THE desperate crisis of world capitalism is driving forward world revolution, as the continuing revolutionary eruptions in Greece and the eurozone states, and the sharpening of the class struggle in the UK the US show.
The equally desperate response of the bourgeoisie to these developments is to stoke up the counter-revolution worldwide. Its policy is civil war at home, and the re-imposition of imperialist power abroad.
We have already seen the organisation of the struggle to recolonise Libya, beginning with the removal of the Gadaffi regime. We now see the drive to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria (with Iran in mind) being stepped up several gears, and the bombing of the US’ alleged ally Pakistan.
This is alongside the growing repressions in the US against the Occupation movements and the US trade unions, and the conscious preparations that are taking place in the UK for a civil war, including the frantic attempt to organise strikebreakers and Military Police for what is becoming a one day general strike on November 30th.
These desperate measures are being organised by weak, and more and more isolated Greek, Italian, UK and US regimes that are either bankrupt or on the point of bankruptcy, but continue to lash out desperately to maintain the capitalist order.
We should remember Lenin’s warnings about the ruthlessness of the capitalist ruling classes, and that the more desperate the situation is, the more desperate the measures they will take to maintain their exploiting order of society.
He insisted that revolutionaries must begin from the position that, in itself, there is no hopeless situation for the bourgeoisie, and that the working class cannot rely on mass pressure or the depth of the crisis to demoralise them or remove them.
For Lenin, the key to the victory of the working class was always the building up of the revolutionary parties of the working class, to consciously use the full power of the working class, the strongest class in society, to expropriate the ruling class through socialist revolutions.
The present situation proves Lenin’s position. The world crisis, the collapsing EU, the bankrupting of the US is not instilling the ruling class with a conviction that their hour has come and that they should hand over power. Instead, the crisis is driving them to more and more desperate and ‘risky’ actions against the working class at home and abroad.
From the counter-revolutionary intervention in Libya the imperialists are organising the same Islamists to send arms and fighters into Syria, where they will be transformed into the Free Syria army whose deeds will be broadcast to the world by the BBC to prove that there is a ‘civil war’ going on in Syria.
This intervention is the beginning of the war against Iran and of the drive to secure all of the gas and oil resources of the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf for imperialism.
Assad, and the government of Iran, have already warned that such an intervention into Syria will touch off a civil war in the Lebanon, and a massive explosion throughout the Middle East, and even in central Asia where the US is now routinely bombing its former closest ally, Pakistan.
The conflagration that is emerging will immediately threaten Russia and China and the Putin-Medvedev plan to establish a Eurasia Zone. Russia is committed to opposing any attempt to repeat the Libyan counter-revolutionary operation in Syria. If the Putin Stalinists stand fast, they will be faced with the threat of war. If they capitulate then before they know it the sabres will be rattling all along Russia’s borders.
The mad dogs of imperialism are now tossing explosive charges amongst the kegs of gunpowder and nuclear material that have accumulated in the Middle East and central Asia, stoking up counter-revolutionary wars that will cost the lives of millions.
Truly desperate measures are on hand. However the the history of capitalism and imperialism, both past and recent, shows that it is capable of any number of such actions, and views them as inevitable if capitalism, and its rule, is to survive.
For the workers and poor of the world there is only one way out of this death agony of the capitalist system. It is through the building of sections of the Fourth International in every country to organise the victory of the world socialist revolution and the establishment of a world socialist republic, which will develop industry and science to satisfy people’s needs, in a classless society.
