Initiative for a New Communist Organization and Program
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Capitalism is threatening the perspective of humanity
1.The war comes forward intensely
We live in an era of intense struggle for global hegemony. The war in Ukraine has in multiple ways been an expression of this conflict, but also a bloody and destructive way of shaping this new balance, a war which undoubtedly constitutes a turning point and the starting point of a new phase, to which both the war in Gaza and the military operations in the Middle East have been added. These military confrontations are developing as miniatures of a global war, posing a real risk of spreading to other parts of the world.
If we were to speak in terms of the Great (First World) War and Lenin’s words, the front in Ukraine is the definition of imperialist, unjust and reactionary war from both sides. Even more accurately, however, we should be talking about the lethal wars of capital in the era of Total Capitalism, where all the sinister characteristics of the wars of the imperialist era appear, along with the over-development of other qualitative aspects such as the more organic confluence with economic wars, the new nuclear danger, the integration of artificial intelligence, information warfare, satellite space warfare and others.
A new phase is taking shape, in which it seems that the military operations will remain active on “regional” fronts, but at the same time the drums of war will be about to beat in areas where the interests of major and minor geopolitical players (e.g. South China Sea, NATO’s expansion zone in Europe, the Middle East, Africa). In this backdrop, the brutality of the ongoing massacre of Palestinians who are threatened with actual genocide by the murderous state of Israel stands out, and there is a serious risk of a general flare-up in the region based on Israel’s actions of constantly provoking Iran, attempting to draw into open military engagement.
The ongoing war conflicts increase militarism, reinforce nationalist and racist ideologies of all kinds, and create new mass refugee crises. The unprecedented increase in military budgets will lead to further reductions on the already insufficient funds being allocated towards health, education, social needs and so on. Under the pretext of the Russian threat and as the arsenals of NATO member countries have been emptied due to aiding shipments for Ukraine, new goals are put on the to-do list; investments in the war industry and meeting NATO’s war spending targets of more than 2% in each member country (which 18 out of 31 countries have already exceeded). The Greek bourgeoisie, led by the government of the New Democracy Party and with the consensus of the rest of the parties of the bourgeois political system, declares that it will exceed 3% of GDP for war spending, seeking to further commit the country to the NATO plans and – through this commitment – to upgrade its position in the wider region, especially in competition with the bourgeoisie of Turkey. The same climate prevails all throughout Europe, with Germany rearming and France, through Macron’s words, starting the talk about ground operations in Ukraine. In the words of top EU officials, “If Europe wants peace, it must prepare for war,” adding that “we must shift the ecomomy into war mode.“
Great anxiety, fear and indignation is brewing among the people. A large part of the world is not convinced by the narrative of “the good NATO and evil Russia”, of “good Israel and the civilised West and the villainous Palestinians and Arabs”, of the conflict “between democratic and authoritarian regimes”; on the contrary, they want peace and stand against the military involvement of their countries. The Middle East developments, with the massacre in Palestine and Israel’s war, have mobilised hundreds of thousands of people in many countries of the world – especially in the West, where mass demonstrations have taken place despite a number of governments prohibiting them (Germany, France, etc.). This new wave of solidarity and anti-war action partially possesses anti-NATO and anti-imperialist characteristics. In the Arab world, this wave also demonstrated distinct class characteristics, as it came into conflict with the stances and interests of the reactionary regimes in the region. The student outburst of solidarity with Palestine in universities in the US and Europe is also particularly important. On the other hand, it is exactly this preparation for war that fuels hatred of the ‘other’, all kinds of nationalist ideology, religious intolerance and ultimately strengthens the far right, in all of its forms.
- A new geopolitical landscape
The US is frantically trying to maintain its hegemony against the rise of China, using its mighty military power, the dollar and generally the part of financial system it controls, as well as its lead in technological advancement (although this is diminishing). This attempt is a leading factor of instability that is threatening peace. The US seeks to strengthen its position as the leading power of the NATO and an arc of “democratic countries” that will oppose “authoritarian regimes” and impose supposed “international security conditions” through a new arms race. The strategy of encircling Russia (indirectly directed against China as well) is a constant pursuit that is constantly developing, opening new fronts, as proven by the war in Ukraine. For the moment, a military confrontation with China seems like a scenario for the distant future, but elements of aggressive tactic are also demonstrated in the Pacific with the AUKUS agreement and the challenge of the status quo in Taiwan and Hong Kong. This process is – among other things – shaping tensions inside the United States with a dispute which may not actually question the essence of the intended direction, but is shaping a tense confrontation around the means and paths of the goal’s promotion (e.g. who is the main opponent now, Russia or China?). This, combined with other social and ideological factors is shaping a peculiar internal division.
The questioning of US hegemony is happening at the same time as the rapid economic and geopolitical emergence of China and other developing and populous states. A direct comparison of the cumulative change in GDP by 2023 versus 2017 is eye-opening: China’s GDP has grown by 20.2%, while, in the US, the GDP has grown only by 8.1% and by 3% in the Eurozone. The China-Russia-Iran alliance has formeda strong second pillar on political, economic and (less so) on military level, where the rival Western pole is clearly better organised and involves dozens of powerful states. China has no significant military presence outside its borders and its strategy is primarily the spread of its economic and political influence through moves such as the One Belt- One Road initiative, 5G leadership, the Made in China 2025 initiative, which will allow the country to become the first technological power. Its presence in the Indian Ocean, Africa and Latin America is rapidly strengthening, even playing the anti-imperialist card in the case of countries such as Venezuela, Cuba and others. We are being presented with statements regarding the overturning of the “unipolar” world of the US by a “multipolarity” that will be able to accommodate more players. This change, however, cannot be reached neither peacefully, nor permanently. Capitalist competition, along with the tendency towards (ultimately warlike) of hierarchy formation in economic, political and military power (with the emergence of the dominant hegemon), is “law” of capitalism, but also the fundamental basis of the danger of war that is constantly being reborn within it.
3.The environmental crisis
The reality that environmental disasters and climate change constitute is directly related to the structural characteristics of the capitalist mode of production and consumption and the way of life as a whole, especially in this current stage of capitalism. Ever-increasing economic growth is the basic condition for the existence of the capitalist mode of production. This also entails an increase in the input of energy and raw materials which are extracted from nature and an increase in the output of waste that nature then has to absorb. Increasing inputs and outputs are incompatible with the finite nature of the biosphere, laying the foundations for the environmental crisis. The sustainability issues of nature and planet Earth are not included in the relatively short-sighted decision making that capitalists base almost exclusively on the one-dimensional rule of profit.
Human intervention today, on the basis of the capitalist mode of production, competes against the basic biogeochemical processes of the planet. The environmental problems are multiple and complex. None of the problems can be solved leaving all the others untouched. Above all, no aspect of the environmental crisis can be resolved while leaving the cornerstones of the capitalist mode of production untouched.
The answer capital gives to the environmental disasters and climate change is limited to analysing and partitioning the environment and its protection into parts, in order to use them as specific goods and services (i.e., commodities, with use value and exchange value). Said commodities are then priced with their costs (at least partially) then incorporated into firm budgets, through the creation of environmental-products markets, providing the price-change incentives in existing markets. Nature gets increasingly reduced to exchange values. This process necessitates its transformation into a sum of specific goods and services that are then priced, viewed as separate from the biosphere and the ecosystems of which they are integral parts. This practice is based on the false capitalist notion that the environment is not governed by ecosystemic relationships, but can instead be broken down into separate parts that can simply be aggregated.The principle that environmental costs are charged to the individual polluters ultimately applies solely for ordinary consumers. Businesses usually pass these costs on to the product through raising the prices. The attribution environmental problems to the consumer’s individual responsibility is a widespread concept, especially in developed countries. The principle that “he who pollutes must pay” is easily transformed into its opposite, i.e. “he who pays can pollute” as e.g. the pollution stock exchange allows individuals, companies or states to buy the “right” to pollute. In contrast, in an anti-capitalist ecological framework and from the communist viewpoint, nature is understood as a set of interconnected ecosystems and processes that cannot be quantified in terms of exchange value. Nature is an integral part of humanity as we are connected to it both as biological and as social beings.
4.Authoritarian armouring of the state and the crushing of people’s freedoms
Demonstrations and strikes are declared illegal, the army and police are establishing a permanent presence in the major metropolises. Political organisations and militants are being monitored, while the legislative work is completely cut and sewn according to the needs of capital. Even the most basic bourgeois legislative guarantee of certain basic rights doesn’t exist anymore. The analysis regarding the emergence ofparliamentary totalitarianism is fully confirmed, as important decisions are mostly taken by appointed committees, “independent” authorities and special institutions (e.g. the EU Commission), while bourgeois parliaments are easily and often bypassed by presidential decrees and legislative acts. From Greece all the way to Catalonia, the “democratic” EU has cancelled and violated every single referendum result, while especially during the pandemic period authoritarianism spread all over the planet with curfews, surveillance of citizens and harsh repression.
The attack on civil liberties, the rise of the far right, the overall anti-democratic turn of modern capitalism is the conjoined brother of the deeper exploitation of the working class. It is neither an “exception” or a mistake, nor an authoritarian remnant of the past or a choice of one government or another, but rather the political form that corresponds both to the contemporary capitalist aggression and the need to consolidate and protect the major anti-worker “reforms”, as well as to the system’s constant fear of new types of uprisings and revolutionary events. It is precisely for this reason that the right to struggle, to strike, to militant demonstration, to collective resistance, are being targeted by the rulers.
5.The intensification of competition and social cannibalism
Modern capitalism attempts a deep dive into reactionary change in the field of values and the construction social culture as a whole. The individual path is reinforced against the collective path, while the phenomena of social cannibalism and civil war between the poor for the sake of survival are becoming more common and more intense. Bourgeois politics is mostly based on viewpoints such as “mind your own business” and “let him who saves himself be saved“. This is all taking place under the constant stress of everyday life, the deterioration of mental health, the scarce and competitive nature of interpersonal relationships, painting a picture that looks like it was taken right off of the “Survivor” reality franchise. The phenomenon of alienation intensifies and social relationships are crumbling. In this reactionary landscape, things like the perpetuation of stereotypes talking about the inferiority of women, the reinforcement of patriarchal attitudes, the devaluation of people of different colour and origin, constitute the ideological and social value framework for the historical regression of social culture. These ideas do not only concern the contemporary far right, but penetrate the mainstream waves of thought, many governments and the mainstream media as a whole. At the same time, the “liberal” bourgeois powers falsely appear as the “healers” of a morbid situation that they themselves create: hypocritically supporting individual rights – but always as an individual matter – or as a matter of at least one group or ‘identity’, while cutting off from the social context of discrimination and always staying within the context of complete attack against social structures and deep exploitation.
All forms and relations of oppression are being reinforced. Racist violence and exploitation intensify both at borders and within countries. Entire social categories are subjected to oppression and violence on an ethno-religious basis. State racism at the borders with murderous pushbacks, the ghettoising and deprivation of rights and freedoms of refugees with modern concentration camps/closed detention facilities, the conditions of brutal double exploitation of migrants deafeningly confirm this. Racism is nothing but the method of capital to keep the oppressed, the most vulnerable sections forever subjugated, blackmailed and illegal to have at hand for even more brutal exploitation. At a time when the migratory flows will continue to increase, the overexploitation of migrants around the world, along with the undeniable facts that women are paid lower wages and more vulnerable to unemployment all reveal that exploitation and poverty are intertwined with a series of inequalities and discrimination based on colour, origin, ethnicity, religion and gender. This type of discrimination, which either comes from the past or is created anew, is necessary for capitalism, because it breaks the working class down and presents overexploitation – especially in heavy manual and/or underpaid work – as a natural state of affairs.
There is an upsurge in gender-based violence and abusive behaviour directed towards women, LGBTQ+ people, children and any person whose characteristics do not conform to the dominant gender norms of the system. At the same time, trafficking rings are being strengthened, with the victims being children, refugee children, women, members of the LGBTQ+ community. Femicide, rape and child rape, physical violence, open discrimination and prejudice are the most acute forms of patriarchy, i.e. those relations, perceptions and power practices which permeate every aspect of everyday life and are exacerbated in the context of capitalism. We conceptualise patriarchy in a different way from certain currents of thought that influenced parts of the feminist movement and saw patriarchy as a system of exploitation in its own right. Patriarchal relations operate within exploitative social systems and in interaction with their idiostructural relationship. They are not simply or primarily survivals from the ‘yesterday’ of exploitative societies – although there are such elements, and strong ones at that. They are reproduced and fed by the relational framework of contemporary capitalism, they are both inflated and transformed within this framework, and they are permeated by the tendency of the commodification of everything – especially the female body – and the imposition of particular behavioural and cultural models of life and work. They derive from the model of gendered social division and the overall production-reproduction function of capital. They are the result of exploitative relations and this is precisely why the crisis of capitalism and the plunge into the exploitation of the working class also exacerbates gender discrimination -always accompanied by the necessary mediations regarding values, ideology and culture.
The deepening of capitalist and labour exploitation reproduces all discrimination and individual oppression to a higher degree (on the basis of gender, race, etc.), which divides the working class, devaluing the rights of one part of it over another. These relations of oppression, exploitation and discrimination, especially as embedded in the contemporary capitalist framework, “produce” fields of conflict – and thus fields of potential radicalisation.
Initiative for a New Communist Organization: The capitalist world today
