Today millions of working people face a harsh reality — the economic, financial and social crises and the devastating world wars of the 20th century haven’t been consigned to history. While the ruling propertied families wield state power, the rapacious profit drive and bitter rivalries that mark their declining world system of exploitation and oppression are once again dragging humanity down the road toward fascism and world war.
Falling rates of profit and sharpening competition over markets, resources and spheres of influence are fueling new trade wars — and ultimately shooting wars — between imperialist rivals, as well as with other capitalist powers.
These uncontrollable and conflicting forces have been unfolding in the decades since the U.S. rulers mistakenly began to act on the conviction that the implosion of the Soviet Union meant they had won the Cold War and could freely ride roughshod worldwide. This has led to bloody wars and humiliating defeats, from Iraq to Afghanistan and more, each of which has tolled the opening guns of World War III more loudly.
This has accelerated since the watershed events of Moscow’s 2022 war against Ukraine’s peoples and the Tehran-backed Hamas pogrom against Jews in Israel Oct. 7.
Opposition to Washington’s foreign and militarist policy is crucial for the working-class movement today. The U.S. rulers use the NATO alliance to open the door to interventions in Europe and around the world, seeking always to advance their own national interests at the expense of workers and rivals everywhere. The capitalist rulers in the U.S. are in decline today, but still dominant in today’s fragmenting imperialist world order.
As the 2022 political resolution of the Socialist Workers Party says, “No propertied ruling class is going to disarm and risk its own wealth and power, while its competitors and enemies remain nuclear-armed to the teeth.”
“‘Not one man and not one penny’ for the imperialist government, its budget, and its war machine” is a “central aspect of our proletarian internationalist continuity from the Bolsheviks under Lenin to this today.”
The imperialist epoch is above all a time of revolution. The 20th century witnessed not only depression and war, but also saw the working classes rise in two great successful proletarian revolutions — the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia led by V.I. Lenin and Cuba’s socialist revolution led by Fidel Castro. The Socialist Workers Party is built on and guided by those lessons.
Whether or not the unthinkable horrors of a third world war are unleashed will be decided by mighty battles between the capitalist and working classes in coming decades. Join the SWP’s 2024 presidential campaign to promote building a mass party of labor with a leadership capable of taking political power and joining with workers and farmers worldwide to end capitalist oppression and wars once and for all.