Introduction

Once again we turn to the question of war, or rather the tendency towards worldwide conflict, drawing on what we wrote a year ago⁽¹⁾ when we attempted to frame the growing risk of a global conflict in the context of the international economy and the crisis that capital has been grappling with for over half a century. And again we reiterate that, despite the countermeasures — the opposing factors or counter-tendencies implemented by the capitalists — this is a crisis which not only does not go away, but which, despite its temporary ups and downs, is becoming increasingly entrenched. The traditional ways capitalist personnel have managed the system are progressively weakening and becoming completely futile.

Thus the system is channelled into the only “solution” available to capital for resolving—so to speak—its own irreconcilable contradictions: specifically world war. Only by destroying excess capital, both constant (machinery, raw materials, etc.) and variable (labour), can the foundations for a new cycle of accumulation be laid: one which holds out the prospect of a bankable return on investments from the profits realised on a given organic composition of capital.

Continuing with the argument and keeping abreast with data should therefore not be seen as mere repetition, but rather as further clarification of a discourse which is seeking to discern the origin of a horizon that darkens with each passing day and closing in at a speed unthinkable (by most) even just three years ago. In our view this clarification is all the more necessary now that war is being seen almost exclusively in terms of the Palestinian scenario. The masses who took to the streets between September and early October to join a wave of righteous indignation over the still-unfinished carnage in Gaza, were forgetting or overlooking another massacre – with its inevitable aftermath of destruction and environmental devastation – that has been going on for over three years in Ukraine; or yet other massacres perpetrated by opposing capitalist factions in various corners of the world, not least, leading to the suffering and rivers of blood shed in Sudan. Above all, forgetting — or rather ignoring — the causes of the war in Palestine, as in every other area. And that means ignoring the class roots of the war: it is not "peoples", in the generic sense, who want to fight each other, but their ruling classes, who use the "peoples" — primarily their majority component, the proletariat — to defend and impose their own particular interests, pushing their respective proletariats to mutual slaughter.

These wars have class roots because war is part of the very foundation of bourgeois society and the relationship between capital and wage labour, which has now reached the inevitable stage where the quantity of surplus value extorted in the production process (exploitation) is no longer sufficient to ensure the expanded reproduction of capital or, in other words, to provide sufficient fuel for the machine of the world economy. To cite a very famous phrase, if war is the continuation of politics by other means, then we can equally add that it is also the continuation of the social war against the working class: the decades-long assault launched by the capitalists against wage workers has been unable to do more than temporarily revive the process of accumulation.

It might be objected that the capitalists always wage war on the proletariat, which is true, but, to use a metaphor, there are moments when the front stabilises and others when the offensive is unleashed. Since the early 1970s a global attack by the capitalist class against wage labour has been underway in order to control it.

Trade Unionism and Class Passivity

We have analysed many times — and will continue to do so — the causes of worker passivity. Here, without neglecting other factors, we emphasise the leading role played by trade unionism, as well as the so-called parliamentary (and even extra-parliamentary) left, which has long since become the capitalists’ transmission belt to the inner life of our class, bending it to serve the supreme interests of the “country”, that is, of the capitalist economy. This applies just as much to Italy as, essentially, any other country, even places where capital considers unionism irrelevant and attempts to do without it. It’s perhaps trivial to observe, but to simplify the discussion, the economic struggle — whether or not trade union based — is always played out within the insurmountable boundaries of what is compatible with capitalism. If conceding to union demands impacts on profits or even the continuity of the production process, they are rejected outright, perhaps even with repressive state intervention. Obviously, therefore, wage demands must objectively take into account the “state of health” of the economy in general and then of the individual company.⁽²⁾ It is equally obvious that in a crisis, especially a crisis of an entire historical phase, the scope for retaliation narrows to the point of disappearing, or almost. Yet it is also true that the proletarian class struggle has the power to wrest a portion of surplus value — whilst still within the notorious frame of compatibility — or to limit, as much as possible, employer aggression. Engels, in little-known writings on trade unions,⁽³⁾ noted how in the London of his time, given equal working conditions, some sectors of the working class “enjoyed” higher wages than others, because the former were organised in unions and fought, while the latter, disorganised and therefore inert, were at the mercy of hard-headed and arrogant employers who profited: “more than they deserved”, so to speak, precisely because of the extreme weakness of "their" working class. The history of the labour movement is full of similar situations. The latest example, in chronological order and keeping to Italy, is that of logistics delivery workers: a segment of workers substantially neglected by established trade unionism, despite its rapid numerical growth. Here, the employers, faced with the disorganisation of the workforce, have had free rein – and to some extent still have – to impose working conditions (i.e. exploitation) close to slavery.

The emergence of “grassroots” unionism, primarily Si Cobas, filled the void left by the established unions and, thanks to determined struggles — not without very high costs — has managed to partially re-establish “average” conditions of exploitation, and here it has necessarily stopped. This doesn't mean, of course, that the bosses aren't constantly trying to raise that “average”, as in every other sector, but simply that if the working class doesn't fight, starting with the defence of immediate working conditions, the bosses don’t just get the finger, or even the hand, but everything else. We won't delve into a long-standing critique of “combative” or “grassroots” unionism — for this, we refer you to our abundant literature — but here we simply want to emphasise that in the ongoing class struggle between the capitalists and the proletariat, if the latter remains essentially passive or responds weakly, the former can play its part unhindered, even to its supreme role, even to warmongering.

When it comes to explaining the passivity of our class, there is no doubt that the role played by capitalism’s fifth column: the trades unions, primarily the big confederations is key. [See CWO note at the end of the article]. They have always done their best to support capital’s offensive against the wage-earning class, especially at times when “the country needs you”,⁽⁴⁾ when they accompany workers to societal butchery just as a shepherd leads sheep to the abattoir; preaching—and practising—social peace, bringing episodes of struggle that had escaped, or were likely to escape, union control back into the frame of employers' discipline: in short, fencing in the class and quelling its battle over demands by locking it into the situation of exploitation.

In short, and to recap, it is capital itself that writes and conducts the tune that unionism must play, and no union action, even "combative," can reverse this state of affairs. This does not mean, we repeat for the umpteenth time, that we should accept that the “economic” struggle is dead. On the contrary, it simply means that the economic struggle needs to follow a different path from the union one.⁽⁵⁾

All of this highlights how the deterioration in the working class's working and living conditions has accelerated in the last three years and will continue to worsen. Yet this is only the latest stage of a process that began half a century ago, with the end of the post-war economic boom and the beginning of a new historical phase marked by a falling rate of profit that is no longer simply tendential. We believe it is important to underline this, not least to demonstrate the inconsistency of the demands and slogans of reformism in all its forms, including the archipelago of “alternative” unionism. In this regard, one of the most popular slogans is “down with the guns, up with wages!”. In itself, this is flawless: who amongst “ordinary people” would want war and lower wages? The point is that today (for decades in fact), capital is being pushed by its inherent laws in the opposite direction: towards ever lower wages and more weapons. This insight needs to be part of a comprehensive critique of the capitalist system so that demands for "butter not guns" don't remain an inevitably frustrated quest. It implies a class struggle which has no alternative but to aim to go beyond and, indeed, against union practice, including the most "radical" ones. In some respects this implies a revival of certain union activity “of the past”, when unions, although already incorporated into the management of the workforce, were obliged by circumstance — for example, the Cold War — to undertake struggles incomparably more difficult and even dramatic — for the class — than the current ones, even though they were politically sterile or, more accurately described, counter-revolutionary.⁽⁶⁾

The Crisis Writes the Script

There is now endless literature on declining living standards, if not outright immiseration, of the proletariat and even significant sectors of the petty-bourgeoisie that has been going on for the past fifty years, if not earlier if we start from the US, since, as Marx noted, the most advanced country — in this case, where the crisis began historically — shows the way to others. There is neither a survey nor a statistic — obviously all of them of bourgeois or reformist origin, which amounts to the same thing — that fails to record this trend. Only the most crass representatives of the “intelligentsia” deny the evidence, alongside the gangs of politicians who alternate in government and who, as agents of capital, naturally defend it. If, instrumentally, they speak out against the growing difficulties of the proletariat, it is only to use as a blunt instrument in their struggle for ministerial seats.

Just to cite one study among many, according to the latest edition of the European Barometer on Poverty and Precariousness⁽⁷⁾, “One in five Europeans (20%) say they are unable to make ends meet with their income. In Greece, the figure rises to 33%, in Moldova to 31%, in Germany to 22% (a sharp increase compared to 2024)”. This last figure may come as a surprise, considering the statistics often cited by reformists which show that from 1990 to 2022 wages in Germany rose by thirty percent, compared to a decline of around three percent here in Italy. In reality, as we have observed elsewhere,⁽⁸⁾ the OECD data for Germany should be taken with a pinch of salt, given that – another finding noted in several studies – “The country has crushed competition by means of strong wage restraint ... This means that productivity increases have benefited profits rather than workers, trapped in a dual labour market: where some, with very secure jobs, are surrounded by an army of mini-jobs working for a few hundred euros a month.”⁽⁹⁾

For capitalism it is the norm that increased productivity benefits profits. Furthermore, it is worth remembering that in the realm of capital, “productivity” does not simply mean the production of more “goods”, i.e. merchandise, but of more surplus value. When this does not happen, or happens at a declining and halting rate, the system goes into crisis. This is what has been happening, we repeat, for half a century, despite all the slowdowns and even reversals, sometimes significant ones, but still momentary.⁽¹⁰⁾ Capital then throws itself with exasperated fury into financial speculation, trying to elude the law of value, to bypass the production process where surplus value is extorted, to make money from money, abnormally expanding fictitious capital, which is only a promise, so to speak, of future values, not yet produced and which perhaps — or probably — never will be. To cite a very “fashionable” example, just look at what's happening in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, the promised land of capital (they say). Well, and obviously according to capitalist sources, so far that land remains only a promise. Indeed, a new gigantic speculative bubble is taking shape, no less than that of the dotcoms at the beginning of the century⁽¹¹⁾ or of the sub-prime mortgages of 2007. A well-known commentator compares the rush to AI with the speculative fever over the English railways of the first half of the 19th century, stating that despite numerous financial failures, the railways eventually prevailed, as if to say that things get better anyway; forgetting, however, that this was back in the youthful phase of capital, unlike today. AI is certainly pregnant with transformations that affect the whole of society, perhaps even radical ones, but the fact remains that, “a recent report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that 95% of AI companies are now not profitable; A recent report by Bain Capital estimates that the sector needs at least $800 billion in revenue growth by 2030 to make current investments sustainable”.⁽¹²⁾ Another capitalist mouthpiece is, in our opinion, even more clear-cut regarding the actual profitability of this sector: “In the US, the multiples between the value of the stocks and the earnings of the magnificent seven of Tech⁽¹³⁾ have exceeded 40, the same threshold that caused the Internet bubble to burst at the beginning of the millennium. The prices are stellar, but the cash flow of Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft has collapsed by 30% in the last two years. From 2024 to today, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Tesla have spent $560 billion each in AI-related investments, but have generated just $35 billion in AI-related revenues. Open AI and Anthropic are growing, yes, but they remain far from profitability: they are worth 300 and 183 billion dollars respectively, compared to estimated revenues of 13 and 34 billion ... to cover the costs of data centres, Big Tech will have to generate 2 trillion dollars a year by 2030”.⁽¹⁴⁾ Obviously these are enormous figures. Moreover, if what we were taught in elementary school was correct, revenue is not the same thing as earnings, i.e. profits. This should be enough to explain the wave of lay-offs that has affected, and will affect Big Tech (but not only) and, at the same time, the arrogance of US imperialism in defending them (as well as other giant corporations) against enemies and “friends”. Indeed, the “friendly EU” is among the main victims of the protectionist fury of the gangster in chief in the White House who, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has brutally accelerated the policy implemented by his predecessors to deal a heavy blow against his supposed European “ally”. On paper, that is. In reality, the EU is both a vassal and dangerous competitor, potentially capable of obscuring the supremacy of star-spangled imperialism and therefore, not least, the “exorbitant privilege” of the dollar as the dominant currency on the international stage. Sanctions against Russia, primarily on hydrocarbons, by the closure of the two Nord Stream gas pipelines (one even blown up), have deprived European capitalism of an important market and a cheap energy source, forcing it to purchase American fracked gas, which is much more expensive and polluting. All of this, as is well known, has led to serious difficulties for European productive industry and, together with inflation,⁽¹⁵⁾ for the continent's working class. For the working class also, and not least, the war is drawing in the disinterested proletariat by using them like cannon fodder on the Ukrainian front.

Thus the “German locomotive” is paying a heavy price, and with it, due to existing ties, the Italian manufacturing sector. More generally, however, the entire continental economy is suffering more than it already was. Companies that are, so to speak, the pride of German capitalism have announced tens of thousands of layoffs. For the time being, these have been spread out over a few years in order to contain as much as possible the social anger which, unfortunately, has so far not translated into class struggle, but into growing support for the Nazi-like AfD party. To name a few, between now and 2030: Lufthansa (-4,000), Bosch (-22,000), Volkswagen (-35,000 “voluntary” exits), ZF (auto parts manufacturer, -14,000 by 2028). Furthermore, in 2024 almost 24,600 companies shut down while insolvencies, in the first half of 2025, increased by 9.4% compared to the same period last year.⁽¹⁶⁾ As already mentioned, the German car crisis has aggravated the difficulties of the Italian manufacturing sector (an increase in layoffs, “industrial crises”, as they say in trade union-political jargon). Thus economic relations between Germany and Italy (and Europe), already tested by uncertainty, have been worsened by the duties imposed by the “American friend”.

Guns or Butter? No, Just Guns

In this context, the voices of many stalwarts of capitalism — in academia, journalism, politics — must make themselves heard. They believe, or want others to believe, that the skyrocketing spending on armaments represents a golden opportunity to boost the European, and indeed global, economy. This could be summed up by saying that producing more “guns” will bring more “butter” for everyone. The examples are numerous, there's only the embarrassment of choice. Let's take one that, for the explicit way it poses the question — and the false consciousness that permeates it — is indeed illustrative. Last March, the Wall Street Journal published an article with a title that leaves nothing open to doubt: “A New Hope for Europe’s Ailing Economies: the Military.”⁽¹⁷⁾ According to the author, the four-year ReArm Europe plan, later renamed with classic bourgeois hypocrisy as Preserving Peace - Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030, worth €800 billion — of which €150 billion in SAFE loans, with the rest paid for by individual states — could shake up the Old Continent's economic system. Indeed, this is what European politicians also appear to “think” given the announced, and partly already implemented, increases in military spending (we'll get to that shortly). But the author of the article, like any good bourgeois, is indulgent with the contradictions of his own conscience, even if he tries not to show it: “Military spending affects the economy in multiple, sometimes contradictory ways ... Longer term, research suggests that military expenditure can increase the efficiency of the broader economy. Government defense contracts can foster economies of scale and spur innovations in civilian industries, economists say.” It's a half-truth, because the same ardent bourgeois adds, almost en passant, that:

To be sure, producing munitions and warheads doesn’t have the same economic benefit as investing in factory machinery or infrastructure. Weapons are intended to be stored or destroyed, rather than used to speed production or shorten journey times.

Exactly: from the point of view of the economy in general, expenditure on weapons falls under the heading of unproductive expenses; a waste of surplus value, a subtraction of surplus value, because armaments are paid for by states through taxes that weigh on the working class (first and foremost) and on businesses, as well as on the middle classes who live off the primary surplus value extorted in the production process.

In this way, capital that could be directed to truly productive investments is diverted, thus worsening the disease — the crisis — it is intended to cure. State spending is a partial and temporary palliative, which indeed guarantees large profits to military-related businesses, but at the expense of overall surplus value, and therefore of other sectors of capital. In doing so, it further exacerbates conflicts between capitals, and therefore between imperialist fronts, fuelling the spiral toward generalised war. Thus the author of this article embraces the Keynesian theory of the positive role of state intervention in the economy, as does the world of pacifist reformism. The difference is that the latter, in its ideological naivety, would like to shift state stimulus toward those sectors that would actually improve the quality of life (the “butter”: healthcare, education, the environment, higher wages, etc.) and increase employment far more than the military sector. Now, to reiterate the obvious, weapons are indispensable for the ruling class both to ensure its class domination and assert its own interests against competition (economic and geopolitical, i.e., imperialist). Schools and hospitals can wait — or be turned into services to be paid for — just as the environment is certainly not a priority. Furthermore, while it is true that money spent on “social services” generates many more jobs than the arms industry (because the latter is a “capital-intensive” sector, meaning it has a high organic composition with lots of machinery and little labour): much higher than that of services, assuming we can even speak of organic composition here. In any case, weapons, like all goods, must be paid for. so where do we get the money, especially in a historical moment like this, conditioned by the structural crisis of capitalism? For us the answer is obvious, and the fact that ours is not an ideological preconception is confirmed by the very agents of capital at the top of capitalism’s institutions.

Once again, we are spoiled for choice. Let’s start with Chancellor Merz, according to whom “The welfare state, as we know it today, is no longer economically sustainable”⁽¹⁸⁾ and move on to the ineffable Rutte, Secretary of NATO and the American President's poodle: “I know spending more on defence means spending less on other priorities. If you do not want to raise taxes. ... But generally speaking, spending more on defence means spending less on other priorities, but it can make a big difference for our future security.”⁽¹⁹⁾ Even clearer is the writer of an editorial in the Financial Times, quoted by economist Michael Roberts: “Europe must trim its welfare state to build a warfare state. … [the welfare state] was the product of strange historical circumstances, which prevailed in the second half of the 20th century and no longer do ... Governments will have to be stingier with the old ... the welfare state as we have known it must retreat somewhat: not enough that we will no longer call it by that name, but enough to hurt.”⁽²⁰⁾ Now, given that welfare is indirect and deferred wages and that a cut to this “institution” is pure and simple wage robbery, the capitalist class has been committed to “harming” the proletariat for years and will commit itself increasingly to do so. In a certain sense we agree with the apologists for capital. Indeed, we've been arguing for some time that the “strange historical circumstances” are over. In other words, the exceptional ascendant period of the post-1945 accumulation cycle is over. Back then, wider profit margins enabled capital to “grant” higher wages in the face of a much more combative working class that was still animated by the possibility of an alternative to capitalist society, however much distorted by Stalinism. All these things are lacking today. The Financial Times journalist, not having the worry of telling lies to win elections, can express with brutal sincerity what the capitalists think and do by outlining the roadmap of its governments, without exception. In this regard, those who sneer at the famous message that state institutions represent the executive committee of the bourgeoisie should consider the curriculum vitae boasted by many elements of capitalism’s political personnel. For example, Merz once held a high-level post at BlackRock, Rutte was at Unilever, controlled by BlackRock and Vanguard,⁽²¹⁾ Macron held an important position at the investment bank Rothschild & Co, not to mention his close ties to Starmer and his government’s links with the City of London, or Crosetto, Italian Minister of Defence, formerly at Leonardo, Italy's leading arms manufacturer.⁽²²⁾

For several years now the aforementioned economic “entities”, as well as the entire military-industrial apparatus, have seen their stock market shares soar with unstoppable progression, fuelled by increased military spending. This is even more so after the decisions taken in recent months by NATO, the EU, and so on. And this is why the Financial Times bluntly says that the “welfare state” must be cut otherwise taxes on businesses and the wealthy in general would have to go up (nothing short of a crime of lèse-majesté against capital). Indeed, for decades, governments have been competing to reduce them. If the crisis reduces the general “ability to pay”, who should pay?

It’s obvious — as ever it is, more and more: the working class. Thus hospitals, schools, and the environment have been pushed back — but now they are an even lower priority — to be far outstripped by spending on armaments. Macron said it, and his peers repeat it in chorus: “There are sectors in which effort is an absolute republican duty. Defence is one of them”.⁽²³⁾

“In a world of tyrants, defence is a necessity, not an option”, headlined Il Sole 24 Ore+.⁽²⁴⁾ By tyrants they meant Putin, Xi Jinping, and company, certainly not Trump, that renowned champion of democracy, who with his One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the budget law, has cut the already meagre food and health subsidies for millions of the poorest Americans. At the same time, consistent with himself and his mandate, he cuts taxes for the wealthy, preparing billion-dollar contracts with the infamous Big Tech⁽²⁵⁾ (and the giant defence companies) for technologically-advanced weapons systems, including the Golden Dome, a modern rendering of Reagan's “Star Wars” programme (Strategic Defense Initiative, 1983). If all this gives a mighty boost to public debt (the same goes for other countries ...), cancelling out, with interest, the increased tax revenues derived from tariffs, that's not a problem. The problem always, and only, lies with the proletariat living in the US and with those who are due to suffer the backlash of the White House's protectionism.

Meanwhile, the EU, so rigid in imposing budget austerity on its own states (i.e. on their proletariat), has decreed that countries with a GDP deficit below 3% can reduce their military spending by up to 1.5% of GDP from the budget calculation and access the SAFE loan. Italy plans to reach the target by 2026. Meanwhile, in the DPFP (Public Finance Planning Document), the government has already announced an additional allocation of €23 billion until 2028. But, as we know, it is the entire EU, with the partial exception of Spain, which bowed to Trump's diktat at the NATO summit in June in the Netherlands and agreed to increase military spending to 5% of GDP between now and 2035, with 3.5% on weapons and 1.5% on related expenditure. In any case, diktat or no diktat, states have long since opened their purse to the merchants of death, precisely because generalised war is no longer just a theoretical hypothesis

given that attempts to overcome the crisis of capital are becoming increasingly exhausted, making the political framework ever more complicated and difficult to manage. The EU itself authorises a multi-year progression of states in their allocations for legally organised slaughter: “According to official data from the European Council, from 2014 to 2024, military spending and specific armaments expenditure in EU countries have already increased, in real terms, by 121% and 325%, respectively.”⁽²⁶⁾ Specifically, “In 2021, total military spending by EU countries was €218 billion, in 2024 it rose to €343 billion, and for the current year it stands at €392 billion.”⁽²⁷⁾ Added to this must be the Preserving Peace plan ...

But perhaps these figures are not truly representative of the intentions of the European bourgeoisie, if the picture painted by European Defence Commissioner, Kubilius is even partially realistic: “We Europeans will invest approximately €6.8 trillion in the military sector by 2035, with 50% going to the purchase of armaments: it will be a true financial big bang.”⁽²⁸⁾

Here, indeed, are the large savings funds like BlackRock, industrial complexes like Rheinmetall or Leonardo, and the whole sorry company intertwined with them, through the governments that faithfully execute them, accelerating the pump that sucks money from the empty pockets of the proletariat and pours it into the bottomless funds of finance capital, understood in the Leninist sense. And the Green New Deal, with its environmental protection? “Come on, we're not ideological”, says the annoyed European bourgeoisie who are seriously lagging behind the “green” technologies developed by China, which threaten to wipe out several European industrial sectors. At first, it was mostly the sovereignist “ogres” who had it in for the Green New Deal or “ecological transition” (albeit a very mild one), then the “respectable” bourgeoisie joined them: the defence of freedom, democracy, and the competitiveness of the European economy is worth a few forests burned by drought, a few flooded rivers, and a few bodies swept away by the “crazy” waters of an increasingly fragile territory, raped by decades of so-called capitalist development.

But There Is An Alternative

The progressive impoverishment of the working class and of segments of the petty bourgeoisie, the advancing degradation that undermines the most basic relationships of coexistence in large urban spaces — a consequence of the commodification of every aspect of life — the diseases, even fatal ones, caused by the devastation of the ecosystem, climate change, wars, even nuclear apocalypse: this is what capital has in store for us, the only “solution” to its insoluble contradictions.

The picture is extremely dramatic, but an alternative does exist, and it is in the hands of the class on whose exploitation this social system is based, a system which can no longer offer anything progressive to humanity, but only more suffering and destruction. This is the proletariat, the wage-earning working class, which needs to awake from the decades of profound torpor into which it was plunged by the bourgeoisie and its ideological expressions, not least social democracy (in short, reformism) as well as the political, and, one might say, almost “psychological”, legacies of Stalinism. Climbing back up this deadly slope is by no means simple, but it is possible. For this reason, together with other like-minded bodies, we are participating in the attempt to build truly internationalist committees.⁽²⁹⁾ As a first step, this means linking together those who place themselves on the proletarian class terrain: against every form of nationalism, against every expression of bourgeois ideology, in order to remind our class of the elementary principle of the irreconcilable opposition between "us" and "them", between the proletariat and the capitalists, with all that this entails in terms of class struggle. Only on the basis of these “minimum” suppositions (so to speak), can we try to counter imperialist war, the inevitable fruit of the capitalist mode of production. We have no illusions; we know how rocky the path is, but we believe it is an important and necessary attempt. Necessary, indeed, but, for us, insufficient: until the most combative and responsive proletarians give life and body to the revolutionary organisation — the international party of the communist revolution — capital will be able to throw the entire planet into the most brutal barbarism, but one way or another it will succeed in perpetuating its monstrous social system.

Notes:

Translated from Prometeo (Series VII), Theoretical Journal of “Research and Struggle for the Communist Revolution” of the Internationalist Communist Party (founded 1946). Translation: Communist Workers’ Organisation, January 2026

The major union confederations in Italy:

• CGIL (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro), founded in 1944 with Communist Party backing;
• CISL (Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori), a largely Catholic breakaway from CGIL in 1950, originally linked to the now defunct and discredited party of Christian Democracy;
• UIL (Unione Italiana del Lavoro), also founded in 1950, on a more pragmatic, less ideological basis.

(1) War, the Economy, the Proletariat: Notes on the War Economy

(2) This last case was especially true for nineteenth-century “free competition” capitalism, before its transformation into monopoly capitalism, when a few giant companies set the coordinates for other businesses to follow.

(3) Engels, Unpublished Writings on Workers' Struggles (taken from the Labour Standard, May-July 1881), Edizioni Prometeo, 1978. Available in English here: marxists.org

(4) To limit ourselves to the post-Second World War period, during Reconstruction, during the Hot Autumn, during the years of "National Solidarity," with the wage agreements of 1992-93, and so on.

(5) To cite one of many writings on the issue, see Communist Work and the Trades Unions Today

(6) An article in Battaglia Comunista from many years ago is enlightening in this regard, because the underlying question is always the same: "Scioperi a catena, niente lotta di classe", Battaglia Comunista, no. 20, 10-17th June, 1948.

(7) Edited by Secours populaire français, with the collaboration of Arci, in Roberto Ciccarelli, "Promesse contro la povertà investimenti nella guerra", Il Manifesto, 11 September 2025.

(8) "Wages, Employment, and the Out-of-Tune Trumpets of the Bourgeoisie", English translation in: leftcom.org

(9) Matteo Bortolon, "Germania anno zero (ma non per le armi)", Il Manifesto, 6 September 2025.

(10) Offshoring, a frontal attack on the global working class, etc.

(11) Between 1997 and 2000, the development of the Internet stimulated financial speculation that poured into this new sector, creating a "bubble" — expected profits far exceeded those realized or achievable — which soon burst, causing a chain reaction of bankruptcies.

(12) Federico Fubini, "Il miracolo in borsa", Corriere della Sera, 20 October 2025.

(13) The ‘Magnificant Seven’ of Big Tech here refers to Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Tesla, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia.

(14) Giuliano Noci, "Europa e USA: le due “bolle” dell'intelligenza artificiale", Il Sole 24 ore+, 15 October 2025.

(15) Inflation was already underway before February 2022, but it was not only fuelled by the usual speculation, but also by the war itself.

(16) Gianluca Di Donfrancesco, "Aerei, automotive, componentistica: per l'industri tedesca è l'ora dei tagli", Il Sole 24 ore+, 7 October 2025.

(17) Tom Fairless, The Wall Street Journal, wsj.com

(18) M. Bortolon, Il Manifesto, cit.

(19) Quoted by Giorgia Bonamoneta, "Per aumentare la spesa militare si taglia salute e pensioni", QuiFinanza, 19 July 2025.

(20) Michael Roberts, "From welfare to warfare: military Keynesianism", thenextrecession.wordpress.com

(21) As is well known, together with State Street Corporation, the multinational financial services and bank holding company based in Boston, they constitute the most powerful investment funds, with stakes (and control) in many companies.

(22) See Marco Revelli, "Cinque per cento in armi... Forse “solo un dio ci può salvare”", in Volere la luna, 10 July 2025.

(23) Massimo Nava, "Più armi, meno cure, meno vacanze (la Francia dà l'esempio)", Corriere della Sera, 16 July 2025.

(24) Sergio Fabbrini, 6 July 2025.

(25) A.D. Signorelli, "La Silicon Valley è pronta ad andare in guerra", Wired, 30 June 2025.

(26) Gianni Alioti, "Il nuovo complesso militare-industriale UE", Il Manifesto, 17 June 2025.

(27) Francesco Vignarca, "Economia di guerra permanente", Il Manifesto, 17 October 2025. Italy's revenue is expected to reach nearly €34 billion in 2025, an increase, it goes without saying, compared to the previous year.

(28) Vignarca, cit.

(29) The No War but the Class War (NWBCW) initiative, which in Italy goes under the name Comitati internazionalisti contro la guerra