Millions of working people are being drawn into world politics today amid the deepening crisis shaking the imperialist system. It has led to trade and military conflicts between rival ruling classes and their governments; Moscow’s drive to subjugate the Ukrainian people; economic breakdowns and sharper boss assaults on workers and our unions; Jew-hating attacks and bloody pogroms like the one Hamas engineered in Israel Oct. 7, 2023; and the drumbeats toward fascism and a third world war.
The growing difficulties the rulers face in solving their crises lie behind the recent fall of governments in France, Germany and Canada.
President Joseph Biden’s promise that he would ensure global “stability” for the U.S. rulers at the top of the imperialist world order lies in tatters. President-elect Donald Trump threatens to use Washington’s immense economic and military power to impose the stability they need, to strengthen their sway against rivals and to acquire or seize territory from them.
Socialist Workers Party members talk with thousands of workers as they take the Militant on the job and on their doorsteps and join in solidarity with strikes taking place today. They find more and more workers sense no capitalist government or party has any solution to the exploitation, wars and breakdowns that threaten humanity. Moreover, what capitalist regimes do to defend their profit-driven interests intensifies, rather than patches up, the crisis of their system.
What working people face today was first outlined by V.I. Lenin, the central leader of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. In the imperialist epoch, he said, rival national ruling classes no longer offer any road forward. They’re driven to wars to redivide the world and seize command of resources, markets and cheap labor.
For decades, the SWP has pointed to the consequences for workers of the crisis of the capitalist world order put together by the U.S. rulers out of their victory in the imperialist slaughter in World War II.
Far from strengthening Washington’s domination, the downfall of the Stalinist apparatuses in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe exacerbated its difficulties. The U.S. rulers lost an irreplaceable partner they had relied on for decades to stifle fights for national independence and revolutionary openings in exchange for “peaceful coexistence.”
Mistakenly believing they’d won the Cold War, Washington stepped up efforts to use military might to impose peace and stability in the Middle East and elsewhere. The U.S. rulers’ disaster in their first Gulf War in 1991 announced sharper national conflicts and the opening guns of a third world war.
“The future of humanity depends on the independent political organization of the world’s toilers to resist the devastation the rulers seek to impose on us,” Jack Barnes, SWP national secretary, said in “Opening Guns of World War III: Washington’s Assault on Iraq,” available in New International no. 7.
“It depends on our capacity to fight, to win revolutionary battles, and to take war-making powers out of the hands of the exploiters and oppressors by establishing governments of the workers and farmers. Whether or not the unthinkable horrors of a third imperialist world slaughter are unleashed will be decided by mighty class battles and their outcome.”
Today there is a noticeable increase in workers meeting boss attacks with strike action and widespread interest in strengthening the unions. Out of these struggles will come the opportunity to build proletarian parties with tested leaderships capable of mobilizing our class to take political power.