This first quarter-century has seen an epochal turning point in inter-power relations, triggered by China's very rapid imperialist development. Arrigo Cervetto recognised this process from the very early 1990s: Today history has sped up its pace to an unpredictable extent. [...] Analysis of the sixteenth century, as the century of accelerations and rift in world history, is a model for our Marxist vision
(La mezza guerra nel Golfo [The Half War in the Persian Gulf], January 1991). The course of imperialism was speeding up, and China's very rapid rise was opening up a new strategic phase with the new century. The United States, the leading power in the world, is being challenged by an antagonist with comparable economic strength which, moreover, openly states that it wants to provide itself with a "world class" military force within the next decade.
Favoured by the 2008 global crisis and also by the pandemic crisis, China has forged ahead with its rapid rise for more than twenty years. Chinese imperialism has put a strain on the previous balances of power and has launched the second half of the new strategic phase characterised by the crisis in the world order. And not only this: Beijing's military development plans have triggered a huge rearmament race in the world, with massive investments on the part of the states.
Wars of the crisis in the world order
Faced with the full manifestation of the crisis in the world order, we have formulated two possible developments in these pages: either a series of concatenated regional conflicts, or the explosion of a major war between great powers. We do not believe that the moment for the breakdown of the world order has arrived yet; we therefore believe that a war between great powers is very unlikely today, although it cannot be ruled out. Meanwhile, the local wars stemming from the crisis in the world order are now underway.
In Ukraine, the war of imperialist division between Russian imperialism and the Western powers, with Europe in the front line, continues to reap victims among the Ukrainian and Russian youth, despite the fact that the hypotheses of negotiations for a truce are becoming more insistent. In Gaza, the war threatens to escalate to a regional level, while the massacre of civilians carried out by the Israeli army in response to the terrorist attack of the Hamas Islamist forces is odious. We're now talking about 40,000 victims, most of them women, children and senior citizens. If this shameful massacre will leave an indelible mark on the Israeli bourgeoisie, which is also responsible for having favoured Hamas's Islamist entrenchment in Gaza, the war also reveals the failure of every national solution.
We deal with our internationalist battle over the Gaza War on another page of our newspaper. Here, we limit ourselves to reiterating our firm conviction that a solution to the crisis in the Middle East and to the Palestinian question is now possible only with the unity of the Israeli, Arab and Palestinian proletariats and of the tens of thousands of immigrant workers there. The alternative of national ways and of nationalisms, polluted by religious fanaticism on both sides, has only led to enormous destruction and to an immense number of lives cut short, above all among the Palestinians. The only way out is to be found in the class unity of the area's vast proletariat and in a militant internationalism against the Israeli bourgeoisie and against those of Iran and of the various Arab countries, with which the Palestinian bourgeoisie is closely linked.
A path for internationalism
Our young people have refused to take part in a campaign to boycott research activities with Israeli universities, their researchers and their students - a campaign encouraged more by the media and the most important newspapers than by real student participation. First of all, we don't understand why relations with the Israeli world of research should be boycotted while, on the contrary, work is continuing on much more numerous and profitable contracts with the universities of European and American imperialism, which bear a huge responsibility for the disasters in the Middle East. Moreover, we should like to have many Israeli students in our universities; we should like to speak with them and to involve them in our solidarity volunteering in support of the Palestinian families who have been victims of the bombings in Gaza. We should like the more aware among them to be convinced that the only way is internationalism, the struggle against their bourgeoisie in their own country carried on with our full support and the solidarity of the European proletariat.
Last year, a study was published by two Chinese researchers, Kaixuan Liu and Wenrui Bi, "Learning Marxism in Paris: Chinese Communist Students in France (1919-25)" [in Marx: A French Passion, eds Ducange and Burlaud (Brill, 2023)]. In the early 1920s, China sent to Paris and Europe about 2,000 students with a "study and work" programme, a kind of forerunner of today's Erasmus Programme. The authors maintain that about 100 of those 2,000 students studied and embraced Marxism.
There is no doubt that the Stalinist counterrevolution and the social-nationalist populism of Mao subsequently appropriated that result of our school, to such an extent that from those 100 students there emerged the leaders of China's state capitalist party, among them Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. But this is another story. Our reflection is another: if, at that time, adherence to Marxism was possible, why shouldn't it be possible today, with Israeli students or those of any other nationality? This is an already ongoing phenomenon in the major European universities, from Rome to Paris, and from Milan to London or Berlin. And why should we not work hard to make sure that those young people can take Marxism and internationalism back to their countries? This is an aspect to bear in mind in our effort to entrench our party in Europe.
An unprecedented test
In July, on the occasion of the Third Plenum of the CCP, the state-party of Chinese imperialism, Xi Jinping wrote: Great changes never seen in a century are accelerating all over the world; regional wars and disorders continue to emerge; global issues are becoming more acute and external attempts to contain China are intensifying. China has entered a period in which opportunities, risks and strategic challenges coexist and uncertainties and unpredictable factors are increasing
. The challenging rising power fixes the characteristics of the next decade marked by the crisis in the world order and its wars. We are called to an unprecedented test, to a new development cycle of our party. We will have to do this starting from a renewed connection with the younger generations, one that is wider and more incisive in the field of militancy and life choices. The times require this.
We need to return to the reflection made after the 1970s of the restructuring crisis, amidst general confusion, the retrenchment of the workers' struggles, and even the moral degradation of imperialist maturity. At the end of 1986, Cervetto urged the need for a connection with young people, stressing how they could be attracted by Lotta Comunista as the party of scientific order, of a clarity which has no myths. Young people could be attracted by a scientific newspaper, which is certainly not easy to read but is a scientific paper that does not shut itself up in an ivory tower, to be read only by a chosen few, but which is distributed among the masses. Science translated into militancy, to become struggle
.
Young people and war
Two basic features will mark the next years - we may well say brand them with a red-hot iron. The first is undoubtedly the crisis in the world order and its wars, with the huge rearmament underway: these are phenomena that cannot but touch the feelings of young people and particularly of students, as Lenin was to stress in the tensions of the early 20th century. No one today can any longer say that a war between great powers is impossible because there are nuclear weapons and therefore the risk of mutual destruction. Today a war between great powers is considered among the possibilities, and attention to the nuclear deterrent and its possible use is universal. Sometimes, the adjective tactical is added to nuclear deterrence: it is just worth remembering that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of that type.
Therefore, on the agenda there is an intransigent internationalist battle among the new generations against unitary imperialism, against our own bourgeoisies, and against all nationalisms, homelands and borders, with a ceaseless denunciation of the frantic rearmament cycle in which the youth is involved. In fact, it is young people who will be the future soldiers, the future conscripts, as has been the case with their Ukrainian and Russian peers. Not for nothing is a revision of military conscription being debated in order to pave the way for a future mass conscription.
Demographic abyss
The second basic feature of the next decade is to be found in the demographic winter, and here our multi-decade analysis is precisely the confirmation of a "science which becomes struggle". The reader will find material on the general decline in fertility on another page. Last year, we provided documentary evidence of how China has passed to a negative demographic balance and of how its population has inexorably begun to diminish. We also dealt in these pages with the European situation, with a negative balance since 2015, leading to an annual loss in population of about one million. In Italy, the temperatures of the demographic winter are freezing: 1.8 million residents have been lost in eight years. And this in spite of the incoming migration flows, which, nevertheless, no longer make up for the decreased birthrate.
Capitalism, having reached full imperialist maturity, is no longer able to guarantee the development of the human species.
But there is another implication, more in the short-to-medium term. If we consider the population between 30 and 59 years of age in four key countries of Europe France, Germany, Italy and Spain - we are now about 105 million individuals. In ten years, without the contribution of immigrants, this would drop to 94 million, i.e., 11 million less. Who will replace them? The loss in Italy would be about 4 million, 3 million in Spain, 6 million in Japan, and 70 million in China. All the states will desperately need immigrants, millions of immigrants. The ruling classes will have to increase the incoming flows and will inevitably have to reckon with the fears of wide segments of the petty bourgeoisie and intermediate strata, grown old and rich in property assets. This is their traditional mass power base: social strata fearful of seeing their social status questioned, afraid of the winds of war, and alarmed by migration flows.
The room for fear-mongers will inevitably grow, and here the signals which come from the xenophobic riots in England are significative. At that point, our struggle against racism and xenophobia will become essential, and our ties with immigrant workers which our workers' clubs are forging in working class districts and workplaces will become crucial. Our solidarity volunteering will be precious: it will become our immediate political struggle against racism and will be a stronghold against xenophobia and in favour of solidarity and inclusion. This is a commitment to which to call not only young people, but all the comrades and volunteers of our clubs.
A historic necessity
The world order crisis and its wars highlight the extent to which this mode of production is historically a thing of the past. Capitalism can survive only at the cost of the periodical destruction of immense productive forces. On the other hand, the demographic crisis actually demonstrates that capitalism is no longer even able to guarantee the continuity of the species. What is needed is a superior society, in an organic relationship between the human race and nature.
The struggle for a social revolution, the struggle for communism, is more than ever a historic necessity. It is our battle for a decade which will be crucial.
Lotta Comunista, July-August 2024