For more than a month, Iran has been the scene of a new wave of protests that have been developing for several years, in alternating phases, adding to those of the two-year period 2019-2020, 2022 (focused on civil rights issues) and the most recent ones between 2024 and 2025.

The Iranian economy has been in crisis for some time, with average GDP growth over the last 10 years of only 1%, worsened this year in June by the 12-day war against USA/Israel and, at the end of September, by the reintroduction of sanctions by the UN and the EU in response to Iran’s alleged non-compliance with nuclear agreements, with measures to freeze bank assets and restrict oil sales.

To date, Iran remains the third largest country in the world in terms of oil reserves (13.3% of global reserves) and the second largest in terms of gas reserves (16.2%). The country’s economy, although severely affected by previous international sanctions, had managed to sustain itself by circumventing them, with the help of China, which receives 90% of its oil and gas exports through the Strait of Hormuz. The resumption of sanctions, defeats on the external front, with the downsizing of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the fall of Assad in Syria, and the truce agreement in Gaza signed by the regional imperialist powers – Qatar and Turkey – which together with Iran support Hamas, have dealt a severe blow to the bourgeois regime in Ayatollah robes, discouraging foreign investment and forcing the devaluation of the rial, which had already closed 2024 at an all-time low of 821 thousand to the dollar, rising to 915 thousand in June and 1.4 million in the last month, with a devastating 20% collapse in December alone.

The exceptional weakening of the currency has led to increased inflation. The collapse of Ayandeh Bank, which the Iranian state acquired to prevent its bankruptcy, has exacerbated this process. Since Iran depends on imports for a significant portion of its food, raw materials, and other goods, the collapse of the currency has had a decisive impact on purchases from abroad, with increases in wholesale and retail prices. According to the country’s Statistics Center, inflation rose by 42% in December compared to the previous year, while food inflation reached 70% and that of medicine and health product inflation reached 50%. The average wage – increasingly eroded by inflation – stands at around $200 per month, while trade union organisations, in a context where unions independent of the capitalist regime are illegal, estimate that a minimum of $550 is needed to support a family. The unemployment rate reached 7.2% in December.

The now uncontrollable discontent has exploded with shop closures in the bazaars and student demonstrations in universities in 31 regions and over 200 cities, some of which, such as Abadan, Ahvaz, and Malekshahi County, seem to have fallen into the hands of the demonstrators, with police forces forced to flee. However, there has been a rise in workers’ strikes for months, intensifying in December, mainly in the oil and mining sectors. In early December, thousands of employees at the South Pars gas complex in Asaluyeh, on the Persian Gulf coast, have protested at several refineries with strikes and demonstrations. During the same period, workers at the North Drilling Company have halted operations on several onshore and offshore platforms. These actions have followed previous strikes in the mines, including the Zarshuran Gold Mine in the south-southest of Tabriz, as well as steelworkers in Hamadan (300 km west-southwest of Tehran) and in industries in the province of Fars. Pensioners and public sector workers have protested alongside industrial workers, demanding the payment of pensions and access to healthcare.

In this climate, the United States has threatened to intervene ’in favour of the demonstrators’, but it is not easy to understand whether they will opt for regime change, as happened, with the roles reversed, in 1979 against the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, or for a change within the framework of the theocratic regime, preserving it, as appears to have happened with regard to the so-called Bolivarian regime in Venezuela, as both are considered the best at playing the role of gendarme against the proletariat.

In the West, a certain "nationalist left" has from the outset downplayed the street clashes as the result of a conspiracy, a covert manoeuvre by the CIA and Mossad. In reality, today as yesterday, even without the incitement of any secret service, countless demonstrators, many of whom have been arrested and killed, are protesting for better living conditions and spontaneously hate a regime that starves them, represses them, and eliminates all forms of civil and trade union rights. Promoting the interests of a bourgeoisie that hides behind Islamic priests and uses its own working class as cannon fodder as ’popular resistance’ or ’anti-imperialist’ reveals the nature and position of parties that are entirely internal to the needs, conflicts, and wars of bourgeois States, Stalinist and ex-Stalinist parties and currents that not only have nothing to do with communism but are not even an expression of the working class, imprisoning and subjugating its immediate and historical interests in the lie of ’national reality’. Regional powers are linked to this or that imperialist superpower. They are also in competition among themselves, but in any case hostile to their respective working classes, starved, exploited, and massacred.

In Iran too, the working class, without the presence of a revolutionary communist party, will once again be forced to fight at the tail end of the interests of merchants and the petty bourgeoisie, deluding itself in a change of government, as has happened many times before in the country’s history. The workers’ struggle for better living conditions against their own governments is always objectively revolutionary. Only today it must fight to achieve its autonomy of programme and movement, as a social class, nationally and internationally, above all divisions and closures within categories and companies.

The uprising in Iran has been brutally crushed by the theocratic regime that the Iranian bourgeoisie has relied on for 47 years to protect its interests against the working class.

Demonstrations involving tens of thousands of young people, women, workers, students, and bazaar traders chanting for Khamenei’s death in dozens of cities and most of the country’s provinces – with fierce clashes in which the repressive forces were in some cases overwhelmed and many of their henchmen killed – were not enough. However weakened, the regime maintains a social base sufficient to withstand the shocks of increasingly harsh revolts.

This social base is founded on the network of interests of the military and paramilitary forces fattened by oil revenues and other capitalist activities, supported by Chinese and Russian imperialism.

A state power, military, intertwined with economic power, increasingly centralized, characteristic of capitalism in its senile, putrescent phase, which corresponds to the true nature of capitalist political regimes, which is fascism, covered by ideological cloaks worn according to opportunity: from the robes of the ayatollahs, to false Bolivarian socialism, to democracy, to false Chinese socialism.

In Iran too, until the working class mobilizes, organized in class unions, with a generalized strike movement that overcomes divisions between companies, categories, and localities and blocks the national capitalist economy to the bitter end, the revolts will continue to break like waves against the regime’s dam, nullifying the enormous sacrifice of the lives of young people, women, and proletarians.

The imperialist powers that support the Ayatollah regime and those that appear to oppose it are united by their interest in keeping the Iranian working class oppressed and preventing it from taking the lead in the struggle.

This is why the US and Israel support the monarchist opposition and make grand proclamations of support for the rioters: they know that in this way they weaken the uprising, because they reinforce the regime’s narrative that it is the result of a foreign conspiracy, not of worsening living conditions and the denial of all civil, trade union, and political freedoms! The more Trump makes proclamations in support of the rioters, the better the executioner can hang and the police can shoot in the streets.

US imperialism certainly has no interest in the overthrow of the regime if led by the working class, which would risk igniting class struggle throughout the Middle East. In fact, no regime in the area has expressed the slightest solidarity with the rioters: they tremble with fear that social revolt will break out against them!

For the US, on the other hand, it is desirable to achieve a “change” that preserves intact the repressive apparatus – of which the Shiite clergy is an essential part – charged with keeping the Iranian proletariat terrorized and oppressed, with a revolt movement bled dry and dominated by the most reactionary parties, and which only diverts oil, gas, and revenues away from China.

This is similar to what was done in Venezuela, with the regime of false Bolivarian socialism that surrendered its leader without resistance and made new agreements on oil, while the police and armed paramilitary gangs continue to patrol the streets of Caracas.

The working class, in Iran as in the rest of the world, has no allies in any regime, whether democratic or authoritarian, because, above these masks, they are all capitalist regimes. Its only ally is the workers of all countries, in the international unity of the working class, and the only political outlet is not democracy – which, as the politics of all the European capitalist states and the US demonstrate, is only a perfidious mystification of their nature – but socialism, the communist program of overcoming capitalism.

As in the rest of the world, the Iranian working class needs to reconnect with the party of the international communist revolution, sweeping away the ideological confusion of a century of counter-revolution, with its falsifications of communism, starting with the Stalinist one, which in Iran, in the name of a false anti-imperialism, led the Tudeh in 1979 to the suicidal tactic of a united front with Khomeini!

Today, the followers of that policy are the same people who throw mud at the Iranian uprising and absolve the executioner! Anti-imperialism without anti-capitalism – which points to only the alliance of states allied with the US as imperialist and not that of the opposing global and regional capitalist powers, led by China – is just misleading propaganda to push workers towards World War III.

The struggle of the working class in Iran is of crucial importance for workers around the world because its victory would deal a severe blow to the imperialist war machine that feeds on the conflict between Israel and Iran in the Middle East, with the Israeli regime repressing internal opposition with the specter of an external enemy and with the Ayatollah regime, which, while crushing ethnic minorities within its borders, exploits the oppression of the Palestinians only to extend the claws of its imperialist policy to the Mediterranean.

For the struggle of the working class in Iran and its extension to the entire Middle East!

For the international unity of workers in all countries, including Iran, Israel, and Palestine!

Against all forms of nationalism, against imperialist war: the first enemy of workers is their own bourgeois regime!

The bourgeoisie continue their dress rehearsal of mass terror and deportations with the commencement of Operation Metro Surge in December of 2025, in which the state of Minnesota is being targeted to prepare for the coming intensification of mass deportations and attacks on living standards in the wake of the inevitable economic crisis. Using the pretext of fraud, the state launched the initiative and has managed to arrest around 3,000 people. The racial element of targeting minority immigrants was made explicit with Trump labelling Somalis as “garbage”, along with the DHS and ICE collaborating to racially profile and target Latino workers who often perform precarious, low wage work. A leaked memo authorizes ICE agents to enter private residences with an administrative warrant, i.e. they do not have to receive approval from judges and can issue warrants autonomously, marking a break from previous legal practice. Once again, we observe how the bourgeoisie violates its own laws and constitutions out of the necessity of continuing the exploitation of the working class. We shall see when the class struggle intensifies who the real garbage is… the capitalists!

In response to these federal operations and more acutely, the murder of Renée Good, a series of protests have occurred that culminated in what opportunists of all stripes are calling a “general strike” on January 23rd. Thousands and perhaps as many as 50,000 engaged in the protest under the leadership of the “ICE Out Coalition”, a local activist organization that has managed to gain the support of a significant section of the Democratic Party and the petty-bourgeoisie, as nearly one thousand small businesses closed their doors to support the action. This is likely because cheap immigrant labor is essential for them to exploit to achieve slim profit margins. Their demands call for: ICE to leave Minnesota, legal accountability for state officers, no more funding for Trump’s ICE (notice that their problem is stated to only be with Republican-controlled ICE), and for corporations big and small to deny access to ICE agents and become “4th Amendment businesses”. Also present are the classic appeals to abide by and defend the Constitution, democracy, and rights of all kinds, human and inalienable.

We communists know that the working class has no interest in defending bourgeois order, which is both fascist and democratic. “The rights of the poor are empty words”, to quote the lyrics of the Internationale. The bourgeois tendency of this group is also highlighted by its tactical approach to the question of striking by first encouraging workers to find “friendly bosses” and common ground with them (as if such a thing could exist!) and by leading workers onto the terrain of the NLRB where the class struggle is co-opted into legal channels. Their official document reminds workers of their no-strike clause and makes the suggestion to claim mental or physical illness as a means of calling out sick. 

As for the unions which endorsed the protest, Teamsters Local 638’s official statement tepidly reminded workers that striking would be illegal. IATSE Local 13 told workers that they have the right to choose, but to make sure the bosses know in advance. SEIU Healthcare MN issued a stern warning that participation in strike action could lead to job termination. The president of CWA Local 7250 stated, “We have not voted on a strike, but our union is calling on people to support this call”. The MNA told their workers that they hold an essential caregiving role as a moral appeal in order for them to follow the no-strike clause, as well as a quite honest assessment of what the endorsement is by stating that the “MNA is joining a broad and growing coalition of labor organizations, faith leaders, business owners, and community members across Minnesota”. According to the New York Times, the president of the MNA went so far as to discourage members from missing work alongside other labor leaders.

The function of the business union leadership seen here is to suppress militancy wherever it organically erupts. By telling workers to not take action and not even bother voting on taking more serious militant action, this layer serves to neuter struggle and keep it legal in order to preserve their labor aristocratic privilege of a salary far beyond what the average worker makes. They fear breaking labor law because it puts their job in jeopardy and salary on the line. Ultimately, the result of this is a drive to find power from other classes, which pushes these unions into engaging in united fronts that keep the status quo. 

Let us look more deeply at where the working class was in this action. Spontaneous organization among the proletariat in the form of workplace committees or strike councils did not occur in any significant sense (or perhaps at all), and so the workers who chose not to go to work typically did so on an individual, legal basis. This, of course, is a very weak tactic and one that diminishes the importance of workers acting as one and drawing strength from numbers and common action. The leadership of the regime unions fall squarely in line with the rest of the mush of this activist united front. Unions en masse endorsed the action, but unanimously rejected any strike language, consistently citing contractual legal obligations to the no-strike clause. The function of this endorsement is then to send the workers to the protests, to not strike (they are granting individuals the glorious freedom to choose!), and to rope them into bourgeois politics and tactics that are connected to the growing anti-fascist popular front led by the Democrats. 

In the absence of the leadership of the class political party, the actions of the proletariat are left to be subsumed by bourgeois politics and directed towards the defense of capital. We cannot depend upon the bourgeoisie, its state, and its allies to give us scraps; we need to force their hand with militant class struggle. The political and activist coalitions present themselves as the organizers and ignitors, but they are opportunists seeking to anticipate and direct the class back onto the field of class collaboration and coalitions with the bourgeoisie, thus practically delaying the development of the class and its maturation into defensive self organization.

Despite the present misleadership, we celebrate the awakening of the proletariat as it participates in mass action and seek to guide it in the right direction toward the class union and to communism. 

The question remains: Was this action qualitatively different from previous actions like 50501 and No Kings? To this, we answer with a resounding “no”. What happened was not a general strike nor a notable “step forward” in comparison to previous action.

It is true, however, that talk of a general strike has become more common, but this is to be expected as the objective conditions worsen and the class organically and spontaneously develops the trade-union consciousness to attain short term objectives. This growing popularity of the term “general strike” may also be a result of it being appropriated and defanged to instead mean disorganized walk-outs and protests, with no serious worker organization committing to a workplace strike. The role being played here by news outlets, activist groups, and opportunism is negative and serves to misdirect workers towards sterile action, proclaiming the general strike as the ultimate weapon all while lying to workers and telling them that mass protest without serious strike action like what has been happening before is tactically correct and that we just need “more organizing” or “more numbers” in general.

Missing from the chagrin of these scoundrels is a serious plan for accomplishing a general strike and a concrete analysis of business unionism and the labor law regime. Only the Communist Party, with its historic experience and political clarity, can correctly give the watchwords that put the working class back on the path of class struggle and towards a serious and effective general strike.

When we look back at the historic 1934 Minneapolis General Strike that has been referenced in comparison to the recent action, there is a stark contrast. At that time, workers organizations were still in the process of being subordinated to the state, with the National Industrial Recovery Act being one such method of government mediation in labor disputes. Communists agitated within the Teamsters, then led by business unionist Daniel Tobin, to push for a strike that encompassed multiple different sectors of workers as well as the unemployed. With a significantly militant and impoverished base of workers, they managed to easily outmaneuver whatever attempts at restriction and anti-militancy that came from leadership. When the time came to strike, other unions struck in solidarity as well.

There was no popular front at play here, nor a united front with interclass and non-worker organizations from above, but rather a united front from below in which workers in their own organizations agitated and committed to serious strike action outside of the limited governmental structures that existed at the time that would have them compromise. Coalitions were made on the explicit grounds of worker organizations and for strike action. The Democratic governor at the time, Floyd Olson, mobilized the national guard, declared martial law, and banned picketing despite the supposed pro-worker orientation of the Farmer-Labor Party and the broader FDR administration. Federal intervention had forced the employer to accept most of the union’s demands, but this was only to prevent broader social revolt. With the bought time, FDR’s administration was allowed to stabilize and further penetrate workers organizations in order to subordinate them to produce for the imperialist war and allow capitalism to survive. 

It is this very same Democratic Party that prepares to cloak itself in a worker veneer as it begins the construction of the future anti-fascist popular front à la Roosevelt. Its real purpose lay in the preservation of capital and of disciplining workers for war. It is the same Democratic “heroes” in office that call for ICE to leave or immigration reform, but allow their party members to authorize expanded funding and for Walz to mobilize the national guard to protect private property and the capitalist order. It is the same Democratic Party whose “deporter-in-chief” removed nearly 3 million people to be exploited abroad so that the economy could recover from the 2008 crash, beating Trump’s record. The Democratic Party, its non-profit and activist appendages, and the regime union apparatus work to anticipate the organic emergence of working class defensive struggles and seek to corral these energies into their interclass organs to save capitalism and prepare for imperialist war.

Workers need to recognize the mirage for what it is, abandon the false oasis, and resume the path of class struggle and building the class union. To seriously achieve a general strike, it will take a great deal of effort and coordination that has to contend with enemies on all sides that seek to misdirect the struggle, as well as an objective worsening of the conditions of the class. Practically, workers must agitate within their unions for class unionist principles such as removing the no-strike clause, radical economic demands, aligning contracts to expire on May 1st, 2028, and be willing to struggle against business union leadership that would rather compromise. The NLRB straightjacket can, must, and will be broken so as to unleash workers from their slumber and truly fight back. Unorganized and organized workers alike must come together and unite to strike from below, utilizing what they can in existing unions and forming new organs of struggle to put forth their own class demands. It is only by fighting for the class union and ultimately for communist revolution that ICE will be dismantled and for there to be an end to the bourgeois reign of terror.

    For united trade union front from below and a real general strike!
    Against the coming popular front!
    Against united fronts from above!
    For independence from bourgeois parties and activist coalitions!

We must fight for an actual general strike! An indefinite strike that halts production, paralyzes profit, and demonstrates the power that a united workers’ movement has. This action is the workers’ strongest weapon for defending against attacks on living standards and resisting violent mass deportation. The general strike will bring in busboys and bus drivers, domestic workers and natives, the organized and unorganized.

While we applaud the fighting spirit of workers across the United States and are encouraged by their willingness to engage in collective action, it won’t do to settle for any distortion of what a general strike is. A general strike is not a one day “economic shutdown” that is pushed by capitalist politicians, or employers through calls for individuals to not shop, not go to school/work, or bosses shutting down their own shops for the day, locking out workers.

A general strike is workers, arm in arm, taking a stand against the bosses and the state through a collective withholding of their labor-power under the leadership of explicitly workers’ defensive organizations. It cannot come from decentralized networks of individuals that do not collectively commit to strike.

The interclass groups that lead these efforts seek to direct genuine anger into voting for the Democrats Party, strengthening capitalism and delaying the workers from organizing a militant, organized defense.

Both Democrats and Republicans use ICE and deportations to regulate the labor market, cyclicly opening and closing borders in order to secure the exploitation of precarious workers for low wages while undercutting domestic workers wages. Immigrant and domestic workers must unite in common defense of wages and living standards across borders!

When the established labor unions tell workers that they cannot violate the no-strike clause in their contracts, like during the protests in Minneapolis they undermine the very action required for a real general strike. Mere protests without indefinite strike action, which can leverage the labor-power of large swathes of the working class, channels the rightful rage and pain of workers towards temporary symbolic action behind demands that are neither truly fought for, nor something capitalism will ever yield without extreme struggle; at best, it results in a temporary reform that can be easily revoked as class tensions subside. By telling workers to follow Democratic Party linked groups, they funnel the energies of the class into class collaboration and abandon what really gives workers power: the strike.

Simply calling for “more organizing” and “more numbers” isn’t enough. We must restore the meaning and power of the general strike with a radical change in tactics. 

We need to abandon the united front from above with interclass political and activist groups that misdirect the struggle and work towards a united front from below, i.e. one that combines all worker’s defensive organizations towards collective strike action. 

This means forming class struggle formations or workplace committees, inside or outside existing unions, among the organized and unorganized, committed to increasing the strength of the struggle to achieve the immediate demands of workers without holding back from taking action that would break the suffocating rules of the National Labor Relations Board which are designed to contain the working class from leveraging its full strike power. We must reject compliance with the no-strike clause in contracts, and organize towards collective action across sectors, unions, and borders by organizing in solidarity for May 1st, 2028 alongside the unions that have already taken this step or organize a real general strike much sooner. 

Out of this united front must come the combination of workplace committees, unions, and workers into a single class trade union that includes all workers against the wage system. Only the international unity of workers, organized in these class unions and led by the communist party, can destroy the capitalist system that produces ICE, prisons, deportations, and poverty.

     For a real general strike directed by workers’ organizations that coordinate collective mass strikes!
     Against united fronts with interclass capitalist groups!
     For the class union!

This February, the war in Ukraine will exceed four years, the longest and most intense clash between regular armies since the end of World War II. It therefore constitutes a fundamental test both for the states involved and for the proletariat that is its victim. Despite this, relations between world imperialisms are going through such a stormy period that this war has been relegated to the background by the international media.

The impromptu promises of the US president, newly re-elected a year ago, to bring the fighting to a swift end by proposing a division of the Ukrainian spoils between the United States and Russia, have been met with opposition from many European states, excluded from the banquet despite their involvement in the war, while Russia has shown no interest in accepting a compromise agreement.

Just recently, behind the scenes at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a revived Zelensky met again with Trump and other US trustees who were negotiating with the Kremlin.

Zelensky, despite having just received another $90 billion from the European Union – which is busy finding a way to keep Greenland’s ice – did not hesitate to harshly criticize it for its indecision toward Russia, and announced a first three-way meeting in the United Arab Emirates between the US, Russia, and Ukraine, which was then held on January 23 and 24.

Thus, the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, in dire straits, seems to be moving away from the embrace of the EU, finally forced to surrender itself into the hands of the US. We shall see.

During these long years of war, the Ukrainian and Russian proletariat have paid a very high price in human lives, some regions of Ukraine have been reduced to rubble, but the material damage is also considerable in Russia.

This destruction will affect the proletariat of both countries for generations to come.Against the backdrop of this tragic context, a political class of inconsequential actors continues to organize useless summits, “high-level” meetings, called “peace negotiations”, a media spectacle behind which the opposing imperialist fronts continue to fuel the war. At this moment, no government has a real interest in ending the war, despite its obvious futility.

Russia wins (for now)

Russia, with an army that has been on the offensive across the entire front for more than a year, has no interest in peace unless it obtains most of what it demanded when it invaded in February 2022. Basically: NATO must stay out of Ukraine; the four eastern oblasts must be recognized as part of Russia, as already enshrined in the Constitution; the Ukrainian army must be reduced to no more than 70-80,000 troops, and for the sole purpose of maintaining internal social order.

Russia’s successes, due to its growing superiority in troops, equipment, and firepower, allowed Putin to state on December 27 that “if the authorities in Kyiv do not want to resolve the issue peacefully, we will resolve all the problems that await us with a special military operation and military means”. This does not seem like bluster to us. The Russian army has already conquered 19-20% of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea, and continues to hammer energy infrastructure, industrial areas, military bases, and especially the port of Odessa with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones every night. Ukrainian air defenses are proving increasingly ineffective against these attacks. The Ukrainian army is falling apart while the Russian army is growing stronger. It is winning the war and is therefore in a position to dictate the terms of a possible peace agreement, or to impose it de facto once it has achieved its objectives.

The massacre of proletarians in uniform

The most reliable estimates put Russian casualties between 250,000 and 350,000, while those of the Kiev army may have exceeded 800,000. This assessment contradicts Western propaganda, which always speaks of ‘very high Russian losses’.

For many months, the Russian army, which has far superior firepower to the Ukrainians in terms of artillery, drones, and air power, has been able to strike hard at enemy lines.

The situation also favors Russia in terms of recruitment. According to various sources, there were approximately 300,000 deserters in the Ukrainian army in 2025, at least 850,000 men of draft age are hiding from recruiters, and approximately 650,000 remain abroad to avoid wearing the uniform. The Russian army, on the other hand, does not seem to suffer from the problem of desertions because it does not send conscripts to the front, and fights by enlisting between 360,000 and 400,000 contract volunteers per year. It has already planned to enlist 409,000 in 2026.

It seems clear to us that if Russian soldiers were sent to their deaths in “mass assaults”, as the Ukrainian general staff claims, there would not be so many volunteers, despite the good pay.

The economic crisis

Western propaganda continues to claim that Russia is in the throes of a serious economic crisis and high inflation, caused mainly by Western sanctions, which should soon lead to political and military collapse.

This too is an illusion. Before the economic crisis causes internal divisions and social unrest that would force an end to the war – something we hope for but which, unfortunately, will not happen in the short term – the Russian army will force Ukraine to surrender unconditionally, the Ukrainian bourgeoisie will lose all its wealth, and its allies will have to come to terms with this.

The criminal steadfastness of the Ukrainian government

However, the Ukrainian government still refuses to cede territory and continues to seek military and financial aid from the West, despite the lack of reserves, desertions, and incomplete replacements of brigades.

But the Kiev government’s stance is not one of national pride, as European warmongering propaganda would have us believe, but of subservience to the party of war at any cost. Zelensky has no other choice, having sold out his own proletariat to his American and European masters. This meant first resisting the invasion, then continuing the war, against all military logic and against any consideration of simple mercy towards his own people.

An article in Le Monde diplomatique argues that “it would be morally unthinkable for Zelensky’s forces, which have sent thousands of soldiers to their deaths to preserve Donbass, to voluntarily surrender the positions they still hold (...) The army would probably refuse to obey”. On the other hand, a capitulation, which is what this would be, would certainly be welcomed with enthusiasm by the soldiers at the front, and also with great relief by the civilian population. But the demobilization of the army could trigger a political crisis, the outbreak of unrest, perhaps even a civil war.

On the other hand, if the Russian government were to give up the occupation of the whole of Donbass, it could not pass off the end of the war as a victory, and this would probably lead to an internal crisis.

Just as the Russian bourgeoisie sacrificed the proletariat, who has nothing to gain from this war, to defend its interests, threatened by the bourgeoisie of the West, the Ukrainian bourgeoisie sacrificed the proletariat for the sake of Ukrainian capitalists, in service to Washington and Berlin. The chickens may come home to roost.

As we clearly wrote in March 2022, a few days after the outbreak of the war: "The working class of Ukraine would have nothing to lose from an immediate surrender of its bourgeoisie in the face of the Russian invasion. Symmetrically, the workers of Russia have nothing to gain from a victory of their state in Ukraine. But the bourgeoisie of Ukraine wanted war, just as much as their Western ‘protectors’ and the Russian bourgeoisie".

The internal situation

Already in 2014, well before the outbreak of the war, we noted how the economic crisis had caused "a massive emigration in Ukraine: the population, which had reached 52,179,210 inhabitants in 1993, steadily declined in the following years, reaching 45,593,300 in 2012. This demonstrates the severity of the crisis and the suffering the population had to endure. For the proletariat and the middle classes, it was like being at war".

But in the following years, the situation worsened: currently, there are over 8 million Ukrainians abroad (about 6 million in the EU), 1.8 million were internally displaced by the war in Donbass from 2014 to 2022, and another 5.7 million by the Russian invasion in 2022.

The current population is less than 37 million, compared to 146 million in Russia, a ratio of four to one.

From a financial point of view, Ukraine is also bankrupt. According to International Monetary Fund estimates, it will need at least $160 billion by this spring.

The indefinite continuation of the fighting, bombing, and destruction, when the military game is already over, on the one hand demonstrates the strength of the war party, supported by the capitalist oligarchies, the producers, and the arms dealers. On the other, it confirms the weakness of the international proletarian movement, and of the Ukrainian one in particular. In the absence of strong unions and a class-based party, it is incapable of mounting a reaction capable of blocking the imperialist war from below.

The non-existent European Union

In this situation of extreme global tensions, the European Union has once again demonstrated that it does not exist as a unified body. The states have acted autonomously and in conflict with each other, showing that the causes of the conflicts of the last century are far from gone.

The EU’s top leaders are crying out about the Russian threat, with the Cossack cavalry ready to drink from the Trevi Fountain, as Christian Democratic propaganda claimed in Italy in 1948, and are launching a huge rearmament plan. But in reality, it is individual states that are rearming, with Germany at the forefront.

Every bourgeoisie in Europe, large and small, is defending its own interests and sphere of influence, strengthening nationalist policies, patriotic spirit, and above all the military budget, in preparation for the future clash that everyone desires. The Polish president summed up this disastrous policy well with the motto “Money today or blood tomorrow”, which in reality means “Money today and blood tomorrow”.

Even the Ukrainian president in Davos did not spare criticism of the ailing European Union, despite the fact that it had just allocated another $90 billion in aid! This is completely insufficient, but with this additional “loan”, EU leaders have confirmed that they are still betting on war, “to the last Ukrainian”. In fact, these funds would be “guaranteed” by Russia’s payment of reparations, a prospect that is currently highly unlikely.

On the other hand, the European Union has accepted all the dictates imposed in recent months by the United States, from military spending at 6% of GDP to $600 billion for investment in US industry and $750 billion to purchase expensive American gas, after rejecting cheap Russian gas.

The European states represent the weakest capitalist bloc, and they are paying the consequences.

But the proletariat of Europe must shun the political sirens that extol the unity of the Union, its “values” of democracy and freedom. Enabling the bourgeoisies of the continent to defend themselves from pressure from the East as well as from the West would only mean the birth of a third imperialist bloc opposed to those of the United States and China. The international proletariat would have nothing to gain from this. A clash between capitalist blocs is brewing that has nothing to do with the interests of the proletariat. It is with the propaganda of the defense of the homeland, of freedom, of democracy, of peace, that the transversal and international war party will attempt to drag the proletarians to the front.

NATO collapses

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has also become embroiled in the conflict. As we wrote in our 2022 article: "Officially, since 2014, NATO has had a constant presence in the organization and training of the devastated Ukrainian army. It is clear that work was being done to expand the conflict from a local one involving the separatist republics to an open and general conflict. The presence of Western military structures represented an important Atlantic outpost on Ukrainian territory, even if temporarily outside the Alliance. More recently, under the presidency of the docile former actor Zelensky (2020-21), it even became an operational area for NATO exercises, with provocative operations to put pressure on neighboring Russia".

During these four years of war, the member states of the organization have taken very different positions, suffice it to think of the policies pursued by Hungary or Turkey or the opposing ones of Great Britain or Poland.

Despite the Secretary General’s proclamations against the “existential” threat posed by Russia and China, the results are few and far between, and the internal differences between the allies on the level of involvement, timing, and final objectives reveal the absence of a common vision and unmask the propaganda efforts to make the Atlantic Alliance appear a monolithic and cohesive force.

NATO’s political role in this war is ambiguous: it is in fact an active party to the conflict, but continues to present itself as a non-belligerent entity so as not to openly challenge Moscow. The hypocrisy of formal non-intervention and substantial military support is a clear sign that there is no clear and coherent shared political line. The United States, which has been the linchpin of the Atlantic Alliance since its inception, makes no secret of its desire to ‘emancipate’ itself from it. The guidelines of the new National Defense Strategy, released by the Pentagon, state: ’The absolute priority of the armed forces is to defend the United States. The Department will therefore prioritize this objective, including defending American interests throughout the Western Hemisphere.“ It continues: ”While U.S. forces focus on defending the homeland and the Indo-Pacific, our allies and partners will take primary responsibility for their own defense, with essential but more limited support from U.S. forces”.

On the grand chessboard of dying capitalism

The war in Ukraine, which pits NATO against Russia, is in fact more a war between the United States and Europe, especially Germany. Washington makes no secret of its satisfaction at having broken the commercial, industrial, and financial ties that united some European countries, Germany foremost among them, with Russia. It has cut off gas and oil supplies and forced European states to drastically increase their military budgets, to the benefit of US arms giants. The Pentagon declares that Russia is not the adversary, openly contradicting the narrative of the NATO Secretary General and drastically reducing military and economic aid to Ukraine. At this point, NATO no longer has a reason to exist, although it will probably continue to stand, surviving itself.

NATO military bases are thus increasingly revealing themselves for what they have always been: strongholds of US imperialism’s military occupation of Western Europe, imposed after victory in World War II. Its purpose has also been to keep a combative proletariat subjugated, in collaboration with the Warsaw Pact states, which were responsible for crushing the working class in Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, the huge presence of Chinese mega-capitalism is quietly imposing itself on the world.

How long will Berlin wait before demanding accountability for the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, ordered by the US and carried out by a Ukrainian commando unit? Will they put the pro-Nazi Alternative for Germany in government for this?

The contradictions of imperialism are becoming increasingly evident as the crisis deepens and war approaches.

New scenarios

These new scenarios are causing concern among the bourgeois international diplomatic corps.

The capitalist regime, in its phase of decadent imperialism, is heading straight for war. A catastrophic third world war can only be prevented by the rise of international proletarian reaction.

To achieve this, vast trade union organizations are needed, under the influence of a strong international communist party. These will work to ensure that the proletariat of every country, even if “attacked”, does not join the war or defend the “sacred borders”. Because the enemy is their own national bourgeoisie, whether it cloaks itself in fascist banners or democratic robes. It will fraternize with the proletarian “invading” soldiers, who are also being sent to slaughter, and will prepare for the only war favorable to the proletariat, that of liberating itself, through communist revolution, from this infamous political regime!

This is the immense but exciting task that lies ahead for our comrades in the coming months and years.

A lightning operation: in 12 days, HTS forces under the command of Al-Sharaa, Syria’s new president, forced the SDF to renounce their autonomy and sign a draconian agreement. Founded in 2011 and dominated numerically and politically by the YPG (People’s Protection Units), the SDF was the main Kurdish militia and armed wing of the autonomous administration of the fertile Rojava region. After fighting began in early January, a ceasefire was reached on the 18th, radically redefining the balance of power in northeastern Syria.

For the Kurds, it is more of a surrender than a compromise, providing for the de facto dissolution of the SDF, their integration as individuals into the Syrian army, and the return to the state of most of the territories they had controlled since 2011, occupied by the Syrian army: Aleppo, Raqqa, and Deir Ezzor, on the border with the Rojava region.

The fall of Rojava marks the end of Kurdish autonomy in an oil-rich region over which various ethnic factions are trying to impose their control. Like any territorial dispute within the anti-historical regime of capital, the war remains a clash between factions for control of energy sources and their sale. Furthermore, the region, being the most fertile in all of Syria, is fundamental for the production of cereals and cotton.

Its economy – contrary to the beliefs of left-wing simpletons and those faithful to the religion of resistance, who idolize popular democracies and socialisms scattered here and there around the world – is characterized by capitalist relations. The industries, managed by the state according to commercial and wage criteria, have developed mainly thanks to oil and gas revenues, which the SDF itself traded with the old Assad regime that fell only a year ago. This is estimated to be several hundred million dollars a year, a deal that, in early 2025, Kurdish capitalists began to entertain with the new government in Damascus.

What a socialist revolution in Rojava! The foolish Western national-communists need only see a few state-owned industries and cooperatives within capitalism to immediately see red!

The struggle for control of these lands is not for the “defense of socialism and revolution”, but only a dispute between capitalists for control of markets and resources in a historical phase in which national liberation struggles no longer have any reason to exist. Even for the Kurds, as demonstrated in previous articles (see issue 434, “Self-liquidation of the PKK sanctions anti-historical national liberation struggles”), conflicts for the recognition or defense of autonomous nation states are past their prime, so much so that they are sucked into broader disputes between the great imperialisms over the division of entire continents and control of markets.

It is no coincidence that both the Palestinian and Kurdish bourgeoisies have submitted to the same capitalist powers that oppress them as nationalities, to the extent that we are witnessing several short circuits: Qatar and Turkey, which finance Hamas in Gaza, are allies of the US, which manipulates Israel. The Kurds, historical enemies of Turkey, relied on protection from the US rather than on the mobilization of their own lower classes, as well as from Israel.

Furthermore, Kurdish nationalists themselves have often expressed their intention to act as oppressors and have put this into practice: the leader of the Democratic Unity Party (PYD) has spoken openly about expelling Arabs from Kurdish-majority regions, and his government has opened fire on demonstrators in the Kurdish city of Amuda and tortured dissidents. Armenians and Assyrians have openly denounced the indoctrination into the cult of Öcalan in the education system of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).

In this tangle of interests and alliances, where one man’s friend is another man’s enemy and today’s ally is tomorrow’s sacrifice, there is no longer any prospect of progress for workers in the various areas other than the transition from one oppressor to another. The Kurdish and Palestinian proletarians must regain their class autonomy and organize themselves to fight independently of their bourgeoisie, not for an impossible national liberation but for the communist revolution.

The liberation of nations with their state affirmations has already taken place. Capitalism now promises only reactionary wars. The only real and authentic struggle for the liberation of Palestinian, Kurdish, Jewish, Arab, and workers around the world lies in the overthrow of capitalism, which is the cause of all the upheavals we are witnessing today. This historic task can only be achieved if workers manage to unite and organize themselves under the leadership of genuine class unions for increasingly widespread economic strikes in defense of their living conditions, and only through the leadership of their genuine revolutionary party, for the slow, tortuous but indispensable establishment of the true communism of tomorrow.