2026 May Day Statement of the Internationalist Communist Tendency

The capitalist crisis only gets worse and worse, with world war becoming an increasing reality. This crisis of a lack of sufficient surplus value is extending the competition between capitalists into a contest between states. Every state is embroiled in an existential struggle within the imperialist pecking order. The only "way out" lies in massive destruction of capital, in the hope of being able to usher in a new round of profit-making.

The only solution they have to offer is generalised imperialist war

Despite promises of peace, ceasefires or the “Board of Peace”, imperialist wars are continuing to burn across the globe, whether in Ukraine, Sudan, Congo, Southern Asia, Gaza or Iran, and this does not even take in the “economic war” going on such as the continuing US blockade of Cuba. Not content with this, the capitalist system is gearing towards even more slaughter with ever growing military spending and a sickening tempo of rearmament. In the face of stagnating profits, the ruling class is willing to accept immeasurable human suffering. It is prepared to drive the system into even more unimaginable barbarism.

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are consolidating imperialist alliances and defined interests; they are a prelude for another world war. The US is preparing for war against China by attempting to break up the China-Russia-Iran alliance of convenience. For decades the US has seen China as its main threat towards its expansive imperialist requirements. The Trump administration’s policy towards China is largely guided by the same strategic premises of Obama and Biden. No matter which politician is managing the US, increasing protectionism and sanctions to set back China's economy and military and targeting China’s allies are all bipartisan preparation for future war. Hostilities between the US and China can only continue to grow with the pressures of imperialist competition. The US is in a do-or-die situation to knock out its main rival as the crisis of profitability deepens.

The US’ manic war-making across the globe is thus part of the preparation for war against China. By attempting to eliminate China’s allies in Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and Russia, they are gearing up for the main fight. In Latin America, where China has steadily increased its presence over the past twenty years, Trump is sending a message through the kidnapping of Venezuela’s Maduro, and the growing threats against Cuba. The brutal war being fought in Ukraine has been taken up by NATO to bleed out Russia and isolate China. The US-Israel permanent war in the Middle East can be seen as a small-scale example of the strategy against China – first the weaker allies of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis, then an isolated Iran itself. This strategy will not go unanswered; the bloody war of positioning won’t stop. Every capitalist, no matter their nation, is driven to continue to adhere to the dictates of capital accumulation, so as a class they choose war instead of continued stagnation.

Workers everywhere are facing extreme austerity, privation, death and displacement as the push for another worldwide slaughter grows. The working class everywhere has been made to pay for capitalism’s insoluble crisis of profitability which is the cause for all the imperialist wars and barbarism. States are all rearming, choosing “guns not butter”. It’s the guns which can win them a greater cut of future profit while there’s little to be found in “normal” capitalist exploitation. Budgets for military spending in Germany and Italy have roughly doubled over the last five years, while in France the retirement age was raised to balance the war budget.

Workers are experiencing a collapsing social situation – we feel it every day when our wages are cut by inflation or increasing workload, when the cost of food and essentials continues to be out of our reach, or when we are evicted and cut off from welfare. Worst of all is whenever your supposed nation demands you to fight and kill our own class sisters and brothers. What has "your" nation done for you? What is “our country” supposed to be? We own little to nothing of it – except our labour power, which is exploited in the interests of “our nation”. This is the situation in every country – the world capitalist class is united in the exploitation of the proletariat. All wars are imperialist and reactionary and there's no perspective in them for the proletariat besides continued exploitation, humiliation, and sacrifices so our class enemy can give palliative care for the moribund capitalist system.

For the proletariat, there's no country to support. Even if they drape themselves with “anti-imperialist” slogans, those who support any current war pick one capitalist over another. Since the opening of the imperialist epoch in the First World War, the capitalist can only play a reactionary role and fight tooth and nail for the survival of their nation’s social capital. Any and all proletarian self-activity is crushed for the defence of the “nation” (that is, profits). Domestic repression exponentially multiplies against workers as seen in every current war and the state’s response towards workers in Ukraine, Iran, Gaza and the Middle East. In the US and other imperialist states rearming for war, repression and xenophobia discipline workers by creating a more precarious section of terrified workers to brutally exploit.

Only the working class can stop the war

The working class – the majority of people of the planet – is the only force capable of halting our further immiseration, the degradation of the planet, and the forward march of all-out war. Workers’ economic demands already run up against capitalism’s drive for war. When workers fight for higher wages, safer conditions of work, shorter hours, or better staffing, they are met with stiff resistance from the bosses and their state. In various countries, governments declare strikes illegal in the name of national defence, while on the “home-front” of warring capitalist states workers are put through misery in the war economy. The capitalist attack on workers’ standards of living has a direct political character. Once the working class’s defensive fight also takes on an offensive, political, anti-capitalist character, it will have the tools necessary to end forever the cycle of imperialist slaughter.

The mass slaughter of the imperialist First World War was brought to an end by uprisings, mutinies and strikes. Revolutionary defeatism took concrete form when, in Russia, the proletariat organised in councils seized power and enforced an end to hostilities, and when mass demonstrations in Berlin and Vienna in 1918 forced an end to the war. This marked the beginning of an international revolutionary wave that shook capitalism to its very foundations. Spontaneity and independent action of the class are important and necessary. Yet, it must be noted, they are necessary but not sufficient conditions for finally overcoming the capitalist system. Without an organised revolutionary force capable of providing an anti-capitalist movement with political direction and a revolutionary perspective, every uprising inevitably runs the risk of being absorbed by the forces of this system. A revolutionary party, on the other hand, which has fought to gain recognition and establish itself within the class through active participation in the class struggle, can serve as a revolutionary political reference point and work to ensure that the working class does not stop halfway. When the theoretical and practical preparation of organised revolutionaries is combined with the class’s capacity for struggle and organisation, this system can be overthrown.

Today we find ourselves in a different situation from that of the past and are far from having formed a communist world party. Nevertheless, the fundamental conditions of capitalist exploitation remain the same. This does not relieve us of the task of working towards the creation of an international revolutionary party. Lenin once aptly observed:

The tactics of agitation in relation to some special question, or the tactics with regard to some detail of party organisation may be changed in twenty-four hours; but only people devoid of all principle are capable of changing, in twenty-four hours, or, for that matter, in twenty-four months, their view on the necessity—in general, constantly, and absolutely—of an organisation of struggle and of political agitation among the masses. It is ridiculous to plead different circumstances and a change of periods: the building of a fighting organisation and the conduct of political agitation are essential under any “drab, peaceful” circumstances, in any period, no matter how marked by a “declining revolutionary spirit”; moreover, it is precisely in such periods and under such circumstances that work of this kind is particularly necessary, since it is too late to form the organisation in times of explosion and outbursts; the party must be in a state of readiness to launch activity at a moment’s notice.

Lenin, Where to Begin?, 1901

This has been confirmed by the historical experience of our class. The absence of a firmly established revolutionary party had dramatic consequences for the German Revolution of 1918–1919. The working class had indeed succeeded in overthrowing the German Empire. But now, with the Social Democrats, a different actor began to set the political agenda. They presented themselves as a moderate "socialist mass party". Yet in reality, they acted not as the moderate right wing of the labour movement but as the left wing of capital. They replaced the class struggle with "law and order", the councils with parliament, and revolution with reform. When the window of revolution still remains open, this is what the absence of a workers’ party fitting its name can look like. Whilst it politically disarmed and disoriented the broad majority of the working class through all manner of manoeuvres, as the mainstay of the Weimar Republic it gave free rein to the proto-fascist Freikorps against the radical elements. The bloody terror of these units laid the groundwork for the later fascist dictatorship.

The defeat of the German Revolution had fatal consequences for the international revolutionary wave. The isolation of the Russian Revolution ultimately led to its transformation into its opposite – the establishment of a dictatorial state capitalism which, to the delight of all reactionaries, masqueraded as "socialism".

What is to be done?

The traumatic experiences of Stalinism have led to much confusion and, at the same time, have significantly bolstered the ruling class’s arsenal of ideological propaganda. The deep-seated defeats of the 20th century have weakened our class’s solidarity and fighting spirit, with the result that successful defensive struggles are rare and face major challenges. The rule of capital appears unchallenged. The chances of revolutionary politics gaining a foothold in the class struggle are not good. Political organisations that defend the internationalist principles of the proletarian revolution have, at best, a limited presence in the struggles of the broader working class. This is merely one expression – albeit perhaps the most decisive one – of our class’s profound weakness.

With this in mind, we must recognise and clearly articulate both the danger of a general imperialist war and the extreme weakness of revolutionary politics. The political differences between revolutionaries reflect real issues. Yet we cannot afford to get bogged down in endless polemics and aimless debates.

Instead of wallowing in criticism and squabbles that lack purpose or direction, for us, truly overcoming the controversies among revolutionaries requires a new life within the working class, through which the political issues raised by the struggle can form the basis upon which to build unity among revolutionaries; for it is only in the concrete dynamics of the class struggle – no longer sporadically and in isolated incidents, but on a mass scale – that the various theoretical and political positions will descend from the “heavens” of theory to find confirmation, or refutation, in the material reality of the class struggle itself. Those who think they have the sole monopoly over the truth will be relegated to irrelevance.

Despite the current weakness of our class, there is an acute need for those who uphold internationalist principles and reject all forms of nationalism to unite under a common banner. Wherever it is waged, the class struggle inevitably clashes with the ongoing preparations for war. This opens up the possibility that internationalist positions will be taken up in the struggles – particularly among the advanced sections of the class – and that the fight against capitalist war will be placed on the agenda. Against this backdrop, we reaffirm our support for the No War but the Class War (NWBCW) committees, which bring together revolutionaries on the basis of internationalism and aim to intervene in local struggles. Although they are neither a substitute for the party nor a path to its formation, these committees can organise a political response to imperialist wars that goes beyond the capabilities of individual organisations.

Our bases for such cooperation, which takes an unequivocally class-based stance and excludes the political legacies of Social Democracy (old and new) and of the Stalinist counterrevolution, including its offshoots—namely, Stalinism, Maoism and Trotskyism - are the following five points :

• 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.

We once again call on all those who identify with these points and recognise the gravity of the current situation to set up such committees in their regions or to join existing ones.