Not so long ago internationalists were ridiculed for insisting that capitalism threatens not only our livelihoods, but the very future of humanity. Nobody laughs now. Ever since the financial meltdown of 2007 revealed a system living on borrowed money it has become increasingly obvious it is living on borrowed time. The number of zombie (unprofitable) companies has grown while states have taken on even more debt to keep the tottering system afloat only for a litany of disasters to unfold. Environmental degradation and CO2 emissions have continued apace, leading to killer pandemics and relentless global warming which in turn is bringing increasing floods and famines.

With no solution to the profits’ crisis, imperialist competition for the world’s resources has brought war and devastation to an increasing area of the world. The Ukraine war has added around 10 million people to the number of ‘displaced people’ in the world (more than 1 in 80 of the world’s population).

And if all that were not enough, even before the war in Ukraine, broken supply chains and financial speculation following Covid have created the biggest global inflationary crisis in half a century. Inflation in the UK and US has now reached 10 per cent. In Turkey, however, the official rate of inflation is close to 80 per cent. Venezuela, Sudan and Zimbabwe’s price increases are likely to be higher this year. One-third of emerging market countries are already in “debt distress”. That number is set to rise. There have already been demonstrations and uprisings across the globe from Ecuador to Sri Lanka including Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq and Iran to name but a few.

The bosses (oligarchs, fat cats or whatever you like to call them) offer the same old solutions. These involve more wage cuts, more job insecurity, more hunger for the world’s real wealth creators — the working class. And it is only the world working class who can prevent the descent into this vortex of war, inflation and climate change. Only they can create a new world without borders where production is for the needs of all, not the profit of a few. However this can only happen if workers organise across all national boundaries in a political movement which is aiming not to reform capitalism but to build an entirely new society. In its own small way, this is what this Aurora is all about.

The above article is taken from the current edition (No. 60) of Aurora, bulletin of the Communist Workers’ Organisation.