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Home ›War, the Economy, the Proletariat: Notes on the War Economy
Introduction
The contrast shown in these figures give us a picture of the characteristics of a war economy which today takes the form of a real war on wages.(1)
The above quote is taken from a USB (Unione Sindacale di Base, a rank and file union) document, written for the state employees’ demonstration on 1 June 2024. The figures they mention relate to military spending “in our country” (Italy) in 2023-24, and the government’s wage offer for a new contract with state employees: respectively, +12.5% and +5.5%. Beyond the figures, which highlight the real financial priorities of the state, what emerges, yet again, is the inability of all the various reformist organisations to understand the dynamics of capital, its consequences for society, and therefore for the class struggle.
It is obvious that the bourgeoisie will more readily allocate the resources it has at its disposal – or that it hopes to have at its disposal – to things that strengthen its class domination as well as its position on the imperialist chessboard. Just as obvious, at least for us, is that the war on wages did not begin with the attack on Ukraine, but rather a few decades ago. If anything the wars that are now bloodying the former USSR, Palestine, Sudan, Congo and other areas of the world are a harbinger of the greater carnage to come. So far capitalism is winning this war on the working class, but it is not winning the war within itself, against the inescapable contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. Whilst these contradictions propel capital to attack the living conditions of the world proletariat (both inside and outside the workplace), they also exacerbate the conflict between the different segments of the international bourgeoisie, who are forced to career, whether they like it or not, down the slope that ends in generalised armed conflict.
Capitalism has long since entered a "war economy mode"
Even though two and a half centuries have passed and despite all the changes that have occurred, capital is still substantially the same. Today, as yesterday, it eventually comes up against what Marx defined as the most important law of capital, namely the tendency of the rate of profit to fall: a stage when, beyond being a "simple" tendency the decline becomes actual and real trouble begins not simply for the "economy" but for both human beings who are forced to live under the domination of capital and, especially now, the environment. Thus the end of the longest cycle of economic growth in capitalism’s history, the one that began after the Second World War, due to the massive destruction of excess capital (including the human beings who form its workforce) in the conflict, is the consequence of the structural fall in the rate of profit. Thus capital – i.e. its manager, the bourgeoisie – has been obliged to resort to "classic" tools, but on a level the system can afford, in order to pump oxygen into the exhausted lungs of capital. From here began the transformation of both the economy and society that is still underway, starting with changes in the composition and distribution of the working class, the proletariat, across the world. From the multiple ways of attacking wages, the dismantling/downsizing of the large concentrations of workers in the "West" and, conversely, the expanding number of links in the so-called global chain of value to the areas where delocalised jobs ended up – all this has massively increased precarious work, under-employment, and low pay, and in the process brought inordinate power to employers over the workplace. They are all part of the strategy aimed at restoring profit rates, searching to find the investment required by today's organic composition of capital. However, as we have said several times, although the extortion of surplus value (exploitation) has increased, it is not enough to start a new cycle of accumulation on a global scale, though it is more than enough to worsen the working conditions of the working class, from the "metropoles" of capital and beyond.
Amongst the abundant literature on the subject, mostly of a reformist nature, are the various ILO (International Labour Organization) reports(2) which only substantially confirm, the "via crucis" that the global proletariat has been forced to travel for several decades. The latest one, released at the beginning of 2024, yet again shows a decrease in real wages due to the impact of increased inflation between 2021 and 2022 (but still ongoing, with ups and downs).
This after workers’ incomes had already been reduced, to put it mildly, by the pandemic: a reduction only partially offset by the massive state support measures to prevent the collapse of the system and an explosion of class struggle in forms that would be difficult for unions generally, and the democratic "majority" in particular, to control. (Both of them being part of the bourgeoisie’s mechanisms for maintaining control over the class itself.)
Here, even if it (apparently) leads us away from the discussion on war, we can usefully quote a passage from the ILO report because it identifies in a few words, and probably without the compilers being fully aware of it, the knots that capital and the unions, including the "radical" ones, cannot unravel. Thus:
During periods of slow productivity growth, real disposable income and real wages are often vulnerable to sudden price shocks. As only a few firms have seen their profits accelerate, most workers have been unable to ask for stronger increases in their earnings, and so they and their households are facing an accelerating erosion of their real disposable income.(3)
Its not the language we would use, but it confirms that productivity – which for capital always means more surplus value (i.e. unpaid work), not more “things” – grows too slowly, so businesses don’t get enough “benefit”. This decisively narrows the limits of wage bargaining – where it exists – and, judging from the facts of the last half century, we can say this is the norm. The combative, all-out struggles of logistics workers have – though clearly not everywhere – raised that sector of the working class to the “average” level.(4) Acknowledging this, is not to look at it from the bosses’ point of view, but rather to remind anyone who is trying to indicate the political way forward not to exaggerate “the final outcome of this daily struggle”.
Obviously, if the class does not fight for whatever reason – whether it is intimidated and brutalised by the bourgeoisie, or held back by those who, formally, should defend its interests even if just on an economic level (the unions) – and while there is no organised political reference point for the class, it is obvious that the employers will take an arm and a leg and impose a greater level of exploitation and oppression, thus making the often heavy sacrifices of the logistics workers worthless. It should be remembered, especially by those who lead them politically (for what it's worth), that they must not exaggerate to themselves “the final result of this daily struggle” and that "Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!’".(5)
Words that some of the political-union personnel at the head of the logistics workers probably know well but, like a child reciting a passage from Dante's Divine Comedy by heart, without understanding what they mean. If, however, they do understand it, then they are fully in that overcrowded category of anti-worker and anti-revolutionary opportunism...
The production of surplus value – as we said earlier – is the source of profit or, to use bourgeois language, of the profitability of capital: a profitability that many bourgeois thinkers and reformists openly acknowledge and accept, but only because, as usual, the ideological lenses they wear make them incapable of fully understanding the data they themselves quote. Indeed, a cursory glance at some of the numbers would suggest that the economy is in excellent health, although the ILO, to be fair, mentions that only a limited number of companies show higher profits. And yet those numbers are striking. Oxfam argues that the
big winners in this period of crisis [meaning the pandemic, inflation and ongoing wars] are global corporations. For huge corporations, just as for super-rich individuals, the last two decades have been extraordinarily lucrative and the last few years have been better still: the biggest firms experienced an 89% leap in profits in 2021 and 2022. New data shows that 2023 is set to shatter all records as the most profitable yet.(6)
The corporations involved in this profits binge are, it goes without saying, those in the energy, pharmaceutical, luxury and banking-finance sectors. Is this the type of business that the ILO is referring to? It could be, since the Oxfam document adds:
These profits are hugely concentrated in a few corporates: globally the largest 0.001% of firms earn roughly one-third of all corporate profits.
This is proof of the role played by monopoly in the present era, and confirmation of Lenin's Imperialism. But if the giant companies have amassed enormous profits (the infamous extra-profits...), even the not-so-large ones, in this case, specifically, the Italian ones, have not had a bad time, according to a study by Rome’s Sapienza University, based on data produced by Mediobanca. Il Sole 24 Ore, the newspaper of the bosses’ organisation, Confindustria, states:
The aggregate balance sheets of medium and large Italian industrial companies […] show that, largely due to inflation, net turnover in 2023 was 34% higher than in 2019, as was the value added[…] between 2020 and 2023 […] the share going to labour costs has gone down by 12% and the share of the risk capital that goes to shareholders (net profit) has increased by 14%. The transfer of wealth from labour to capital has been crazy. The shareholders have withdrawn 80% of the net profits as dividends leaving 20% for new investments [which] of which only 40% went on material for factories and 60% on financing shareholdings.(7)
This "propensity" not to reinvest profits in what is called the real economy, but instead mostly in finance, is not confined to Italy alone. Far from it, since it is a feature of today’s capital, wherever and whatever its size if it is true that "for every US$100 of profit generated by 96 major companies between July 2022 and June 2023, US$82 was returned to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks and dividends".(8) Moreover,
In a 2021 report, the consulting firm McKinsey calculates that 77% of the increase in the net value of the world balance sheet – that is, both financial and real assets – is attributable to the increase in the prices and valuation of bonds and stocks. Only 23% depends on the creation of new real resources.(9)
This is precisely the so-called financialisation of the crisis.
Perhaps looking at these analyses from the leading lights of the bourgeoisie – but which generally coincide with those of the reformists – slows down our discussion, but it is precisely because they come from the other side of the class barricade(10) that they confirm, yet again, that in times of deep and lasting crisis caused by inadequate profit rates, the profits realised are only partially (even minimally) reinvested in the production process, precisely because of low expected returns. Instead they engage in financial speculation, which bizarrely tries to evade the law of value, that is, to skip the production phase where surplus value is created. They therefore dash headlong into the search for short-term and very short-term profits, through financial sleights of hand that artificially inflate the "values" of existing goods (material and immaterial) and of those that have yet to be produced (fictitious capital), giving rise to speculative bubbles. These grow until they inevitably burst, with severe effects on the real economy and, of course, on the working class.
From the early 1970s, when the boom of the post-war accumulation cycle "officially" ended, this has been accompanied by the progressive increase in debt (both public and private) and state deficits. The state has intervened, and is intervening massively, to support private capital, causing public debt to explode – at the expense of wage workers, robbed of indirect and deferred wages – in an attempt to postpone the reckoning with the capitalism’s laws of existence as long as possible.
The same can be said of the monetary policies implemented by central banks, before, during and after the pandemic, of which so-called "quantitative easing"(11) is the most recent, most famous and most quoted example. But neither debt nor state monetary policy on a scale typical of true war economies – which only highlight that capitalism has long since entered a war economy – have revived the economy. The reason is that instead of destroying excess capital – overaccumulation – they keep it alive, preventing the recovery, if you like to call it that, of capitalism. No matter how much exploitation is intensified, no matter how much the environment is plundered and raped by the frantic search for raw materials at the lowest possible cost, the economy is not recovering. GDP growth, when it exists, remains low, which contributes to increasing state debt. Yet the devastation of the natural environment and increased exploitation are not enough to restart the stalled engine of the accumulation process – which is why the risk of a generalised war has become increasingly real.
Regardless of the will of the bourgeoisie, the ineffectiveness of all these measures aimed at putting the capitalist machine back on track pushes it towards this tragic outcome. Only a war of immense destruction is able to create the conditions for capital to revive real profitability. Always assuming that after such a war life on the planet would still exist.
A foul smell: the arms race evokes the enormous carnage of the past
The meat grinder of war in Ukraine, to which is now added the massacres in Palestine and Lebanon, are the most visible warning signal that the bourgeoisie is pushing the world towards catastrophe. Yet these are only the most recent steps in this direction. For years, states – which are capitalist everywhere, whatever form they take – have embarked on an arms race that is highly reminiscent of the years preceding the two world wars. It is pointless saying – as we read in some “ultra-left” circles – that today military spending is far below the levels reached during the Second World War, the Korean War or the Vietnam War. This is a formalistic banality since what matters is the turn of events, the direction in which the crisis of capital has led us.
Such a pedantic judgment is even less valid if we consider that the Korean and Vietnam wars occurred during the phase of economic “prosperity” (the boom), when the bourgeoisie of the leading imperialist powers had room for manoeuvre to cushion the costs. This option does not exist today. The unstoppable rise in global debt is, in fact, perhaps the most striking sign of this. Military spending has been growing continuously for over twenty years and will grow even more, certainly for the European countries who are members of NATO. Since 2014, the year of the occupation of Crimea by Russia, NATO countries have committed to increasing "defence" (the usual hypocrisy) spending to at least 2% of GDP. Italy has not yet reached the goal, but even in the Budget Law of 2025 there is a substantial increase in funds earmarked for war: we are talking about €40 billion more for the next three years. Moreover, the government has been insistently asking for some time that defence appropriations be separated from the Stability Pact, that they should not be under any budget constraints and therefore be excluded from austerity, unlike healthcare, education, environmental protection, etc. But how big is military spending?(12)
According to SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), "World military expenditure rose for the ninth consecutive year to an all-time high of $2443 billion."(13) It goes without saying that the strongest increases were seen in Russia (+24%) and Ukraine (+51%), which committed 109 and 64.8 billion dollars respectively (excluding, for the latter, aid from the USA and the EU). Amounts that are far lower than those of NATO (1,341 billion, 55% of world spending), the USA (916 billion, +2.3%) or China, "the world’s second largest military spender", after the USA, which increased its allocations by 6% compared to the previous year, reaching $296 billion.
Incidentally, according to SIPRI, the uninterrupted growth of Chinese military spending over the last twenty-nine years, has forced the other bourgeoisies of the area to increase their military budgets, thus fully enrolling the countries of the Indo-Pacific into the global arms race. It is clear that this arms race was not triggered by the attack on Ukraine. On the contrary, if anything, it had already exacerbated tensions and accelerated Russia's decision to invade Ukraine to stop NATO's expansion to the East and demonstrate that it was not intimidated by the growing military-financial commitment of its adversary. Obviously, we are not making excuses for Moscow's imperialism, but underlining once again how the distinction between the attacked and the aggressor is only formal, since every bourgeoisie is equally co-responsible for the imperialist dynamics. Imperialism is not a policy among many possible ones for capital, but it has been its very way of existence for about a century and a half. Given that states are incomparably the biggest buyers of weapons, paid for from taxes and cuts to public services, increased military spending is one of the factors contributing to the growth of public debt. Meanwhile, it is obvious that the wallet of the so-called military-industrial apparatus is getting fatter. A sector in which, incidentally, the big three of finance – Black Rock, Vanguard, State Street – occupy a prominent place, as well as in many other companies all over the world. According to a Greenpeace report, since the “war on terror”, which Bush Jr began in 2001, arms companies have seen their orders and the value of their shares continue to rise, with “a Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman share up from less than 30 dollars to the current 450 […] A Rheinmetall share was worth 10 euros and is now worth over 300”.(14)
Even in the face of this growing state financial commitment to “defence”, the reformists only reveal their inability to understand the nature of capitalism and the state. Their indignant denunciation of the “arms boom” is sincere, but pacifism can neither explain the reason for the phenomenon, much less indicate the correct way to politically fight it. In another well-documented study by Greenpeace, we read:
Such a rise in military expenditure [see the figures quoted above] and arms procurement contrasts starkly with the stagnation of EU economies. In the aggregate of NATO EU countries, between 2013 and 2023, real GDP has increased by 12% (just over 1% per year on average), total employment by 9%, and military expenditures by 46%, four times faster than national income.(15)
In reality, it is precisely economic stagnation, itself an expression of the difficulties of the global accumulation process which make it impossible for them to solve their problems on a merely economic level, that explains the "arms race".
It makes no sense to complain – as Greenpeace does – that a billion euros invested by the state in schools, health, the environment, etc., would create four times more jobs than the same investment in the military sector: it only reveals the naivety, however sincere, of pacifists. It may be true, but given that the billion comes from taxes, therefore from a levy on wages and surplus value (tax evasion aside...), those state expenses, although necessary, are unproductive, from the point of view of collective capital, exactly like those for weapons. However, they are indispensable for exercising class domination over the proletariat and keeping at bay, or attacking the other bourgeoisies on the geopolitical chessboard of opposing imperialist interests.
False friends, real enemies: the lacerating contradictions of the bourgeoisie
So-called “delocalisation” led the bourgeoisie of the “metropoles”, starting with the USA, to believe that it had solved the problems raised by the fall in the rate of profit. However, it has only postponed them and, at the same time, created new ones: namely the accelerated development of Chinese imperialism, which has grown in parallel with its industrial apparatus, albeit significantly financed by "Western" capital in search of much greater rates of profit. The upshot is that the USA (and also Europe) have weakened their own industrial sectors and, unlike in the 50s and 60s of the last century, are left without a strong manufacturing base which makes it more complicated to exercise imperialist economic, political, military domination.
Leaving aside the disasters of American intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya – one striking example was the pandemic, when the “advanced countries” discovered that they were not able to produce enough of the most basic medical devices, that the “value chain” had become too long and dispersed across the planet, creating major problems for economic-industrial activity at home. Post-pandemic inflation is certainly due to bottlenecks in world trade – as a consequence of the global dispersion of production – even if financial speculation played a significant part after the invasion of Ukraine, by fueling the increase in energy prices and agricultural raw materials, and this had a knock-on effect on all other goods. The inflation strengthened by the conflict between the two countries of the former USSR is the first direct consequence of so-called "delocalisation". The inflation strengthened by the conflict between the two countries of the former USSR is the first direct consequence of an economy conditioned by the war on the working class, first of all, but it has also put sectors of the petty bourgeoisie in difficulty.
The war was also a brutal slap in the face to the European bourgeoisie, reminding it of its subordinate role to star-spangled imperialism, which has humiliated it, taking away its Russian market and its cheap hydrocarbons, and left it with a series of economic problems as big as a house. For example, the auto crisis in Germany and France – but with large negative repercussions on other countries, not least Italy – which will be paid for by the working class (wage cuts and layoffs are already envisaged), is in no small part a direct consequence of the conflict. In this regard, it is useful to remember that while the USA, through NATO, is forcing Europe to increase its military budget, as noted above, they will benefit even more from this increase in spending, given that over 50% of the armaments expenditure of European countries ends up in the pockets of the US military-industrial apparatus...
For some years even before the pandemic, certain sectors of the "Western" bourgeoisie, faced with China's commercial and "geo-strategic" aggressiveness, have theorised and slowly begun to practice “reshoring”, that is, the repatriation of industrial activities. This is far from easy, but, easy or not, it is becoming an increasing necessity, however objectively complicated and limited in scope it is, at least in the short term, in order to strengthen the indispensable weapons of imperialist policy.
Today we talk about “friend shoring”, that is, "delocalising" factories preferably to neighboring states, but if not geographically close, to politically reliable ones. This practice is accompanied by the return of protectionism, with the consequent trade tensions that raise the prices of goods and fuel warmongering. As always, the increase in the costs of goods that enter into the "national" production processes will be offloaded onto the proletariat, the payer of the bourgeoisie's bills. And, above all, for the bourgeoisie, the role of the state as a collective capitalist, in every form, including as a direct manager of segments of the economy, has to be strengthened even more than it already is.(16) It is no coincidence that the German government last summer proposed the purchase of shares in some armaments companies and the participation, alongside private capital, in the foundation of companies in the military sector.(17)
It is no coincidence that the Draghi report on competitiveness,(18) a lucid analysis of the enormous shortcomings of European imperialism, points to the formation of a real European state as the only way forward if the continent's bourgeoisie does not want to be condemned to economic decline and political-military irrelevance on the imperialist world stage. If it wants to emancipate itself from being a doormat of the USA and conquer an autonomous role, Draghi says it demands an investment of €800 billion a year in the EU's economic system. Of this enormous sum, a significant part must go to the military sector, to the detriment, if necessary, of the resources destined for the feeble "Green New Deal". This was conceived not so much for the good of the planet and the living beings that inhabit it, but to support its competition – including military – with the American and Chinese bourgeoisie, who are massively assisted by their respective states. They have unified states, the European bourgeoisie does not. To paraphrase Marx, Draghi develops and systematises from the point of view of the "bourgeoisie in general" perspectives already present in some parts of the European bourgeoisie, but the obstacles raised by the "many bourgeoisies" of the old continent are not negligible, and the future is more uncertain than ever: overcoming the greed and selfishness inherent to his own class is a very complicated thing and usually only a traumatic event or process such as war can do it. Certainly the joint venture created between Rheinmetall – one of the most important European arms factories – and Leonardo is a step in the direction the Draghi (and, before him, Letta) report hopes for, but it still remains a single episode: other important steps necessary to provide the European bourgeoisie with a real state apparatus – including a common debt or the development of AI, fundamental for the wars of the present and even more so for the future – are still yet to come and it is not certain that they will ever come.(19) It is true that on 19 November 2024, some European foreign ministers (plus that of the UK), meeting in Warsaw,
Probably for the first time, the five largest countries of the European Union have – here in Warsaw –spoken out in favor of European defense bonds. This is a big deal. [This is with the aim of[ strengthening the security and defence of Europe, using all the levers at our disposal, including the economic and financial power of the European Union, and strengthening the European industrial base.(20)
But timescale is still very slow, perhaps too slow to equip the European bourgeoisie for the present and future imperialist storms.
Only the conscious, organised, revolutionary proletariat can save the world
But if the bourgeoisie has its problems, the proletariat is struggling with incomparably bigger ones, summed up by the political irrelevance into which it has sunk for over forty years.
Our publications abound with analyses on the reasons that have produced this situation, so we will not dwell on it here, suffice it to recall that the working class (understood in a broad sense) has gone from the frying pan of social-democratic-Stalinist influence into the fire of the loss of the most elementary class identity, of renunciatory fatalism, of disorientation, so much so as to lend an ear even to the most obscurantist sirens of the class enemy, to the most reactionary expressions of the bourgeoisie, that is, to fascism in the 21st century version, commonly called "sovereignism" or "populism". Whether under the control of old and new social democracy(21) or under the blinding glare of "sovereignism", the proletariat, as a social subject that the bourgeois political forces must somehow take into account in order to control, today is in the state of an amoeba, politically speaking, a mere object for capital.
The rare manifestations of life on the level of class struggle(22) – in Italy especially the working class sectors with an overwhelming presence of immigrant workers – are trapped and used, as has been said, by a "grassroots" unionism that is undoubtedly much more combative than the traditional ones, but which still remains on the terrain of unionism, that is, the acceptance of capitalism as a natural horizon.
Worse, often the political personnel at the head of those radical-reformist unions, in words declare their internationalism, in fact inoculate or tolerate and widely support nationalism in the working class segments that it leads, in the religio-fascist variant of Islamist jihadism. The reference is obviously to the political galaxy led by Si Cobas that is not ashamed (rather on the contrary!) of exalting the massacre of 7 October 2023 as one of the brightest examples of struggle of the oppressed and exploited.
The drama of our times is not only given by the uninterrupted attack for half a century against the world proletariat, by the climate catastrophe in motion – of which the Valencia massacre(23) is a tragic example – by the rush to generalised war, but also and not least by the absence in the class of a coherently anti-capitalist, i.e. communist, political reference point that can contrast, and attack, an increasingly destructive social system. The task facing internationalists to try to reverse the enormous political regression into which the class has been pushed is gigantic and the No War but the Class War (NWBCW) committees are an attempt in this direction,(24) which in no way obscures the objective for which the Internationalist Communist Tendency was born (as some critics have said): the creation and development of the world or international communist party. This is not a magic wand, but the indispensable political instrument of the class struggle, if the proletariat does not "want" to continue to be the object of exploitation and death at the hands of capitalism.
CBBattaglia Comunista
December 2024
Notes:
Translated from Prometeo #32 (Series VII), Theoretical Journal of “Research and Struggle for the Communist Revolution” of the Internationalist Communist Party (founded 1946).
Translation: CWO, January 2025
(3) ILO, World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2024, p.12, ilo.org
(4) “Logistics workers” are those largely employed in warehouses of distribution firms like TNT or for firms like IKEA. They are often migrant workers employed through agencies who cheat them of the wages and conditions they are entitled to by national agreements. The traditional union federations have largely ignored them and so they have become a recruiting ground for so called rank and file or base unions. For previous coverage of their sttruggles, see leftcom.org and leftcom.org
(5) Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit, marxists.org
(6) Oxfam, Inequality Inc. How corporate power divides our world and the need for a new era of public action, p.9, policy-practice.oxfam.org
(7) Riccardo Gallo, Quel travaso pazzesco di ricchezza dal lavoro al capitale (That crazy transfer of wealth from work to capital), Il Sole 24 Ore, ilsole24ore.com
(8) Oxfam, Inequality Inc., p.35. “Buyback” is the purchase of one's own shares to increase their value, (fictitiously we should add).
(9) Beda Romano, De Larosière: «Crisi del capitalismo sconcertante. C'è un problema morale serio» (“Disconcerting crisis of capitalism. There is a serious moral problem”, Il Sole 24 Ore, 24plus.ilsole24ore.com
(10) Without Oxfam's knowledge, one might say, for its sincere humanitarianism.
(11) The injection of liquidity, i.e. money, into the system through the purchase of bonds,
securities, not least toxic ones, from the private sector.
(12) SIPRI uses the expression military spending because it considers not only that for armaments, but all that invested in “defence”.
(13) SIPRI, Global military spending surges amid war, rising tensions and insecurity, sipri.org
(14) Francesco Vignarca, “Lo biondo boom dei soldi armati” (The dirty boom of armed money), il Manifesto, ilmanifesto.it
(15) Greenpeace, Arming Europe: Military expenditures and their economic impact in Germany, Italy, and Spain, p.3, greenpeace.org
(16) In this regard, see leftcom.org
(17) Isabella Bufacchi, Così Berlino rafforza l'industria militare: Stato nelle aziende di armi, investimenti rapidi (How Berlin strengthens the military industry: State in arms companies, rapid investments), Il Sole 24 Ore, 24plus.ilsole24ore.com
(18) Presented in early September 2024 to the EU Commission.
(19) It is curious, but not too much, that reformism also advocates massive state intervention in the economy, which should significantly reduce inequalities, promote the green transition, etc., thanks to taxation on the rich and cuts to military spending. In short, the reformist utopia remains a utopia, the Draghi plan is instead placed on the terrain of the complex reality of things.
(20) Statement by Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski, Il Sole 24 Ore, ilsole24ore.com
(21) The old pre-89 communist parties were precisely a mixture of Stalinism and social democracy.
(22) In other countries, there has been a certain awakening in recent years, but the torpor, in principle, remains.
(23) Reference to the 2024 Spanish floods in which at least 232 people died.
(24) On the nature of the NWBCW committees, see leftcom.org
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- 1912: Republic of China
- 1913: Fordism (assembly line)
- 1914-18: World War I
- 1917: Russian Revolution
- 1918: Abstentionist Communist Fraction of the PSI
- 1918: German Revolution
- 1919-20: Biennio Rosso in Italy
- 1919-43: Third International
- 1919: Hungarian Revolution
- 1930s
- 1931: Japan occupies Manchuria
- 1933-43: New Deal
- 1933-45: Nazism
- 1934: Long March of Chinese communists
- 1934: Miners' uprising in Asturias
- 1934: Workers' uprising in "Red Vienna"
- 1935-36: Italian Army Invades Ethiopia
- 1936-38: Great Purge
- 1936-39: Spanish Civil War
- 1937: International Bureau of Fractions of the Communist Left
- 1938: Fourth International
- 1940s
- 1960s
- 1980s
- 1979-89: Soviet war in Afghanistan
- 1980-88: Iran-Iraq War
- 1982: First Lebanon War
- 1982: Sabra and Chatila
- 1986: Chernobyl disaster
- 1987-93: First Intifada
- 1989: Fall of the Berlin Wall
- 1979-90: Thatcher Government
- 1980: Strikes in Poland
- 1982: Falklands War
- 1983: Foundation of IBRP
- 1984-85: UK Miners' Strike
- 1987: Perestroika
- 1989: Tiananmen Square Protests
- 1990s
- 1991: Breakup of Yugoslavia
- 1991: Dissolution of Soviet Union
- 1991: First Gulf War
- 1992-95: UN intervention in Somalia
- 1994-96: First Chechen War
- 1994: Genocide in Rwanda
- 1999-2000: Second Chechen War
- 1999: Introduction of euro
- 1999: Kosovo War
- 1999: WTO conference in Seattle
- 1995: NATO Bombing in Bosnia
- 2000s
- 2000: Second intifada
- 2001: September 11 attacks
- 2001: Piqueteros Movement in Argentina
- 2001: War in Afghanistan
- 2001: G8 Summit in Genoa
- 2003: Second Gulf War
- 2004: Asian Tsunami
- 2004: Madrid train bombings
- 2005: Banlieue riots in France
- 2005: Hurricane Katrina
- 2005: London bombings
- 2006: Comuna de Oaxaca
- 2006: Second Lebanon War
- 2007: Subprime Crisis
- 2008: Onda movement in Italy
- 2008: War in Georgia
- 2008: Riots in Greece
- 2008: Pomigliano Struggle
- 2008: Global Crisis
- 2008: Automotive Crisis
- 2009: Post-election crisis in Iran
- 2009: Israel-Gaza conflict
- 2006: Anti-CPE Movement in France
- 2020s
- 1920s
- 1921-28: New Economic Policy
- 1921: Communist Party of Italy
- 1921: Kronstadt Rebellion
- 1922-45: Fascism
- 1922-52: Stalin is General Secretary of PCUS
- 1925-27: Canton and Shanghai revolt
- 1925: Comitato d'Intesa
- 1926: General strike in Britain
- 1926: Lyons Congress of PCd’I
- 1927: Vienna revolt
- 1928: First five-year plan
- 1928: Left Fraction of the PCd'I
- 1929: Great Depression
- 1950s
- 1970s
- 1969-80: Anni di piombo in Italy
- 1971: End of the Bretton Woods System
- 1971: Microprocessor
- 1973: Pinochet's military junta in Chile
- 1975: Toyotism (just-in-time)
- 1977-81: International Conferences Convoked by PCInt
- 1977: '77 movement
- 1978: Economic Reforms in China
- 1978: Islamic Revolution in Iran
- 1978: South Lebanon conflict
- 2010s
- 2010: Greek debt crisis
- 2011: War in Libya
- 2011: Indignados and Occupy movements
- 2011: Sovereign debt crisis
- 2011: Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster in Japan
- 2011: Uprising in Maghreb
- 2014: Euromaidan
- 2016: Brexit Referendum
- 2017: Catalan Referendum
- 2019: Maquiladoras Struggle
- 2010: Student Protests in UK and Italy
- 2011: War in Syria
- 2013: Black Lives Matter Movement
- 2014: Military Intervention Against ISIS
- 2015: Refugee Crisis
- 2018: Haft Tappeh Struggle
- 2018: Climate Movement
People
- Amadeo Bordiga
- Anton Pannekoek
- Antonio Gramsci
- Arrigo Cervetto
- Bruno Fortichiari
- Bruno Maffi
- Celso Beltrami
- Davide Casartelli
- Errico Malatesta
- Fabio Damen
- Fausto Atti
- Franco Migliaccio
- Franz Mehring
- Friedrich Engels
- Giorgio Paolucci
- Guido Torricelli
- Heinz Langerhans
- Helmut Wagner
- Henryk Grossmann
- Karl Korsch
- Karl Liebknecht
- Karl Marx
- Leon Trotsky
- Lorenzo Procopio
- Mario Acquaviva
- Mauro jr. Stefanini
- Michail Bakunin
- Onorato Damen
- Ottorino Perrone (Vercesi)
- Paul Mattick
- Rosa Luxemburg
- Vladimir Lenin
Politics
- Anarchism
- Anti-Americanism
- Anti-Globalization Movement
- Antifascism and United Front
- Antiracism
- Armed Struggle
- Autonomism and Workerism
- Base Unionism
- Bordigism
- Communist Left Inspired
- Cooperativism and autogestion
- DeLeonism
- Environmentalism
- Fascism
- Feminism
- German-Dutch Communist Left
- Gramscism
- ICC and French Communist Left
- Islamism
- Italian Communist Left
- Leninism
- Liberism
- Luxemburgism
- Maoism
- Marxism
- National Liberation Movements
- Nationalism
- No War But The Class War
- PCInt-ICT
- Pacifism
- Parliamentary Center-Right
- Parliamentary Left and Reformism
- Peasant movement
- Revolutionary Unionism
- Russian Communist Left
- Situationism
- Stalinism
- Statism and Keynesism
- Student Movement
- Titoism
- Trotskyism
- Unionism
Regions
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