Internationalist struggle against the capitalist rivalries and war economy

Announcement from the Political Committee of Communist Liberation / Greece

1. Capitalism is at a critical turning point, which is already triggering a series of developments at all levels, fueling crisis phenomena, economic uncertainty, and tremors in geopolitical interrelations. In this context, two main interrelated developments stand out:

i. Intensification of intra-capitalist rivalries, even within the same camps and alliances. Along with the declaration of an open US-China economic war, tensions are developing between the US and the EU and between the EU states. These contradictions manifest in trade disputes (such as tariff conflicts) and divergent geopolitical stances—particularly regarding Ukraine and attitudes toward Russia. The tariff war with consequences such as signs of stagflation in the US, the downward revision of forecasts for US, EU, and Chinese growth, and the weakening of the dollar as a reserve currency, is part of this context.

ii. Shift towards the "war economy" and militarized rhetoric, in general and especially in the EU which, through Rearm Europe, seeks to reverse its economic stagnation (and recession in Germany).

2. The above is not related only and mainly to arbitrary “Trump choices”, although the role of the leaders of powerful economies and states in particular should not be underestimated. The field within which the contradictions of Total Capitalism are exacerbated has a historical and social depth that goes beyond the current period. Capitalism’s internal contradictions in the process of production, exchange and distribution stand out. On one hand, capital drives toward rapid technological integration to boost relative surplus value; on the other, this very process heightens the organic composition of capital, exacerbating the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

In particular, the relative downturn of American capitalism, despite its military and political superiority, strengthens the tendencies of loss of hegemony and dominance. As a result, it leads to critical strategic readjustments for the next round of deadly competition. With an eye primarily on capitalist China, which claims to hegemonically steer the next phase of global capitalist development, the USA is attempting a separate strengthening of its own in all fields, reshaping the foundations of the Euro-Atlantic alliance within the framework of NATO and the EU.

The current escalation of inter-capitalist competition and systemic crises is fundamentally tied to two structural trends: the downward trend in profit rates and the inability to profitably reinvest surplus capital. The IMF expects global growth to reach 2.8% this year, a rate revised downward by 0.5% compared to the previous estimate, in January. The risk of recession has increased significantly, both for the global economy and for the US in particular, but also steadily for Germany and the EU, where economic growth has been revised downward by 0.2 percentage points and is expected to reach 0.8%. The IMF predicts zero growth for Germany, 0.6% for France and 0.4% for Italy (a corresponding decrease of 0.2 and 0.3 compared to the January forecasts). China, the main target of President Trump's tariffs, could see its slowest growth since 1990, at just 4%.

In this context, the imposition or threat of imposing tariffs has a dual objective: On the one hand, to "protect" the US economy, while simultaneously harming competing economies, especially China, and providing incentives for a certain return of American businesses back to the US (debatable to impossible in perspective) and on the other hand, to finance (through tariffs/taxes and rising prices) a new round of internal restructuring of capitalism with tax exemptions for the bourgeoisie and further reductions of all kinds of social policies.

In conclusion, the imposition of a wave of tariffs by the Trump administration (and the subsequent backlash) simultaneously involves two aspects:

First, it is an acknowledgement of the downward trajectory of the US and panic at the prospect of losing hegemony. It means recognizing that it is no longer the "only" or "great" power. This is where Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again" stems from.

Second, it simultaneously constitutes an aggressive, adventurous policy with the aim of showing the US that it has the power to threaten and position itself in the next phase.

3. The U.S. tariff policy represents a strategic offensive primarily targeting China as Washington's main economic and geopolitical threat. However, this approach requires restructuring global trade relations through a dual strategy. In this way, not only do they blackmail countries with Chinese investments in the South, so that they do not function as a bypass for Chinese exports, but they also pressure the EU (and especially Germany), due to the trade deficit they have with China. To impose their general policy, they attempt a combination of bilateral negotiations with various enticements.

The measures will have contradictory and perhaps unintended results. American multinationals abroad are being affected. For example, Apple only pays 2% of its costs in production costs in China, while it has 58% profit margins realized in the entire supply chain of its products. Industries in the US are also being affected, due to tariffs on spare parts. The shock in the bond market threatened the stability of the financial system with the risk of leading to a major crisis. While aiming to lure businesses back to American soil, these policies are having the opposite effect-creating investment hesitancy and fostering growing doubts about the stability of both the U.S. economy and the dollar.

4. These adjustments undoubtedly damage the “image” of the USA in the eyes of its rivals and friends. The tariff measures correspond to weak economies, contradictory in their effects for capital itself and capital accumulation. At the same time, they are accompanied by inhumane, racist policies (see the deportation pogrom) and measures (with typical examples being the war on education/universities, the issue of abortion among others). Trump’s rhetoric also constitutes a certain ridicule for the USA. From whom was the USA “liberated” on April 2? It is a complete reversal of historical truth to talk about shaking off tyranny from… Bangladesh, Vietnam or Lesotho! The “deindustrialization” of the US was not imposed by China or anyone else. On On the contrary, it is the American multinational corporations that left for markets with lower labour costs and higher profit rates.

5. The Trump administration curses but also declares the end of “globalization.” In essence, globalization refers to all the post-war arrangements by the hegemonic capitalist economies that placed the US in a leading role after the Second World War. Not only within the framework of NATO, but also within the framework set by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), later the World Trade Organization (WTO). They were the ones that launched the ability of the US and multinational capital for imperialist robbery and double capitalist exploitation of the weakest economies and mainly of the working classes and peoples around the world. The unresolved contradictions of total capitalism are fundamentally rewriting the rules of global economic competition. The violent expansion of capitalist relations around the world (in terms of political, economic blackmail, and even wars) also created the conditions for the emergence of new capitalist centres. The US is today threatened not only by the rising economic, industrial superpower China, but also by friendly capitalist countries such as India or Saudi Arabia.

6. Trump is not going to stop the “globalization” process. Because such “globalization” – in the sense of the gradual, supposed formation of a harmonious global economy where “everyone gains within free markets, each with their comparative advantage” – has simply never existed. On the contrary, it is certain that American capitalism, like European or Chinese capitalism, cannot abolish the absolute “law” of capitalism, that capital, after a certain level of national, internal accumulation, always seeks its international migration and expansion in the form of commodities, financial flows or investments, seeking profits but also offsetting the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. The US trade deficit resists simple solutions, as parts of manufacturing have long since moved to Asia, Mexico and elsewhere, creating the conditions for technological growth, economic development and increased power in competing countries. Thus, the tendency for capitalist internationalization, precisely because it occurs simultaneously (albeit under different conditions) for the separate national capitals, is by definition competitive, in a context where the successes of each side constitute losses for others and there is anything but a space for harmonious coexistence for all.

7. Despite the temporary imbalance in the context of the acute intra-capitalist competition, the relative decline of the USA and the Euro-Atlantic capitalist bloc in general, just as the path towards a calm “globalization” was a myth, it is also a myth that through the rise of the role of China and BRICS, humanity is marching towards a multipolar world that will accommodate more “players”. This cannot happen either peacefully or permanently though. Capitalist competition, coupled with the inherent tendency for (ultimately warlike) formation of a clear hierarchy of economic, political and military power ( culminating in the emergence of a dominant hegemon), constitutes a “law” of capitalism leading to the perpetual source of war's resurgence within the system.

8. The US ally, the European Union, observes these developments from an increasingly vulnerable position, dealing with signs of economic stagnation or even recession already visible, especially in its developed core (Germany, France, Italy). It is attempting to escape the existential threat with an unprecedented shift towards the “war economy”. The intention for open, direct involvement in Ukraine is being openly expressed. The far-right in the key EU countries is setting the agenda for all bourgeois political forces on all issues more than ever. The conservative claim that the shift towards the war economy is “forced” due to the risk of US support for the far-right Zelensky regime in Ukraine being withdrawn or due to the removal of the US “protective umbrella” within NATO is not confirmed. Despite the importance of these parameters, the EU also has its own independent strategy in this direction, even before the election of Trump. The Draghi Report is distinctive, where the shift towards a war economy is set as a path to reversing economic stagnation. They speak openly of a transition from the “welfare state” (what is left) to the “war state”, with a possible resort to a kind of “military Keynesianism”, in a context where bourgeois states, while limiting social spending, will increase war investments.

9. The Eastern bloc which is competing to the West is unstable and has not formed coherent political, economic and military structures. The US and EU aggression also has to do with preventing the risk of greater homogenization and rise of the opposing camp, with an attempt to divide it. China is rapidly advancing its internationalized economic and geopolitical rise. The gigantic projects it promotes in numerous countries are accompanied in some cases by the provision of military use of infrastructure. For example, the Chancay port in Peru, which is the largest in Latin America, was recently inaugurated and includes the possibility of use by the Chinese Navy, without the Peruvian state having sovereignity within it. This is a covert base that reveals that China's rise is not only economic but is also acquiring the -necessary in the future- military power. Its self-promotion today as a “protector” of “free trade” and “globalization” reflects its complete separation from any remnant of its past, despite the presence of a powerful state, which is, however, the guardian of capitalist development and not of any “social welfare”. This model was followed in the past by Japan and the “Asian tigers”, in a different historical and economic environment of course. There are signs not only of fatigue, but also early signs of crisis of Chinese capitalism (real estate bubble, housing crisis, bankruptcies of giants such as Evergrade, which was established in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands). The internationalization of Chinese capitalism cannot remain unscathed by endogenous and exogenous “viruses” of crisis. This is why the state often intervenes to rescue private companies or has also unilaterally imposed aggressive tariffs, e.g. on Australian agricultural products and metals.

10. The risk of a general outbreak of war is growing against the backdrop of growing economic competition. Global military spending reached $2,718 billion in 2024, up 9.4% in real terms from 2023 and the steepest annual increase since at least the end of the Cold War. The five largest military spenders - the United States, China, Russia, Germany, and India - accounted for 60% of the global total, with a combined spending of $1,635 billion. The 15 largest spenders in the world in 2024 all increased their military spending. The global military budget – the share of global gross domestic product (GDP) allocated to military spending – rose to 2.5% in 2024. US military spending rose by 5.7% to $997 billion, accounting for 66% of total NATO spending and 37% of global military spending in 2024, clearly outstripping the rest of the world and the main driver of the race to war. All NATO members increased their military spending in 2024. Total military spending by NATO members amounted to $1,506 billion, or 55% of global military spending. Of the 32 NATO members, 18 spent at least 2.0% of GDP on military expenditure, up from 11 in 2023 and the highest number since NATO adopted the spending guideline in 2014. Military spending in Europe (including Russia) increased by 17% to $693 billion and was the main contributor to the global increase in 2024. Germany’s military spending increased by 28% to $88.5 billion, making it the largest spender in Central and Western Europe and the fourth largest in the world. Poland’s military spending increased by 31% to $38.0 billion in 2024, accounting for 4.2% of Poland’s GDP. China, the world's second-largest military power, increased its military spending by 7.0% to about $314 billion, marking three decades of continuous growth. Russia's military spending reached about $149 billion in 2024, a 38% increase from 2023, accounting for 7.1% of Russia's GDP and 19% of all Russian government spending. Japan's military spending increased by 21% to $55.3 billion in 2024, the largest annual increase since 1952. In 2024, the United Kingdom increased its military spending by 2.8% to $81.8 billion, making it the sixth-highest spending country in the world. France's military spending increased by 6.1% to $64.7 billion, making it the ninth-largest spender. Sweden increased its military spending by 34% in 2024, to $12.0 billion. In its first year of NATO membership, Sweden's military burden reached 2.0% of GDP.

11. These developments reposition the debate within political currents, not only since the crisis of 2007-09, but also at the turn of the pandemic (2020-21). In the bourgeois political world, political currents with a common exploitative class base are developing but also increasing divergences that cause political turmoil. The extreme right-wing currents and parties are strengthening, especially after Trump's second election, with an emphasis on the "return and recovery of national sovereignty" and the resurgence of the so-called economic nationalism as a response to "globalization", enhanced aggression towards the working class, but also a particular emphasis on the promotion of ultra-conservative values, old and new, in relation to immigrants, refugees, political and social rights. However, in moments of political crises, they easily join forces, as happened, for example, in France with the formation of the Bayrou government, which in practice united the "centre" with the traditional right under the tolerance of Le Pen.

12. The discussion about the relationship between Trump and far-right parties which are influenced by fascist perceptions has its importance. Every political and social phenomenon is judged in the context of the era of its appearance, but also with the development it has subsequently. There are similarities with the interwar period, where fascism appeared in Europe, however, there are also new parameters that need to be analyzed. Far right regimes and parties today have a significant geographical spread, not only in the "West" but also in the "Periphery", in Latin America, Asia (India, Israel, Turkey, South Korea, etc.) where they combine national or religious particularities with traditional fascist policies. Modern phenomena are perhaps even more dangerous than their historical reference and introduce us to a new era. They are above all phenomena of total capitalism with its new elements and the answer cannot be "democratic fronts". Already, those that have been formed (Macron's France, Christian Democrat/Social Democrat/Green governments in Germany, etc.), while talking about a "wall of democracy", fully adopt the agenda of their "opponent". But even on the left, the proposals of "popular fronts" are ineffective, as they do not base themselves on the current period of capitalism, propose failed responses from the past, deliberately underestimate the issue of the anti-capitalist intersection or critical aspects such as the issue of the EU.

13. The debate about the “end of neoliberalism” divides bourgeois think tanks, as well as the left. However, the basis of this debate mainly concerns the economic dimension of neoliberalism, as it appeared as the Chicago School, Reaganism/Thatcherism and as it spread over the last 35 years across the planet. However, this period of capitalism does not only concern economic policy. It is an aspect of the consolidation of total capitalism, which, however, concerns the entire sphere of production, work and people's lives. Capitalism in each of its transitional periods does not stop utilizing its “old” tools, which in each new era acquire a different content. For example, state interventionism now hardly concerns any “social contract”, but almost exclusively the support of capital's profits. Therefore, there is no "return to a previous era", but a deepening of the exploitative nature of modern capitalism in conditions of instability and crisis.

 14. In the field of the reformist left, the dominant response so far has been the “anti-neoliberal front”, in response to the perception of the “greater evil”, with an explicit denial of an anti-capitalist front, anti-capitalist struggle and overthrow (as impossible or unnecessary) and an explicit or implicit suggestion of the “progressive” response to some kind of Keynesianism and “leftist, progressive governments”. This political direction is entering a political crisis. The current turn of events-including the unvarnished rhetoric of Trump and similar figures-reveals the dual engines of capitalist crisis: intensifying inter-capitalist competition on the global stage, and escalating class struggle within and across national borders. These dialectically related forces now manifest simultaneously across all critical economic, political, and military domains. The questions of anti-capitalist politics and the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist order itself, return in an urgent and demanding way. Political independence from bourgeois politics, of the line of intervention of the anti-capitalist communist left, is necessary. This is judged both in the analysis and in the political choices in practice. It is also judged in the independence from indirect or direct support or "alliances" with logics of "democratic, anti-far right or popular front", "progressive alternative" and in the rejection of logics of following one or the other imperialist/capitalist bloc.

15. In this context, the anti-capitalist communist left is opposed both to the classical liberal theory and politics that sees "progress", peace and supposedly economic readjustment and growth due to the benefits of competition, and to neo-Keynesian or post-Keynesian management policies of the "Western" or Asian type. The break with capitalism and imperialism in the national and international arena and the pursuit of an economic and social course for the benefit of the working classes and peoples, is based on a triptych of key political goals, which have both a tactical and strategic dimension:

i. extensive public ownership of the main sectors of these economies, planned state investments, with direct nationalizations, re-nationalizations with workers' control. This position combats the wave of privatizations that have enormous negative consequences today

ii. Workers' control over production, especially on critical issues of the operation of state-owned enterprises from the perspective of defending the interests of their workers and of the working class in general, projecting the need for working class democracy and political control across the entire scale of social and political relations and primarily in production. This position opposes the economic operation of bourgeois states with private-economic criteria, the open endowment of capital with public money through the state and banks

iii. Internationalist struggle from now on, with mutual support in the field of labour and popular movements, as well as bilateral or multilateral relations with the cancellation of foreign debts, the abolition of all measures that sweep local markets from the dictatorship of multinationals or the capitalist blocs, in the perspective of the internationalist communist unification of humanity, which the only globalization that can serve the people’s interests.

16. The Russia-Ukraine war has all the characteristics of an imperialist, unjust and reactionary war on both sides. However, it simultaneously inaugurates a new round of capital’s murderous (large-scale) wars in the era of total capitalism, where all the terrible characteristics of the wars of the era of imperialism appear, along with the over-development of other qualitative aspects such as a more organic connection with economic wars, nuclear danger, the integration of Artificial Intelligence, information warfare, satellite space warfare and others. It is tragic for the left that some organizations support the war campaign of NATO and the EU in the name of “Ukraine’s right to defend itself”. A multitude of other leftist forces and anarcho-communist currents celebrate Russian military victories even if they came from a real slaughterhouse in “World War I trenches” conditions. Others judge the events in Gaza based on the question of the “nature of Hamas”, overlooking the massacre of the Palestinian people by the Zionist murderous and reactionary state of Israel with the support of the USA, NATO, EU, including Greece. They also overlook that the first “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) genocide in history is taking place, the applications of which do not only concern the Palestinian people, but all those exploited in the future. The use of both old and new forms of war shapes conditions of unimaginable horror, which is “normalized” even within the left.

17. The movement of millions of people, the events and the multifaceted processes in the consciousness of society and the political scene, impose a substantial political debate and intervention from the side of the revolutionary, working-class and internationalist anti-capitalist and communist left . From this point of view, we must deepen the debate in relation to the political and ideological currents that inevitably develop against the background of the above developments and in the context of the class and political struggle. The bourgeois political systems are in unprecedented political crisis and instability, especially in the developed capitalist countries. As the social issue sharpens on all sides (the housing crisis around the world is typical despite the “kingdoms” of real estate investments that shine), broad sections of working and popular strata are alienated from the stable political support of the regime parties, despite the obvious inability to mobilize towards an anti-capitalist policy of overthrow. Class struggle and workers’ resistance are always present in these processes. We must transform in such a way to become in particular their most subversive political tendencies and mainly the tendency to transform into a comprehensive political struggle. From the great movement in defence of the Palestinian cause to the strikes around the world, from the USA to China, and from the demonstrations for Tempi in Greece to the mobilizations in Argentina, the working classes and the peoples are making their presence known. Political affiliations are anything but stable. Bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties are in political and organizational crisis, while within the left political lines are being rearranged, seeking a new communist prospect.

The Political Committee of Communist Liberation

Greece, May 2025