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Brutal acceleration of the economic crisis, increase of war intrigues, militarization of social life:
the working class must oppose the attacks and put forward its revolutionary perspective

The economic crisis of capital knows a brutal speed up whose dramatic firsts consequences make themselves already felt and which can only aggravate and impose on the whole capitalist society. In spite of quibbling and solemn declarations of the "leading experts of the finance and the economy", the bourgeois class and its various national States do not have any other solution than to take urgent measures in perfect contradiction with their tirelessly credo repeated for decades : the USA and the Great Britain, notably, nationalize financial institutions or banks threatened with bankruptcy.

The economy is more and more looking like a ship in distress whose crew is reduced to seal the most threatening breaches without knowing how things will end. It's not only a few institutions which are threatened by bankruptcy ; it is the entire capitalist system, and the measures which are taken to deal with the most urgent things can only drive to an aggravation of the economic situation ; and terrible measures against the working class. Already, the redundancies double in all sectors, inflation can only aggravate, and the pressure on salaries is going to become stronger. It is the proletariat which will have to pay for the "rescue" of the international financial system. It is this one which will have to pay for the "junk bonds" that the States, and the US State first of all, exchange for liquid assets, some fresh money, supplied to banks. Here is what means "nationalization" of the big American banks and the plan of relaunching of the American bourgeoisie. The consequences for the international proletariat, already so strongly affected these last years, are going to be brutal and dramatic. Furthermore, the shock is such that it can only worsen imperialist rivalries and imperialist wars ; whose increasing expenses are going to be assumed also by the international proletariat. Whatever is the side where we look, the working class of all countries is going to have to pay the bill with its sweat, its tears and its blood.

Even before the explosion of this crisis, whose immediate cause is not the excesses of nasty traders, but well and truly the incapacity of the financial capital to realize itself in the production, one of the effects of the decay of the capitalist system could be felt painfully in different points of the globe : Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and several others countries of Africa or Asia suffered the warlike manouvers from part of big and little imperialisms since several years. This summer, the conflict between Georgia and Russia came and marked one more step in the list of the warlike cancers of the planet by putting directly face to face two main nuclear powers, Russia and the United-States. The international, the world, consequences of this war can be seen immediately (see our communiqué in this issue of the bulletin). All these wars, all these conflicts are the direct consequence of the economic dead end of capitalism which constrained each State, each power, big, medium or small, to dash into war adventure to defend its capitalist interests. The war is nothing but the continuation of the economic policy on the military ground.

All the patters we are told about a so-called "return in the configuration of the cold war" about the Russian-Georgian conflict do not prevent us from seeing that the front line is not situated between USA and Russia, but much more certainly between two poles, two groups of countries whose economic and imperialist interests oblige them to oppose each other in a conflict of world dimensions. We have already developed this point in our bulletin and we will not insist here again. Let's only underline the fact that the warlike episodes which multiply these last years are the direct consequences of the sinking of the capitalism in the economic crisis.

This dynamic of confrontations and imperialist wars, whose outcome can't be but a generalised imperialist war, expresses at the level of the increasing militarization of society. In the name of the "war against terrorism", we can see each and every State reinforce its seizure and control over all the aspects of social life. Since the attacks, more or less manipulated by the State and which allow this one to strengthen its influence and its control over the population (see in this bulletin our article on Latin America), up to the implementation in numerous countries of systems of surveillance (video camera in streets, files grouping together informations about the "dangerous groups of population", etc.), through media campaigns against populations like Roms in several countries of Europe, the different States set up a real arsenal intended "to adjust" their repression against the "responsible for disorder to law and order " and anyone can understand that, in the perspective of important class struggles, it's the combative workers and the communist militants who will be the first victims of these systems of surveillance.

The State prepares to confront the working class

The bill of the crisis and the "costs" - economic and political - of the flight forward in the generalised imperialist war are going to be directly and mainly supported by the international proletariat. And the bill already looks steep. The attacks of any orders against the working class are going to double and to fall thick and fast.

Inevitably, these attacks will provoke reactions of the international proletariat. And unlike the 1930s, even if it remains subjected to the bourgeois ideology, affected for a moment by the ideological themes that the media campaigns launch, it does not adhere to these themes and is not ready to submit itself to its national States and bourgeoisie. It is an historical situation without precedent. The bourgeoisie is forced to march to the war even if its deadly enemy, the proletariat, is not ideologically, politically, nor physically defeated. Thus, the bourgeoisie is not in a situation so favourable from an historical point of view in front of the proletariat. Crisis and war present at the same time, with the same brutality and are imposed so brutally on the workers. That can only provoke important class struggles that the bourgeoisie will have the biggest difficulties to "calm", to master and to fight back - we do not doubt that it will do its best, it's already doing it, with all its energy and all the political forces it has, specially left-wing parties, the leftists and the unions.

On the other hand, there is a weakness the international proletariat suffers and which can turn out to be fatal : the dispersal and the sectarianism of its revolutionary minorities, main "depository" of its class consciousness and its revolutionary program. Massive and decisive class confrontations announce and the revolutionaries risk to be dispersed, without preparation, panicked, and so to miss cruelly to the proletariat. Today, in front of the new and alarming situation of the capitalist world, the communist groups have to get off their torpor, their routine, and address the proletariat with energy, strength, determination, and unite. Today, in front of this situation, any initiative going in this direction, international conference, intervention in common, would be a step forward which could only clear the way towards the grouping of the revolutionaries and to the constitution of the world party. Inevitably the opening of such a process would have an impact at the same time on the revolutionary elements and the ones looking for political coherence as well as towards the most combative minorities of the proletariat.

The future belongs to our class, the future belongs to us. It's up to us to be at the level of the stakes !

The Fraction, October 2008