This resolution presented by the Tendency for a Revolutionary International (TIR) was rejected by the 2025 World Congress by 3 votes in favour, 112 against, 6 abstentions, and 9 No Votes.
Class Struggle in the World
The proletarianization of millions, mostly in developing countries, where more and more farmers are moving to urban factories, is combined with more and more workers in more developed countries in the West moving from factories to services. The working class is indeed increasing at a global scale. On the subjective level, the working-class organizational weakness remains with trade unions being less strong and no revolutionary mass parties. This situation offers the possibility for class struggle and / or revolutionary currents to be able to implant themselves within the working class and to act independently from the unionist or political leadership of the institutional left. But for the time being, despite the reactions of our class, this has not modified the correlation of forces which remains not in favour of the working class.
These changes have contradictory effects on class consciousness. In developed societies, by eliminating manual jobs, automation causes the rate of surplus-value of the automated sectors to fall, forcing capital towards laborintensive sectors, where extremely harsh working conditions have already ignited major struggles.
In the rest of the world, especially in China and India, millions of workers are joining the traditional nucleus of the working class: factories. Despite the strikes and the sometimes massive and violent eruptions like in China, Hong Kong or Korea, for the time being the ruling class has not lost control of the situation.
We must rely on the struggles that are emerging. It’s that real movement of the class struggle which will allow to rebuild a class consciousness. The working class and the youth are not defeated. There are many examples of this: the victorious strike in the American auto industry, the victorious Hollywood actors' strike, the unsuccessful but more politically mature movement against Macron's reactionary pension reform, the revolt movement in Bangladesh, the feminist uprising in Iran and, last but not least, the Palestinian resistance. It is untrue to say all these struggles were useless, they were an opportunity to accumulate experiences and, in the eyes of millions of young people and workers, they revealed the realities of the capitalist order.
The self-organized labor movement of Kazakhstan crushed by the Russian military, the democratic uprising in Sudan drowned by the restoration of the military dictatorship, or the defeat which has led to ethnic cleansing revolt against ethnic, economic and political oppression in Myanmar; these are all reminders of what can be the outcome of revolts in situations that lack an independent intervention of the working class and why we need class rooted revolutionary parties.
The situation in Latin America features the contradictions, the inadequacies but also the possibilities of popular struggles in the current phase of the crisis. After the failures of US imperialists to overthrow the nationalist bourgeois governments in Bolivia and Venezuela, popular uprisings in Chile and Colombia bringing to power new governements, Bolsonaro’s far-right defeat in Brazil, and the "leftist" Obrador taking office in Mexico. However, these governments, in all their nuances, only tried to manage the capitalist economy by offering certain concessions to the people, without questioning, in any way, the system itself.
Nevertheless, along with "progressivism", there appeared a coalition of the right, the far right and neoliberals. The new rise of bourgeois nationalism reached its limits very quickly and quite ingloriously. The farright is making a comeback by polarizing societies, and this bourgeois progressivism does not want and cannot provide solutions. These governments can not be a rampart against far-right and fascism, on the contrary they can only make the far right progress. The hope lies in the mobilizations of the working class and the youth. Partial demands alone cannot provide a way out.
Despite the weaknesses of the labour movement, and due to the deep crisis of the capitalist system, and its inability to deal with the permanent imbalances and contradictions it creates, the ruling classes have not been politically strengthened.
In China, the Xi regime relies more and more on the vast surveillance and social control apparatus it has formed.
In Russia, Putin's rule rests on the mechanisms of repression and widespread Great Russian chauvinism for a relative and unstable tolerance of Russian imperialism.
India, a would-be superpower, has been shaken by both the largest strike in history and agricultural mobilizations, and, especially, by the onslaught of Hindu nationalism.
In the US, a divided bourgeoisie is split between a Republican conservative wing and the Democratic, supposedly, progressive wing.
In Europe, Britain, since 2015, has seen four prime ministers in the quest for its imperial greatness after Brexit, while Germany and France are rocked by geopolitical shifts and the rise of the far-right, which has gained a foothold in many European governments.
Throughout the developed world, the bourgeoisie shifts politically to repression and Bonapartism, showing little, if any, interest in a reformist or social-democratic governance. The masses, disenchanted by the mainstream politicians and the bankrupt parliamentary left agendas, can fall in the illusion of challenging the bourgeois social order from the right. Yet, for the time being the far-right itself has neither the type of organization nor the ideological integration it needs to unleash a new fascist tide, which at least in part explains its transformation into systemic mainstream parties. The defeated Golden Dawn in Greece is, so far, the only attempt for a genuine fascist party. It’s when the workers are massively mobilizing and with total class independence that the far-right steps back.
In the African Continent, the livelihoods of its inhabitants are decided in the metropolises of their colonial or neo-colonial masters. The multifaceted capitalist crisis is hitting the poorest continent on Earth the hardest. Furthermore, it is hit the harshest by climate disasters produced thousand miles away in the imperialist centres. Corrupt politicians, imperialist political interference and local warlords have offered Africa nothing but misery, ethnic cleansing, famines, and perpetual war. Sub-Saharan Africa is currently the theatre of an imperialist guard shift between US-French and Russian imperialisms. On top of the old colonial powers, Russia and China have stepped in following their own imperialist projects. Minerals, crucial for the Eldorado of green capitalism, are the imperialist loot, along with other forms of super-exploitation of the Continent.
In the Pacific, a new war theatre is under construction. The AUKUS agreement aligns the USA, Australia and the UK to contain Chinese expansion, while Japan is again creating its imperial army and France holds an iron grip on Polynesia and especially its colonial rule over Kanaky/Nouvelle Calédonie. However, resistance in Kanaky, in the last period, has created an instability in the framework of this domination. The recent mobilizations against the cost of life in Martinique are also an expression of the same phenomena.
The building of broad allaiances with institutional left parties or bourgeois parties has in no case proved its usefulness in order to rebuild class consciousness without even talking about the workers’ movement.
Climate change and war will increasingly lead the popular masses to face the system's deepest impasses and contradictions. The only way forward for national liberation movements, and populations displaced by oppression or natural disasters, is to make the perspective of communism the cause of the working class. For the working class itself, political independence from the institutional left, while building a revolutionary transitional programme and revolutionary parties, is, in turn, the only way to respond to the everyday effects of the crises of capitalism and to shape a vision for another society.
Two Major Present-Day Wars
The international situation continues to be marked by tensions between imperialist powers, especially between the oldest advanced capitalist countries, and emerging powers with different strategic orientations. While the war in Ukraine continues, the last months have been marked by the unrestrained war waged by the Israeli colonial state against Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank.
Against this backdrop of increasing warlike confrontation and reactionary, authoritarian and militarist policies, our side, that of the oppressed and exploited, has not remained passive.
This was shown, for example, by the general strike in Argentina on January 24, 2024 against the far-right government of Javier Milei. Faced with frontal attacks on workers’ rights, price regulations, public services, the environmental and social struggles, the trade union organizations were pressured to call for a mobilization.
The role of revolutionary organizations is first and foremost to be present at the heart of all mobilizations, to take initiatives to build and amplify them, and thus to offer our whole class prospects for self-organization, independence, and the overthrow of this society.
It is these perspectives that we want to present and emphasize through our analysis of the situation in Ukraine, and of the disagreements we have with the majority of the International Committee, and in Palestine, with the broad movement that is being expressed throughout the world.
Faced with genocide in Gaza, the world responds: “Resistance!
A recent unprecedented international mobilization
Faced with the unprecedented tragedy, the international mobilization is also on a scale not seen for years.
While some governments tried to ban demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinian people the day after October 7th (in France, Germany, Hungary, etc.), they did not succeed in silencing international solidarity.
In France, it was the pressure of the numerous protesters and the initiatives, including legal action, taken by organizations such as the NPA-R that made it possible to impose the right to demonstrate in support of Gaza.
The demonstrations that took place on every continent, in the major cities of many countries, took on a scale not seen since the 2003 movement against the war in Iraq. In London, for example, several hundred thousand people joined the demonstrations. In New York, the protests and occupations organized by the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) movement, demonstrated the rejection of the unconditional support of imperialist governments to the Israeli state. In Tunisia, the mobilization on October 18, 2023 reached a scale comparable to that of the demonstrations in January 2011, before the fall of Ben Ali. In Egypt, popular pressure forced the government, which wanted to muzzle any expression of solidarity, to back down.
The expression of class solidarity
Although reactionary governments claiming to be Islamic, as in Turkey and Iran, are seeking to exploit the solidarity movement, and although religious political currents and sometimes even the Muslim clergy in certain countries, as in Egypt, are seeking to direct and largely structure some of these mobilizations, the fact remains that the international solidarity being expressed goes well beyond religious affiliations.
The Israeli state represents a leading edge of Western imperialism in the Middle East, and the fate of the Palestinian people symbolizes, in the eyes of many dominated peoples and workers around the world, the fate of all exploited people.
At the beginning of November 2023, the Barcelona Port Workers’ Organization (OPEB) announced its refusal to serve ships carrying war material bound for the State of Israel. In the United States, workers blocked the military supply ship Cape Orlando for several hours in the ports of Oakland, California and Tacoma, Washington, as they did in Italy at the port of Salerno. In Denmark, the Søborg factory of the arms company Terma, which manufactures equipment for F-16 and F-35 fighter jets for the Israeli army, was blocked, as was the road leading to the headquarters of Elbit Systems in Bristol, UK, which manufactures parts for Israeli drones. In Belgium, several airport staff unions called for a refusal to handle shipments of military equipment destined for the Israeli state.
In France, workers’ collectives such as the “Health Workers for Gaza”, in which comrades from the NPA-R are a part of, are present at every demonstration.
These workers are of different origins, languages, and religious beliefs. But what unites them is much stronger than any division: it’s the fact that they belong to the same social class. This is what leads them to identify with the Palestinians, massacred in their homes, hospitals, streets, and schools, by the Israeli army, with the complicity of the governments that oppress and exploit us in each of our countries.
Our anti-capitalist and revolutionary perspectives: for the right of peoples to self-determination and for the political independence of our class
The complaint lodged by South Africa with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) aroused a great deal of sympathy, and even hope within the solidarity movement with the people of Gaza. But while the ICJ judgement found in favor of South Africa, considering that there was indeed a “risk of genocide in Gaza” and calling on the Israeli government to allow humanitarian aid in, the court did not demand a ceasefire!
This judgment clearly illustrates the impasse represented by international institutions. These emanations of the capitalist states can never represent any kind of redemption for our side.
Its salvation will only come from itself, from its struggles and direct solidarity between the exploited of the whole world.
This perspective is the opposite of those proposed by the Palestinian nationalist leadership.
The Palestinian Authority, headed by Fatah, co-manages the occupation of the West Bank together with the state of Israel! Fatah, which was the symbol of armed struggle in Palestine, by refusing to confront the reactionary Arab regimes and by choosing conciliation with imperialism, by refusing to address the Palestinian workers outside the borders of the Palestinian territories, has ended up demonstrating through the failure of the Oslo Agreement to what extent any bourgeois nationalist policy, even secular, is incapable of offering a perspective of liberation to the Palestinian masses and the region.
Hamas, the party in power in Gaza since the 2006 elections, although it has a strong implantation in Gaza, remains a petit-bourgeois reactionary and religion-based movement. Its leaders have close relationships and similar aims with theocratic – repressive – corrupt regimes in the region (Iran, Qatar, and Türkiye). Like all bourgeois nationalist movements, Hamas’ aim is to end the occupation in favor of the Palestinian ruling classes and in no way to put an end to exploitation of the Palestinians.
However, our support of Palestinian people’s struggle and resistance is unconditional.
Even more than anywhere else, the nationalist perspective is doomed to failure. The nationalist movements of the past were able to drive out the colonialist forces - the United Kingdom out of India and Pakistan, France out of Vietnam and Algeria - and send the settlers home. But where to send the Israeli settlers, when their metropolis is itself made up of territories stolen from the Palestinians?
The so-called “two-state solutions” are now widely recognized as unworkable, since they all involve the unjust confiscation of land, the ban on the return of 7 million refugees and the creation of a state in two separate parts, Gaza and the West Bank, whose communications would always be dependent on Israel’s goodwill.
Those who still speak of a "two-state solution" are in fact at best considering the existence of micro-territories under Palestinian authority, like the Bantustans, those small states enclaved in apartheid South Africa to maintain an exploitable black workforce, under the authority of leaders complicit in the apartheid regime. But even this solution no longer has any credibility. While the Zionist extreme right simply wants to get rid of the presence of the Palestinian people. However, the endurance of the Israeli army or the ability of the US to finance a protracted war while maintaining an open front in the Chinese Pacific is doubtful. In Palestine, the hope lies in working-class solidarity in both the imperialist metropolises and the Arab world towards the seizure of power by the working class, the only one capable of ensuring respect for the right of peoples to self-determination, of achieving the complete democratization of society, of making the oppressed and the exploited of today live together on the same land, of giving them the same goal: the establishment of a society freed from imperialist domination and capitalist exploitation.
However, as implausible as it may seem today, forming a single political entity is the only viable option. It would mean dismantling the Zionist state. It would therefore require a break between the majority of the Israeli population - which is also made up of exploited workers, many of them poor - and the ideology of its bourgeoisie. It would also imply a rupture between the majority of the Palestinian population and its bourgeois nationalist leadership.
In the past, the proletarians of the colonialist metropolises have already stopped supporting the policies of their states. These ruptures followed the struggles of the colonized peoples and the excessive number of victims caused by colonial or imperialist wars, as in Algeria and Vietnam.
This is why our support for the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and resistance is unconditional.
But this policy would not be complete if the national liberation movement did not seek to address the proletariat of the whole Middle East region, that of the neighbouring Arab countries where the majority of the Palestinian population lives, but also the Israeli proletariat.
We participate in this fight under the program of social revolution and the flag of proletarian internationalism.
We do not pretend to know in advance the course of a victorious movement and the form that the power resulting from this movement would take. But, in Palestine as elsewhere, our perspective remains the union of the proletarians of all countries to destroy the bourgeois states and replace them with their own power, to build a communist society.
Finally, because of the special role played by the Israeli state as a relay for the interests of the Western imperialist countries in the Middle East, the prospect of its demise cannot be achieved without a broad international movement to combat all other complicit, criminal governments. Denouncing the imperialist countries is the first of our tasks in demonstrations, particularly for those who live and work there. This is the policy that we address, pedagogically and based on our support for the Palestinians, to those we meet in demonstrations.
Ukraine: the role of struggles in the face of war and governments
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 marked a new episode of tensions in international relations. While it was Russian imperialism that sent its troops to attack Ukraine, the latter’s primary aim was to defend what it considers its own zone of influence against the expansionism and aggressiveness of American imperialism. US imperialism has also coped very well with this war, which has now lasted two years. After having massively supplied arms and munitions to Ukraine, without however being enough to repel the Russian troops, the ruling spheres of American imperialism now seem to want to ease off on these deliveries. During these two years, the United States was able to deploy troops in a historic manner on the European continent, revive the order books of the American military industry, disconnect Russian gas and push European states to supply American gas. Never did the United States or other imperialist states care about the fate of the Ukrainian people.
For our part, we reaffirm, starting from the analytical grid outlined by Lenin, what we have affirmed from the beginning: "For the Marxist, the important thing is to know for what purpose the current war is being waged, during which now one and now the other army can be victorious." (Lenin, On Imperialist Economism). A war is "truly national" only if "at its core" it is based on "a long process of national mass movements, of overthrowing national oppression" (ibid.). This is not at all the case in Ukraine. Yes, we support the right of Ukrainians to self-determination, but the dominant character remains more than ever the character of inter-imperialist confrontation. The Ukrainian army is not a people's liberation army, it is a bourgeois army armed from head to toe by NATO and Western imperialisms. The very recent scandal that has just broken out, targeting Ukrainian military officials and business leaders who allegedly embezzled 40 million dollars in the context of an arms purchase, in the middle of the war with Russia, is a stark reminder of this reality. Supporting arms deliveries is supporting one camp against the other, it is making people believe that the future of the working class can depend on the victory of this or that imperialist bloc.
Like Lenin, we recall the “necessity of subordinating the struggle for this demand, as for all the fundamental demands of political democracy, to the revolutionary mass struggle directly oriented towards the overthrow of bourgeois governments and the realization of socialism.” (The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination). This means that we fight for the total political independence of the working class from Zelensky and all bourgeois nationalists. We do not seek to advise him, we fight him. We support the demonstrations of Ukrainian women demanding the return of men from the front. We support the return of strikes, in the health sector, among railway workers, among student youth… These are the only forces that can put an end to the current barbarity.
Just as, on the other side of the border, the women who, defying the Putin regime, dare to demonstrate for the return of mobilized men, represent a considerable hope. Contrary to the portrayal in the Western capitalist press, Russian society is far from being monolithic. Because it too is divided into classes with antagonistic interests. Proof of this are the new major demonstrations in Bashkortostan to demand the release of Fail Alsynov, an environmental activist sentenced to four years in prison for “racial hatred” for having denounced a mining project. Fail Alsynov had also denounced the mobilization campaign launched by Putin, which particularly targets national minorities, here the Bashkirs. These demonstrations echo the demonstrations against this mobilization that broke out in September 2022, particularly in Dagestan.
All this leads us to recall what we wrote in March 2022: “The first task of revolutionary Marxists in the period which sees the multiplication of military clashes and the growing risk of a generalized conflict, is the construction of an international movement against war and for the right of peoples to self-determination. (…) The slogans that revolutionary communists must defend in such an anti-war movement are the following:
- No to the imperialist war in Ukraine!
- Immediate withdrawal of Russian troops! Immediate withdrawal of NATO troops and officials from Eastern Europe!
- All imperialist armies out of Ukraine and Eastern Europe!
- Not one penny, not one soldier, not one weapon for the war in Ukraine. Against all intervention by our own imperialisms! No to national unity behind our own imperialism or bourgeoisie!
- Solidarity with the anti-war movement in Russia, Ukraine and the West! Release all imprisoned demonstrators in Russia!
- Open borders and welcome all refugees, whatever their country of origin! No to racist sorting between “good” and “bad” migrants!