The global economic and political crisis is gaining momentum. We are often told that this crisis started with the financial crash of 2007/2008 or even with Covid. But these were just the latest episodes. The entire capitalist world economy has been limping along for decades. And today, US hegemony is threatened by the rise of China.

World War Two was the deadliest conflict in history. Between 70 and 85 million lives were lost. In 1945 politicians promised ‘never again’. But here we are again. With all other options exhausted we are back in the same situation of rising tariffs and global arms race as before the last two world wars.

50 wars are going on around the world right now. None have more strategic consequences than those in Ukraine and Palestine. And these war fronts are becoming increasingly connected. With nuclear threats looming in the background this is the most dangerous time since 1945. There has been no shortage of alarm calls.

The boss of JP Morgan warned last October that “World War Three has already begun”. British Army boss, General Sir Roly Walker predicted last year that World War Three would not really start until 2027 (coincidentally a week before a new defence review!). That Strategic Defence Review, published on 2 June, confirmed the UK was “already at war” against Russia in the cybersphere so military spending will rise to 2.5% of GDP. The Labour Government has promised it will eventually become 5%, in order to reach the new NATO targets.

“Guns not Butter”

This all comes at a difficult time for UK state finances. With an already massive borrowing bill (a hangover from the 2008 bank bailout and Covid), and tax rates as high as they have ever been (except for the mega-rich) they have given themselves only one option – a further attack on the working class.

Everywhere in the world workers have been getting a smaller and smaller share of the national ‘pie’ for decades. Yet politicians have to ‘maintain the confidence of the markets’ and cut social spending. Starmer’s Labour Party is no exception. Cuts to Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) for the disabled will save £2.5 billion and a halving of the foreign aid budget by 2027 will save around £6 billion, which is bad news for those (for example) in Africa facing starvation as a result of climate change. The UK is the sixth richest country in the world yet cannot even look after its vulnerable citizens. On top of that “1 in 7 people in the UK face hunger and hardship” (Trussell, the food bank charity). That’s 10 million people, including the 4.5 million children who are now living in “Dickensian poverty” according to the children’s commissioner. Meanwhile, everywhere in the world the capitalist rich are getting richer and the very rich are becoming mega-rich, including those in the arms industry.

Arms production is waste production in economic terms. Weapons cannot be eaten, nor do they create new value. If they are sold abroad they do, of course, create profits for arms manufacturers but for capitalism as a whole they represent a total waste. However, in the expectation of a major war our rulers always find the money for rearmament. We have reached that point now. It is the same old choice of “guns not butter” that Goering posed in 1936 when the Nazis started their Four Year Plan for war. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI):

Estimated global military expenditure rose for the 10th consecutive year in 2024, to reach $2.7 trillion, driven by the Russia– Ukraine war and other armed conflicts and geopolitical tensions. The 9.4 per cent increase in total military spending in 2024 pushed estimated world spending to the highest level recorded by SIPRI.

2025 SIPRI Yearbook

Whilst the US remains by far the largest military spender in the world ($997 billion in 2024) or 3.2 times greater than second placed China, the Ukraine War has brought about a massive U-turn in Germany. The Merz government not only has signed up in principle to the 5% of GDP figure but is even claiming that rearmament will revive the ailing German economy. In the short term he may be right. Rheinmetall AG which supplied the German government in two world wars has tripled its market capitalisation as a result. It is not alone. Arms manufacturers across the world are rubbing their hands. But Merz has gone further, citing the Russian threat to Europe, he is now calling for compulsory military service for young Germans.

Britain, as an island not successfully invaded for a millennium, is relatively safer, but Starmer stated that the latest “defence” review was not just about how “to survive in this new world but to lead”. This means military adventures across the world (under the umbrella of US imperialist aims). Just look where “British power” has been most seen in the last 3 years – supporting Israeli and US attacks in Iran from the RAF base at Akrotiri (Cyprus), and sending ships to the Red Sea to support the US fleet in intercepting Houthi attempts to disrupt shipping in solidarity with the Gazans. That is not all. At the BAE systems shipyard in Glasgow Starmer promised to build as many as 12 new nuclear-powered submarines to expand the nuclear weapons programme (with help from the US).

Repression and Resistance

Part of the drive to war is the crushing of opposition to it at home. This can already be seen in Ukraine, Russia and Israel, but state clampdowns on anti-war dissent does not have to wait until war begins, as Trump is demonstrating in the US. In the UK, so far, the state clampdown has assumed an element of farce. The proscribing of Palestine Action (which has killed no-one and destroyed no building) as a terrorist organisation after they got into an RAF base and spray-painted fighter-bombers (just as they had Elbit arms factories earlier) is a sign of what’s in store. And it’s no joke. People who were peacefully demonstrating against the ban while not necessarily supporting Palestine Action’s politics were also arrested. And even the comforting sound of the “Online Safety Act” may not be all it seems since sharing videos of police brutality can now be blocked as “violent content”.

Such actions are the thin end of a very thick wedge. Once a full blown war breaks out the repression and suppression will increase. Everyone who opposes this drift to imperialist war needs to start to organise in the working class now before it is too late. The world’s working class is the only class which has a common interest in putting an end, not just to war, but to the system that causes it.

The capitalist class maintains its position of exploitation over us by many means, all of them based on the “divide and rule” policy to break up our only weapon – our collective strength. When they are not reducing us to isolated individuals in the workplace through zero hour contracts or fake “self-employed” status they exploit our different “identities”. The capitalist rackets of both the Left and Right play on differences of race, gender, religious origin or citizenship status to undermine our common cause. Moreover, they always play the nationalist card to divide wage workers who share the same interests the world over. You have to fight for “your country”, they tell us. But what is this country, other than the territory where one or other set of bosses exploits us? As Marx noted long ago “Workers have no country, you cannot take from them what they do not have”.

In this context we salute those who have refused to participate in imperialist slaughter in Russia, Ukraine, Israel and Gaza. More than that we can only praise the courage of those who have gone further and openly taken action to incite desertion from the war fronts. The young conscripts in Israel who refuse the draft into the IDF because they do not want to commit genocide or those who did fight originally until they discovered what it really meant and now face gaol. Courageous too are those Palestinians in Gaza who have demonstrated against the disaster that Hamas has brought upon them. We also salute the clandestine oppositions in Ukraine and Russia who send out information on what is really happening, and those who have publicly demonstrated against the slaughter on all fronts. They are, of course, denounced as “traitors” by the powers that be.

The Need for an International Political Organisation

Admirable though they are, we have to go beyond protests and the actions of small groups. For millions around the world capitalist peace is hardly more endurable than capitalist war.

What we need to do is change the system before it brings us all to destruction. Unless the various struggles against war become more general struggles against the system that causes it, nothing will change. If we are to create the basis for sustainable existence, a new international and internationalist organisation needs to arise out of the resistance to war and its consequences. After years of working class retreat this will not be easy but already there are signs (see accompanying article) that many have had enough of declining wages and worsening working conditions.

Some internationalists, including ourselves, have already come together in "No War But the Class War" (NWBCW) groups around the world. This is not a new International – that will only arise out of wider struggles – but it is a place for internationalist workers to cooperate. It not only shares information and advice but the affiliated committees seek to take part in various forms of class resistance to all existing states and their drive to take us into another war. Their guiding principles are:

• Against capitalism, imperialism and all nationalisms. No support for any national capitals, “lesser evils”, or states in formation.
• For a society where states, wage-labour, private property, money and production for profit are replaced by a world of freely associated producers.
• Against the economic and political attacks that the current war, and the ones to come, will unleash on the working class.
• For the self-organised struggle of the working class, for the formation of independent strike committees, mass assemblies and workers’ councils.
• Against oppression and exploitation, for the unity of the working class and the coming together of genuine internationalists.

Why not get in touch and we can put you in contact with the nearest committee? Better still form one yourself and join the fight! We have a world to save.

The above article is taken from the current edition (No. 72) of Aurora, bulletin of the Communist Workers’ Organisation.