The Middle East has been contested by capitalist blocs for more than a century. At first, it was Russia on one side and England, France, and the U.S. on the other. Today, following Russia’s collapse, the United States of America has come to impose its superior military power there. Not only for oil—its supply and price—but for strategic dominance of the region.

U.S. capital—in the midst of a severe economic crisis, which is shaping up to be the worst in the last seventy years and is already taking a devastating toll on millions of American workers—intends to penetrate the region, establishing military and commercial footholds there in order to boost profits by force of arms.

The true victims of bourgeois wars are the workers: today, the first to be united in the attack are the Iraqis and Americans—civilians and those in uniform alike—followed by the proletariat throughout the region—Arabs, Kurds, Israelis—and finally the workers of the entire world, impoverished, terrorized, and repressed in the poor South as well as in the increasingly similar North.

Feeble and contrived distinctions come from other equally capitalist states, not because they are peace-loving and horrified by the bloodbath that looms, but because they, too, have their own selfish bourgeois interests in the region to protect and are not yet ready to go to war to defend them. The Euro front, to the extent that it holds out, does not represent a force for peace, in opposition to a warmongering Dollar front, but rather one of the sides in the general inter-imperialist clash toward which the capitalist system is hurtling. Out of this clash will emerge not an impossible different Europe, but inexorably the direct confrontation between the world giants of Capital: Europe, the U.S., Russia, China, Japan..., and the Third World War will be imperialist, just as the First was and as the Second was.

In Italy, broadly pacifist movements and the left-wing opposition (which had already endorsed the war in Yugoslavia) have declared themselves ready to lend their blessing—alongside that of the United Nations—to this war as well, portraying it not as disgustingly reactionary and anti-proletarian, but as necessary and in defense of peace, and they themselves will set about urging the proletariat to support it. This confirms the communist assertion that the parliamentary-democratic façade—the perennial pride of bourgeois civilization everywhere—is perfect for containing the most deadly and well-oiled militarism and serves as the best deception for the orderly mobilization of millions of proletarians from factories and offices to the trenches.

Meanwhile, a thousand Alpine troops are already leaving for Afghanistan, but the CGIL refuses to mobilize workers against the war, against increased exploitation, and against the further curtailment of union freedoms that the war regime will bring about. Only the grassroots unions have called for a general strike on the day the first bombs fall on Iraq.

- CAPITAL IS THIRSTY FOR WAR.

- ONLY THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS has the strength to oppose capitalism’s deadly plans.

Only the proletariat, a class WITHOUT A HOMELAND—which has nothing to gain from either its country’s economic dominance or its victory in war—has its own perspective for historical and social emancipation and the strength to impose it, against the wars of Capital and against its equally monstrous and unbearable peaces. In order for this strength to be unleashed, it must be organized and directed: class-based trade union organizations—capable of mobilizing the vast majority of workers on a national and international scale—must be strengthened, and the International Communist Party—an indispensable instrument for leading the working class to the forefront of revolutionary opposition to imperialist war—must spread.

For the emancipation of the workers.
For class solidarity with the Iraqi proletariat and that of the entire Middle East.
Against war between states, for class war against the regime of Capital.