The world capitalist system has been in crisis for decades. The end of the post-war boom has led to all kinds of expedients in the richest capitalist countries as we have highlighted in our series on the economic foundations (the latest contribution to which can be found in this issue). Restructuring of capital — which produced the decimation of the industrial working class in the ‘advanced’ states of the West and the collapse of the old Soviet bloc (which was not “actually existing socialism” as Stalin called it) — and globalisation have led to a resurgent China, which is now much more than an exporter of cheap consumer goods. We have arrived at a situation of general sharpening of imperialist competition. National debts have never been so large outside of wartime. Capitalism is running out of tactics to prolong its existence. The war in Ukraine is grinding on; the massacres in Palestine are grinding on; wars continue in Sudan, Mali, Yemen, Congo and many other parts of the world. Meanwhile, the pillage of the natural world in the search for profit and securing of imperialist supply chains is creating increasingly bizarre weather events, as well as disasters like wildfires, floods and landslides that destroy thousands of lives. Possibly the ‘end of history’, but certainly not a world of peace and prosperity. While the likes of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos claim wealth greater than some countries, the world working class, the people whose labour power is the source of all capitalism’s wealth, is getting a smaller and smaller slice of the pie. We could elaborate on the dire state of health services in the richest countries in the world, the ubiquity of food banks, people living in tents on the streets, derelict town centres adjacent to playgrounds for the rich … the gap between capitalism’s rich and capitalism’s wage slaves is a yawning chasm. No reforms can fundamentally change this.

What, in this situation, can we do?

Our perspective is that world capitalism is so mired in crisis that the only way out for it is through war: a war to devalue capital just as with the First and Second World Wars. The war between Russia and Ukraine is the signal that capital has entered this new and dangerous preliminary period, a period of more than sabre rattling and serious realignment of the forces in play. This is the situation across the world. It is only going to worsen, and at the moment there is little sign of the working class fighting back. We are not in a position to alter the world situation, and we cannot have much impact on the consciousness of the working class as a whole, but we can have an effect on what communist militants ‘do’.

We are absolutely convinced that world capitalism is shepherding humanity to disaster. War and environmental destruction, the consequences of capitalist society, are heaping misery after misery on our class. However, the working class as a whole has been slow to respond.

In this situation, revolutionaries need to find ways of working together, even outside of periods of widespread class militancy, and especially now. A fundamental lesson of the history of our class is that revolutionaries who wait for events to propel them act too late. Luxemburg’s failure to break with the SPD and form a clearly revolutionary group in opposition to it, the revolutionary left in Britain’s failure to clearly break with the class-collaboration of the BSP and cohere around a revolutionary alternative, even the example of the Zimmerwald Left who came together from 1915, well after the war had started, are not examples to be emulated. We do not know how long we have, but we know it is better for revolutionaries to be working together before generalised war breaks out, rather than begin the process afterwards. In other words, given the severity of the world situation, we maintain it is imperative that revolutionaries try to work together. It is in this spirit that we welcome the initiatives taken against the future capitalism is preparing for us all.

From our perspective therefore, given the gravity of the global situation, we are ready to listen to all proposals of consistent internationalists who don’t erect artificial barriers against the participation of all. We are not talking today about wholesale political regroupment. We have to concentrate on the issues of the day, not on debating our differences about how the counter-revolution ended our ancestors’ hopes the last time around. Of course it would be easier if there were a grassroots movement already stemming from the class, opposing all the horror capitalism is heaping on us, but for now, without such a movement, we think those who accept this perspective have to talk to each other, and not just take part in stunts, to actually seriously discuss perspectives and the possibility of working together — even if all we can do at the moment is propagandise towards the working class and hope that some of what we are saying finds an audience. This is why the ICT sent delegations (composed of CWO comrades) to the ‘Prague Week of Action Against War’ in May and to the conference of internationalists in Arezzo in June (comrades of Battaglia Comunista and the Groupe révolutionnaire internationaliste attended).

We will have more to say on the Arezzo conference later; it has just finished as Revolutionary Perspectives is going to press. We will concentrate more on the week of action and the conference that were organised in Prague.

From an organisational point of view, it was a disaster. Participants may disagree about who’s to blame but the fact is some events didn’t take place at all, others were poorly attended, people were promised accommodation and weren’t provided any, and ultimately on Friday the congress venue pulled out. In the absence of any communication from the organisers, around 50 participants met up and self-organised their own congress. The discussions carried on for many hours, and though eventually the original organisers found some other venue, the self-organised congress had already made plans for the next day. So on Saturday two separate events took place: the official congress and the self-organised congress (though some participants visited both throughout the day).

From a political point of view, the real divide that emerged was between the activists who were looking for immediate solutions on how to stop the war, and those with a class struggle orientation who had a more long term perspective and understood wars, as a product of the capitalist system, can only be ended by the mass struggle of workers.

However, it wasn’t all a waste of time. Over the week, many good conversations were had (particularly in smaller groups, in pubs, cafes, etc.). Experiences were shared and links were made between organisations and individuals from many different countries. Above all, seeing internationalists of various tendencies join forces to basically improvise their own congress was heartening. We all tried to make the best of a bad situation and it drew us closer together. In that sense, we are glad we went.

More discussion will be needed with any and all of these groups before we can even approach the question of joint work. We do not know where any of the conversations will lead — perhaps in some cases they will lead nowhere. But we think these discussions are vital. The geo-political situation is sharpening and capitalism’s warmongers are changing the game. National flags are flying everywhere. Too much is at stake not to attempt talking to others who share some of our perspectives but not all. We do not know how long we have before capitalism embarks irrevocably into world war but, however long that is, the discussions between internationalists need to begin in earnest.

We are publishing two texts from this process: the first is the appeal we made before the ‘week of action’ to the internationalists attending it. The second, as a result of attending, represents the answers to some questions about our position on ‘revolutionary defeatism’ put to us by the Péntek esti kísértetjárás collective in Hungary.

Capitalism is leading us into ever-greater catastrophe, and only the mass action of the working class will be able to rescue humanity — not simply through pleas for ‘peace’, but ultimately by the great mass of the working class creating their own political bodies: organs within which the political offspring of the pre-war political scene will best be organised in a clear-speaking political party (or ‘body’ if we want to be mealy-mouthed), with a clear programme to put forward to the working class. The ICT is not that party, though we hope to be one of the components that will make it up. We urge all those who see the catastrophe that is approaching, and agree that the working class is the only force that can prevent it, to open up a dialogue with us, in an attempt to bring that revolutionary perspective to the working class. We cannot afford to think there will be time later. We cannot afford to let opportunities for dialogue now slip away. We think complacency in the face of what capitalism is unleashing on the world is a huge mistake. We think underestimation of the ferocity of the attacks that are coming will be a recipe for disaster. We urge all revolutionaries to seriously consider the dynamics of the current situation and where we are headed, and begin the task now of creating the political organisation that the working class will need in the future.