The stern warning of Engels which was reiterated by Rosa Luxemburg a century ago, ‘Socialism or Barbarism’, is today more relevant than ever. We are witnessing the rapid descent into barbarism. After centuries of preaching humanism, rationalism, innate rights of individuals and nations, civility and due processes, environmental protection, etc, the very powers that advocated them are today resorting to openly proclaimed apartheid, genocide programs, unashamed rejection of sovereignty of nations, bombing schools, hospitals, housing complexes, civic facilities, production facilities, production centres, natural resources, poisoning air and water. All this is being conducted as spectacles to be seen and enjoyed like any media show by the people at large. Do we need more stark evidences of the fact that in its desperation, capitalism is undoing what humanity across the globe has achieved over two lakh years of its existence. Once again the angry words of Rosa haunts us: “Violated, dishonoured, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretence to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form.”

We need to qualify the use of the term ‘barbarism’. The terms ‘savagery’ or ‘barbarism’ were originally used by class societies to characterise non-state communitarian societies, which were in actual fact far more humane and civil. What we see today is a historically unprecedented wave of destruction and dehumanisation, something unthinkable for the hunting gathering bands or tribal societies.

A world order was painstakingly established after the Second World War under the aegis of the United Nations, keeping in mind the inveterate opposition between Socialism and Imperialism and the aspirations of colonial and semi colonial people for freedom and development. This framework went through a series of transformation as socialism was dismantled and replaced by capitalism and imperialism in the USSR and the people’s democracies. The eventual collapse of the USSR and the neo-liberal globalization initiated by USA, led to massive flow of capital across the continents to exploit cheap labour and natural resources. This eventually led to a shift in which manufacturing got concentrated in countries like China and the far eastern countries, ‘service’ sector including banking and finance got concentrated in Western Europe and USA while the other Asian, African and Latin American and Middle Eastern countries ended up as regions for exploitation of natural resources, especially sources of fossil fuels and minerals. Many of these countries saw the establishment of nationalist governments which came to power spearheading anti-imperialist mass movements. While some of these had a democratic character, many others established authoritarian, clerical and repressive regimes, which nevertheless stood against imperialist powers. Countries like Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, Syria etc are examples of these, and their importance lies in the fact that they possess vast resources of fossil fuel. Of course, given the world power equations, they needed the support of one or the other major imperialist power.

The USA which had hoped to be the dominant world power presiding over an ‘unipolar’ world, found itself strategically weakened by not only the shift of manufacturing and the lack of actual investments, but also the loss of exclusive control over the energy resources of the world. It was further weakened by democratic ideological movements including environment movements, anti racialist and gender justice movements, which sought to force the imperialist capital to shed some of its profits and invest in environmental protection and social justice.

The massive shift in capital investment from developed capitalist countries to countries which provided cheap labour and freedom from labour laws and labour organizations, and unprecedented growth of the so called ‘unorganised sector’ in these countries created a world wide weakening of both the identity of ‘workers’ and workers’ organisations driving labour movement into disarray. As small peasant agriculture became more and more un-sustainable and the subordination of peasant production to market progressed leading to greater stratification greatly weakened the peasant movements. Though dissatisfaction with the new forms of capitalism was often displayed in powerful protest movements, they did not emerge as unified movements of workers challenging capitalism. In fact, the very identity of who is a worker was obfuscated. Nevertheless, the mass of the labouring people joined hands in a number of democratic movements and ‘anti-establishment’ movements which may be oriented towards regressive ideologies.

So today we see the US imperialism trying to recover its lost power, by on the one hand whipping white Christian racialism and anti coloured and anti democratic sentiments domestically with an empty promise of restoring manufacturing employment in the US, and on the other hand aggressively and unabashedly violating the very international order it had fostered to gain crude colonial controls over the nationalist governments which had control over energy supplies and were allied to other imperialist powers. This is obviously very much in line with the kind of redivision of the world attempted by the Axis powers which led to the ‘world wars’ of the first half of the last century. This ultra reactionary adventure showcased by President Trump is obviously backed by a significant and powerful section of US imperialist capital. This segment of capital places its bet on Information Technology, especially super computer based artificial intelligence.

It is in this context that we need to place the major initiatives of the Trump administration: weaponizing tariff, deployment of ICE within USA to attack coloured peoples and immigrants, invasion of Venezuela and the ‘regime change’ there, complete blockade of Cuba, demanding sovereignty over Greenland, allowing Israel a free hand in its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and now the joint war on Iran and Lebanon. The sidelining of the United Nations which had been promoted as the guarantor of world peace and development is now complete. It is a desperate US imperialism trying to restore its imagined supremacy over the globe and assuring its reactionary following in the US that ‘America Will be Great Again’.

What is noteworthy in all this is that the Trump administration is facing resounding defeat on most of these fronts, faced with stiff resistance. Internally the defeat of ICE invasion of Minneapolis when the entire labouring people of the twin city defended their immigrant population and the massive ‘No Kings’ demonstrations; the stubborn resistance of Cuba in face of the most dire conditions caused by US sanctions, the resistance of the Greenlanders to US demands, the valiant resistance of the Palestinians and the worldwide support they received and now finally the virtual defeat of US-Israeli invasion of Iran and Lebanon.

The Communists of Venezuela and Iran have called for rallying for national defence against the US-Israeli aggression, We need to realise that this is also simultaneously an attempt at redividing the world between imperialist powers. There is an urgent need for the labouring people across the world to organize themselves and cooperate with each other across national boundaries and struggle to demolish capitalism and the undemocratic states to establish democracy and socialism.

We reproduce here some of the statements of the fraternal organisations on these issues.

Editorial Board

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