The current combined ecological, economic, and political crisis gripping the world is giving rise to an intensification of the class struggle. It can be seen in racial and ethnic strife, the spread of despotism, militarization and fascist movements, growing strikes by workers, and rightwing attacks on basic democratic rights, especially those of women and Indigenous and Black people. However, as the parasitic capitalist class tries to retain control through crackdowns, resistance grows.
On the international front, the United States—the main imperialist and stabilizing power since World War II—no longer enjoys its former absolute and unconditional leadership. At the same time, Anglo-European capitalism remains incapable of rising from the recession that began in 2008. The recent banking crisis that erupted in the United States in March 2023 illustrates this.
As a consequence, these powers have less and less capacity to win “the hearts and minds” of the peoples of the world, the dubious claim President George W. Bush made for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Although this situation opens a fertile field for the revolutionary Left, the loudest criticism of capitalism remains fundamentally reformist in the form of left populism.
It is not difficult to see how this situation will end if the revolutionary Left continues the sectarian course it has been on since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. Unless there is a widespread regroupment of communists to fan the flames of struggle and develop strategies for international revolution, it seems apparent that the fascists will come to power globally, as capitalism has no other answer to its ongoing crisis. If this happens, the planet will devolve into world war on a scale unimaginable in the past.
In this situation, the struggle for life on the planet rests with radicals of this and future generations. The Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment (CRIR) takes seriously its responsibility to pass on the knowledge and best traditions of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxembourg and other great revolutionary leaders and thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries. We recognize the necessity to strive to overcome left sectarianism and join forces with like-minded revolutionaries to build new and better foundations to make the 21st century socialist transformation a reality. Time is running out to accomplish this and we urge those who agree with the fundamental ideas expressed here to contact us at the email address below to discuss how we can work together.
All life in danger
It is important for old and new fighters to be clear about the challenges we face and the terrain on which the class struggle is unfolding today.
Capitalism has already caused irreparable damage to life on our planet. It is no longer a question of reversing the damage, but how big the damage will be. The 2015 Paris Agreement called for limiting global warming to 2°C, but ideally to 1.5°C. However, the 2021 report of the United Nations Environment Program has pointed out that to stay below the ideal limit of 1.5°C would require reducing greenhouse gases by half before 2030! An impossible dream under capitalism.
The same U.N. report observed, “Only an urgent systemic transformation can achieve the huge cuts needed to limit greenhouse gas emissions.” Among its findings is the assertion that if the plans of the countries that signed the Paris Agreement were to be met 100%, they would still be insufficient and by 2100 global warming will have accumulated 2.8°C above the planet’s pre-industrialization temperature. President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the relatively weak Paris Agreement and, although Biden has brought it back in, it is clear that large corporations, despite global destruction, prefer to protect their profits rather than imagine reducing greenhouse emissions.
If it remains intact, capitalism will irreversibly disfigure the planet. What would such a world look like? Science fiction movies already give us some ideas. For the time being, between 1970 and 2018 the wildlife population has been reduced by 70% . The present is already a real-time catastrophe.
Recession, pandemic, and war
In the aftermath of the pandemic, the worldwide class struggle has been gathering momentum as the systemic challenges to class exploitation and imperialism intensify.
Billionaire Warren Buffet once said that “when the tide goes out you can see who has no clothes on.” This is true not just for investors but for the international working class. As an effect of the 2008 financial crisis, GDP per capita fell 3.39% in 2009. A decade later, the Covid pandemic that broke out in 2019 caused the 2020 GDP per capita to plummet 4.33%, sparking working class protests around the world.
While the United States experienced this contraction, China grew 8.89% in 2009 and 2.12% in 2020. It is evident that the pandemic has accelerated processes that were already underway before 2019 and that these processes are changing the main features of contemporary capitalism.
International economic growth is no longer what it used to be, but it is even less so in the world’s number one power—the United States. Owner of what remains the most dangerous and formidable military force, the U.S. is showing signs of aging and its former role as arbiter and undisputed leader is no longer the rule.
The current war in Ukraine is shining a light on this development. Neither the United States nor any European power has sent its armies into that country, as was previously the custom. On the other hand, Russia is no longer the obedient state that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is an expression of the growing space being occupied by competing powers, each with an important regional weight. In the Middle East, Iran is a good example. In Southeast Asia, the rise of China is indisputable. In Latin America, Brazil has occasionally played this role in the Southern Cone, and Mexico is already playing it in Central America, albeit as a lackey of the United States on immigration.
At the same time, no other state can yet replace or displace the leading military and economic powers. Although Western imperialism has not sent troops, its logistical support to the Ukrainian army is causing a serious setback to Russia, which is now ruthlessly repressing all domestic resistance to the war while drafting hundreds of thousands of young men and convicts into the military.
Revolutionary optimism
U.S. imperialism and the secondary powers that try to rival it depend on economic growth. Some need growth to maintain their primacy; others to increase their influence. But the planet is already incapable of sustaining the destruction that maintains permanent growth. The only way out is to end unfettered capitalism and install socialist planning on an international scale.
In its present stagnant condition, capitalism is only capable of providing satisfaction to the rich. It no longer has the vigor it had during the thirty years following World War II. During that time, capitalism was able to create what became known as the “welfare state” under which the working class managed to secure a set of beneficial reforms that have since been largely laid to waste.
This situation presents an opportunity for a revolutionary critique of capitalism to gain space in the public sphere. However, this space is still occupied by a very timid Left known as “progressivism” in Latin America and the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party in the U.S. It does not propose systemic change or to overthrow capitalism, but only to reform it a little and even this it does not accomplish. The progressive agenda is so limited that when it has come to power—for example, with Lula in Brazil, the Kirchners in Argentina or AMLO in Mexico—its main concern has been to boost local capitalism with a neoliberal agenda that worsens the situation of the working class.
The spinelessness of this kind of reformism has done a great favor for the right wing, which promises to radically reform capitalism and “cleanse it of all evil” in order to restore growth. Most of the time, evil is represented with the faces of foreign migrants, Indigenous and Black people, feminists, and dissident trade unionists and public workers. It is the struggles of these sectors which never stopped despite the very adverse conditions of the pandemic including prohibitions against mobilizations, government lockdowns and police repression. These workers stood up to the repression of their bosses and their governments and by doing so opened a fertile field for optimism—an optimism that must be nurtured and supported by the Left.
New and improved foundations
Proletarian internationalism is much more than a slogan. It requires concrete action. With the exception of Stalinism, whose parties support reformist regimes, the traditions of the radical Left represent the most effective reservoir for confronting capital.
It is no secret that when the Soviet Union collapsed three decades ago, many socialist dreams evaporated. Imperialism gloated over the supposed “death of communism” and what its ideologues called the “end of history.” All the while, of course, its masters gleefully anticipated the rich windfall to be made through the restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union. Facing this barrage, many of our comrades-in-arms lost confidence in the working class’s ability to make socialism work and joined reformist parties.
Under these circumstances, revolutionary groups suffered splits and/or an exodus of members and were forced to start over from scratch. Truly, those who survived and gained ground during this time performed a miracle. One such organization is the Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment (CRIR) which is made up of parties that weathered this setback.
This crisis of the Left is often viewed with pessimism and resignation, but that is only one option. In reality, today’s international situation presents a precious opportunity to strengthen revolutionary forces by putting the work to achieve a communist world on stronger foundations.
This begins by unconditionally anchoring working-class feminism against patriarchy where it belongs—in the forefront of every fight for equality, liberation, and workers power, including at the center of every mobilization against national oppression, race and ethnic prejudice and white supremacy.
The battle for socialism is the expression of the ancestral desire to emancipate relations within our species. Now, however, it is necessary to prevent our species from wiping out all other forms of life. We must address the urgency of the ecological crisis. Destruction of Nature exists today in ways never imagined by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky or so many other revolutionary leaders. By organizing to save the planet, we save ourselves.
To make proletarian internationalism concrete, CRIR has two main priorities. First, we seek to forge revolutionary regroupment to address key developments in the international arena. Second, we work to build united fronts to overcome sectarianism and defend our class against rising authoritarianism and fascism. Recognizing that tactics vary from one country to another, CRIR is committed to fostering a form of collaboration that promotes mutual understanding and respect.
The parties in CRIR share experience with several Trotskyist internationals. Our analysis is that each of these functions as a body unto itself, operating more like a church in search of followers in agreement with doctrine, than as a vibrant revolutionary organization seeking to be a source of strategic thought, debate and action geared toward the emancipation of humanity from the chains of capitalism.
CRIR is not and does not pretend to be this kind of grand international. We are not looking for followers but comrades with whom we can work to take advantage of the widening opportunities for revolutionary action. Our hope is that we can generate a brand of collaboration that will foster the conditions for the emergence of a new and vibrant international at a point in the future.
We invite all those interested in this work to contact CRIR, not for us to tell you what to do, but to collaborate. CRIR has points of unity which we adopted in 2013 and which you can read here. We want to know what you think of them. And we encourage you to contact us directly by reaching out to any one of the representatives of the CRIR’s current member parties listed below. Or you can write CRIR directly at cririnter@gmail.com.
Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment (CRIR)
Partido Socialismo y Libertad – Argentina
Movimento Revolucionário Socialista – Brasil
Freedom Socialist Party – U.S. and Australia
Partido Obrero Socialista – México
