arriving” miraculously) tend to reproach us. We must provide support to the victims of violence (and they will mostly be women and children), defend ourselves and attack the abusers (who will mostly be adult men), and create, where possible, situations of protection and prevention before these events occur, agitate and continue to reflect collectively on the issue. But none of this precludes us from beginning to organize and fight against the material conditions that keep women and children in the position they are in, that is, to undertake a strugglein solidarity against the State and Capital. What prevents us from ever ending the problem is reducing the “struggle” to a matter of legal reforms, police action, in short, the strengthening of the State. A State that is nothing more nor less than the monopoly of violence, its manager and supposed administrator, which seeks to reaffirm its own power in the domestic sphere as well.
The danger of criticizing feminism
We run the risk of unwittingly serving sexism and the maintenance of the status quo when we criticize feminism. In the same way, we risk serving fascism by criticizing antifascism, or the left when we criticize the right. But for this to happen, our criticism must be mutilated and stripped of its radical nature. If it is conceived as an end in itself in endless and purely logical discussions. If it is assimilated into the mainstream, ignoring its origin and purpose.
Sexist/misogynistic criticism aims to neutralize feminism in order to maintain the status quo, to defend traditions and, ultimately, the old capitalist order. That is why it’s no coincidence that there is an increasingly strong link between the reactionary critique of feminism, extremist liberalism and the Alt-Right. For our part, the intention in criticize feminism is to transcend it in its emancipatory aspects and to attack it in its bourgeois aspects, with the sole purpose of deepening the struggle for the social emancipation of humankind.
If society is “sexist,” we have no choice but to admit that sexism is not only present in the men involved in it, but also in the women, children, and the elderly. If there has been no large, organized movement of men, also supported by women, in defense of sexism, although there have been small attempts, it is because sexism does not require any conscious defense by a particular sector of the population; it already exists intrinsically.
The danger also lies in considering feminist ideology to be above all criticism. Shielding it from criticism is the surest guarantee that, in response to an increasingly unilateral and short-sighted feminism, a reactive movement will be strengthened against it, fostering an equally unilateral and even more absurd anti-feminism. And this is precisely what is happening and can be observed in ordinary reactionaries and in the emergence of what has come to be called “neo-machismo,” which has very little that is new about it. In contrast, our contribution aims to resume, develop, and extend the radical critique of all the conditions of existence imposed by class society, the critique of commodity fetishism and of oppression in all its forms. Therefore, “a women’s revolution” is neither necessary nor possible, neither first, nor in the meantime, nor afterwards. If we understand a revolution as the total transformation of society, it cannot be carried out by and for only a fraction of that society.
Its most militant and rebellious elements reject capitalist society but the feminist movement is still far from formulating a comprehensive critique that would achieve their goals. The only way to overcome this limitation is by criticizing it, but this is becoming increasingly difficult as feminists increasingly believe hat their ideas are unquestionable and that anyone who criticizes them is necessarily a misogynistic male chauvinist, a “patriarchal fascist.” Official feminism, as it is presented, is nothing more than a radical democratism, that appeals to the “middle class,” like antifascism between the world wars, before it became the official ideology of the proletariat.
This analogy is by no means arbitrary; as we pointed out earlier, we are at a point where criticizing capitalism without also addressing sexism is considered suspect of misogyny. Several decades ago, an entire social movement with revolutionary ambitions was stripped of its practices, its language, its slogans, forced to renounce its ambitions in the name of defending democracy against fascism, and that silencing, which the majority of the proletariat accepted willingly, fervently defending the supposed “lesser evil,” or unwillingly, facing imprisonment, torture, and massacres, was the prelude to a catastrophic defeat.
“Identity politics and democracy are part of the genetic makeup of feminist ideology. Its democratic character is clearly evident in that, limited as it is to being a partial struggle, it can only advocate for equality between men and women as wage slaves and, conversely, as citizens. It is a defense of equality within inequality, the same democratic mystification that has had enormous power of resurgence throughout history and that continues to conceal the underlying cause of our oppression: the subordination of everything and everyone to the demands of production, however democratically managed it may be.” (Barbaria, Why We Are Not Feminists)
Postfeminism / Queer
The first National Women’s Meeting in Argentina was held in 1986 in Buenos Aires. Today, after being held in different cities across the country, it has changed its name to the Plurinational Meeting of Women, Lesbians, Transvestites, Transgenders, Intersex, Bisexual, and Non-Binary People. Yesterday, transfeminism seemed minoritarian; however, today it is not only accepted but also part of the broader official feminist movement. These meetings, endorsed or rejected by different provincial governments, now have significant participation from LGTTBIQ+ activists and a strong influence from queer theory, as well as from Indigenous movements and postcolonial theories. Transfeminism has become so socially ingrained that its influence is noticeable both in the drafting of laws and public policies, and in the media.
Transfeminism expands the subjects of classic feminism to include those who are not cisgender women.iv In this last term, the prefix cis means “on this side,” the antonym of the Latin prefix trans: “across,” “beyond,” “from one side to the other.”
Postfeminism, we could risk to say, is the theory of this transfeminism. Heir to post-structuralist theories, which we commonly and dismissively call postmodern, it insists that sex and gender are constructed through language. This explains the emphasis on linguistic struggle.
“ Postfeminist criticism emerged as a response to gender theory and its limitations, and is now well-established in academia. (…) Queer theory forces us to rethink gender, sexuality, the orientation of desire, its articulation, and the intersection of these issues with those related to social class and race. In this sense, post-gender theory has been extraordinarily fruitful. (…) It was born to break with labels, to tell gender roles: Go to hell!, to claim a space for so-called erotic minorities and to fight for the depathologization of homosexuality, transsexuality, etc. It brought the idea of intersexuality back to the forefront after more than a century of binarism and biological determinism. In the early years of this century, it was presented to us as the true and definitive sexual revolution, and in little more than fifteen years, it has become a factory of new labels (cis, trans, non-binary individuals, pansexual, polysexual, omnisexual, sapiosexual), while still pointing to the heterosexual man as the cause of all our ills, as the enemy to be defeated.
The term “cisgender,” which in post-feminist theory refers to heterosexual men with male genitalia or heterosexual women with female genitalia, is now used as an insult. As if being cisgender were synonymous with being an oppressor or, in the case of ciswomen, a poor, oppressed woman who isn’t even aware of her oppression.” (Lucía González-Mendiondo, Gender and Sexes: Rethinking the Feminist Struggle) v
“Situated in the context of the 1980s, after two decades of ultimately defeated demand struggles and the boom of “liberalism,” the equation “queer = deviant = discriminated against = dominated = in revolt” has become a mandatory reference for those seeking an overview that goes beyond sexual issues, but who cannot, or do not want to, reason in terms of class. Anyone who identifies as queer knows that heteronormative pressure does not apply equally to a white or a black woman, to a lawyer or a worker. But since a class analysis appears impossible, and participation in a seemingly nonexistent or defunct class struggle even less, queer discourse offers a way of talking about social division and addressing it, giving less importance to the exploitation of labor by capital. The essential fact is domination. Since queer activism pits those who accept the norms against those who reject them (the enemy is the norm, the normative, in short the heterosexual) members of all classes can join this struggle. And since it is about fighting against all forms of oppression, all specific struggles must converge.
(…) Although still dominant, heterosexuality is no longer as prevalent as it was in 1970: the CEO of Apple, the world’s largest company by market capitalization, announced in 2014 that he was gay, and many political leaders, including heads of state, no longer hide their homosexuality.
It is natural for a sexual minority to seek acceptance. Anyone who wants to live their gay life freely (and who very often claims not to have chosen to do so) is not, by this fact alone, driven to try to revolutionize society. Nor does an unruly person necessarily fight against the established order. The Stonewall gay and lesbian movement could only assume a revolutionary character during the brief phase in which a social storm prevailed; its program was only subversive as long as society denied it a place. The integration of the movement came later, but for most gays and lesbians, it is not a defeat, but a victory, to be able to become a soldier, a politician, or an executive of a multinational corporation without having to hide.” (Gilles Dauvé, Queer, or the Identity That Refuses to Be One)
On the other hand, it would be petty to ignore the existence of queer expressions that are not seeking integration in academia or other parts of bourgeois society, although they evidently share a powerful common denominator. Often, a set of key characteristics allows different expressions of the same current or idea to exist under the same term. In the case of queer theory, this involves a radical anti-essentialism that emphasizes not similarity but difference and particularity, not assuming the subordination of the specific needs of different groups to a universal objective, but rather making each specific need be considered universal. Hence its insistence on and starting point in the marginal and the abject, often running the risk of obscuring the general in favor of the particular.
NOTES
i In the case of anarchism, for example, the failure to position itself outside of and against its dominant and reformist forms, for ideological and identity-based reasons, has cost its more radical expressions the tolerance and coexistence with openly social-democratic sectors. This isn’t about fighting until someone wins the title. Perhaps we need to be a little more indifferent to labels and more attentive to the social content of a project.
ii See “Communism? Anarchy?” in Cuadernos de Negacion no. 2.
iii For a definition of ideology, we recommend, at the very least, the preface to The German Ideology written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. We also refer the reader to what was stated in Cuadernos de Negación No. 13, p. 21.
iv It should be clear that when we talk about the feminist movement we are not excluding transwomen, even when we do not explicitly mention transfeminism,.
v Although the author catagorizes it within post-feminism, it’s worth reiterating that “cisgender” can be an insult in these circles. Because there’s always some idiot who extrapolates a particular situation to the general situation in order to, while being part of what is predominantly accepted, present themselves as oppressed by “gender ideologies.”
Venezuela, Greenland, Minneapolis….
IS HE JUST MAD OR IS THERE A STRATEGY?
More and more people think that the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize is suffering from serious mental degradation. They call him crazy, insane, nuts, flipped, deranged, disturbed, bonkers, lunatic, utterly mad and much more. But could it be that his rantings and obsessions hide a rational strategy?
Lately, the owner of Maria Machado’s Nobel Prize medal has shown even more symptoms of dementia than usual. No need to list examples: you’ve undoubtedly seen plenty of them on different media, moments that made you shake your head and wonder how such an idiot could become the most powerful person in the world.
But whatever you may think about the mental health of the self-proclaimed “acting president of Venezuela”, he is not an absolute monarch, even though he would like to be one. His power is not simply the result of his election victory in 2024; he owes it to the continued support of the majority in Congress and, above all, the capital markets. If they considered him a dangerous madman, his throne would quickly falter. When the stock and bond markets feel he’s sowing too much uncertainty and show their disapproval Trump tends to listen immediately. A sharp drop in US stock markets was enough to make his threat of a military invasion of Greenland disappear. So if the capital markets did not react earlier, it must be because they did not consider his bluster to be so damaging for their interests.
The most obvious common thread that runs through all the main policies of the Trump government, from the raid in Venezuela, the military threats against various countries and the claim of Greenland to the terror campaign of ICE, to name but some recent examples, is that they all sow fear and are designed to do so. So the question is, for what purpose?
Sowing fear abroad
Assuming there is no difference between Trump’s public persona and the man behind the scenes, he seems to live in his own irrational world of which he is the glorious center, impervious to reasonable arguments but sometimes easily persuaded by flattery and subservience. “A chimpanzee with a hand grenade,” “a spoiled toddler who throws a fit when he doesn’t get his way”—is how he is sometimes described in the media. And what do you do with a toddler who has so much power, with a monkey who can cause so much mischief? You handle him very carefully. You seek de-escalation. You make concessions to the toddler to calm him down, you try to distract the monkey so that he leaves the grenade alone. Out of fear that he might do something catastrophic like raise his tariffs again or invade Greenland, you humour him, you give him something that he wants. That seems to be the tactic that America’s allies/vassals have used in dealing with Trump. Or, seen from another angle, that is the excuse Trump gave them to do what they wanted to do anyway.
Suppose there is indeed a difference between the boorish bully we see in public and the man behind closed doors, surrounded by his strategists. I’m not suggesting that Trump himself is a smart geopolitical strategist, nor that his advisers are always on the same page, yet the hypothesis that there is a long term strategy behind the main domestic and foreign actions of the US government does not appear unlikely. What then, was the strategy behind Trump’s seemingly crazy desire to annex Greenland?
Was the goal to establish American military bases in Greenland? Nothing prevented the US from doing that already; a 1951 treaty with Denmark gives it the right to set up as many bases on the island as it wants.
Was the goal to grab Greenland’s raw materials? Those raw materials are now the property of the semi-autonomous Greenlandic state. In the event of annexation, they would become the property of the US federal government, so that could be a possible motive. But for now, that would only be a small gain. There is currently only one active mine in the whole of Greenland. Mining companies are not eager to gain access due to the extreme logistical challenges. These may become less extreme as a result of global warming, but the outlook is uncertain. In any case, the profits would be insignificant compared to the loss that such a disruption of the NATO alliance would represent.
But maybe the goal was to blow up NATO? That is an hypothesis which has been heavily promoted by the media and politicians. Even Starmer and Macron have implied it. Canadian prime minister Carney claimed that a rupture is occurring in geopolitical relations: the allies of the US can no longer count on its military support and must band together. Pundits tell us that Trump wants to take the world back to the 19th century, when the great powers of back then carved up the globe, each ruling over its own ‘sphere of influence’ and respecting each other’s (a debatable interpretation of history). The US military intervention in Venezuela was seen as proof of this trend: Trump proclaimed the “Donroe doctrine”, updating the warning of the sixth president of the US to other powers to stay out of its backyard. In contemporary terms that would mean that the American continent would be the exclusive playground of the US, and that the US would accept that China and Russia would demarcate a similar exclusive domain in their own respective regions. But it would be foolish to mistake the tightening of the US’s grip on Latin America for a withdrawal from the rest of the world. The opposite is true. Whether in Europe, the Middle East or South Asia, the inter-imperialist rivalry between the great powers is increasing. In all these regions, US capital is seeking to counter the advances of its enemies. It would be shooting itself in the foot if it would be abandoning NATO at the same time. That the Trump government is openly contemptuous of its Europeans counterparts is an established fact. It’s even explicit in its Strategic Directive published last December. Some of it is theater, some is heartfelt right wing ideology. But none of it implies an intention to end the transatlantic military alliance. That would be stupid, even on a merely transactional level: members are required to make their arsenals conform to NATO standards which in practice more often than not means that they must buy American weapons. So the more NATO escalates its war preparation, the bigger the market for the American military industrial complex.
A new Strategy
A quick reminder of the context: capitalism, the global system, is in a deep crisis from which there’s no way out. The many trillions of dollars, yens, euros and yuan that have been created since 2008 have shored up capitalists at the expense of everyone else by giving them an ever larger size of the total buying power (money). Money to spend, to invest, to send stock prices through the roof, to become more money for a while (bitcoin and other schemes) and so on. So the Economist may ask: crisis, what crisis? And yes, on the surface, that may sound right, depending on what is measured (and how it is measured: unemployment for instance, is grossly undercounted in the US and many other countries). But scratch that surface and you’ll see that the rot in the foundations has spread further. You’ll see that the current growth, to the limited extent that it expresses productive investment, has been spearheaded by technology aimed at reducing the part of human labor in the production of commodities even further. The robots are taking over as never before and they yield their masters surplus profits, at the expense of competitors who have no robots or only older models. Until the robots are everywhere and deflation (or it may be inflation, depending on the policies) asks the question: where is the surplus value?
The robots above are meant literally but also metaphorically as stand-ins for the whole IT-centered economy. Actually, AI chips might be the better stand-in, since that is what the capitalist hopes are pinned on. When I wrote above that capitalism is in a deep crisis, I did not mean that there is a global recession right now (though it seems to be coming). I meant that capitalism is facing conditions in which its very foundation, the collective belief that value equals wealth, is under threat. Since 2008 the focus of the managers of capitalism has been on preventing a contagious collapse of the value of capital. This has implied policies which inevitably widened the income gap and made the growth of capitalism more and more incompatible with the reproduction of the global working class. This article is not the place to delve more deeply into capitalism’s systemic crisis, there are other articles on this site on that subject and one on the impact of AI will be published shortly. The point here is that the worsening systemic crisis is the background of the heightened competition and growing tensions between nations, the economic warfare with tariffs and sanctions and the military incursions that remind us of the breakdowns in the international order that preceded the previous world wars.
Furthermore, within that framework of systemic crisis, the economic balance of power has shifted. The US, while still holding an edge in high tech and finances, has steadily lost ground in industrial production to China. But the latter country’s manufacturing capacity increasingly outpaces global demand.
Latin America is a good example of the growing economic power of China at the expense of the US. Twenty years ago China had barely a foot on the ground there but in 2024 the trade between them exceeded 500 billion dollars. Both as a market for Chinese commodities (including infrastructure), and as a source of raw materials (oil from Venezuela, soy from Brazil, copper from Chile and Peru, lithium from Argentina and so on) Latin America became ever more important for China. And vice versa. For ten of the twelve South-American countries China is now a larger trade partner than the US. China does not only export goods to Latin America, it also exports capital, behaving no different than other capitalist powers in a similar position. Since 2014, it has lent three times as much to Latin America as the US. These loans allow those countries to buy Chinese commodities. One of China’s greatest debtors is Venezuela which paid in oil. Lately, more than two thirds of Venezuela’s oil production went to China. Not anymore.
Of course, the decapitation of the government of Venezuela had nothing to do with stopping drugs, saving democracy, or fighting (non-existing) socialism. The main purpose was to push back against China’s growing presence in Latin America. It was no coincidence that the American commandos kidnapped Maduro only hours after he had received a high-ranking Chinese delegation at his palace. The timing was meant as a smack in the face. The raid was followed by threats against Colombia and Cuba. Direct American pressure helped mini-Trumps come to power in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama. The latter country was pressured to annul the contracts held by a Chinese company which operated port facilities on opposite ends of the Panama Canal. The American intervention in Venezuela has made it clear to all rulers in Latin America that the US Special Forces can pay them a visit any time they dare to displease Washington.
The deeper the crisis becomes, the greater the incentive for the US to use its military power to compensate for the ground it lost economically and to blackmail weaker nations into submission. The deeper the crisis becomes, the more difficult it becomes for China to find markets large enough to keep its outsized productive apparatus profitable. Economic competition was never merely economic but under the pressure of the systemic crisis it tends to shift more and more to military competition. Global military expenditures have climbed every year since 2015. Wars have multiplied. The nuclear arms race is starting up again with China taking the lead and several non-nuclear nations considering to go nuclear as well, given the increased threats.
A telltale sign of the acceleration of capitalism’s war tendency is the erosion of the international order established after the last world war. The UN’s loss of influence reminds how the League of Nations became irrelevant in the years preceding that war. For Trump the old world order’s ideology and rules hinder the exertion of American power. So forget about ‘international law’, ‘human rights’, the Geneva convention, ‘spreading democracy’, etc. That old ideology is worn out anyway. Stephen Miller, Trump’s influential adviser who is said to be an architect of both the campaign against immigrants and the moves on Venezuela and Greenland, called it “a straitjacket”. In reality, so he explained to a CNN reporter, the world is governed “by iron laws”, “by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” So there you have it. The wolf who tells the sheep he’s going to eat them, gets praise for his honesty. Trump, who lies as he breaths, likes honesty too, if it’s fear-inspiring. So the Department of Defense is now the Department of War. And to Venezuela he says: We’re not here to liberate you. We’re here for your oil.
And he means that. The US has extorted a ransom from Venezuela in the form of 50 million barrels of oil, to be sold for profit, plus control over Venezuela’s oil export generally and indefinitely. The US’ interest in Venezuela’s oil may seem curious, given the current oversupply on the global oil market and the relative low quality (high refinery cost) of Venezuelan oil. But in light of the US’s long term strategy of war preparation it is not strange at all. If there is to be another global war, it will pit the US against China. In such a conflict, China’s Achilles heel could be its dependence on imported oil. In recent years the US, with the help of its junior partner Israel, has tightened its military grip on the Middle East and may be in the process of bringing Iran, the main challenger to its dominance there, to its knees. The Venezuela intervention makes clear that China has no reliable source of oil on the American continent either.
The great powers are preparing for a great conflict. Not an imminent war, there are still many obstacles for that to happen. i The US strategy aims to prevent the consolidation of a hostile bloc around China and Russia. Its goal is therefore not to repel allies but to force them to make greater efforts for the joint war preparation. Trump has played this game before. By insinuating that the famous Article 5 of the NATO treaty (“an attack on one is an attack on all”) no longer counts and by questioning the alliance in all sorts of ways, he forced the European NATO-members to pledge a 150% increase in military spending over the next decade, at the expense of the social wage. NATO secretary-general Rutte and other European leaders have openly thanked him for this (and while they did so, you could see them thinking: without your help, we never would have been able to sell this to our public). And now he has done it again: by threatening to annex Greenland, he created the appearance that the US is not only no longer an ally but also a potential enemy! Now European countries have to arm themselves even faster in view of a possible war against the US! And so they have to buy even more American weapons! It’s absurd, but that is the story the European governments are telling their subjects. And with some success: European nationalist fever has risen considerably. That too is war preparation.
The outcome of the Greenland affair makes clear what all the hoopla was about. Greenland will be militarized so that the West will control the northern shipping roads freed by global warming, and Europe will bear most of the costs. China and Russia are banned from mining Greenlandic raw materials, but the US is not. And NATO? NATO is alive and well.
Obviously that is not everyone’s opinion. There is a real tension in NATO, as was evident at the recent Munich Security conference where several European leaders complained of America’s “wrecking ball politics”, even though Marco Rubio assured them of Washington’s enduring friendship. Some think a new world order is taking shape, although it’s not clear what it might look like. The overriding theme of the Munich conference was the unanimous resolve to escalate the ‘rearmament’ of Europe even faster, which must have sounded like sweet music to the ears of the managers of US Capital and its military-industrial complex.
By the way: the hypothesis that there is indeed a rational, albeit sinister, strategy behind Trump’s behavior does not rule out the possibility that he is mentally deteriorating. According to insiders, years of cocaine and amphetamine use (especially Adderall) have severely damaged his brainii. Incidentally, Hitler was also a notorious amphetamine user. And Hitler also suffered from the megalomaniacal narcissism that so many find so attractive in Trump. I do not want to suggest here that Trump is a second Hitler (although his vice president JD Vance did claim exactly that in 2016, before he converted). What Trump’s behavior does make clear is that in capitalist world politics, rationality and madness are not mutually exclusive. And that is especially true when the system is in crisis.
Fear and loathing in Minnesota
Just like in his foreign policy is spreading fear the main theme in Trump’s domestic politics. Recent events in Minnesota have amply illustrated this. Again, we need to ask why. What is behind this campaign of terror? Is it a symptom of Trump’s dementia, an expression of blind reactionary ideology, or is it part of a long-term strategy?
Again, the events have received so much attention that it’s not necessary to describe the brutal tactics of the ICE army nor the widespread resistance they provoked. iii Even Bruce Springsteen sings about it. A striking aspect about ICE’s terror in Minneapolis-St Paul is its sheer conspicuousness. You’ would think that the ICE agents, if their goal would be to apprehend undocumented immigrant criminals, that they would act discreetly, in order not to alert their prey. You’d also think that they would arrest (undocumented immigrant) criminals. Instead this campaign unfolded in a way that seemed designed to draw maximal attention to itself and the vast majority of the people arrested did not have a criminal record or only for traffic violations. It included children, old folks, immigrants and citizens. Even native Americans, descendants of the original inhabitants, have been held for days on suspicion of being ‘illegal immigrants’! Basically, anybody brown-skinned speaking Spanish is a potential target. Clearly, the aim is to strike fear.
The why question is relevant. This massive hunt is disrupting economic activity (thousands don’t go to work because they’re afraid to leave their homes) and costs the federal state many billions of dollars. It’s not good for profits. So how can it be good for capital?
One answer could be that it is motivated by the racist ideology of the present US government and made worse by the fact that the many people who join ICE (earning big bonuses) are of the thuggish kind and moreover are badly trained. But that begs an explanation as to why then has racism regained so much importance in the governance of US capitalism. Another possible rationale is that the ICE raids are spectacularly frightful in order to make undocumented immigrants flee the country. According to the Department of Homeland Security 1.8 million have already ‘self-deported’ since Trump regained power. That could indeed be a reason if the government expects a huge increase in unemployment and wants to get rid of the burden of ‘superfluous’people.
But there’s more to it. The fear that the Trump government spreads domestically and the fear that it spreads internationally are both functional to its strategy to prepare for global war.
There’s more to war preparation than producing weapons and training armies. An essential condition is to indoctrinate the population to support the war and endure its horrors. A gradually increasing militarization of society is part of that. The population must get used to the presence of soldiers and armed goons in the streets. In a speech in September Trump declared that American cities should serve as “training grounds” for U.S. troops. “Inner cities are a big part of war,” he said. In other words, war on the cities, and more specifically war on the working class they contain, is a necessary step in the larger war preparation. The demonization of immigrants serves to divide and weaken the working class. The climate of fear is aimed at inducing submission. The Trump administration follows Machiavelli’s advice: “He who controls people’s fear becomes the master of their souls.”
The war effort requires a sense of community at the home front. Workers in the factories and soldiers on the battlefield have to think that they share the same interests as their rulers and exploiters against a common enemy. But the more capital’s real domination penetrates the whole of society, the more it destroys any remnants of pre-capitalist and working class-based community life. Those who have been uprooted are left with a powerful longing for their lost communities. The more frustrating, unsatisfying, and insecure the world shaped by capital has become, the stronger this feeling. And it is the capture of that feeling which is key to the war preparation strategy of the Trump administration and those factions of the ruling class who share it, not only in the US but around the world. The goal is the creation of a national community. A false community that brings people together not on the base of real common interests but on the base of speaking the same language and having the same ethnic, cultural-historical background. Its unity has no rational base, it rests on strong emotions and trust in the great leader.
The MAGA community provides a substitute gratification for the genuine longing for community felt by many. But the identity upon which this community is established necessarily entails the exclusion of those who do not share the common historico-cultural traits. Those excluded, though they live in the same country, become alien elements, infiltrators that need to be removed. In language reminiscent of Hitler, Trump repeatedly has said immigrants coming to the U.S. are “poisoning the blood of our country”. They are all pictured as rapists, murderers, drug pushers, gangsters and terrorists. The purpose was to make them the scapegoat for all the real pain and frustrations mounting in society. The more crisis ridden the society becomes, the more it makes sense for the ruling class to channel the anger it causes away from itself, onto the scapegoat. The very brutality of the ICE thugs then becomes a satisfying ritual of revenge. The greater the rage of the mass against the scapegoat, the more the ruling class can use this rage to mobilize the mass behind its projects, especially war.
But it seems that the strategy backfired. They must have seriously underestimated the common bonds between migrants and non-migrants in the working class neighborhoods of the twin cities. It was, mutatis mutandis, as if on Kristallnacht (1938) the majority of the Germans would have supported the Jews. The ICE assault provoked a wave of protest and resistance not seen in the US since the George Floyd rebellion in 2020 (which also started in Minneapolis). Hundreds of thousands demonstrated in several cities. Barricades were erected in the streets to impede ICE patrols. Neighborhood ICE watches were organized spontaneously. The gangs of ICE-agents were continuously confronted. Hotels where they stayed were trashed. Food deliveries were organized for migrants too scared to leave the house. Many other creative initiatives were taken, often by people who never protested before. It was beautiful and encouraging to see, even from afar.
And yet. It didn’t make ICE flee the twin cities. They continued their assaults, perhaps a bit less aggressively. Only on February 13 ‘Border Czar” Tom Homan announced a “significant drawdown” of the ICE campaign in the twin cities, because it had “accomplished its mission”. But he added that there would be no change in the enforcement policy. ICE is preparing to bring its terror campaign to other cities and towns. It plans to spend 38 billion dollars to buy giant warehouses and convert them into additional detention centers. Meanwhile the Democratic politicians held press conferences and filed lawsuits and sent out their police to protect ICE from the demonstrators.
On January 23 a day of action was organized in the twin cities which was billed as “a general strike”. But the strike, while celebrated, was far from general. In fact, in all the companies in the area that employ a large number of workers it was business as usual. The trade unions said they were sympathetic to the movement but opposed striking, because it was forbidden by their contract. This illustrates the weakness of the working class struggle in the US. The victims of the ICE assault are working families, and so are the vast majority of those fighting against it. But they don’t fight using the very weapons that make the working class potentially so strong. A real general strike is what is needed to stop ICE.
Still, the degree of solidarity with the victims of the state’s attack was and still is impressive. It’s a slap in face of Trump whose authority, already battered by scandals and discontent over the high cost of living, seems significantly diminished. At this time, it seems likely that the Congressional elections in November will result in a resounding Democratic victory. But that would not be a victory for the working class. The Democrats, like their kindred spirits in Europe, have a different strategy than the Trumpists but their goal, subduing the working class and prepare for war, is the same. The masks must fall.
The Democrats are no alternative
The Democrats do not oppose ICE, they want its agents to be better trained and wear body cams when they do their dirty work. They want a velvet glove on the iron fist, like when Obama was the president. He earned the nickname “Deporter in Chief” because his government deported more undocumented immigrants than any president before – close to three million. The Democratic president expanded ICE, ordered the construction of detention camps, hired for profit companies to run them, contracted the Silicon Valley spyware company Pallentir to work with ICE. On the other hand, the modern president who legalized the greatest number of immigrants was Reagan, a Republican. It doesn’t depend on the party but on the circumstances. World capitalism in its present phase of intensifying destruction induces ever more people in the poorer countries to flee in order to escape violence, hunger and lack of opportunity. That is a reality that is the product of a system of which both Democrats and Republicans are agents. The exodus may go up or down depending on the economic conjuncture but it will no go away. The mass of people that are superfluous for Capital is a growing burden for the system. In that light it’s not surprising that the Trump administration imposed drastic cuts in foreign aid and that European governments followed its example, which will result in many millions of deaths.iv But US Capital also needs undocumented labor so neither party wants to get rid of it. Instead they want to manage it, turn the faucet open or closed depending on Capital’s needs and the propagandistic demands of their own political marketing strategies. These strategies differ. For the Democrats the democratic mystification – the idea that the country is owned by its citizens of all races who rule it together by participating in the democratic system – is crucial. It may be a more potent tool to unify the nation and thereby prepare it for war than Trump’s fear mongering approach. So while the latter spotlights the brutality of immigrant crackdowns, the former covers them with the cloak of multicultural patriotic love. But the goal is essentially the same. In foreign policy too, the Democrats share the goal of war preparation. They too want massive military spending and are even more aggressive than their Republican counterparts on waging economic war against China.
Yet the Democrats seem different. So different that at the height of the tension in Minnesota there was talk in mainstream media about the possibility of a new civil war. But that possibility simply does not exist. Despite appearances, the Democrats and Republicans have much more in common than what divides them. Right now the Democrats’ popularity is rising. All they have to do for that is not be Trump. One of the worst effects of Trumpism is that, by contrast, it gives new credibility to worn-out mystifications. It could be a Democratic president who leads the country, in renewed unity and once again proud to be a nation of immigrants, to war.
Sanderr
2/14/2026
i More on that in: https://internationalistperspective.org/staging/3363/capitalism-crisis-and-war/ . But regardless of the obstacles, an accidental start of global war cannot be excluded entirely. During the cold war this almost happened twice. According to experts, the integration of AI in military launching systems increases the possibility.
ii This claim was made by Noel Casler who worked closely with Trump on the TV-show “The Apprentice” and by the actor Tom Arnold. Trump denies it but has not sued Casler.
iii Among the many overviews of the events we found these interesting: https://illwill.com/lies and https://wildcat-www.de/en/current/e_a127_chinga.html
iv Global humanitarian aid decreased from 2022 to 2025 with 60%. According to experts, the US cuts alone result in 500.000 to 700.000 additional deaths per year.
“VIVA LA MUERTE!”
About the US military intervention in Venezuela
If we had to find a slogan to illustrate what characterizes the policies of the world’s major countries today, it would be “Viva la muerte!” Their goal is to develop all the means, both material and ideological, to cause more human carnage. To make things clear, the government with the largest military-industrial complex on the planet is changing the name of its Department of Defense to Department of War, while demanding that its 31 allied countries immediately increase their military spending to 5% of their GDP, which often means an increase of 100% or more. And they agree with applause… and plans to cut spending on health and education, for example. “Viva la muerte! Muera la inteligencia!” (1)
The same destructive madness is developing in the sick minds of governments on the other side of the planet, in China, Russia, Japan, and both Koreas.
“Capitalism carries within itself war the way clouds carry a thunderstorm”, Jean Jaurès rightly said in 1914.
The recent intervention of the US military in Venezuela, as well as the installation of enormous military forces in the Caribbean, are part of the ongoing disaster. What motivates the US government is not the fight against drug trafficking or a desire for democracy and freedom, but an effort to combat the decline of its economic dominance in the world and the spectacular development of China’s presence and influence in Latin America and the rest of the world. Defending the dollar as the world’s main currency, particularly the petrodollar, is one of the motivations behind this operation.
In 2024, the National Defense Strategy Commission (2) published a report that clearly states that the United States faces the most dangerous threats since 1945, including the threat of a major war, with China and Russia as the main enemies. A war for which, if it were to be prolonged and spread to different fronts, the country is not sufficiently prepared, either industrially or ideologically. “We need” the report says, “a warrior mindset”. The Trump administration is obeying and faithfully and brutally executing these guidelines. (3)
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, although most of them are still untapped and consist of very dense crude oil that is difficult to extract and transport. Venezuela’s current oil production is incredibly low compared to what it was in the past and what it could be. (4) But, first of all, in the event of a widespread war, these reserves could be decisive, especially for China. Second, Russia and China have invested billions of dollars in the Venezuelan oil industry. The repayment of these investments could be interrupted. Today, China absorbs more than 80 % of Venezuelan oil exports in repayment of these investments (estimated at $ 20 billion), and this repayment was supposed to last for years. Third, for a quarter of a century, Cuba has survived thanks to significant Venezuelan oil aid. That is why the first measures imposed by Trump on Delcy Rodriguez’s government concern oil. Three objectives: 1. “Open up the country to our giant oil companies” (Trump). 2. Seriously hamper Venezuela’s relations with China and Russia. 3. Try to strangle Cuba.
Trump claims to justify military intervention as a fight against drug trafficking that “poisons” Americans. It is true that Venezuela, with its 2,219 km of porous border with Colombia, has been, especially since the arrival of the “Chavistas” in power, a refuge and ally (supposedly “ideological”) of guerrilla groups such as the FARC, one of the world’s largest producers and traffickers of cocaine.
But the United States, the world’s largest consumer of cocaine and largest producer of marijuana, is home to huge American drug trafficking mafias. Why not start by cleaning up their own backyard? Incidentally, the cocaine that passes through Venezuelan networks is mainly exported to Europe. The cocaine that reaches the United States mainly passes through the Pacific and Mexico.
On another level, there is a significant factor that partly explains the spectacular nature of the huge military mobilization in the Caribbean: the ideological preparation of the American population, and young people in particular, for war. This involves the creation of the “warrior mindset” demanded by the Commission of the National Defense Strategy.
What transition?
Many people hoped that shortly after Maduro’s removal, everything would change, that thousands of political prisoners would be released, that torture centers would be closed, that the Bolivarian “colectivos,” the paramilitary groups created by Diosdado Cabello (5), would be disarmed and disbanded, and that the widespread police control they exercise would disappear… That the millions of Venezuelans who fled the country could begin to return…
But for now, a few weeks after January 3, apart from the “release” of a few political prisoners under direct pressure from the US authorities, the reality has not changed or, worse, has worsened in some respects. In “23 de Enero,” a working-class neighborhood of Caracas considered a stronghold of the regime, the “colectivos” have imposed an informal curfew by increasing the presence of armed men. After 6 p.m., the streets are empty. In the streets of Caracas, the colectivos carry out identity checks, searching and sometimes confiscating cell phones containing messages applauding Maduro’s capture. What prevails is a sense of anxious and fearful anticipation…
At the government level, what has changed is above all the absence of the number one. Three figures seem to constitute the main pillars of the “new” order.
1. Delcy Rodriguez, designated by Trump as “interim president,” was sworn in before the National Assembly in front of Jorge Rodriguez, her own brother and president of that assembly. She is one of the people who has held the most important positions in Maduro’s governments. But since January 3, each day has brought new revelations about the active role she played in preparing and carrying out the kidnapping. Trump continues to praise her and say that she is “a wonderful person.” A few hours after the attack, Trump told the New York Post that she was aware of it: “We have spoken to her several times. She is understanding, she understands.” As for her role at the head of the government, Trump says: “Her leadership is good and smart. We are working together to ensure the prosperity of both countries in this new era of trade.” Together with her brother, she quickly pushed through the National Assembly a first reading of a “reform of the organic law on hydrocarbons” to facilitate investment by American companies. All this does not prevent her from repeating that “no one but God decides my destiny”, that we must mobilize to bring back Maduro and his wife, who were kidnapped by a heinous foreign attack, etc.
2. Diosdado Cabello, Minister of the Interior and Vice President of the Government in charge of Citizen Security. Generally considered the most brutal man in Chavismo and the most important after Maduro. Every week, he presented and continues to present a television program with the significant title: “Con el mazo dando” (With the hammer striking). According to Reuters, he too had discussions with the US authorities a few months before Operation Maduro, which he categorically denies. For him, in Venezuela, “nothing has changed, the Bolivarian revolution continues… The bombing on January 3, which claimed the lives of more than 100 Venezuelans… has consolidated the unity of the country.” Although he affirms his solidarity with the measures taken by the government, despite being “the man who controls the guns”, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, he has taken no steps to disarm the colectivos or appease those most hostile to the new policy. “Cabello must go!” declares the influential American newspaper.
3. Vladimir Padrino, Minister of Defense and head of the army, although more discreet, is the third pillar of the current government. He is the one who has so far ensured the indispensable control of the military hierarchy. On January 19, he announced a “complete overhaul” of the military forces for the defense of the country after “an unprecedented imperialist aggression” and in order to be better prepared for possible new aggression in the future.
All three are among the officials sanctioned by the European Union on June 25, 2018, with their assets frozen and a travel ban imposed on them for “undermining democracy and the rule of law in Venezuela.” Delcy Rodriguez is at the center of what has been dubbed “Delcygate” for transporting 104 gold bars worth $68 million to Spain in January 2020. Both men are accused of drug trafficking by the US justice system, which, since January 2025, has been offering $ 25 million for Cabello’s capture and $ 15 million for Padrino’s.
The duplicity and double-dealing of these figures illustrate the grotesque paradoxes that characterize the situation in Venezuela a few weeks after the US intervention.
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Some claim that the US intervention was ultimately a failure, as Chavista leaders, army generals, and others accused of drug trafficking are still free and in power.
But in reality, the current contradictory situation was anticipated by the authorities who prepared and carried out the intervention.
A few days ago, Marco Rubio, Trump’s Secretary of State (and proposed by Trump as the future president of Cuba), said: “We believe we are making very positive progress”. According to him, there is a three-phase strategy for the future of Venezuela under Washington’s tutelage:
1. stabilization, 2. recovery and reconciliation, 3. political transition.
But how can this first phase of “stabilization” be carried out? The main concern was to prevent the inevitable confrontation with Chavistas from degenerating violently into open and violent armed action, paving the way for civil war. The idea was to force some of the Chavistas in power to manage the stabilization of the situation themselves. This is why, for example, when some called for María Corina Machado, the main opposition figure, to be immediately put in power, Trump replied that she was not the right person because she did not have sufficient “respect and support”… presumably in the army and the colectivos. (6)
But to what extent can we say that “stabilization” will take place?
Politically and officially, Chavista leaders are stepping up their calls for peace and “unity” among the Venezuelan people. But little has changed in the practice of social life. In some respects, the situation has even worsened.
The release of political prisoners is underway. It should be remembered that Trump recently stated that he had decided to carry out a second military operation, but that he had canceled it when he saw that the government had begun to release political prisoners. Cabello claims that this release is in response to a decision made by Maduro before December and that it is part of a process of “national reconciliation.” But it is proceeding very slowly. The prisoners’ families often sleep in front of the prisons while they wait. The releases come with conditions: not to talk about the conditions of detention, not to make political statements… How far will this process go?
Apparently, the US government is confident and is preparing to reopen its embassy in Caracas. Recently, a large US plane filled with equipment for the reestablishment of the embassy landed.
In any case, Chavistas who have joined “the other side” should reflect on the famous quote by former US Secretary of State Kissinger: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
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What the Venezuelan reality demonstrates once again is that the only way to escape the stranglehold of the militant “Viva la muerte!” and Chavist or “democratic” dictatorships is through the difficult path of revolutionary and international conquest of control over our social life.
Raoul Victor
January 24, 2026
Raoul Victor who grew up in Venezuela is a long time militant in the left communist movement and a friend of Internationalist Perspective. His website is HERE.
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1. Attributed to General José Millán Astray, a pillar of Francoism, during a meeting on October 12, 1936, in response to Miguel de Unamuno, who had condemned the recent “uprising” with the famous phrase: “You will win, but you will not convince!”
2. This is an “independent” body, composed of experts from both the Republican and Democratic parties, created in 2022 by the Congress, whose function is to conduct an objective audit of the Department of Defense’s strategy and security issues in general.
3. The brutality of US imperialism is nothing new, even if it is reaching particularly spectacular levels today. Just over three years ago, President Biden did not hesitate to announce and destroy the gas pipelines that supplied German and European industry with Russian gas and to force European countries to buy much more expensive American gas.
4. In 2003, as a repressive measure following a major strike by the national oil company PDVSA, Chavez proceeded to lay off nearly 20,000 employees. Most were managers, engineers, and skilled technicians. Shortly thereafter, thousands of employees chosen for political reasons but without experience, including military personnel, were brought in en masse. The consequences in terms of incompetence and negligence, combined with chronic corruption, have been disastrous.
5. Inspired by the “Committees for the Defense of the Cuban Revolution”, they exercise strict control over the population, particularly in working-class neighbourhoods. They are systematically used to attack rallies or demonstrations against the government on motorcycles.
6. Corina Machado, Nobel Peace Prize winner and leading figure in the opposition to the Chavez regime, is a power-hungry personality. Knowing that Trump dreamed of winning the Nobel Prize that was awarded to her, she decided to share it with him and bring his medal to the White House. Machado, a true fan of the man, is complicit with the person who, for two years, encouraged, supported, and supplied all the weapons necessary for the appalling and infamous genocide of the population of the Gaza Strip, the man who is now waging a ruthless war against immigrant workers in his country. Trump thanked her and told the press that she was “a wonderful woman” and that they would have to see how to involve her in the current transition process. According to opinion polls, she would be the winner of any presidential elections—the third stage of Rubio’s plan.
ANOTHER SPECIAL MILITARY OPERATION ON THE ROAD TO GLOBAL WAR
Why did the US launch a “special military operation” in Venezuela? To get their greedy hands on the oil and other resources in that country? To get its imperialist rival China and its allies (Russia, Cuba, Iran) out of the region and warn other Latin American countries of the price they might have to pay for their presence? To score an easy ‘glorious’ victory in order to shore up Trump’s sagging poll numbers? The correct answer is “all of the above”. What is certain is that it was not done because of drugs smuggling – that pretext was as transparant a lie as Putin’s claim that the purpose of his invasion of Ukraine was denazification – nor was it done for the defense of democracy – the US prefers Maduro’s vice-president in command because she has the support of the army, rather than the opposition which won the elections – and least of all because of hostility to Venezuela’s socialism, since there neither is nor was any socialism there, only a corrupt and brutal leftwing capitalism, a sworn enemy of the working class. 1
What this tells us is that different capitalist states, the big powers but smaller ones too, are openly discarting their own hypocrital ‘values’ and rules (‘international law’, ‘human rights’, the Geneva convention, etc.) in order to obey what capitalism’s global crisis is ordering: when your capital is losing profit and markets, go and grab them with force, no excuse necessary. Students of history will recognize this behavior as typical for the years preceding the World Wars.
Among the first reactions to this escalation, we appreciated the following article by the Angry Workers Group, which hits a few nails right on the head.
1 For an analysis of Venezuela’s leftwing capitalism see Venezuela and the “Bolivarian Revolution” (Part 1) and Venezuela and the “Bolivarian Revolution” (Part 2)
Venezuela -Class struggle against imperialism and the myth of national independence
The attacks of the US army in Venezuela are an expression of imperialism, but how can we respond to them? Understandably, the reaction of many people is to rally for ‘national independence’. From a working class perspective and the perspective of international emancipation, the battle cry for ‘sovereignty’ is a dangerous myth. The situation in Venezuela is part of a global panorama of block confrontation and as international workers we have to find ways not to get crushed in the middle.
Venezuela and China
One of the reasons given by the US government for fighting ‘communism’ in Venezuela is its close ties to ‘enemies of the US’: China and Iran. On the evening before his abduction, Maduro received a high-ranking Chinese delegation. Shortly after the meeting ended, he was sitting in a US army helicopter. China is now effectively the only relevant factor countering the current march of the US and US-aligned movements in Latin America (Milei/Argentina, Bukele/El Salvador, Nasrallah/Honduras, Kast/Chile, Mulino/Panama, etc.).
China currently imports approximately 80% of Venezuela’s daily oil production of 950,000 barrels per day (as of November 2025, i.e. before the first tanker was seized by US troops). There is no data whatsoever on the actual prices at which China has been buying Venezuelan oil over the last 10 years or at which the ‘enormous collection of goods’ delivered from China to Venezuela on credit (house hold appliances from Haier, Yutong buses, cars) is being charged. Even a factory for assembling Yutong buses was set up in Yaracuy in 2015.
In Chancay, Peru, the Chinese logistics giant COSCO operates a large deep-sea port 100 km north of the capital Lima. From there, the voyage to China takes 23 days, down from 40 days previously. In Panama, the US wants to oust China from the two ports at either end of the canal (Colón and Balboa). Meanwhile, Black Rock/MSC and COSCO are fighting over the shares. Panama has left the Chinese supply-chain project ‘Silk Road’ again.
It appears that there are no US troops in Venezuela, at least not in any significant numbers. When Trump announces that the US will now govern the country until an ‘orderly transition’ takes place, this can only be based on the threat (made real by the kidnapping of Maduro) that they could strike effectively and deadly anytime, anywhere.
The war in Ukraine and the genocide in Palestine are part of this picture
We can see the outcome of the alleged struggle for ‘national independence’ in Ukraine: working class people from both sides are sent into the meat grinder. The Russian government needs the war to maintain its power and becomes increasingly dependent on supplies from China and Iran. The Ukrainian government depends absolutely on EU and US military and financial support and sells agricultural land and infrastructure to western companies in return. Instead of ‘defending democracy’ the Ukrainian state curbs trade union and political rights and forcefully conscripts young men to the front line. ‘Leftists’, like the Green Party in Germany, but also groups closer to home, repeat the myth of ‘national self-defence’ in order to demand more and more weapons for the massacre.
Even the genocide in Palestine cannot be understood outside the picture of block confrontation. It was no coincidence that the confrontation escalated shortly after the Chinese government managed to bring the Saudi Arabian and Iranian government to the negotiating table. It was clear that this was undermining the earlier Abraham Accords that had been brokered by the US and that the regional power-balances would shift drastically. At this point, everyone who had a stake in the game wanted to exert their influence. The territory of Palestine is used as a minor chip in the bargain, in particular by the regime in Iran, which is the main sponsor of Hamas. On the other side the west and the US bolster the Israeli war machine. While tens of thousands of richer Palestinians were able to flee the region, the local proletarian population in Gaza pays the price.
We can see that the idea of ‘national independence’ in a global capitalist world is a myth. The problem is that the counterpart to the US block – meaning, states like China, Iran, Russia – also has nothing to offer in terms of workers’ liberation. While we see Iranian flags being waved at protests against the war in Gaza, in Iran itself thousands of working class people currently clash with the state forces, protesting against inflation and the regime. Which side are we on?
Working class resistance against the drive to war
We currently witness a global arms race, led by the US, which will spend over a trillion US-Dollar on military defence in 2026. The EU plans a military budget of over 2 trillion Euro for the coming seven years. It is clear that they pay for this by cutting our income and welfare, such as health and education. Every government wants to normalise this preparation for future wars, in the UK we are repeatedly told that we are at war with Russia.
We have to refuse this in our day to day struggle. We have to develop a wider strategy on how to sabotage the war machine, how to defend ourselves against state aggression, such as the attacks on migrants by ICE units. We need strategies of underground proletarian resistance, combined with struggles where we have larger collective power. Workers at ST Microelectronics in France went on strike against the use of their product for the military, tram drivers in Munich refused to drive trams with army recruitment advertisement, dock workers in Genoa block ships with weapon deliveries and call for general strike, school students in Germany protest against the state effort to reintroduce army conscription, health workers demonstrate against plans to draft them into the military medical apparatus, DHL workers protest against the involvement of their company in military logistics, VW workers denounce the companies plan to sell parts of the plants to the weapon industry.
All these small struggles are expressions of the question of worker control: who decides what happens with the things that we produce or the services that we provide? We have to gradually expand this battle over control to the social level. Against global war, for a free and communist future.
1/4/2025
TEN QUESTIONS ON THE POLICIES OF THE TRUMP GOVERNMENT
The German language blog Communaut asked IP’s Sanderr to answer ten questions about the Trump administration’s policies. He did, with some help of other US-based IP members.
1. One of the more controversial questions of the day is how to read the Trump administration: A bunch of ideological lunatics in bed with self-serving billionaires and hence doomed to create nothing but chaos – or a team serving the long-term interests of US capitalism, even though at the price of some disruption in the here and now? You tend to take the second view, linking it closely to the question of war. Could you briefly explain that perspective?
It’s not either or, one does not exclude the other. It is obvious that Trump’s government (and family) contains “ideological lunatics in bed with self-serving billionaires” but that doesn’t mean that it has no geopolitical and domestic long-term strategy. To the contrary, there is a unity between both aspects which is expressed in a kind of shamelessness, a willingness to use raw power without excuses, an arrogance and a contempt that permeates all that they do and say. Not only are the conventional pretenses dropped, they are actively despised: anger against “wokism”, “political correctness” is what binds all factions of the MAGA movement. The background of this is US capital losing ground within a context of global capitalism suffering from a declining general rate of profit and overcapacity. Losing ability to win the competitive game on a purely economic level, the US leans more on its extra-economic might. Corruption, blackmail, coercion, military intervention domestically and abroad are the result. I’m not saying that the Trump administration wants global war but in many ways it is preparing for it. Creating doubt about the US’ willingness to protect Europe against Russia is part of it. Without this, it would have been difficult to get Europe to increase its military spending that much. And this also fits the transactional zeal of this government, since it is a boon for the American arms industry. Another example is the present aggression against Venezuela. The Trump administration is quite open about its desire to control that country’s oil and rare earth reserves, but its goal is also to push China out of the continent. Pundits write that the recent statement of the US government criticizing Europe reflects isolationism. To the contrary, it reflects intense involvement in Europe. This US government does not only want its European allies to prepare for war militarily, but also politically as they see it: by forging their own volksgemeinschaft, by becoming countries that are ideologically conditioned for war.
2. Large sections of US capital now support Trump, even the big Tech corporations that during his first Presidency had rather formed a counter-pole. However, besides tax cuts that capital of course always likes, it seems a lot of this support is simply born out of fear – capitalists seek good relations with a President known for his personal vendettas – and not so much enthusiasm about his economic agenda. Reading the business press from the Financial Times to the Economist, it seems the verdict of the pundits is fairly unambiguous: Trump is creating uncertainty and chaos, that’s bad for investment; and a proper trade war would even be worse.
In regard to the big tech companies, fear is not why they support Trump. Their initial oppositional posture towards Trump, during his first term, was born of fear: They were afraid of being seen as too close to him. Because of the social climate (the George Floyd protests) and the anti-Trump feelings of a large part of their own workforce whose position on the labor market was relatively strong at the time, they kept a distance. Now, in Trump’s second term, the tech oligarchs seem to be breathing a sigh of relief that they can shamelessly suck up to the Trump administration and use the loosening conditions on the labor market to whip their workforce into line. They might not like the tariffs but there is a lot in the government’s policies they do like, not in the least the opportunity to contribute to advanced weapons technology. But you are right, “Trump is creating uncertainty and chaos, that’s bad for investment”. To some extent, this may reflect the Trump team’s incompetence, or it may be seen as part of its negotiating tactics. But The Trump government is trying to upset the global status quo, so some increased uncertainty is to be expected. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. And these pundits you refer to assume that, without this chaos, investment would be higher, while it was already declining for years. And they also assume that with a different president, such as Kamala Harris, there would have been less uncertainty which is not certain either. Besides, some parts of the US capitalist class like the insecurity: It is good for the military industry and the safe haven-effect pulls the world’s savings to the US.
But it’s clear that not the entire capitalist class in the US is happy with this or other aspects of Trump’s rule. They are happy with the deregulation and the tax breaks but divided over the tariffs, the use of ‘soft power’ globally, the immigration policy and other things. The ruling class seems more divided than ever since the civil war but part of it is theatrics of course. There’s no question that there’s a near-unanimous commitment to pursuing continued US global economic and military dominance.
3. With respect to tariffs, you say that regardless of whether exporters to the US will lower their prices – in order to stay competitive in the US – or not, it will be good for US capital. But US manufacturers are of course themselves dependent on imports, and that is why the CEO of one of the “big three” car companies had the courage to raise the alarm last spring, when Trump unleashed his tariff orgy, saying that this would actually be disastrous for America’s industry. Often they are even more directly affected because it is their own factories outside the US that would pay the price.
You may have misinterpreted what I wrote on the tariffs. (“In either case, U.S. capital wins”) I was not claiming that the tariffs are “good for US capital” but that, because of the rest of the world’s dependency on the US market, their impact is more complicated than just adding inflationary pressure in the US. The tariffs fulfill multiple functions but arguably the main one is protectionism in function of war preparation. They seek to decrease the dependency of the US on foreign production, especially from China, its main enemy in a potential global conflict. But you’re right, the tariffs are damaging to world trade and already for that reason they are bad for US profits, on top of the direct costs they impose on American business and consumers. That’s why I wrote in the same article “If the government persists with its tariff war despite the negative economic consequences, then we will know how urgent war preparations are for it.” And we have seen that the government has had to withdraw a number of tariffs under pressure of ‘the markets’ (the owners of capital).
4. And what about consumers? It seems inflation really helped Trump to win the elections. His lower class voters were of course particularly affected. Wouldn’t they also be the ones suffering most strongly from his tariffs?
Yes the are. To what extent they blame Trump’s tariffs for the high prices is debatable but it seems to me that they do so increasingly, hence the recent electoral victories of the Democrats who won by campaigning mainly on the theme of “affordability”. Trump has achieved a lot for his class in his first 11 months but it seems to me that he has peaked, that his popularity is sinking and his authority is beginning to crumble. This trend will likely accelerate as the impact of the austerity measures (such as in health care) becomes more felt and unemployment rises. That also means that divisions within his party come to the surface and that the role of the Democrats as a political force in defense of US capital from a position of opposition to the current government will become more prominent. When there are few strikes and protests, the function of the Democrats is less crucial for capital. It is when social unrest is rising that their role becomes more important in order to contain and defang the resistance.
5. How realistic is the idea to reindustrialize the US by means of tariffs?
In the foreseeable future, it is not realistic at all, with or without tariffs. Since Trump became president again, there are 50 000 industrial workers less in the US. In many basic industries, US domestic production cannot compete against Asian producers. In part, this idea of re-industrialization through tariffs it is simply a mystification to rally support from the working class. But in part it is really pursued, especially in regard to industries that would be vital in a global war, such as steel and aluminum. That is something think tanks like the Rand Corporation emphasize. Another crucial industry is the production of chips, which are the lifeblood of today’s economy as much as oil now or ever was. The US dominates the sector, but most of the actual physical manufacturing of chips takes place in Asia, and of advanced chips in Taiwan in particular. This is seen as a major weakness of the US in a potential war with China. The Biden administration’s CHIPS act began an industrial policy to entice with massive subsidies and to pressure with threats foreign capital to build chips factories in the US, some of which are already ready to operate. German capital is also involved in these projects. Domestic US companies as well are building chips factories with major government support. In one of them, Intel, the US government took a 5 billion dollar ownership stake. These new American chips factories make no sense economically, they cannot produce as cheaply as the Asian ones. They only make sense because capitalism is preparing for major wars. And since these giant investments are not profitable, they could only be organized by the state. Every acceleration of war preparation is an acceleration of state capitalism. But the state’s capacity to do so is not unlimited. No doubt that the government would love it if it could decouple the US economy from China but for now that is not possible. Under pressure of the capital markets Trump had to lower the tariffs on Chinese goods substantially.
6. You write that one of the goals of the Trump administration is »maintaining the dominant position of the dollar and thus control over the global financial system«. However, his chief economic adviser Miran is famous precisely for seeing the reserve function of the dollar – normally interpreted as an “enormous privilege” – as a burden, as it drives up the dollar’s value and thus hampers exports.
Truman desperately asked for a one-armed economist, one that would not begin his advise with “on the one hand…” There usually is a “but on the other hand”. To the advantage of the dollar’s global role for the US as well: the impact on export of the upward pressure on the dollar. But when you look at how the economic order designed in Bretton Woods, with the dollar at its center, has shaped the history of the world since the end of world war 2, it’s clear which hand is the strongest. The dollar’s unique role gives the US special powers which no other country has, in regard to deficit spending, money creation and attracting capital (surplus value) from all over the world. The US would not want to give up that advantage, today less than ever. There are not many who like Miran would like to get rid of the reserve function of the dollar for the sake of a lower dollar. In the past, the US was able to impose, when it really wanted, a currency revaluation on its competitors (the German Mark in the 70’s, several currencies but mainly the Japanese Yen in 1985 (Plaza- accord). But now it doesn’t really need to yet. While the dollar’s unique role creates a global demand for it which raises its price, it also allowed the US to preside over a never seen orgy of money creation which in turn lowered the dollar’s price. It’s the old “on the one hand..but on the other..” again.
7. Is the harsh crack-down on immigration not actually detrimental to the US economy? It seems many sectors would be in deep trouble if the government really moves forward with its announced mass deportations.
Yes it is. Although the government had to retreat a few times (most notably because of complaints of agribusinesses) and it would be catastrophic if it would try to deport the majority of the undocumented (which will not happen), its crackdown has been brutal, larger than anticipated and bad for profits. It does not have an economic aim, its goal is entirely political. This shows how important war preparation is for this government. War preparation is not only military production but also an attack on working class consciousness, an ideological battle to create a national community, a ‘volksgemeinschaft’ that is willing to fight and die for capital. I guess I don’t need to convince comrades from Germany how important the process of exclusion of an internal scapegoat is in forging the volksgemeinschaft. So it’s logical that there is a pronounced racial undertone in the government’s anti-immigrant words and actions. But there’s a problem in using racism, in that a large part of the US population (about 37 %) is non-white. The MAGA movement is divided over this. Aside from its use to reinforce the national community through exclusion of non-members, the hunt for migrants and the brutal and remarkably arbitrary way in which it is carried out (detentions of passers-by are done in front of cameras as if to advertise the danger) seem designed to spread fear and to divide the working class. Fear (of migrants, of crime, of violence, of minorities, of the poor, of moral decay and more) is constantly stoked and juxtaposed to the reassuring image of the powerful confident leader and his team of fearless warriors. The Trump administration spreads fear all around. In the general population to create a feared outsider infiltrated inside, the scapegoat, and by persecuting this scapegoat the majority is separated from it, and thereby being defined on a common ground. So a false community is formed and the danger of a unified working class is being averted. Or at least that’s the plan.
8. Let’s move on to the political and social climate in the states. What do you think about the protests so far, both the more liberal “No Kings” demos as well as the confrontations – mostly by migrants – with ICE?
The No King demos by and large were orchestrated by the Democrats and the like. So while they expressed the breadth of the discontentment they were also system-affirming, a pledge of allegiance to bourgeois democracy and all its trappings. The anti-ICE protests are more promising, although many of those also are carrying the same mystifications about striving for a more perfect capitalism. However, it is encouraging to see how fast spontaneous, intense reactions have appeared against ICE raids in LA, NYC and Chicago. Also neighborhood organization (warning a network of anti-ICE activists when ICE enters an area) has spread in cities. The weak point is the absence of work place protest. ICE is terrorizing a large segment of the working class and there are no strikes or other work place-based actions against it.
9. How is the working class affected? Do people already feel the impact of Trump’s policy in their everyday lives? And is the UAW in its support for higher tariffs representative for broader parts of the proletariat?
The big unions have been advocating protectionism for many years, blaming foreign countries for the decline of American industry. In that sense, they have prepared the way for Trump. It’s clear that there is some support in the working class for the tariffs and even for the anti-immigrant policy, especially in the South and the Midwest. It’s difficult to gauge how much, but my sense is that it is diminishing, perhaps mainly because of the failure of the Trump government to reverse the decline of their living standard. Trump is shouting out loud that they never had it so good but their real life experience tells them otherwise. Also, the brutality of ICE has shocked many.
10. Besides ICE raids, we’ve also seen drastic repression against the Palestine protests. Is that driven mainly by racism or also a pretext to attack the left? After all, there’s also been this idea that the Antifa, which is in fact no organization at all, must be banned as “a terrorist organization”.
These protests were against the government’s policies, they would have been met with harsh repression even if there was no racial/ethnic aspect. The government uses any pretext, the anti- ICE protests, the Gaza demos, Antifa, the murder of Charlie Kirk and others etc, to deploy or expand its repressive means and to accustom the population to the presence of the military in the streets. That too is war preparation. Trump said that the big cities would be a good training ground for the military. He is eager for a street fight, yearning to crack skulls, thinking that a frightful repression will excite his Maga army and intimidate its opponents. It’s Nation building to save Western civilization. Meanwhile that civilization produces the AI bubble, the Crypto bubble, shadow banking and many other roads to the abyss. Trump may be the Hoover of this time. But it was not Hoover but his ‘progressive’ successor FDR who turned out to be the greater obstacle to autonomous class struggle.
December 18, 2025
REFLECTIONS ON A SUMMER CAMP
Since quite a few years pro-revolutionary internationalists have been organizing summer meetings, including week-long “summer camps”, to inform each other, to discuss and establish contacts. We reported earlier on some of those gatherings that took place last year in Europe. This year we welcomed the return of one of the oldest of these initiatives, which had taken a break during the covid years. Unfortunately, none of us was able to attend but from what we heard of friends who were there, it must have been quite interesting, with participants from many countries, reports on class struggles from around the world and discussions on theoretical issues, all in a friendly atmosphere of solidarity.
While we had to skip that summer camp, we were able to participate in another, organized by the so-called “Beach Communists” in the south of France, also attended by comrades from many (mostly European) countries. What distinguished this camp from the other one was, among other things, that it situated its discussions within a perspective of organizing and participating in class struggles and did not shy away from affirming political positions. Indeed, earlier it adopted a common platform which, after some debate, was unambiguous in its defense of ‘revolutionary defeatism’, the rejection of supporting either side in the wars of capitalism, including those in Ukraine and the Middle East. As the first paragraph of the platform states: All states, without exception, exist today to maintain the domination of the ruling, capitalist class over the working class. Capital is everywhere, transcending borders, and we need to be able to face it internationally, not just with workers from our own territories. Therefore, we do not offer any support to wars waged by any capitalist state or any faction aimed at creating or strengthening a new state, whether aggressor or aggressed, whether or not they describe themselves as ‘socialist’ or ‘democratic’.
Given the present world situation, War was one of the main topics of discussion at this camp. The other main issues on the agenda were class struggle, the period of transition to communism, and feminism. While all these topics are important, the discussion of them left us quite frustrated.
On class struggles: various reports were presented on struggles in a number of countries. These were informative but also reflected the confusion of some participants about the nature of the trade unions. While it was stated that the aim of this session was to continue a general discussion on the trade unions started at last year’s summer camp, and the text proposed as a basis for this debate identified the unions unambiguously as organs of capitalism, the debate didn’t take place and base-unionist illusions survived the session unscathed.
On the period of transition: not coincidentally this subject has been returned to more and more in recent years, reflecting a growing awareness that the perspective of a breakdown of the global capitalist system is becoming increasingly realistic. Unfortunately, the entire discussion was centered around a presentation given by two comrades who, as they put it, had “discovered The Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution1, two years prior, and couldn’t believe that nobody was talking about it”. Not only did they defend its theoretical frame but they went further, suggesting that it was possible to create something like self-managed worker’s firms that would represent concrete and practical steps towards a communist social order. Only comrades of IP and a few others criticized their position. The discussion was limited to the comrades’ presentation and not a free exchange on the general topic of transition to communism. Therefore there was no discussion of the State and its nature, no discussion on value production, and no discussion on revolution or the revolutionary subject… only “communist firms”!
On war: the session was in three parts: First, Sanderr (IP) presented a general overview of the connection between capitalism, crisis and war, based on his text, which then was discussed; second, various comrades reported on the militarization underway in the countries where they are based, and third, the Statement on War that originally came out of the conferences in Prague and Arrezo last year (See HERE) was presented and discussed.
The general presentation did not evoke much discussion. Some seemed to think that theoretical discussion is a waste of time (although informally there were some interesting discussions on crisis theory and war later on).
The presentations on militarization were informative, showing how broad and fast the war preparation has become. A comrade from Russia gave a rundown on all the different perspectives that people are taking, especially on the war in Ukraine, and did a good job at exposing their contradictions.2
The Statement on War was discussed and approved with some minor modifications. But it was clear that some participants were not happy with the decision to adopt the statement. Some of their objections seemed not very important (for example, they wanted the text to be called Statement rather than Declaration and preferred trade union mediations rather than trade union middlemen in point 8).
They also disagreed with the passage We do not call for negotiations or UN interventions, parliamentary resolutions, disinvestments, etc. At their insistence the word disinvestments was dropped and the rather superfluous phrase since we do not see that these will lead to revolution was added.
But we got the impression that behind these mild criticisms there were deeper disagreements that were not talked about. A sizable number of the participants felt that this discussion was ‘forced on them from the outside’ and did not see political clarification as the coalescing factor of this summer camp, preferring political vagueness for the sake of activist unity.
Feminism: The discussion on feminism was more than a little confusing. It had been decided to dedicate a full session to this topic because ‘toxic masculinity’ was seen as still pervasive in the pro-revolutionary milieu. A complicated power point presentation was given on the topic of genetic biology in an attempt to show that biological differences do not explain social differences and to present counter-arguments for when biological determinism is used to attack a communist perspective. The discussion that followed proceeded with difficulty, since nobody was an expert on the topic of genetic biology. After that, we split up in small work groups where we talked about the gender-make-up in our respective workplaces and sex discrimination. Then these groups reported back to the plenum. There was a serious lack of class perspective in the discussion. Some of the more militant voices seemed to embrace feminism as a partial critique of the system. More interesting was the presentation by a worker of the Spanish Correos (Post Office) on how she and her female colleagues were being exploited and attempted to fight back.
In conclusion:
For us, the balance sheet was mixed. We were disappointed in the lack of desire for theoretical clarification through discussion by many at the camp who seemed more interested in activism. In our opinion this made them vulnerable to confusion on who is on the side of the proletariat and who represents he Left of Capital. We also were not happy with some of the organizational measures, such as a speaking limit of 2 minutes in the discussions, or the establishment of a “care team” to address incidents of sexual harassment (which did not occur).
On the positive side, the atmosphere at the camp was generally friendly and many informal conversations were interesting. We made some good contacts.
Positive as well is the commitment of the Beach Communists to continue to the discussions throughout the year in working groups meeting online, which hopefully will contribute to a well prepared summer camp next year. Several of these working groups are already active (on class composition, gender/sex, and war).
Three and possibly more summer camps and similar meetings are being planned for next year in various European countries. Internationalist Perspective has been urging the various organizers to join forces for maximal results. Without success however. It seems to us that many in our milieu still have not grasped how the acceleration of history demands from us to think and act together.
NOTES
1 This is a text by the Group of International Communists (GIK) from 1930, which describes a system of labor-time vouchers. IP’s critique of this concept can be found HERE, HERE and in MacIntosh’s text “Communization and the Abolition of the Value Form”
2 An interview with this comrade can be found HERE
Addendum:
INTERNATIONALIST STATEMENT ON CAPITALISM AND WAR
(fourth draft)
Adopted by the Narbonne Summer Camp August 2025
1. All wars, whatever they are called, are capitalist wars. While the specific conditions in which they break out may be quite different, all are rooted in the capitalist system, which is based on competition and exploitation. Wars are the extreme form of the competitive logic of capitalism. They constitute the ultimate degree of capitalist exploitation and oppression. It’s no longer just labor which capital demands from the exploited, but their very life or that of their children.
2. While imperialism has been a constant feature of capitalism since its beginning, the crisis of profitability and the escalation of class conflict which capitalism faces today and the instability it engenders, both pushes economic competition to military conflict and creates opportunities to do so. This crisis will only deepen, making it inevitable that the continuing existence of capitalism implies that war could reach all over the planet.
3. The working class, the vast majority of humankind, has nothing to win and everything to lose in war. It is always its main victim. National defense and national liberation means fighting and dying for the interests of one faction of the capitalist class against another. It means killing (and being killed by) other working class people for the power and profit of the class that exploits and oppresses us.
4. We reject both nationalism and bourgeois democracy, which are the principal ideological tools by which the capitalist class creates the illusion that its interests and those of the working class within the national borders are the same, and by which it mobilizes for war and justifies the militarization of society.
5. There are no separate solutions for the many existential threats to humankind. A peaceful capitalism, a green capitalism, a socially just capitalism are all just pipe dreams to hide the growing horror that is real. War, ecocide, climate disasters, pandemics, poverty, insecurity, forced migration, homelessness, stress and mental breakdown will continue to worsen, together with the crisis of capitalism which causes them all. Therefore there is but one solution to all of them: closing the capitalist chapter of human history.
6. We are not pacifists. We do not call for negotiations or UN interventions, parliamentary resolutions, etc. since we do not see that these will lead to revolution. We do not appeal to the ruling class to act “reasonably”, because we understand that it can’t. Instead we count on autonomous, class based resistance to capitalism. The global working class is the only social force capable of ending capitalism and establishing a human community based on the fulfillment of needs instead of the compulsion of making profit.
7. But it has a long way to go. Its struggle cannot be merely economic, it has to be political as well and confront the state. It has to refuse to submit to capitalism’s war drive. We support proletarians on both sides of any war who refuse to fight, who desert, who turn their weapons against those who order them to kill each other. We support sabotage of the war machine and resistance against conscription, mobilization and the militarization of society.
8. But the oxygen on which the war-machine depends is the exploitation of the proletariat, the extraction of surplus value. It would be paralyzed without it. So war can’t be stopped without ending exploitation. Furthermore, to make room for the war efforts, the ruling class has to attack the social wage, impose austerity. In fighting against it, workers fight against the war, consciously or not. The more they wage this fight autonomously, without any collaboration with the capitalist class, its state and its trade union mediations, the more it can blossom into a struggle against exploitation, a revolution which puts an end to capitalism, to its wars and its miserable ‘peace’.