After razing Gaza to the ground, Israel is now launching a murderous onslaught on the rest of the Middle-East. They have invaded Lebanon, launched strikes on a port in Yemen, and according to some sources even struck Syria. In response, Iran launched missiles on Israel. The situation could now degenerate into a regional war, sucking in one country after another.
Given the decline of the U.S. and the rise of China, tensions are mounting between the major imperialist blocs. This war could become another proxy war between these blocs, like the one taking place in Ukraine. And even if a major regional war does not break out, the whole region will be engulfed in chaos for years to come.
With fragile economies, just recovering from the COVID crisis and years of inflation, the imperialists understand that a flare-up in the Middle East could trigger an economic crisis that would destabilize their already fragile political regimes. But apart from empty words, the Western powers are doing nothing to stop the Zionist state’s onslaught.
Biden said in his last speech to the UN on Sept. 24 that “a full-scale war is in no one’s interest.” Yet he has no intention of stopping the flow of American weapons to Israel, without which such a war would be impossible. Israel’s role in protecting Western interests in the Middle-East is too important to jeopardize that alliance.
The U.S.A. in particular also understands that all their allies are closely watching how they treat Israel. As capitalism in crisis provokes growing conflicts between imperialist powers, and the rivalry between China and the U.S.A. simmers, the struggle for spheres of influence acquires crucial importance. If the U.S. abandons Israel now, it will send a signal to waverers that the Western imperialist bloc is unreliable, and that they should consider turning to Russia and China.
So, our ruling classes are ready to drag us all into war to protect their imperialist interests. They are powerless to curb the logic of confrontation between imperialist blocs. Like a bulldozer, the world is heading slowly but steadily towards the abyss. There can be no doubt that the capitalists have lost all right to govern.
The Revolutionary Communist International’s campaign against militarism and imperialism, launched in August, therefore comes at an opportune moment. The workers’ movement must return to its anti-militarist and internationalist roots to stop this madness before the whole world is engulfed in barbarism.
As a first step in this campaign in Canada, the Revolutionary Communist Party has been mobilizing for a student strike for Palestine since the beginning of the school year. This movement provides the perfect opportunity to fight against the warmongers. Youth in particular are burning with a desire to fight against the genocide of the Palestinians and against imperialism and war in general. This youthful energy must be channeled into a mass strike movement to spark the fire of the workers’ movement.
But the crisis of capitalism doesn’t just mean wars between nations. For several years now, we have also been witnessing a rise in conflicts within the ruling class itself. This is exactly what we saw with the mass movements against Netanyahu in Israel, which were supported and even fomented by part of the Israeli ruling class.
Like rats in a cage, capitalists are turning against each other as their system collapses in on all sides. Political instability has been the norm for many years, as the bourgeoisie loses control of its system and all sorts of opportunistic scoundrels try to take advantage of the chaos.
The clearest case is probably the United States, where on Nov. 5 the firebrand Donald Trump could be re-elected. Popular discontent and the division at the top, between Republicans and Democrats, are such that it has become cliché to announce the imminent explosion of a civil war within the planet’s leading power.
In Canada too, long spared from instability, the political crisis is now making its presence felt. The Liberal Party, Canada’s traditional governing party, is undergoing an existential crisis. With the end of NDP support, Trudeau’s hugely unpopular minority government could fall at any moment.
Every day, communist analysis is confirmed. The bourgeoisie is a senile, ignorant class, putrid with its own greed, clinging with all its might to its rotting system. And this historic crisis of capitalism is translating into the dismantling of the world order, instability and war.
This year, we founded the Revolutionary Communist International, and here we founded the Revolutionary Communist Party, to send a signal to all communists that time is running out. We need to organize them into revolutionary parties across the globe now, to prepare for the overthrow of this rotten system, before it drags us all into the abyss.
This article is the editorial for issue #9 of Communist Revolution. Subscribe here!
