Let us unite in the global struggle to defeat Trump’s imperialist offensive
Let us bring down the governments that perpetuate poverty and war
The offensive of the U.S. and Israel against Iran has backfired. Cracks are multiplying in the camp of the invaders. No matter how much they try to cover it up, Trump has suffered a severe political setback. Netanyahu is attempting to advance territorial annexations on Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese soil, but his domestic and international position is increasingly being called into question. The quagmire facing US imperialism and the Zionist regime is practical proof that the U.S. and Israel are not an unbeatable machine. The setback they are suffering in the conflict with Iran is a source of encouragement for the exploited peoples confronting US imperialism across the globe.
It is a boost for the peoples of Latin America who have been suffering from the US escalation in the region. It is a boost for Cuba, which is under threat and facing a blockade that has escalated to levels of humanitarian disaster. It calls into question the Venezuelan government’s shameful collaboration with the U.S. invader and encourages the independent mobilization of its working class. It is a stimulus for the struggle being waged by U.S. workers and youth who are confronting Trump with growing mass participation and radicalization. The 8 million who mobilized on March 28 show the existence of a mass opposition to the war as the government has been publicly discussing the launch of a ground invasion, which would require a massive mobilization of the population as soldiers, and foreshadows an electoral defeat in the midterm elections scheduled for November of this year. It is a boost to the struggle against rearmament and austerity plans that workers are waging against capitalist governments of every stripe across the European continent, with their war budgets voted by the far right, conservatives, liberals, so-called leftists and social-democrats.
And, of course, it is a boost to the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist struggle throughout the Middle East: in Palestine and Lebanon, and also in Iran. The Iranian people have not heeded Trump’s call to rise up in tandem with the bombings. We are well aware of the oppressive, reactionary, and repressive nature of the Iranian capitalist regime. But a progressive solution for Iran’s exploited and oppressed masses will not come from Zionism and US imperialism. The reckoning with the Tehran regime must come from the exploited people of Iran, who must be the architects of their own destiny, and we have the duty to support the socialist anti-capitalist forces struggling against the regime at the same time as against imperialist aggression.
We salute the anti-imperialist demonstrations in Iran defying the bombings, the mass demonstrations in the city of Gaza against the criminal and racist death penalty law targeting Palestinians, the resistance against the ground occupation in Lebanon, and the protests taking place across the globe against the ongoing aggression—including the new, massive Global Sumud Flotilla heading to challenge the genocidal blockade still imposed on the Palestinian people. We salute the struggles of the working class against reactionary reforms, from Greece to India, to Argentina, to Portugal. We salute the strikes for wages and living conditions, from the miners in South Africa, to the strikes for fuel prices in Bolivia and Ecuador. The imperialist drive for war promotes chauvinism and bourgeois nationalism everywhere, to which we oppose militant working-class internationalism. The revolutionary character of this internationalism is expressed by being at the forefront of the struggle against attacks of imperialism against oppressed nations.
The stance of China and Russia has been one of undisguised duplicity in the face of a new attack on a country with which they are declared partners in the BRICS project. They have even allowed the UN Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the attacks Iran launched against US bases in neighboring Arab countries in response to the extremely severe attacks it suffered. Previously, China and Russia endorsed Washington’s false, neo-colonialist peace plan for Gaza in that same forum. There is neither anti-imperialism nor a quest for improvement for the “Global South” here, but rather capitalist-imperialist depredation and a struggle for spheres of influence.
European governments are navigating their crisis with the US by attempting to improvise their own imperialist pole after decades of integration to it. Their clashes stem from deploying their military resources—which they are bolstering with rearmament budgets and preparing the ground for conscription—where they can advance their own interests and continue their plans for EU expansion into Eastern Europe, plans now called into question by the war in Ukraine having become completely bogged down after more than four years. They are not guided by “humanism,” but by the quest to satisfy their own imperialist appetites.
In Latin America, the struggle against Zionist and imperialist aggression is inextricably linked to the struggle against Trump’s agents and accomplices on the continent. We denounce the governments that act in concert with the Republican tycoon, such as Milei in Argentina. We denounce the governments that pose as progressives, such as Scheinbaum in Mexico or Lula in Brazil, who have adapted to U.S. pressure and participate in the blockade that Washington is stoking against Cuba, which aims to provoke an implosion on the island to facilitate a U.S. takeover of it. We demand that both governments reject this ultimatum and supply the oil and humanitarian aid that Cuba desperately needs.
The war, which is spreading, is an expression of the historical exhaustion and decay of the current capitalist social order. One of its manifestations, given its status as the world’s leading power, is the decline of the United States, which is one of the main engines fueling the trends toward a world war. The current ceasefire is violated permanently by the US and Israel. They have been forced to take a step back, but the US’s need to advance militarily against its enemies or confess its decline is very strong.
The crisis of overproduction and the fall in capitalist profit margins lie behind the drive toward war and the destabilization of the existing imperialist order. All capitalist governments, whether liberal or “progressive” or “socialist”, aim to reignite their rivalry on the basis of heightened levels of exploitation and austerity, while seeking to advance repression and social discipline that will allow them to deploy their workers as soldiers in the coming clashes. The war in Iran itself, far from solving the capitalist crisis, has aggravated it, with oil prices impacting living conditions all over the globe and increasing the prognosis of a profound economic depression.
The struggle against the threat and advance of fascist and far-right formations will not come from the formation of “Popular Fronts” of class conciliation, but from the independent organization and mobilization of the working and exploited masses, from a united front of action against imperialist war. This independent struggle is joined inextricably with the task of throwing the trade-union bureaucracy out of the labor movement and recovering unions as tools of the class struggle. The truce of the AFL-CIO with Trump, during acts of mass struggle where thousands discuss the need of a general strike, is an example of the global tendency of integration of these bureaucracies into the state and betraying the interests of their class. There has been an upsurge in working class actions against the war machine, blocking production and distribution of weapons and opposing the functioning of US and NATO bases. We demand the shutdown of the 800 military bases the US operates in 80 countries for its imperialist war machine!
It is urgent to build a proletarian international and internationalist front against all capitalist states and all capitalist blocks. While forces claiming to be of the left vote for their bourgeoisies’ military budgets, we internationalists have the obligation to raise a class banner, to fight for our living conditions, and to confront the spreading imperialist offensives and steadily oppose rearmament and capitalist wars.
We propose holding a new internationalist conference against imperialist war in July in Athens, to raise a banner of working-class defiance against militarist barbarism and exploitation. For an international workers’ front to rise up against imperialist war. Let us promote the formation of workers’ parties and a revolutionary international.
- Hands off Iran!
- Israel and the Zionists out of the Middle East!
- For the defeat of the U.S.-Israeli genocidal coalition!
- Stop the bombing of Lebanon immediately! Israeli troops out of Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank!
- End the criminal blockade of Cuba and Gaza!
- For the revolutionary unity of the peoples of the Middle East, free from capitalist and imperialist domination!
- For an international and internationalist class front against capitalist governments and the wars of capital!
- Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!
First signatures:
KA – Communist Liberation (Greece)
PO – Workers Party (Argentina)
SEP – Socialist Laborers Party (Turkey)
SWP – Socialist Workers Party (Great Britain)
TIR – Revolutionary Internationalist Tendency (Italy)
Fuerza 18 de octubre (Chile)
GAR – Grupo Acción Revolucionaria (Mexico)
UFCLP- United Front Committee for a Labor Party (US)
