We are living through a period of sharp turns and sudden changes in the world situation. The election of Donald Trump as the president of the United States and his policies have introduced enormous instability into world politics, the world economy and relations between the powers.

Momentous events are transforming the world as we know it. With Trump causing political and economic upheaval globally, the pent-up contradictions of nearly two decades of capitalist crisis and stagnation are reaching a fever pitch. From the genocide in Gaza to the West’s defeat in Ukraine, and from rising tariffs to ballooning world debt, epoch-defining developments are shaking the consciousness of billions.

To assess this situation, the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI) will convene its first-ever World Congress in Italy just eight weeks from now. There, delegates and visitors will engage in in-depth discussions on this draft of our World Perspectives document, approved by our International Executive Committee. To navigate the twists and turns of the world situation, a clear understanding of the current period is essential – without it, a revolutionary organisation is like a ship without a compass.

Over the past two years, the RCI has grown exponentially. We are now present in 70 countries worldwide. The World Congress will mark a crucial step in preparing our International for the titanic shocks, class struggles, and revolutionary upheavals on the horizon.

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We are living through a period of sharp turns and sudden changes in the world situation. The election of Donald Trump as the president of the United States and his policies have introduced enormous instability into world politics, the world economy and relations between the powers.

Trump has not caused this turmoil, which is the result of the crisis of capitalism, but his actions have enormously accelerated the process. Contradictions which had been building up under the surface for a long time have suddenly burst into the open, upsetting the whole situation. The so-called liberal world order, which had existed for decades, is now collapsing in front of our very eyes.

In analysing the world situation we need to start with the fundamentals. Capitalism is a system that has long outlived its historical role. In its epoch of decay it produces wars, crises and environmental destruction, which in the long run threatens the very existence of life on the planet. The purpose of this document is to outline the main features of this crisis and to stress the need to build a revolutionary organisation which can overthrow it, the only way to guarantee a future for humanity.

In the final analysis, the inability of the capitalist system to develop the productive forces is the cause of the crisis. The economy is hemmed in by the limits of the nation state and the private ownership of the means of production. For decades the capitalists have been using various methods to try to overcome these limitations: increasing liquidity, developing world trade, etc. All of these measures are now turning into their opposite.

The election of Trump

The election of Donald Trump in November 2024 represented a significant political shift, and a manifestation of the crisis of legitimacy of bourgeois democracy, which is not unique to the US but which exists in all countries. Despite extensive efforts by the main section of the US ruling class and establishment to prevent his victory, Trump secured a decisive win.

This result has been widely interpreted, particularly by liberal commentators, mainstream media, and sections of the ‘left’, as evidence of a broader rightward shift in US and global politics.

Such ‘explanations’ are superficial and misleading. Furthermore, they invite us to draw extremely dangerous conclusions. For instance, that Joe Biden and the Democrats somehow represent a more progressive and ‘democratic’ alternative – a claim that is in complete contradiction to the facts.

The Biden administration was completely reactionary, a fact that was especially clear in the realm of foreign policy. Let us recall that ‘Genocide Joe’ provided Netanyahu with a blank cheque to proceed with the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. He led a campaign of ferocious repression against students and others who dared to oppose this reactionary policy.

Similarly, in the case of Ukraine, he was responsible for deliberately provoking a conflict that has led to a bloody slaughter, handing over billions of dollars in cash and military aid to the reactionary regime in Kyiv, and engaging in a dangerous policy of provocation against Russia that brought the USA to the brink of World War Three.

In the election campaign, Trump positioned himself as the ‘peace candidate’, as opposed to the warmongering policies of the Biden clique. This distinction was particularly influential among voters in districts with significant Muslim and Arab populations.

While it is true that a layer of reactionary elements contributed to Trump’s support, these factors alone do not account for the scale of his success and the fact that he increased his share of the vote in almost every demographic group, notably even amongst black and Latino working-class communities. In fact, in several states where Trump performed strongly or improved his vote share, voters simultaneously endorsed progressive ballot initiatives, such as measures to protect abortion rights or increase the minimum wage.

The key factor behind Trump’s victory lies in his ability to tap into, articulate, and mobilise a widespread and deeply rooted anti-establishment sentiment that permeates American society.

A striking example of this phenomenon can be seen in the public response to the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO by Luigi Mangione. While the act itself was shocking, the public reaction – marked by sympathy for the assailant rather than the victim – was even more revealing. Mangione has come to be seen by many as a kind of folk hero. Notably, this response was not confined to the political left but was also shared by a section of conservatives and Republican voters, including Trump supporters.

This situation presents a paradox. Trump, despite being a billionaire and surrounding himself with other billionaires, has successfully positioned himself as the voice of anti-establishment anger. This contradiction highlights the incoherent and distorted nature of the current political mood. Nevertheless, it does reflect a genuine and widespread disaffection with mainstream institutions: with big business, with political elites, and with the state apparatus as a whole.

The root cause of this anti-establishment anger can be found in the crisis of capitalism. It has reached massive proportions since the crisis of 2008, from which the system has not yet fully recovered. Support for bourgeois democracy in the advanced capitalist countries was built for decades on the idea that capitalism was able to satisfy some of the basic needs of the working class (healthcare, education, pensions…) and the expectation that each generation’s living standards would improve, however slightly, in comparison with those of the previous generation.

That is no longer the case. In the United States, in 1970, more than 90 percent of 30-year-olds earned higher incomes than their parents had at the same age. However, by 2010, this percentage had decreased to 50 percent. By 2017, only 37 percent of Americans anticipated that their children would achieve better living standards than they themselves had.

According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, since the early 1980s, the real wages of working-class Americans have either remained the same or decreased, particularly as jobs were outsourced to other countries. Similarly, the Economic Policy Institute reports that wages for lower- and middle-income households have seen little to no growth since the late 1970s, while the cost of living has continued to rise.

At the same time there is an obscene polarisation of wealth. On the one hand, a small handful of billionaires are increasing their assets. On the other hand, a growing number of working people find it more difficult to make ends meet. They are faced with austerity cuts, the purchasing power of wages being eaten up by inflation, increased energy bills, a housing crisis, etc.

The media, the politicians, the established political parties, parliaments, the judiciary, all are quite rightly seen as representing the interests of a small privileged elite, making decisions to defend their own narrow, selfish interests rather than serving the needs of the many.

The crisis of 2008 was followed by brutal austerity cuts in all countries. All the conquests of the past came under attack. The masses saw attacks on their living standards whilst the banks were bailed out. That gave rise to enormous anger, mass protest movements and, above all, to an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy of all bourgeois institutions.

In the first instance, that mood, exemplified in the mass anti-austerity movements around 2011, found an expression on the left. There was a rise of left-wing, anti-establishment figures and parties across Europe and the United States: Podemos, Syriza, Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, among others. Yet each of these movements ultimately betrayed the expectations which had been created. The limits of the reformist politics of their leaders were exposed.

It was the abject failure of these left figures that paved the way for the rise of reactionary demagogues like Trump.

The same processes are at play in most advanced capitalist countries: the crisis of capitalism, attacks on the working class, bankruptcy of the left, and the rise of right-wing demagogues riding the wave of an anti-establishment mood.

Danger of fascism or Bonapartism?

Even before Trump was elected, there was a noisy campaign in the bourgeois media and the Left to denounce him as a fascist.

Marxism is a science. Like all sciences, it possesses a scientific terminology. Words such as ‘fascism’ have, for us, precise meanings. They are not mere terms of abuse, or labels that can be conveniently stuck onto any individual who does not meet with our approval.

Let us begin with a precise definition of fascism. In the Marxist sense, fascism is a counter-revolutionary movement – a mass movement composed principally of the lumpen proletariat and the enraged petty bourgeoisie. It is used as a battering ram to crush and atomise the working class and establish a totalitarian state in which the bourgeoisie hands state power over to a fascist bureaucracy.

The chief characteristic of the fascist state is extreme centralisation and absolute state power, in which the banks and big monopolies are protected, but subjected to strong central control by a large and powerful fascist bureaucracy. In What is National Socialism?, Trotsky explains:

“German fascism, like Italian fascism, raised itself to power on the backs of the petty bourgeoisie, which it turned into a battering ram against the organizations of the working class and the institutions of democracy. But fascism in power is least of all the rule of the petty bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it is the most ruthless dictatorship of monopoly capital.”

Such, in general terms, are the main features of fascism. How does this compare with the ideology and content of the Trump phenomenon? We have already had the experience of one Trump government, which – according to the dire warnings of the Democrats and the entire liberal establishment – would proceed to abolish democracy. It did no such thing.

No major steps were taken to limit the right to strike and demonstrate, still less to abolish free trade unions. Elections were held as usual, and finally, although amidst a general uproar, Trump was succeeded by Joe Biden in an election. Say what you like about the first Trump government, but it bore no relation whatsoever to any kind of fascism.

Furthermore, the class balance of forces has changed significantly since the 1930s. In the advanced capitalist countries the peasantry, which represented a large section of the population, has been reduced to very small numbers, and professions which were previously considered ‘middle class’ (civil servants, doctors, teachers) have become proletarianised, with these sectors joining unions and going on strike. The social weight of the working class was enormously strengthened by the development of the productive forces during the enormous economic upswing that followed the end of the Second World War.

The ideology of Trumpism – insofar as it exists – is very far from fascism. Far from desiring a strong state, Donald Trump’s ideal is that of free market capitalism, in which the state plays little or no role at all (with the exception of protectionist tariffs).

Others have raised the idea that Trump represents a Bonapartist regime. The idea here, again, is to portray Trump as a dictator set on a path to crush the working class. But this form of labelling does not explain anything. In reality, far from attempting to crush the working class, Trump is appealing to it demagogically and trying to appease it. Of course, being a bourgeois politician he represents interests that are fundamentally opposed to those of the workers. But that does not make him a dictator.

It is possible to point to this or that element in the present situation that can be said to be an element of Bonapartism. That may be so. But similar comments could be made of almost any recent bourgeois democratic regime.

Merely to contain certain elements of a phenomenon does not yet signify the actual emergence of that phenomenon as such. One could, of course, say there are elements of Bonapartism present in Trumpism. But that is not at all the same as saying a Bonapartist regime actually exists in the United States.

The problem is that ‘Bonapartism’ is a very elastic term. It covers a wide gamut of things, starting with the classical concept of Bonapartism, which is basically rule by the sword. It is not useful to analyse the present Trump government in Washington in this fashion, which, despite its many peculiarities, still remains a bourgeois democracy. Our task is not to assign labels to things, but to follow the process as it unfolds and understand its essential aspects.

Tectonic shifts in world relations

Trump’s foreign policy represents a major turn in world relations and the end of the liberal world order which had existed for 80 years after the Second World War. It is a recognition of the relative decline of US imperialism and of the existence of rival imperialist powers, Russia and particularly China, its main imperialist rival in the world arena.

At the end of the Second World War, the US emerged enormously strengthened. With Europe and Japan ruined by the war, America accounted for 50 percent of world GDP and for 60 percent of world manufacturing output. Its only serious rival on the world arena was the Soviet Union, which had emerged strengthened from the war, having defeated Nazi Germany and advanced across the continent.

The Chinese revolution further strengthened the Stalinist bloc. The US worked to rebuild Western Europe and Japan in an effort to contain the ‘advance of Communism’. The Soviet bureaucracy was not interested in world revolution and was quite prepared to reach a modus vivendi with Washington, expressed in the policy of ‘peaceful coexistence’.

Thus followed a period of relative equilibrium between the US and the USSR, two nuclear powers, which was known as the Cold War. On the basis of American domination, a series of formally multilateral institutions were created to manage world relations (the United Nations) and the world economy (the IMF and the World Bank set up at the Bretton Woods Conference). That equilibrium was reinforced by the post-war economic upswing, a period of extraordinary development of the productive forces and of the world market.

This period lasted until the collapse of Stalinism in 1989-1991 and the restoration of capitalism in Russia and China. That produced another major turn in the world situation. The United States had become the dominant imperialist power, not challenged by anyone.

The 1991 imperialist war against Iraq was carried out under the auspices of the UN with Russia voting in favour and China merely abstaining. There seemed to be no opposition to the domination of US imperialism. From an economic point of view, Washington pushed globalisation and ‘neoliberalism’: that is the further integration of the world market, under the domination of US imperialism, and the rolling back of the state.

That period of unfettered domination of US imperialism has been slowly eroded over the last 35 years, to the point where a completely new situation has now emerged.

Driven by its supreme arrogance, the US launched the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But here, history began to go into reverse. The Americans were bogged down in these unwinnable wars for 15 years, at a great cost to themselves in terms of expenditure and loss of personnel. In August 2021, they were forced into a humiliating retreat from Afghanistan.

These experiences left the US public with no appetite for foreign military adventures and the American ruling class very wary of committing ground troops abroad. Along with the rise of new regional and world powers, the relative balance of forces globally was shifting. US imperialism learnt nothing from these experiences. It refused to admit the new balance of forces and tried instead to maintain its domination and thus became embroiled in a whole series of conflicts that it could not win.

A multipolar world?

The world situation is dominated by enormous instability in world relations. This is the result of the struggle for world hegemony between the US, the world’s most powerful imperialist power, which is in relative decline, and China, a younger, more dynamic rising imperialist power. We are witnessing a tremendous shift, comparable in scale to the movement of the tectonic plates on the Earth’s crust. Such movements are accompanied by explosions of all sorts. The war in Ukraine – where a humiliating defeat for US-NATO is being prepared – and the conflict in the Middle East, are expressions of this fact.

Trump’s approach to world relations represent an attempt to recognise that the US cannot be the world’s only policeman. In his view, and that of his close collaborators, the attempt of the US to maintain hegemony and total domination is extremely costly, impractical and damaging to its core national security interests.

That does not mean that the US ceases to be an imperialist power or that Trump’s policies are in the interests of the oppressed peoples of the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. Trump’s foreign policy represents a sharp delimitation of what are and what are not US core national security interests, starting in North America.

When Trump says America needs to have control over the Panama Canal and Greenland, he is expressing the needs of US imperialism. The Panama Canal is a crucial trading route, linking the Pacific with the Gulf of Mexico and carrying 40 percent of the US’ container traffic.

As for Greenland, it has always had an important geostrategic location, which is why the US has a military presence on the island. Global warming has led to increased shipping traffic between the Pacific and the Atlantic across the Arctic. Less polar ice means easier access to sea beds, where there are huge reserves of rare earth minerals. The island itself also has important deposits of critical minerals (rare earths, uranium) as well as gas and oil, which are now becoming more accessible, also as a result of global warming. Here the US is in competition with China and Russia for the control of these trading routes and resources.

Trump’s foreign policy is based on the recognition of the limitations of US power. The consequence of that is an attempt to disentangle America from a series of costly conflicts (Ukraine, Middle East) through deals, in order to rebuild its power and to concentrate on its main rival on the world arena, China.

In the whole period since the end of the Second World War, or perhaps even before that, US imperialism maintained the pretence of acting on behalf of human rights, spreading democracy and the ‘rules-based order’, defending ‘the sacred principle of the inviolability of national borders’, and so on.

They were acting through ‘multilateral’ international institutions, which were apparently neutral, in which all countries had a say: the United Nations, the WTO, the IMF, and so on. In reality, this was just a fig leaf. It was always a farce. Either the interests of US imperialism were expressed through these institutions, or they would ignore them completely. The difference now is that Trump does not care at all for any of these pretences. He seems determined to tear up the whole rulebook and express things more openly, as they really are.

Some have argued that faced with unbridled US power, the idea of a multipolar world was something progressive, that would allow oppressed countries a greater degree of sovereignty, an ideal that we should fight for. Now we can see a glimpse of what a ‘multipolar’ world might look like: imperialist powers carving out the world into spheres of influence, bullying countries into submitting to one or another.

The relative decline of US imperialism

We must emphasise that when we speak of the decline of US imperialism, we refer to a relative decline. That is, a decline in comparison with its previous position relative to other competing powers. The United States remains, on all measures, the most powerful and reactionary force in the world.

In 1985, the US represented 36 percent of the world’s GDP. It is now down to 26 percent (2024). In the same period, China has grown from 2.5 percent of the world’s GDP to 18.5 percent. Japan, which reached a peak of 18 percent in 1995, has now collapsed to just 5.2 percent.

The US still dominates the world economy through its control of financial markets. A massive 58 percent of the world’s currency reserves are held in US dollars (while only 2 percent are held in Chinese renminbi), although the figure is down from 73 percent in 2001. The dollar also represents 58 percent of the world’s exports invoicing. In terms of net outflow of Foreign Direct Investment (a proxy for export of capital), the US is top of the world with US$454 trillion, while China (including Hong Kong) comes second at US$287 trillion.

It is a country’s economic clout which gives it international power, but this needs to be backed by military might. The US’ military spending represents 40 percent of the world’s total, with China coming second at 12 percent and Russia third with 4.5 percent. The US spends more than the following 10 countries in the ranking combined.

Nevertheless, the USA can no longer claim to be the undisputed master of the world. The colossal economic power of China and its consequent advances in military strength, together with the military superiority which Russia has demonstrated on the battlefields of Ukraine, present it with a formidable challenge. Thus, on all sides, the limitations of America’s global power are being cruelly exposed.

This relative decline finds its expression economically with the partial flight of capital away from the dollar, US treasuries, and American stocks. With the US monopolies facing greater competition from international rivals, particularly from China, American stocks are no longer considered the surefire bet that they previously were by investors. Similarly, as the US federal debt mountain grows, and the American government resorts to greater deficit financing, US treasuries (government debt bonds) are no longer considered the financial safe haven they once were. This has led to a weakening of the dollar – in spite of US tariffs – and its dominance in the arena of global finance.

This represents a ‘market correction’, bringing the price of America’s currency, assets, and bonds closer into line with US capitalism’s real diminished economic position. Nevertheless, as with US military power and America’s former role as the world’s policeman, there is no viable alternative to the dollar when it comes to world trade and finance. Hence the growing alarm amongst bourgeois strategists about the chaotic impact on the global financial system and world economy if confidence in the dollar were to collapse.

This is another way in which the relative decline of US capitalism and the emerging ‘multipolarity’ will contribute towards greater uncertainty and instability on a world scale. One by one, all the pillars of the postwar order are being eroded and undermined, with explosive consequences – economically, militarily, and politically.

Russia’s military clout

While Russia is not an economic colossus comparable with China, it has established a solid economic and technological base. This has enabled it to successfully withstand the unprecedented economic aggression the West has inflicted on it under the banner of ‘sanctions’. Moreover, it has done this while carrying on a war that has defeated all the weapons systems hurled against it by western imperialism. It has built a powerful army that is a match for the combined forces of the European states; it has built a formidable defence industry that is outproducing both the United States and Europe in tanks, artillery, ammunition, missiles and drones; and it possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, which it inherited from the USSR.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the wholesale looting of the planned economy, the Russian ruling class toyed with the idea of being accepted at the world table on equal terms. They even floated the idea of joining NATO. This was rejected. The US wanted to exercise complete and unfettered domination over the world and they saw no need to share power with a weak and crisis-ridden Russia.

The humiliation of Russia was starkly revealed, first when Germany and the US engineered the reactionary break-up of Yugoslavia in Russia’s traditional sphere of influence, and then with the bombing of Serbia in 1999. Yeltsin, a buffoonish drunk and a puppet of US imperialism, was a representative of that subordinate relationship.

However, as Russia gradually recovered from the economic crisis, the ruling circles were no longer prepared to accept their humiliation in the international arena. This is what was behind the rise of Putin, the cunning Bonapartist, who manipulated his way to power by all kinds of manoeuvres.

They started to push back against the eastward advance of NATO, a move which broke all the promises made to the Russians in 1990 when they were promised there would be no eastward expansion of NATO, in exchange for accepting a unified Germany within the alliance.

In 2008, Russia waged a short and effective war in Georgia, destroying the country’s army, which had been trained and equipped by NATO. That was the first warning shot by Russia, signalling it would no longer accept the encroachments of the West. Syria and Ukraine were the next. In each of these countries, the strength of Russia in relation to US imperialism was put to the test. The relative decline of US imperialism, meanwhile, was further revealed in their humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was the logical conclusion of the West’s refusal to accept Russia’s national security concerns, expressed in the demand of neutrality for Ukraine and a halt to the eastward expansion of NATO. When Donald Trump asserts that this war was unnecessary, and that if he had been president it would have never taken place, this is probably true. US imperialism and its European allies were well aware that NATO membership of Ukraine was a red line from the point of view of the national security interests of Russia. Despite this, they decided to invite the Ukrainians to apply for NATO membership in 2008. This was a blatant provocation, which logically would lead to the most serious consequences. It was this fatal step that eventually led to war.

The West insisted on Ukraine’s ‘right to join NATO’ – when its neutral status, the ban on foreign military bases and non-participation in military blocs was something that had been agreed, and even written into the Ukrainian declaration of independence. The head of the CIA, William J. Burns, had repeatedly warned against it. But the clique of warmongers who ran the foreign policy of the Biden administration – and Joe Biden himself – had other ideas.

Biden thought he could use Ukraine as cannon fodder in a campaign to weaken Russia and cripple its role in the world. A country like Russia, a rival to US imperialism, could not be allowed to threaten US global hegemony. In March 2022, Biden, puffed up by his own arrogance, even raised the idea of regime change in Moscow! Together with the Europeans, he was convinced that economic sanctions and military exhaustion would bring Russia to the point of collapse. They seriously underestimated the extent of Russia’s economic and military power. As a result, US imperialism has found itself embroiled in an unwinnable war, which has represented a colossal drain on its financial and military resources.

Trump now insists that this disaster was not his doing. He says: “This is not my war. It is Joe Biden’s war.” And that is correct. The strategists of capital are quite capable of making mistakes based on miscalculations. And this is a case in point. When Trump says that the war in Ukraine does not represent America’s “core interests,” he is absolutely correct. America faces a far greater threat in Asia and the Pacific in the rising power of China, in addition to other problems in the Middle East and a growing economic crisis. That explains his haste in trying to extricate US imperialism from the treacherous swamp of Ukraine. But the problems created by Biden and his European stooges are proving difficult to resolve.

The men and women who run the show in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin systematically sabotaged every attempt to bring about a peaceful solution. In April 2022, negotiations in Turkey between Ukraine and Russia were quite advanced and could have led to an end of the war, on the basis of accepting a number of Russian demands. Western imperialism, in the person of Boris Johnson, scuppered the talks, pressuring Zelensky not to sign on the promise of unlimited support which would lead to Ukraine’s full victory.

Today, the US faces a humiliating defeat in Ukraine. Sanctions have not had the desired effect. Rather than suffering economic collapse, Russia has enjoyed steady economic growth rates far exceeding those of the West. Far from becoming isolated, it has now established closer economic ties with China and a number of key countries which are meant to be in the US sphere of influence. Countries like India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others, have helped it to circumvent sanctions.

China and Russia have now become much closer allies united by their opposition to US domination of the world, and have gathered around them a whole series of other countries. When the US defeat in Ukraine is finally realised it will have enormous and lasting consequences for world relations, further weakening the power of US imperialism across the world.

The US-NATO defeat in Ukraine will send a powerful message. The world’s mightiest imperialist power cannot always impose its will. Furthermore, Russia has emerged from it with a large army, tested in the latest methods and techniques of modern warfare, and with a powerful military-industrial complex.

Trump’s policy here represents a sharp turn from the previous policy of US imperialism. He has recognised that this war against Russia cannot be won and therefore is attempting to pull the US out of it. There is also a calculation that reaching a deal with Russia which recognises her national security interests (i.e. those of Russian imperialism) might pull her back from her close alliance with China, US imperialism’s main rival on the world scene. However, it is unlikely that these calculations will work, since during the three years of the war, the West has pushed Russia too close to China for them to easily unwind this process. Recent statements and actions by both the Russian and Chinese governments indicate that both sides view their rapprochement as strategic.

The rise of China as an imperialist power

China’s rapid transformation from extreme economic backwardness to a powerful capitalist country has few parallels in modern history. In an amazingly short space of time, it has risen to a position where it is able to challenge the power of mighty US imperialism.

China today has absolutely nothing in common with the weak, semi-feudal and semi-colonial, dominated nation that it was in 1938. In fact, at the present time, China is not only a capitalist country, but one which now has all the features of an imperialist power in its own right.

It is impossible to explain this transformation without understanding the crucial role played by the Chinese Revolution of 1949, which abolished landlordism and capitalism and created the basis for a nationalised planned economy, which was the prior condition for transforming China from a backward, semi-colonial nation into its present position as an economic giant.

As a latecomer to the international arena, it has had to fight to control sources of raw materials and energy for its industry, fields of investment for its capital, trading routes for its imports and exports, and markets for its products. In all these fields, it has scored notable successes.

The 30-year rise of China has been the result of massive investment in the means of production and reliance on the world markets. Initially, it took advantage of its large reserves of cheap labour to export goods like textiles and toys to the world market.

Now, it is a technologically advanced capitalist economy, which has a world-dominating position in a series of high-tech markets (electric vehicles and EV batteries, photovoltaic cells, antibiotic ingredients, commercial drones, 5G cellular communications infrastructure, nuclear power plants, etc.), not only in terms of volume of sales, but also in terms of innovation.

China is also a world leader in the field of robotics. It ranks number three in the world in industrial robot density, with 470 per 10,000 manufacturing workers, even though its manufacturing workforce is over 37 million. This puts it behind only South Korea (1012) and Singapore (770), and ahead of Germany (429) and Japan (419), whilst being well above the level of the US (295). These are figures for 2023, and China’s ranking has probably improved since then, as in 2023 it represented 51 percent of all new industrial robot installations in the world.

In terms of the export of capital, China is second only to the US. In 2023, the US accounted for 32.8 percent of global Foreign Direct Investment outflows, with China and Hong Kong representing a combined 20.1 percent. In terms of accumulated FDI stock, the US had 15.1 percent of the global total, while China and Hong Kong accounted for 11.3 percent.

As a result of the way capitalism was restored in China, the state plays an important role in the economy. It has had a conscious policy of fostering and funding the development of technology. ‘Made in China 2025’ had the aim of achieving a great leap forward in key industries, and in making the country self-sufficient and not dependent on the West. China’s research and development expenditure has significantly increased and is almost on a par with that of the US.

This success was not gained without creating growing contradictions and conflicts with other capitalist nations, leading eventually to the present trade war with the United States.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening up of new markets under the policy of globalisation, the growth of the capitalist economy in China was initially seen by western economists and investors as a golden opportunity.

Western investors fell over themselves in their haste to set up factories in China, where they could exploit an apparently endless supply of cheap labour. Between 1997 and 2019, 36 percent of global capital stock growth occurred in China. So great was the penetration of China by US capital, that the two economies appeared to be indissolubly joined at the hip.

Growth in China actually played a crucial role in the development of the world economy for a number of decades. In 2008, the western bourgeois even hoped that China would help pull the world economy out of recession. However, as we pointed out at the time, it had a very serious and threatening downside for them.

These factories, utilising modern technology, would inevitably produce vast quantities of cheap commodities which had to be exported, since the demand for them in China itself remained limited. Ultimately, this has caused serious problems for the United States and other western economies.

Everything changed into its opposite. The question was increasingly posed: who is helping whom? It is true that big profits were being made by western investors, but China was establishing advanced manufacturing capabilities, technological expertise, infrastructure, and a skilled workforce. This increasingly came to be seen as a threat, particularly in America.

China has now become an irreplaceable supplier for global manufacturers, whether producing finished consumer products like iPhones or essential capital goods and components. China is the primary supplier for 36 percent of US imports, fulfilling over 70 percent of the US demand for those products.

China has become a systemic rival of the US on the world scene. This is the real meaning of Trump’s trade war on the country. This is a struggle between two imperialist powers to assert their relative strength on the world market.

Washington has used the most extreme measures to do so, banning the sale of the most advanced microchips to China, barring the sale of the most advanced lithography machines, and preventing companies like Huawei from bidding for 5G infrastructure contracts in several countries, etc.

But the attempts by the US to block China’s development in cutting edge technology have had the opposite effect. In response, China has accelerated the drive towards achieving self-reliance. While it still faces bottle-necks, for instance, as a result of not having access to the most advanced EUV lithography machines which are used to manufacture the most advanced microprocessors, China has used ingenuity to find partial work-arounds.

It is true that, despite its progress, many contradictions exist in the Chinese economy. Productivity of labour in China has been growing through the development of science, industry and technology, while in Europe it has been stagnant for a long period of time and in the US has only experienced some modest growth in recent years. Yet Chinese productivity of labour overall still lags behind that of the United States by a sizeable margin. It will take time for the gap to be closed.

It is also fair to assume that the unprecedented rates of growth that China attained over the last few decades will not be maintained. Indeed, the slowdown has already begun. In the 1990s, China grew at a breathtaking pace of 9 percent a year, with peaks of 14 percent. Between 2012 and 2019 it grew between 6 and 7 percent. It is now around 5 percent. Yet it is also the case that the Chinese economy as a whole is still growing faster than the advanced capitalist countries in the West.

Of course, by the very fact of having become a capitalist economy and one heavily integrated into the world market, China must eventually face all the problems that this entails. Already, there are regional disparities in economic development as well as massive income inequality. Unemployment has risen among migrant workers and youth.

Huge economic stimulus packages, Keynesian measures, have led to an increase in debt. Government debt to GDP, which was only 23 percent in 2000 has now increased to 60.5 percent in 2024. This is a significant increase, but it is still lower than most advanced capitalist economies. Total debt (state, corporate and household) however, has reached 300 percent of GDP.

The rise of protectionism and the slowdown of world trade will undoubtedly affect China. The only manner in which it can overcome this crisis will be to push harder to unload its overproduction onto the world market, which in turn will add to the tensions on a world scale and at the same time deepen the crisis of the system as a whole.

In this titanic struggle between two economic giants, the question is posed point blank: who will prevail? The columns of the western press are full of negative appraisals and dire warnings for the future of the Chinese economy.

The western press consistently seeks to present a very black picture of the Chinese economy – as they invariably do in relation to the Russian economy, which, however, is still maintaining a healthy growth rate of around 4 to 5 percent a year. This hardly suggests an economy that is on the verge of collapse.

China is certainly not immune from crisis, but it also has considerable reserves to meet this challenge and emerge from it with far less damage than is often touted in the western press. Above all, one must bear in mind that China, although it is a capitalist country, still has many peculiarities.

It is, in fact, an economy that still maintains very considerable elements of state control, intervention and planning. This works very much in its favour, when compared to countries like the United States.

There are also important political, cultural and psychological factors that can play a decisive role in any conflict with foreign imperialist powers. The Chinese people have long and bitter memories of their past subjugation, exploitation and humiliation at the hands of imperialism.

However much they may dislike their own ruling class, the hatred of foreign imperialists runs far deeper and can provide a powerful support to the regime in its struggle with the USA.

The ruling circles of the USA have watched the rise of China with increasing panic. They have adopted a belligerent attitude, expressed, on the one hand, by Trump’s outrageous tariff increases, on the other hand by constant provocations over Taiwan.

The warmongers in Washington are constantly accusing China of planning to invade what the Chinese regard as a rebellious island which is rightfully theirs.

But China’s ruling circles are run by men who have long learned the art of patience in diplomacy. They have no need to invade Taiwan. They know that, sooner or later, it will be reunited with the mainland. They waited decades to regain control of Hong Kong from the British. And they see no reason to seek a hasty military solution to the problem.

Only a serious miscalculation on the part of the warmongers in Washington, or a rash decision by Taiwanese nationalists to proclaim independence, would provoke them into taking military action. Under such circumstances, the men in Beijing would hold all the cards.

There is no way that Taiwan could hold out for long against the might of the Chinese army and navy, which is stationed only a few miles away, whereas the Americans would have to move a large force to meet difficult and dangerous conditions across an entire ocean.

In any case, there is nothing to indicate that Donald Trump himself is looking for military conflict with China. He prefers other methods – the imposition of crippling sanctions and high tariffs, to force China to submit. But China has no intention of submitting, either in an economic war or in actual military conflict.

Until recently, China has projected its power mainly through economic means, but it is also building its military power. China has recently announced a 7.2 percent increase in defence spending. It already possesses a huge and powerful land army and is now in the process of developing an equally powerful and modern navy to defend its interests in the high seas.

A recent BBC article states that it now possesses the largest navy in the world, surpassing that of the United States. Nor is it correct to say that its Armed Forces are based on antiquated technology and equipment. The same article states that:

“China is now fully committed to developing ‘intelligentised’ warfare, or future military methods based on disruptive technologies – especially artificial intelligence, according to the US Department of Defense.”

It adds that:

“China’s Academy of Military Science has been given a mandate to make sure that this happens, through “civil-military fusion”, in other words joining up Chinese private sector technology companies with the country’s defence industries. Reports suggest that China may already be using artificial intelligence in military robotics and missile guidance systems, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned naval vessels.”

Moreover, China has one of the most active space programmes in the world. Among other missions, it has ambitious plans to build a space station on the moon and visit Mars. Apart from their intrinsic scientific interest, these plans are clearly related to a highly ambitious programme of rearmament.

The development of capitalism in China is now an established fact. It is pointless to deny this. Nor, objectively speaking, is it a negative development from the standpoint of the world revolution, for it has created a massive working class, one which has become used to a steady increase in its living standards over a protracted period. This is a young, fresh working class, unsaddled by defeats, not bound by reformist organisations.

“China is a sleeping dragon. Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world” is a statement frequently attributed to Napoleon. Whether he said it or not, it certainly applies to the powerful Chinese proletariat at the present time. The moment of truth may be delayed for some time. But when that mighty force starts to move it will provoke an explosion of seismic proportions.

Balancing between the powers

The relative decline of US imperialism and the rise of China have created a situation in which some countries can balance one against the other and gain a small degree of autonomy to pursue their own interests, at the very least at a regional level. This includes countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, India and others to different degrees.

The rise of the BRICS, which were formally launched in 2009, represent an attempt by China and Russia to strengthen their position on the world arena, to protect their economic interests and to bind a whole series of countries into their sphere of influence.

The implementation of wide-ranging economic sanctions by US imperialism against Russia accelerated this process. In working out mechanisms to avoid and overcome sanctions, Russia has made a series of alliances with other countries, including Saudi Arabia, India, China and many others.

Rather than demonstrating US power, the failure of sanctions revealed the limits of US imperialism’s ability to impose its will and pushed a number of countries to consider alternatives to US domination of financial transactions. Membership of the BRICS has expanded with new countries being invited or applying to join.

When dealing with this question it is important to have a sense of proportion. As important as these changes are, the BRICS are riddled with all sorts of contradictions. Brazil, while being part of the BRICS, is at the same time part of Mercosur, the South American free trade bloc, which is negotiating a free trade agreement with the EU.

India is a part of it, but is reluctant to allow new members to join as that would diminish its weight in the bloc. It also has a ‘strategic partnership’ with the US; it is part of the Quad security and military alliance with the US, Japan and Australia; and its Navy conducts regular military exercises with the US.

What is significant here is that a country like India, a US ally and a rival of China, has played an important role in helping Russia bypass US sanctions. India buys Russian oil at a discount price and then resells it on to Europe in the form of refined products at a higher price. For now, the US has decided not to take measures against India.

So far, the BRICS are no more than a loose alliance of countries. The United States’ imperialist bullying of its rivals is what is pushing them closer together and encouraging others to join.

Crisis in Europe

While the US has suffered a relative decline in its strength and influence globally, the old European imperialist powers – Britain, France, Germany and the others – have declined much further since their former days of glory, to second-rate world powers. It is worth noting that Europe, as an imperialist bloc, has been particularly weakened in the last decade. A series of military coups, for instance, have displaced France from Central Africa and the Sahel, largely to the benefit of Russia.

The European powers followed US imperialism in its Ukraine proxy war against Russia, something that has had a devastating impact on their economy. Since the collapse of Stalinism in 1989-1991, Germany had pursued a policy of expanding its influence to the East and had established close economic links with Russia. German industry had benefited from cheap Russian energy. Before the Ukraine war, more than half of Germany’s natural gas, a third of all the oil, and half of its coal imports were coming from Russia.

This was one of the reasons for the success of German industry in the world, the other two being the deregulation of the labour market (carried out under social democratic governments) and the investment ploughed into industry in the second half of the last century. The domination of the European Union by the German ruling class and free trade with China and the US completed a virtuous cycle that allowed Germany to come out apparently unscathed from the 2008 crisis.

The situation was similar for the EU as a whole, where Russia was the largest supplier of petroleum (24.8 percent), pipeline gas (48 percent) and coal (47.9 percent). European sanctions imposed on Russia after the Ukraine war started led to much higher energy prices, with a knock on effect on inflation and the loss of competitiveness of European exports. In the end, Europe has had to import much more expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US and much more expensive Russian oil products via India.

In fact, a large part of Germany’s gas still comes from Russia, only now it does so in the form of LNG, at a much higher price. The German, French and Italian ruling classes have shot themselves in the foot and now they are paying a heavy price. Already under the Biden presidency, the United States has repaid its European allies by waging a trade war against them through a battery of protectionist measures and industrial subsidies.

The European Economic Community, and later the European Union, represented an attempt on the part of the weakened imperialist powers of the continent to huddle together after the Second World War in the hope of having a bigger say in world politics and the economy. In practice, German capital dominated the other weaker economies. While there was economic growth, a certain degree of economic integration was achieved and even a single currency.

However, the different national ruling classes composing it remained in existence, each one with their own particular interests. Despite all the talk, there is no common economic policy, no united foreign policy and no single army to implement it. While German capital was based on competitive industrial exports and its interests lay in the East, France draws large sums in agricultural subsidies from the EU, and its imperialist interests are to be found in the former French colonies, mainly in Africa.

The sovereign debt crisis which followed the 2008 recession stretched the EU to its limits. The situation has now worsened even further. The recent report by former European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, paints the crisis of European capitalism in alarming terms, but he is not wrong. At bottom, the reason the EU is not able to compete with its imperialist rivals in the world is the fact that it is not a single economic-political entity, but rather a collection of several small and medium-sized economies, each one with their own ruling class, their own national industries, their own sets of regulations, etc. Europe’s economy is sclerotic and has been overtaken by its rivals in terms of productivity growth.

The productive forces have outgrown the nation state, and this problem is particularly acute in the small but highly developed economies of Europe.

The protracted decline of European imperialist powers was masked by the fact that the US was underwriting its defence, and supporting the EU politically. For the best part of 80 years, US imperialism propped up Europe, under its domination, as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. This was a very useful arrangement for European capitalism as it was able to outsource a sizeable portion of its military defence costs to its powerful cousin on the other side of the Atlantic.

That is now over. US imperialism under Trump has decided to manage its relative decline by trying to reach an agreement with Russia so as to better concentrate on its main rival in the world arena: China. The centre of world politics and the economy is no longer the Atlantic but the Pacific. That shift has been in the making since the end of the Second World War, but has now come to the fore in an explosive manner.

This is a major shock to world relations which no one can ignore. If the US wants to reach an understanding with Russia, that leaves European imperialism in a very weak position. The US is no longer its friend and ally. Some have even gone as far as to say that Washington now regards Europe as a rival or an enemy.

At the very least, Trump has made it clear that the US is no longer prepared to subsidise Europe’s defence. The withdrawal of the US’ protective umbrella, as some have described it, has revealed starkly all the accumulated weaknesses of European imperialism, which have built up over decades of decline.

The crisis of European capitalism has important political and social implications. The rise of right-wing populist, euro-sceptic and anti-establishment forces across the continent is a direct result of it. The European working class, with its forces largely intact and undefeated, will not accept a new round of austerity cuts and mass layoffs without a fight. The stage is set for an explosion of the class struggle.

War in the Middle East

The current conflict in the Middle East can only be understood against the background of the world situation. US imperialism had been weakened in the Middle East, while Russia, China and also Iran had become strengthened. Israel felt threatened. The 7 October attack was a serious blow to the Israeli ruling class. It destroyed the myth of invincibility and questioned the ability of the Zionist state to protect its Jewish citizens, the key question which the Israeli ruling class had used to gather the population behind it.

It also clearly exposed the collapse of the Oslo Accords, signed in the aftermath of the collapse of Stalinism. The whole thing was a cynical fraud from start to finish. The Zionist ruling class never really entertained any idea of conceding the Palestinians a viable homeland. They regarded the Palestinian National Authority (PA) as simply a way of outsourcing the policing of the Palestinians. This discredited Fatah and the PA – seen quite correctly as mere puppets of Israel – has led, with the acquiescence of Israel, to the rise of Hamas, which was seen by many as the only force pursuing the struggle for Palestinian national rights.

In reality, however, the reactionary methods of Hamas have led the Palestinians into a blind alley from which it is hard to see any way out.

The Abraham Accords, signed in 2020 under the pressure of the first Trump administration, were meant to establish the position of Israel in the region as a legitimate actor and to normalise trade relations between it and the Arab countries. This would have meant the burying of Palestinian national aspirations, something the reactionary Arab regimes were quite happy to do. The 7 October attack was a desperate response to that.

The attack was initially met with jubilation by the Palestinians, but it had the most terrible consequences. It handed Netanyahu, who immediately prior had faced a long wave of mass protests, a perfect excuse to launch a genocidal campaign against Gaza. One year later, the Israelis had reduced Gaza to a pile of smoking rubble, but they had not achieved their stated aims: the release of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas. This led to mass demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of Israelis and even a brief general strike in September 2024.

The character of these demonstrations was not one of support for the Palestinian cause, nor of opposition to the war per se. Nevertheless, the fact that there was such a degree of mass opposition to the prime minister in the middle of the war is an indication of the depth of the divisions within Israeli society.

The collapse of his support pushed Netanyahu to escalate the situation with the invasion of Lebanon and an attack on Hezbollah, which was accompanied by constant provocations against Iran. In order to save himself politically, he has repeatedly shown that he would be prepared to unleash a regional war, which would force the US to intervene directly on his side.

Despite the danger that the massacre in Gaza could lead to the revolutionary destabilisation of the reactionary Arab regimes (in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and above all in Jordan), Biden made it clear that his support for Israel was “iron-clad”, and Netanyahu cashed this blank cheque repeatedly, pursuing a path of escalation towards a regional war. As well as the genocidal massacre in Gaza, he launched a ground invasion of Lebanon, air strikes against Iran, Yemen and Syria, and then a ground invasion of Syria.

The sudden and unexpected collapse of the Assad regime in Syria has changed the regional balance of forces once again. Turkey is a minor capitalist power in terms of the world economy, but it is one which has big regional ambitions. Erdogan has very skilfully played the conflict between US imperialism and Russia to his own advantage.

Sensing that Iran and Russia, with whom Erdogan made a deal in Syria in 2016, were otherwise engaged (Russia in Ukraine and Iran in Lebanon), Erdogan decided to back the offensive of the HTS jihadis from Idlib. To everyone’s surprise, that precipitated the complete collapse of the regime. The degree to which it had already been hollowed out by economic sanctions, corruption and sectarianism was much greater than anyone had realised. The current carve up of Syria is the continuation of more than 100 years of imperialist meddling all the way back to the Sykes-Picot agreement.

Ultimately, there can be no peace in the Middle East as long as the Palestinian national question is not resolved. But this cannot be achieved under capitalism. The interests of the Zionist ruling class in Israel (backed by the world’s most powerful imperialist power) do not allow for the formation of a genuine homeland for the Palestinians, and even less for the right of return of millions of refugees.

From a purely military point of view, the Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, a modern capitalist imperialist power with the most sophisticated military technology and an intelligence service which is second to none. It is also fully backed by US imperialism.

So what other forces can the Palestinians rely upon? No confidence can be placed in the reactionary Arab regimes, which pay lip service to the Palestinian cause but which have betrayed it and have collaborated with Israel and imperialism at every step .

The only true friends of the Palestinians are to be found in the Arab street – the oppressed masses of workers, peasants, small traders and the urban and rural poor. But their immediate task is to settle accounts with their own reactionary rulers. This poses the question of the abolition of capitalism through the expropriation of the landlords, bankers and capitalists. Without this, the revolution in North Africa and the Middle East can never succeed.

A powerful working class exists in the region, in Egypt and Turkey above all, but also in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Jordan. A successful uprising in any of these countries, bringing the working class to power, would change the balance of forces. It would thus create conditions more favourable for the liberation of the Palestinians, and would prepare the way for a revolutionary war against Israel, which would inevitably flow from the whole situation.

The state of Israel and its Zionist ruling class can only be defeated by splitting the country’s population along class lines. At the moment, the perspective of a class split in Israel seems distant. However, constant war and strife can eventually lead a section of the Israeli masses to draw the conclusion that the only way to peace is through a just solution of the Palestinian national question.

Without a perspective of the revolutionary socialist transformation of society, endless wars, waged by reactionary governments with imperialist powers pulling the strings, will solve nothing. Under the rule of imperialism, temporary ceasefires and peace agreements will merely prepare the way for new wars. But the general instability that is both the cause of wars and their consequence will create the conditions for a revolutionary movement of the masses in the next period.

The Palestinian revolution will triumph as a socialist revolution and as part of a general uprising of the mass of poor workers and peasants against the reactionary regimes in the region, or it will not triumph at all. The countries of the Middle East and North Africa possess colossal untapped resources which could guarantee a thriving and prosperous society. Instead of this, the entire history of the Middle East and North Africa following so-called independence from direct imperialist rule has been nothing but a nightmare for the majority of the people. The bourgeoisie has shown itself to be incapable of solving any of the fundamental problems.

A most pernicious role has been played by the Stalinists who based themselves on the false theory of ‘two stages’, which artificially separates the proletarian revolution from the so-called bourgeois-democratic revolution. This reactionary theory has led to one disastrous defeat after another, creating conditions for the rise of reactionary and oppressive dictatorial rule and the madness of religious fundamentalism in one country after another. Only a victorious socialist revolution can put an end to this nightmare.

Only a socialist federation can solve the national question once and for all. All peoples, Palestinians and Israeli Jews, but also Kurds, Armenians and all the others, would have the right to live in peace within such a socialist federation. The economic potential of the region would be realised to the full in a common socialist plan of production. Unemployment and poverty would be a thing of the past. On that basis alone, the old national and religious hatreds could be overcome. They would be like the memory of a bad dream.

This is the only real hope for the peoples of the Middle East.

Arms race and militarism

Historically, any significant change in the relative strength of different imperialist powers tended to be settled through war, chiefly the two world wars of the 20th century. Today, the existence of nuclear weapons rules out an open world war in the coming period.

Capitalists go to war to secure markets, fields of investment and spheres of influence. A world war today would lead to the wholesale destruction of infrastructure and life, from which no power would benefit. It would require a crazed Bonapartist leader ruling over a major nuclear power for a world war to take place. That would only be possible on the basis of decisive defeats of the working class. That is not the perspective ahead of us.

Nevertheless, the conflict between imperialist powers, which reflects the struggle to assert a new redivision of the planet, dominates the world situation. This is expressed in several regional wars, which are causing massive destruction and killing tens of thousands of people, as well as in trade and diplomatic tensions, which are growing all the time. Last year saw the highest number of wars since the end of the Second World War.

Furthermore, the war in Ukraine has completely transformed the way warfare is conducted. As is always the case, war allows for the testing of new technologies and techniques in real-life conditions, which are rapidly spurred on and adjusted to the battlefield. Combatant armies are forced to quickly develop means and tactics to counteract them. We have seen the introduction of large numbers of drones (aerial, land and sea), electronic surveillance and jamming techniques, etc.

The only armies to have real-life experience of these new methods are those of Ukraine and Russia. The West is seriously lagging behind in all these fields. The Ukraine war has dramatically shifted the military balance of forces in Russia’s favour.

That does not mean that Russia has an interest in invading Europe, nor even part of it. That so-called threat has been massively hyped up by the ruling class in order to justify a large increase in military spending and in an attempt to reduce public opposition. Russia has no interest in invading western Ukraine – which would be a far more costly and taxing enterprise than the present Russian military campaign – let alone in invading NATO countries.

The threat from the point of view of European capitalism is not really that of a Russian invasion or an open military conflict between Russian and European armies. That would be very costly for both sides. Furthermore, it would involve two sides possessing nuclear weapons, a very dangerous proposition.

The real threat for European imperialism in crisis is to have been abandoned or downgraded by the world’s largest imperialist power, while at the same time being neighbours with another powerful imperialist, which is emerging massively strengthened from the present war.

Russia has a lot of clout (militarily and in terms of energy resources) and is already exercising a powerful pull on Europe’s political scene. Countries like Hungary and Slovakia have already broken ranks with the Atlanticist orientation of the dominant European powers. In others, there are rising political forces moving in a similar direction to one degree or another (Germany, Austria, Romania, Czech Republic, Italy).

What European imperialism is defending is not the lives and homes of the people of Europe, but the profits of its multinational companies and the predatory imperialist ambitions of its capitalist ruling classes. Russia is a rival of German capitalism in Eastern and Central Europe. Russia is a rival of French imperialism in Africa.

The long drawn-out crisis of European capitalism means that once the protection of the US is withdrawn, it will be unable to stand on its own. It is threatened with being carved up between the rival interests of the US, Russia and China. Centrifugal tendencies are becoming ever stronger, as each capitalist class begins to assert its own national interests. It is not at all excluded that these tendencies will eventually lead to a break up of the European Union.

European capitalism’s scramble to rearm

In the case of Europe, the drive towards militarism and arms spending is the result of the strengthening of Russian imperialism as it emerges victorious from the war in Ukraine, the withdrawal of US military support, and the attempt of European powers to show they still play a role in the world arena.

Russia’s military expenditure for 2024 was around 13.1 trillion rubles ($145.9 billion), which accounts for 6.68 percent of the nation’s GDP. This marks an increase of over 40 percent compared to the previous year. When adjusted for purchasing power parity, this figure approximates $462 billion.

Meanwhile, Europe has substantially increased its military spending by 50 percent in nominal terms since 2014, reaching a collective total of $457 billion in 2024. In this case, adjusting the Russian figure for purchasing power makes sense, since what we are comparing is the amount of tanks, artillery pieces or ammunition that each dollar can purchase, in Russia and in Europe. In other words, Russia is outspending the whole of Europe when it comes to the military.

Russia is also out-producing all of NATO, including the US, in terms of ammunition, rockets, and tanks. According to NATO intelligence estimates, Russia is producing 3 million artillery munitions a year. The whole of NATO, including the US, has the capacity to produce only 1.2 million, less than half the Russian figure.

Furthermore, the war in Ukraine has completely transformed the way warfare is conducted. As is always the case, war allows for the testing of new technologies and techniques in real-life conditions, which are rapidly spurred on and adjusted to the battlefield. Combatant armies are forced to quickly develop means and tactics to counteract them. We have seen the introduction of large numbers of drones (aerial, land and sea), electronic surveillance and jamming techniques, etc.

The only armies to have real-life experience of these new methods are those of Ukraine and Russia. The West is seriously lagging behind in all these fields. The Ukraine war has dramatically shifted the military balance of forces in Russia’s favour.

That does not mean that Russia has an interest in invading Europe, nor even part of it. That so-called threat has been massively hyped up by the ruling class in order to justify a large increase in military spending and in an attempt to reduce public opposition. Russia has no interest in invading western Ukraine – which would be a far more costly and taxing enterprise than the present Russian military campaign – let alone in invading NATO countries.

The threat from the point of view of European capitalism is not really that of a Russian invasion or an open military conflict between Russian and European armies. That would be very costly for both sides. Furthermore, it would involve two sides possessing nuclear weapons, a very dangerous proposition.

The real threat for European imperialism in crisis is to have been abandoned or downgraded by the world’s largest imperialist power, while at the same time being neighbours with another powerful imperialist, which is emerging massively strengthened from the present war.

Russia has a lot of clout (militarily and in terms of energy resources) and is already exercising a powerful pull on Europe’s political scene. Countries like Hungary and Slovakia have already broken ranks with the Atlanticist orientation of the dominant European powers. In others, there are rising political forces moving in a similar direction to one degree or another (Germany, Austria, Romania, Czech Republic, Italy).

What European imperialism is defending is not the lives and homes of the people of Europe, but the profits of its multinational companies and the predatory imperialist ambitions of its capitalist ruling classes. Russia is a rival of German capitalism in Eastern and Central Europe. Russia is a rival of French imperialism in Africa.

The long drawn-out crisis of European capitalism means that once the protection of the US is withdrawn, it will be unable to stand on its own. It is threatened with being carved up between the rival interests of the US, Russia and China. Centrifugal tendencies are becoming ever stronger, as each capitalist class begins to assert its own national interests. It is not at all excluded that these tendencies will eventually lead to a break up of the European Union.

The world economy: from globalisation to trade wars and protectionism

Trump’s introduction of wide-ranging tariffs on 2 April marked a turning point in the world economy. But the process of the slowing down of globalisation and the move towards protectionism had started earlier.

The worldwide recession of 2008 was a turning point in the capitalist crisis. In the period immediately preceding the crisis, the world economy was growing at around 4 percent a year. Between the 2008 crisis and the 2020 pandemic shock, it grew at only 3 percent. Before Trump’s tariffs it was already trending at around 2 percent, the lowest growth rate in three decades.

In fact, the world economy has never recovered from the 2008 recession. There was a massive bailout of the banks at the time, a desperate measure to save the financial sector. States in Europe accumulated massive debts and budget deficits and were forced to implement austerity measures. The working class was being made to pay the price for the crisis of capitalism.

The ruling class, in a panic, responded with a massive programme of quantitative easing, the injection of a vast amount of money into the economy, and the unprecedented lowering of interest rates to zero or even negative. That did not produce a recovery, however, as households were also saddled with debt. There was no productive field of investment in production, so the excess liquidity inflated bubbles in share prices, in crypto currencies, etc.

The austerity measures implemented by governments everywhere led to mass movements around the world in 2011: the revolution in North Africa and the Middle East, the Occupy movement in the US, the ‘indignados’ movement in Spain, the Syntagma square movement in Greece, etc.

That reflected a growing discontent against the capitalist system which was making the working class pay for the bank bailout measures and this led to the discrediting of all bourgeois institutions. That change in consciousness – as we have seen – found a political expression in the rise of a new type of left reformism around 2015: Podemos, Syriza, Corbyn, Mélenchon, Sanders and the ‘progressive governments’ in Latin America.

The masses were attracted to them because of their apparently radical opposition to austerity. That process came to an end when the limitations of reformism were exposed: with the betrayal of the Syriza government in Greece; Sanders’ support for Clinton; the collapse of Corbynism; and the entry of Podemos into a coalition government in Spain.

In the countries dominated by imperialism, we saw mass uprisings and insurrections (in Puerto Rico, Haiti, Ecuador, Chile, Sudan, Colombia, etc.). The mass mobilisations during the struggle for a republic in Catalonia in 2017 and 2019 were also part of this same general trend.

The lack of leadership, however, meant that none of them ended in the overthrow of capitalism, which would have been possible.

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 represented an external shock to the economy at a time when it was already heading for a new recession (having never fully recovered from the 2008 crisis). This finally pushed the world economy over the edge.

Again, in panic, the ruling class resorted to desperate measures to prevent a social explosion. In the advanced capitalist countries, workers were paid by the state to stay at home at a massive cost to the public finances, which were already saddled with debt from the previous crisis.

Over the last 15 years, repeated attempts to kick-start the world economy by injecting massive amounts of liquidity into the system through quantitative easing, record-low interest rates (2009-21), and other similar panic measures have abysmally failed to achieve any substantial economic growth. The capitalists, in spite of being showered with money, have not been investing.

The key factor was that capitalists need a market where they can sell their products in order to realise profits. Massive accumulation of debt means that households and businesses are unable to drive consumption.

The world’s combined household, state and corporate debt has reached around $313 trillion, or 330 percent of world GDP, up from around $210 trillion a decade ago.

Debt is a reflection of the fact that the limits of the system have been stretched to their breaking point and now acts like an enormous barrier to any further development. The combination of high levels of state debt and higher interest rates has already tipped a series of dominated countries over the edge. More will follow.

The pandemic also had an impact on consciousness, revealing the inability of the capitalist system of private profit to deal with a health emergency, and how profits came before human life for the pharma giants.

In the 1990s and 2000s, there was a certain growth in the world economy, although the rate of growth was substantially lower than during the postwar boom of 1948-1973, when there was a significant development of the productive forces. On top of this, the economic growth in the period leading up to 200 was based on the expansion of credit and ‘globalisation’. This allowed the system to go beyond its limits, partially and for a period of time. Globalisation meant the expansion of world trade, the lowering of tariff barriers, the cheaping of consumer goods, and the opening up of new markets and fields of investment in countries dominated by imperialism.

Now, all those factors have turned into their opposite. The expansion of credit and liquidity have turned into a mountain of debt.

Globalisation (the expansion of world trade) was one of the main drivers of economic growth for a whole period after the collapse of Stalinism in Russia, and the restoration of capitalism in China and its integration into the world economy. Instead, what we have now are tariff barriers and trade wars between all the major economic blocs (China, the EU and the US), each one attempting to save their own economy at the expense of the others.

In 1991, world trade represented 35 percent of the world’s GDP, a figure which had remained basically unchanged since 1974. It then started a period of sharp growth to a peak of 61 percent in 2008. Since then it has remained stagnant.

Before the recent round of tariffs, the IMF projected world trade would grow by just 3.2 percent a year over the medium term, a pace well below its annual average growth rate of 2000-2019 of 4.9 percent. The expansion of world trade is no longer a driver of economic growth as it was in the past. Now, the whole process has gone into reverse.

The tendency towards protectionism, a symptom of the crisis of capitalism, had been building up for a period of time. In 2023, governments worldwide introduced 2,500 protectionist measures (tax incentives, targeted subsidies and trade restrictions), triple the number from five years earlier.

During the first Trump presidency, the US adopted an aggressive protectionist stance, not only against China, but also against the EU, a policy which continued under Biden. Biden enacted a series of laws (CHIPS, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, etc.) and measures aimed at benefiting US production at the expense of imports from the rest of the world. Since the re-election of Donald Trump, all the trends towards protectionism have sharply accelerated and have now led to an open trade war.

The rise of protectionism and implementation of tariffs will act as yet another shock to the global economy, following on from the pandemic and the Ukraine war. This will add to the persistent inflationary pressures in the economy – on top of deficit financing, military spending, demographic changes, and climate change – whilst also sapping demand.

However, the economic situation is very precarious. The potential exists for a new slump in the coming period, and even a possible depression cannot be ruled out.

Trump’s tariffs

Trump’s sharp turn towards protectionism and open trade war with China is a symptom of the crisis of US capitalism. It means recognising that US manufacturing companies cannot compete in the global market without state intervention. At the same time, protectionism is a way for rival capitalist countries to make other countries pay the price for the crisis. ‘America First’ necessarily means ‘everyone else last’.

With his wide ranging protectionist measures Trump is pursuing several aims. 1) To penalise the import of manufactured goods and thus to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. 2) To stop the rise of China as an economic rival. 3) To use the proceeds from tariffs to alleviate the US budget deficit, so that he can retain tax cuts. 4) To use tariffs as a bargaining chip in negotiations with other countries in order to extract political and economic concessions.

It is true that some companies have announced investments in the US as a way to circumvent tariffs and keep access to the US market (the largest consumer market in the world). But setting up new factories is a process which will take some time and any gain in terms of new jobs is likely to be offset by the short-term impact of tariffs on supply chains.

Today, after 30 years of globalisation, supply chains are extremely elongated, with different countries specialising in different parts of the productive process. The automobile industry in the US, Mexico and Canada is extremely integrated, with parts crossing borders several times before being assembled in stages in different countries. Any move towards shortening supply lines will have an immediate disruptive impact on the economy, which will lead to products becoming more expensive or even scarce in some cases. The uncertainty created by Trump’s use of tariffs as a negotiating tool also has a detrimental impact on investment decisions.

The US and Chinese economies are deeply intertwined and mutually dependent. For the US, there is currently no viable substitute for Chinese manufacturing – Chinese goods are both affordable and of high quality. Efforts to remove them from the US market, as pursued by Trump, would likely inflict serious economic harm long before any revival of American manufacturing could begin, if it ever materialises at all.

Any attempt to disentangle this relationship will have negative consequences for the world economy as a whole. Let’s remember that after 1929 it was a general turn towards protectionism which tipped the world from economic recession into a depression. Global trade volume fell by 25 percent between 1929 and 1933 and a large part of that was the direct result of increased trade barriers.

For a whole period of time, globalisation allowed the capitalist system to partially and temporarily go beyond the limits of the nation state. Protectionism represents an attempt to hem the productive forces back into the narrow confines of the nation state, in order to reassert the domination of US imperialism over others. As Trotsky warned in the 1930s:

“On both sides of the Atlantic no little mental energy is wasted on efforts to solve the fantastic problem of how to drive the crocodile back into the chicken egg. The ultra-modern economic nationalism is irrevocably doomed by its own reactionary character; it retards and lowers the productive forces of man.” (Nationalism and Economic Life, 1934)

As was to be expected, trade union leaders everywhere are responding to protectionism by lining up behind their own ruling classes ‘in defence of jobs’ in their own countries. Communists must stand on an internationalist, independent class point of view. The enemy of the working class is the ruling class, chiefly our own at home, not the workers of other countries.

Faced with factory closures, we should advance the slogan of occupation. Instead of yet more state bail-outs of private companies, we demand the opening of the books and nationalisation under workers’ control. If factories cannot work for profit under capitalism, they should be expropriated, re-tooled and repurposed to fulfil socially useful purposes, under a democratic plan of production. Neither free trade nor protectionism is in the interest of the working class. These are just two different economic policies with which the ruling class attempts to deal with the crises of capitalism. Our alternative is to overthrow the system that causes them.

Crisis of legitimacy of bourgeois institutions

The crisis of capitalism, as an economic system which is now unable to develop the productive forces to any significant degree, and consequently unable to improve the living standards from one generation to the next, has led to a deep and growing crisis of legitimacy of all bourgeois political institutions.

There is an obscene polarisation of wealth, with a small handful of billionaires increasing their assets, while a growing number of working-class people find it more difficult to make ends meet and are faced with austerity cuts, the purchasing power of wages eaten up by inflation, increased energy bills, a housing crisis, etc.

The media, the politicians, the established political parties, parliaments, the judiciary, all are seen as representing the interests of a small, privileged elite, making decisions to defend their own narrow selfish interests rather than serving the needs of the many.

This is extremely significant as the ruling class in normal times rules through these institutions, which are generally accepted and seen as representing ‘the will of the majority’. Now that is being questioned by ever growing layers of society.

Rather than the normal mechanism of bourgeois democracy, which serves to soften the class contradictions, the idea of direct action to achieve one’s aims is becoming increasingly accepted. An article in Le Monde warned Macron in France that by preventing the party with most elected parliamentarians from forming a government, he risked the people drawing the conclusion that elections were of no use. In the US, one in four believe that political violence may be justified to “save” the country, up from 15 percent a year earlier.

The rise of anti-establishment demagogues is an indication of this erosion of the legitimacy of bourgeois democracy and its institutions. In the past, when a right-wing government became discredited, it would be replaced by a social-democratic ‘left’ government, and when that became discredited, it would be replaced by a conservative government. That is no longer an automatic process.

Instead, there are violent swings to the left and to the right, which are characterised in the media as the growth of ‘political extremism’. But the strengthening of the extremes in politics is merely a way of expressing the process of social and political polarisation, which in turn is a reflection of a sharpening of the class struggle. The resulting collapse of the political centre is what fills the ruling class with terror. They wish to stop it by all means at their disposal but they are powerless to do so.

The reason for this is not hard to see. Left and right governments today basically carry out the same policies of cuts and austerity. This leads to the general discrediting of politics, a steady rise of abstention and the emergence of all sorts of third party alternatives, often of an ephemeral nature. Right-wing demagogues have been able to capitalise on an existing anti-establishment mood also because of the inability of the official ‘left’ to offer any real alternative.

The hue and cry from the liberal capitalist establishment about the ‘danger of fascism’ and the ‘threat of the far right’ serves to drum up support for lesser-evilism, the idea that ‘we must all unite to defend democracy’, that we should ‘defend the Republic’. This at a time when in most countries it is the liberals who are in power carrying out attacks on the working class, whipping up militarism… and attacking democratic rights.

Thus, Trump is called a ‘fascist’ or an ‘authoritarian’ when he pursues a policy of expelling non-citizens for their support for Palestine. What are we then to call the governments of European countries which have banned and brutally repressed pro-Palestine demonstrations? What do we call it when in Germany and France non-citizens are being arrested and deported for supporting Palestine?

The liberals are using the courts to implement completely undemocratic measures to bar politicians they do not like from standing in elections (like Le Pen in France) or, as in the case of Romania, to cancel elections when they do not like the result! And then they turn around and call for ‘unity to defend democracy’ and for a ‘cordon sanitaire against the far right’.

This is a criminal policy, which in fact serves to increase the support for right-wing demagogues who can then say: ‘See, right and left, they are all the same.’

Communists will fight any reactionary measure against the interests of the working class and against democratic rights, but it would be fatal to be seen in any way to support ‘democracy’ in general (which means support for the capitalist state) or to mix banners with the liberals when they attack right-wing demagogues.

In reality, the appeal of right-wing demagogues will always reveal its illusory character to the degree that it comes into conflict with the real situation. Trump is in power already in the US. He has made many promises. He is riding on the expectations of millions of people who think that he is really going to ‘Make America Great Again’. But this is a pure illusion. For working-class people, making America great again means decent, well-paid jobs. It means that they can get to the end of the month without being forced to work two or three different jobs, or having to sell blood plasma to make ends meet.

There are strong illusions amongst millions of people in the United States that Trump will bring back the ‘good old days’ of the post-war period. If there is one thing which is certain it is that this is not going to happen. The crisis of capitalism means that a return to the golden age of the post-war boom, or the roaring 1920s, is ruled out today.

It is not ruled out that, for a short period of time, some of these measures – for example, tariffs which promote industrial development in the United States at the expense of other countries – might have a little bit of an impact. Many will also give Trump the benefit of the doubt for a period of time. He can also use the argument that it is the establishment, the ‘deep state’, which is not allowing him to carry out his policies.

But once reality sinks in and these illusions are dispelled, the deep-seated anti-establishment mood that propelled Trump to power will lead to a sharp shift towards the opposite side of the political spectrum. We could see an equally sharp and violent swing of the pendulum to the left.

There is an article by Trotsky called If America Should Go Communist, where he talks about the American temperament which he describes as “energetic and violent”: “It would be contrary to the American tradition to make a major change without choosing sides and cracking heads.”

The American worker is practical and demands concrete results. He is prepared to take action to get things done. Farrell Dobbs, the leader of the great Minneapolis Teamsters strike in 1934, went straight from being a Republican to being a Trotskyist leader. In his account of the strike, he explains why. To him, the Trotskyists were the ones offering the most practical and effective solutions in dealing with the problems the workers faced.

An explosive situation: radicalisation of the youth

The truth is that the world situation is pregnant with revolutionary potential. The insurrectionary wave of 2019-2020 was partially cut across by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, but the conditions which triggered it have not gone away. In 2022, the uprising in Sri Lanka brought down the president with the masses entering the presidential palace. The mass strikes against the pension counter-reform in France in 2023 put the government on the ropes. In 2024, the masses in Kenya, led by the revolutionary youth, stormed parliament and forced the withdrawal of the finance bill. In Bangladesh, a movement of the student youth which was faced with brutal repression led to a nationwide uprising and the overthrow of the hated Hasina regime.

A common feature in all of these movements is the leading role played by the youth. Anyone under the age of 30 has lived all their politically conscious life in a situation marked by the 2008 crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the massacre in Gaza.

More recently we have seen significant mass movements in Turkey, Serbia and Greece. In the case of Greece, the rage against the cover up of the railway disaster at Tempi, combined with the accumulated anger at the mass impoverishment resulting from the permanent austerity and deep impasse of Greek capitalism, led to a massive general strike and the biggest protest demonstrations in the country since the fall of the dictatorship. The massive character of the general strike, which involved not only the working class but also other layers of society (small shopkeepers, etc.), shows the real balance of forces in modern capitalist society. When the working class moves, it can pull behind it all oppressed layers.

In Serbia, the protest movement over the collapse of Novi Sad station canopy has created a revolutionary crisis, with the largest protest demonstration in the country’s history. The students have played a decisive role, occupying the universities and organising through student plenums (assemblies). The protests have already brought down the government. The students are consciously trying to spread the movement to the working class and the people at large with the formation of zborovi, mass assemblies in towns and cities as well as in some workplaces.

Both these movements bring out two key features of the current situation: the enormous potential power of the working class and its dominant social weight on the one hand, and the extreme weakness of the subjective factor.

On top of this, layers of the youth have also been radicalised over issues of democratic rights, the mass women’s movement against violence and discrimination (Mexico, Spain), for or in defence of abortion rights (Argentina, Chile, Ireland, Poland), for same sex marriage (Ireland), the mass movement against police brutality against black people (US and Britain), etc.

The climate crisis has also become a radicalising factor for this generation of young people who feel very strongly, and quite rightly, that unless things change radically, life on Earth is threatened and that the system is to blame.

The hypocrisy and double standards of imperialism regarding the massacre in Gaza, the so-called ‘international rules’ and police repression of the Palestine solidarity movement have opened their eyes to the nature of the capitalist state, the capitalist media and international institutions.

A growing section of the youth identifies with communist ideas as the most radical alternative against the capitalist system. This is not a majority, not even amongst the youth, but certainly this is a significant development.

The collapse of Stalinism is now 35 years behind us, so for this generation the ruling class propaganda about ‘the failure of socialism’ has very little meaning. What they are worried about and have suffered directly as a result of is the failure of capitalism!

Crisis of leadership

There is an accumulation of combustible material around the world. The crisis of the capitalist system in all its manifestations has provoked one revolutionary uprising after another. The so-called liberal world order, which shaped the world for decades, is crumbling before our eyes. The turn to protectionism and trade wars is creating enormous economic turbulence.

The question that we need to ask ourselves is not whether there will be revolutionary movements in the period opening up in front of us. That is certain. The question is whether these will end up in a victory for the working class?

We have seen a number of revolutionary movements and insurrections over the last 15 years. These have demonstrated the enormous revolutionary elan and power of the masses once they start to move. They have been able to overcome brutal repression, states of emergency, information blackouts, and the most repressive regimes. But, at the end of the day, none of them have led the working class to power.

What was missing, on every single occasion, was a revolutionary leadership able to take the movement to its logical conclusion. The 2011 Arab revolution ended in repressive Bonapartist regimes (Egypt, Tunisia) or even worse, reactionary civil wars (Libya and Syria). The Chilean uprising was channelled back into the safe channel of bourgeois constitutionalism. The Sudanese revolution also ended in a wholly reactionary civil war.

Trotsky wrote in the Transitional Program that “the historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.” His words are now truer than ever. The subjective factor – that is, an organisation of revolutionary cadres rooted in the working class – is extremely weak when compared to the colossal tasks posed by history. For decades, we have been struggling against the tide and have been thrown back by powerful objective currents.

This inevitably means that the coming revolutionary crises will not be solved in the short term. Therefore, we are facing a protracted period of ups and downs, advances and defeats. But through all these processes, the working class will learn and its vanguard will be strengthened. At last, the tide of history is beginning to flow in our direction and we will be able to swim with the tide, not against it.

Our task is to participate, side by side with the masses of the working class, and connect the finished programme of socialist revolution with the unfinished yearning of the most advanced elements for a fundamental revolutionary change.

The founding of the Revolutionary Communist International in 2024 was a very important step and we should not underestimate what we have achieved: an international organisation firmly based on Marxist theory. In the recent period our numbers have grown significantly. Nonetheless, we must maintain a sense of proportion: our forces are still completely inadequate for the tasks that lie ahead.

The weakness of the subjective factor means inevitably that in the next period the radicalisation of the masses will express itself in the rise and fall of new left reformist formations and leaders. Some of them might even use very radical language, but all will come up against the basic limitations of reformism: their inability to pose the basic question of the overthrow of the capitalist system and the coming to power of the working class. For this reason betrayal is inherent in reformism. But for a period of time, some of these formations and leaders will generate enthusiasm and will get mass support.

There needs to be a sense of urgency in the building of the organisation everywhere. It is not the same to have 100, 1,000 or 10,000 members when mass uprisings erupt again. An organisation of 1,000 trained cadres at the beginning of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, or an organisation of 5,000 cadres with roots in the working class when Corbyn won the leadership of the Labour Party in Britain, could have transformed the situation. At the very least, with a correct policy and approach to the mass movement, they could have grown into a significant force within the working-class movement, becoming a point of reference for wider layers.

In the right conditions, in the heat of events, even a relatively small organisation can be transformed into a much larger one and fight to conquer the leadership of the masses. That is in the future. The task now is the patient work of recruiting, and above all training and educating the cadres, particularly amongst working-class and student youth.

An organisation that is firmly rooted in the masses and armed with Marxist theory will be able to respond quickly to the rapid shifts and turns in the situation. But a revolutionary leadership cannot be improvised once revolutionary events break out, it must be prepared in advance. That is the most urgent task facing us today. On our success or failure the entire situation must ultimately depend. This idea must be the main driving force behind all our work, sacrifice and efforts. With the necessary determination and persistence, we can and will succeed.