The Third World War is spreading. Not only in Ukraine, Iran, and Palestine: the African continent is in turmoil, Venezuela has been attacked and is under siege, Cuba is under threat, and South America is being shaken by attempts to impose US puppet governments. In the background are the maneuvers of the US, Zionist, and EU imperialists against the People’s Republic of China.
The world is not facing the danger of a Third World War; the world is already immersed in the Third World War.
The entire economic and financial activity of the imperialist countries revolves around the demands of war and projections for its development.
Enormous amounts of money are already being diverted into military engineering, logistics, and war production, taken away from healthcare, education, measures to address the climate and environmental emergency, and social policies.
The effects are visible, are out in the open, and continue to worsen.
And the more forcefully the alarms that periodically erupt in public debate over one emergency or another gain momentum, and the more desperate the appeals to “do something” become, the more clearly it emerges that the current ruling class does not want to and cannot change course. War is an objective necessity of capitalism in crisis.
And although the particular consequences of this course differ to some extent from country to country, this is the track on which all imperialist countries are proceeding.
In this sense, all imperialist countries have a common destiny, assigned to them by history: they are the frontline—the cause, the driving force, and the promoters—of the Third World War and, precisely for this reason, they are also the decisive context for the rebirth of a conscious and organized communist movement, the only alternative to the chaos produced by the general crisis of capitalism.
Only the socialist revolution and the establishment of socialism in at least one imperialist country can interrupt the destructive vortex of the Third World War.
Before giving in to skepticism and distrust, and throwing this thesis into the bin of “beautiful hopes that are impossible to realize,” give yourselves the opportunity to explore it more deeply.
Inevitably, we speak of our own country, because it is precisely here that we must and can carry out the socialist revolution. This is the concrete and decisive contribution that the Italian workers and popular masses can make to the popular masses of the other imperialist countries and to the peoples of the oppressed countries, by emancipating themselves from the system of power of the ruling class (see the article “Anatomy of the Papal Republic” on page 10).
What Was Silent Is Now Shouting
One consequence of the overall worsening of living and working conditions, the increase in precariousness, and the decay of the social institutions that in some way guaranteed social cohesion is the proliferation of protests, expressions of discontent with the course of events, and, in parallel, the search for “solutions.”
This is not a phenomenon that emerged suddenly; it has grown in parallel with the worsening of the general crisis—economic, environmental, and social. The fact is that today everyone is shouting about the ills of society.
The media are shouting, stringing together one real or invented emergency after another.
Pundits and influencers at the service of the ruling class are shouting about social decay and fomenting the hunt for poor immigrants.
Politicians of every color are shouting improvised solutions, invented solutions, solutions pulled out of thin air.
Confusion reigns because all analyses and solutions that evade the real causes of the situation, that evade the general crisis of capitalism and deny the connection between the chaos we are experiencing here in Italy and the development of the Third World War, are merely chaotic chatter that feeds confusion, obstructs the analysis of reality, and prevents the elaboration of effective solutions.
Shortcuts are increasingly prevalent. From the “remigration” promoted by the reactionary right and nostalgists of the Twenty Years of Fascism, to the wealth tax promoted by the bourgeois left. Empty talk that poisons consciousness and feeds powerlessness and defeatism.
What Was Motionless Has Begun to Move
The worse the situation becomes—and it is visibly getting worse—the more the popular masses are pushed to mobilize, to take some kind of initiative.
And indeed, mobilizations and protests are multiplying. But so are backward, antisocial, destructive, and self-destructive forms of resistance.
Anyone who insists on saying that “nothing is moving in Italy” is simply disconnected from reality.
The healthy and advanced part of the popular masses has been mobilizing continuously for years against the genocide in Palestine and against the Third World War. Protests against those responsible for the climate and environmental crisis have continued for years. The country is dotted with large and small episodes of workers’ resistance to the dismantling of the productive apparatus. There are widespread mobilizations against environmental devastation and against large-scale speculative projects that are useless and harmful. Students and teachers in secondary schools and universities are in motion, as are the parents of elementary school students.
By contrast, even the most brutalized part of the population, under the sway of reactionary propaganda, is beginning in some way to mobilize.
It does so at the command of this or that racist or fascist strongman, driven by backward and antisocial conceptions, but it is beginning to do so in an increasingly collective manner.
This means that the struggle between the revolutionary mobilization and the reactionary mobilization of the popular masses is intensifying and becoming increasingly concrete.
This means that the organization and mobilization of the popular masses—in one direction or the other—has assumed, is assuming, and will progressively assume an increasingly important, decisive role.
Thinking Positively Is a Revolutionary Act
In the context we have necessarily described only in broad outline here, fear is also spreading.
It is spreading because the authorities and institutions of the ruling class cannot and do not want to provide a positive response to the problems of the overwhelming majority of the population; they are unable to defend and preserve social cohesion. On the contrary, they operate and act ONLY in accordance with the demands of financial and speculative capital.
It is spreading because the forms and instruments through which the ruling class governed society and the country have increasingly become openly instruments of oppression and persecution of the popular masses.
It is spreading because the propaganda of the ruling class remains deeply rooted in the prevailing common sense of an important part of the popular masses. The ruling class presents the decline of its system as the decline of human society, of humanity itself, just as it presents its particular interests as common interests, as the common good.
However, the decline of capitalist society is NOT the end of the world, nor does it correspond in any way to the decline of human society. On the contrary, the extinction of capitalism will be—is—an epochal evolutionary leap for human society.
A leap through which humankind frees itself from the causes of war, the climate and environmental crisis, racism, male chauvinism and gender oppression, and ALL the consequences of the division of society into classes.
That revolutionary leap is possible. It will be traumatic and it will not be linear, but it is possible, as well as necessary. That leap is the socialist revolution, which, with the establishment of socialism, opens the way to a new phase of human civilization.
Everything that feeds skepticism or distrust regarding the possibility of making that leap is a manifestation of how much influence the ruling class still has over the popular masses at the cultural, intellectual, and practical levels.
The skepticism and distrust that fill the thoughts and feelings of workers and the popular masses are the last chain binding workers and the popular masses to the ruling class.
But the principal problem, the decisive question, is the extent to which skepticism and distrust condition the communists, the revolutionaries, those who want to change the world, the political vanguards, and the vanguards of struggle: are they themselves still convinced that “the conditions for revolution do not exist,” that “the enemy is too strong,” that “it would be beautiful and just, but…”
Comrades, thinking positively is not idealism. It is not unjustified optimism. It is the manifestation of having reached the understanding that the collapse of the old world of the capitalists is the prerequisite for the birth of the new world of the organized popular masses. Thinking positively is revolutionary.
Move Everything to the Counterattack
The Third World War is spreading; the governments, institutions, and authorities of the ruling class are fueling it; the effects of the general crisis and the world war are pushing the popular masses to mobilize and take the initiative.
It is precisely here that the role of communists becomes decisive.
It is the communists who must promote the political, ideological, and organizational strengthening of workers’ and popular organizations, and of the political and trade-union organizations that, in general terms, resist the disastrous course of events. With the objective of moving them to the counterattack.
To overthrow the governments, institutions, and authorities of the ruling class and replace them with a government of popular emergency, with institutions that are accountable to workers’ and popular organizations, and with new public authorities.
The existing workers’ and popular organizations must become what the soviets were in Russia: this is the substance of our work, our objective.
There are a thousand reasons why so many comrades, workers, and elements of the popular masses are still inclined to throw this thesis into the bin of “beautiful hopes that are impossible to realize.”
But ultimately, however solid and reasonable each of these reasons may appear, they are merely manifestations of skepticism and distrust.
Skepticism and distrust in what we say—in the line, the methods, the instruments of struggle, and the objectives—but also, and perhaps above all, skepticism and distrust in the fact that organized workers and popular masses are capable of imposing the epochal leap that is needed. Which, upon closer examination, is also a lack of faith in themselves.
This is why thinking positively is a revolutionary act. It breaks first and foremost with the conviction that oppressed classes must remain oppressed, as if by “divine will.”
But divine will does not exist, just as human nature does not exist, and there are no spells that condemn the popular masses to be cannon fodder or slaughtered like cattle for the ruling class. Therefore, the question is not metaphysical, but very concrete.
Every initiative that does not project itself toward the offensive, toward the counterattack, leaves ground to the enemy. It leaves ground to the governments, institutions, and authorities of the ruling class, or even to those who, on behalf of the ruling class, promote the reactionary mobilization of the popular masses.
In times of war—which are also times of socialist revolution—either positions are won or ground is lost: equilibrium is always and only a temporary phase. And now there is a need to organize for the counterattack, not for balancing acts and postponements.