War and fascism are not a historical accident resulting from mad and cruel leaders, parties, and ideologies, but the inevitable product of capitalism’s historical course—the most authentic expression of the nature of this mode of production.

Political power does not belong to Trumps, Putins, Khameneis, Netanyahus, or Xi Jinpings, but to apparatuses serving the gigantic industrial and financial concentrations of capital. These apparatuses direct the bourgeois national State machines.

The war in Iran only apparently—and according to the lies of the liberal-bourgeois and opportunist left—harms the capitalist economy, even if, as in any business deal, there are those who gain and those who lose.

The rise in oil prices, within certain limits, benefits the U.S. bourgeoisie, which has been the world’s leading producer of crude oil since 2015 and one of the main exporters since 2019; it benefits the Russian bourgeoisie; it also benefits the Iranian bourgeoisie, which—despite the conflict—not only continues to export its oil to China via Hormuz but, by decision of U.S. imperialism itself, can now sell 140 million barrels (about 70 days’ worth of exports) at full price to all countries—including the U.S.—by virtue of the suspension of sanctions.

The rise in inflation within certain limits resulting from the rise in oil prices does not harm businesses, which respond by raising the prices of their products. Instead, it harms the proletariat, the wage earners, the only ones who cannot autonomously decide to raise the selling price of their commodity—their labor power—but who, to do so, must struggle against the bourgeoisie, that is, go on strike. If the rise in inflation is not excessive—such that it does not overly suppress consumption, which has been in decline for decades anyway—it is good for profits, because it coincides with a de facto reduction in wages.

The war on Iran is in the interests of the U.S. bourgeoisie, not only for the increased oil revenues, but because it fuels the gigantic military-industrial complex of the world’s leading imperialist power, because it strengthens the financial dominance of the dollar and thereby props up Washington’s public debt. This is so true that the U.S. bourgeois regime has undertaken it despite the strong opposition of the military leadership.

The war against Iran is clearly also a war for hegemony and the division of the world market, waged by the U.S. against, first and foremost, Chinese imperialism—its main rival—and then also against European imperialisms, which, as major importers of oil and gas, will have to raise the prices of their goods, thereby making them less competitive on international markets. The German and Italian bourgeoisies, which have already paid the price of the war in Ukraine, will now pay that of the war in the Middle East.

But the European bourgeoisies, too, are madly in love with war: all have thrown themselves into a pharaonic rearmament plan to breathe life into their stagnant manufacturing sectors; German automobile industries are converting to arms production; two drones that crashed in Cyprus were enough to justify the dispatch of military ships by European countries (including the Sanchez government); they are already plotting and negotiating deals for reconstruction in Iran, Ukraine, Lebanon... The same applies to the capitalist regime in Beijing—the Chinese path to the (now evident) falsification of socialism—which now boasts the world’s second-highest military spending, which continues to grow.

All national bourgeoisies desperately yearn for war as their sole salvation from the crisis of overproduction that is advancing, inexorably leading to the catastrophic collapse of the global capitalist economy.

The intertwining of business interests among imperialist powers confirms that the conflicts between bourgeois States are by no means absolute, even if—as in wars between mafia clans—leaders and followers are killed: the Russian bourgeoisie benefits from the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran, a country with which it signed a “strategic partnership treaty” just one year ago; China has a key ally in the Iranian regime, from which it purchases 90% of its oil exports, but it is also Israel’s leading trading partner and sells control systems to both—Israel and Iran—so that one can massacre the Palestinians and the other the Iranian rebels.

What matters to the international bourgeoisie and its national political regimes, more than winning the spoils, is that the war be fought: that it devour lives, cities, factories, and surplus goods, to breathe new life into the stagnant accumulation of capital. Imperialist war, more than just a war between bands of capitalist States, is a war of the bourgeoisie against the world proletariat, it is a class war.

Further proof of this is provided by the laughable declarations in “defense of the oppressed peoples” by U.S. imperialism, as well as the mendacious “anti-imperialism” of the capitalist regimes opposed to Washington, which only the nostalgic veterans of the sham of the USSR’s false socialism can believe. The proclamations by the U.S. and Israel in support of the Iranian protesters during the January demonstrations served only to benefit the Iranian regime, which was thus better able to accuse them of colluding with foreign forces and massacre them. The bombings since February 28—which, incidentally, began two months after the massacre had already taken place—have united the opposition forces around nationalism and thus around the regime, which can further intensify internal repression. And indeed, with the war, all demonstrations have ceased. The U.S. and Iranian bourgeoisies are earning more from oil than before. The regime change called for by the U.S. is a shift in the direction of oil revenue flows while keeping the bourgeois apparatus—based in Iran on the Pasdaran and the Shiite clergy—intact, an apparatus that oppresses the proletariat, exactly as happened in Venezuela.

All the bourgeois States of the world, first and foremost those that set themselves up as champions of democracy, have an interest in keeping the Iranian proletariat oppressed and exploited because its uprising would ignite the class struggle from Turkey to the Maghreb, passing through the Middle East, including Israel, whose bourgeois regime would lose the bogeyman it uses to chain the working class to the chariot of national capitalist interests.

European imperialisms in democratic guise, have done business for half a century with the Iranian bourgeois regime in its Ayatollah’s robe and will continue to do so, in defiance of every democratic sermon recited as needed by political bigwigs and bourgeois institutional leaders. The murderous cynicism of European and American democracies shows how democracy is the cloak with which these regimes cover their bourgeois nature, whereby Profit comes first: beneath the democratic mask, the social and political reality is that of the Dictatorship of Capital.

Political, trade union, and social freedoms are granted only to the extent that they do not harm the fundamental interests of big Capital: as the crisis of overproduction and imperialist war intensifies, they must be curtailed or entirely revoked to prevent them from hindering the intensification of exploitation and militarism.

The liberal-bourgeois left-wing parties, which in Europe as in the U.S. present themselves as an alternative and bulwark against the right and fascism, do nothing but pave the way for them: when they come to power, their policies can only carry out the dictates of big capital. They delude workers into believing that the solution lies in the electoral

arena, within the current capitalist political framework; they disorganize and disarm them, handing them over to the most backward strata who fall for the populist deceptions of fascism and follow in the wake of the petty bourgeoisie.

The opportunist left-wing parties, which do not believe in revolution and communism—even when they declare themselves radical or revolutionary—face the unveiling of fascism within bourgeois regimes by forming a united front with the bourgeois left in “defense of democracy,” marching with them toward failure.

It is enough for the bourgeois regime to promote an increasingly reactionary, ruthless, fascist right wing to make the bourgeois left embrace right-wing policies. The logic is analogous to that by which workers are made to swallow worsening contract renewals by the regime’s unions: “it could have been worse!” Against fascism, the liberal-bourgeois left has no political program to oppose it, other than the one—shared with the right—of managing and defending capitalism, marching toward economic collapse and imperialist war.

In a well-known image, many small fish, hunted by a large predator, unite to form an even larger fish, reversing the balance of power. In democracy, the picture is different: two big fish (the bourgeois right and left) circle around the small fish (the proletariat), blowing big bubbles (propaganda) and trapping them inside; the third big fish—the bourgeoisie—rises from below and eats the small fish.

What will save the working class from war and fascism will not be the “defense of democracy,” the political united front of the “anti-fascist” parties, but the class struggle in defense of wages and living and working conditions, with a class-based trade union united front leading ever more widespread and prolonged strikes, until revolution and the proletarian dictatorship.

The alternative is not between democracy and fascism, between right and left, but between capitalism and communism, between war and revolution.

- Against war between States—for war between classes!

- For proletarian internationalism!

- For the communist revolution!