These teachers are now on strike. They need our help.

I sent this message (below) to you last week but I’m not sure that you saw it. The teachers are now on strike and they need our support more than ever.  

Please read on, sign up to show your solidarity, and spread the word.  

Thank you!

Türkiye: Teachers at an Italian School Demand Equality and Fair Pay

Turkish teachers working at Liceo Italiano I.M.I., an institution operating in Türkiye under Italian school status, have unionized against discriminatory practices at the school. Teachers state that despite carrying a heavier teaching workload than their Italian colleagues, they are employed under lower status and receive lower wages. They are calling for an end to this inequality, which they describe as creating “two different worlds within the same school,” and are demanding fair working conditions.

Rising inflation in Türkiye has severely eroded teachers’ salaries in recent years. Wage increases that remain far below the official inflation rate have pushed teachers into deep economic hardship. As no progress has been made in collective bargaining negotiations, the union has announced a decision to strike.

To learn more and to show your support, please click here.

And please share this message with your friends, family and fellow union members.

Thank you!

Eric Lee

LabourStart

The post These teachers are now on strike. They need our help. appeared first on Asia Commune.

图片显示了习近平和张有霞关系的破裂。

中国马克思主义

一场严重的危机在中国资本主义独裁政权的最顶层爆发，该政权由习近平和中国共产党（CCP）领导。2026年1月25日 ，习近平宣布撤销中央军事委员会（CMC）副主席张又侠和刘振立的职务，指控其严重违纪。至此，中央军委仅剩下两名成员：主席习近平和副主席张升民。共产党的官方媒体刊登了张又侠和刘振立的被捕的报道后，立即引发了军队内部的震动，但直接隶属于军队的媒体并没有进行任何表态，而是在舆论上史无前例地保持了长达72小时的沉默，同时高级军官们都消极对待甚至无视习近平颁布的最新命令，集体表达了军队严肃且全面反抗习近平的意愿。

中国独裁政权的危机是全球所有独裁政权危机的一部分，正如委内瑞拉的查韦斯主义、伊朗的伊斯兰原教旨主义或古巴的资本主义独裁一样，这些政权因受到人民的唾弃和排斥而陷入危机。在中国，由于仍然强大的军事、警察暴力和过于严格的信息管控，导致明面上看不到任何统治危机，但统治阶级内部已经意识到，如果继续支持习近平极端高压的独裁模式，中国共产党的”绝对统治”将因为过度积累社会矛盾而在数年内彻底崩溃。于是，在1月29日，驻扎在各个战区的军队开始大规模地在北京城外集结，这表明了统治阶级中反对习近平的力量开始采取军事手段，试图通过”剔除”习近平来捍卫各自的政治地位与既得利益。目前，北京周边已经形成了驻扎在郊区的围城部队与负责守卫首都的部队相对峙的局面。中国目前的局势反映了该政治体制最高层爆发的尖锐危机。

军方高层清洗及其风险

虽然习近平以”涉嫌严重违纪违法”等多重罪名扣押了张又侠，但在过去，两人都属于”太子党派系”，并建立了合作与信任关系。 张又侠一直是习近平在军队中的核心支柱和政治上的最大依靠，曾坚定支持习近平在2015-2017年进行军事改革，也是习近平排除反对力量，修改宪法达成无限连任的最大保障。军改完成后，中央军委明确将全军现役总人数定为200万人，其中包括不足100万人的陆军、约29万人的海军、约40万人的空军、约10万人的火箭军及其他部队。这一规模自2017年以来保持稳定，是不包括武警和预备役在内的全球规模最大的正规军。

由于中国在经济上受到华尔街的全面控制，经由最新的资本积累形式，中国已经转变为帝国主义资本的亚宗主国（sub-metrópoli）。作为全球资本主义的次中心，中国加强了美元的全球垄断地位，并保证了极高的剥削率，因此，并不存在迫使中国政府维持规模如此庞大的军队的侵略者，军队主要是为了镇压全国性的工人暴动而存在的。而要保证军队的镇压能力，必须由拥有实际作战经验的人来管理，没有指挥经验的习近平不得不与曾参加过对越战争的张又侠达成协议来间接控制军队。

值得一提的是，即便张又侠曾是习近平的盟友，但他从未真正成为其下属，两者的冲突源于他对习近平推行无限期连任后还要指定继承人的野心感到不满，导火索则是”台湾问题”上是否诉诸武力的意见分歧。由于习近平需要政治功绩来巩固其统治合法性，就像布什政府曾成功利用”911事件”来排除他们的政治对手那样，习近平迫切希望通过控制台湾来完成对他个人的神话，以求彻底打击党内反对派，因此在对待”台湾统一”的具体方式上急切地倾向于使用武力。而张又侠则从军事战役的极大难度、给国家经济带来巨大的负面影响方面，尝试说服习近平采取谈判等和平措施，这就构成了对习近平的反对意见。对于一位极度自负的独裁者而言，任何反对意见都是不能容忍的，尤其是张又侠的权威、地位、实际权力都对习近平构成了挑战，因此，逮捕张又侠就是习近平抹除党内不稳定因素的必要措施。

涉及到独裁政权各派系之间的激烈对抗

自张又侠和刘振立下落不明后，部队的调动就显示出一场危机，由于习近平盲目地扩大其在军队内部的影响力，他决定继续调查并惩处中国人民解放军（PLA）内部的高级官员，导致了中国军队与北京之间产生直接冲突，这表现为北京的行政官僚无法与该国各军区的军事官僚达成协议。这是资本主义独裁政权内部两个派系之间的斗争，其中并不存在任何进步力量，因为这两个派系都是深度腐败且亲帝国主义的资本主义部门，与大企业和华尔街有着千丝万缕的联系。

近50万人将军队视为工作来源，这是因为中国人民解放军200万现役人员中，有23%是文职人员，他们为了更稳定的社会保障而在军队中谋职。解放军腐败的基础在于军队可支配的资金规模超过1.1万亿元人民币，由国家预算和军工企业收入组成。然而，在2017年的军队改革完成后，军队管理趋于混乱，腐败依旧严重，且缺乏实战经验。其中大部分具备战斗能力的装备仍是前苏联的遗产，而自主研发的新型武器并不适合在正面战场进行持久、高强度的使用。至于职业士兵，大多由独立意识强、忠诚度低的年轻人组成；由此可说，中国军队的综合实力可能还不如越南。

中共文职官员的腐败范围广泛并影响着国民经济，而军队的腐败则与军事预算，特别是军事装备采购挂钩。从历史上看，例如邓小平时代，为了换取政治忠诚，军队被允许进行走私，直到1998年远华案揭露了人民解放军的石油走私行为。远华案涉及数百万吨成品油和数十亿的偷税漏税，引发了公众的巨大关注和大规模的贪腐投诉，这促使江泽民强制要求军队与商业脱钩。

自江泽民因远华案丑闻爆发而采取措施以来，文职官员与军官之间的利益界限被明确界定，导致军官不再担任政府领导职务。像张又侠这样对习近平的独裁以及将党最高领导人职位转变为”世袭制”感到不满的高层将领，曾公开对抗习近平，但在政治斗争中暂时落败，被习近平的安全部队拘留，目前处境不明。

海南金融中心的真实情况

除了最近爆发的军事冲突，隶属于习近平派系的政府官僚也丧失了对习近平的信心。最近，中国共产党宣布在海南建立国际金融中心；然而，实际上，这个中心更多是作为党内精英的洗钱工具，而非真正的全球中心。由于其地理位置远离主要贸易路线和时区，无法与香港或新加坡竞争。在封关运作模式下，跨境资金转移变得更加便利，例如支持投融资的 EF 账户。首月的交易数据揭示了复出口的假象：几乎所有业务都是国内内部循环，在实践中充当了精英阶层资产外逃的通道。

据爱德华·斯诺登泄露的消息，中国官员在海外的存款高达4.8万亿元人民币，占贪腐总资产的三分之一。随着资本主义中国危机的加深，资本外逃现象愈发严重。目前中国经济增长率仅为5%，这在当地被视为接近衰退，远低于十年前14%至12%的历史增长水平。贫富差距剧烈扩大，迫使独裁政权不得不加强超过408万亿的社会融资以刺激消费。危机的一个重要表现是经济陷入通缩，尽管政权实施了强力的经济救助，但消费和购买力的崩溃依然导致了这一局面。

但现在经济增长停滞，救助措施未能使其摆脱困境，这无疑构成了政权危机的背景。目前，习近平为了挽回崩溃的统治基础，正在和那些利益不统一的官僚集团进行殊死挣扎。我们的人民正观察着权力最高层发生的内斗，与此同时，对独裁统治所造成的灾难的不满情绪正在不断积聚。

毫无疑问，现在的任务是将中国革命者重新团结在马克思主义和彭述之所推动的正统托洛茨基主义周围，而不是团结在导致了亲资本主义及华尔街财团独裁统治的毛主义修正主义周围。与此同时，民众的不满和危机迫使习近平选择铲除一切形式的反对派和异见人士，这无疑将进一步加剧政权的危机。马克思主义者谴责这场独裁政权的危机是一场亿万富翁之间的争斗，我们必须利用其危机，推动一切旨在终结习近平和中共资本主义独裁的运动，以建立一个真正的工农政府，终结这个腐败的亿万富翁资本主义寡头集团的统治。

The post 中国资本主义独裁政权的高层爆发危机 appeared first on Asia Commune.

By Sagnik Mukherjee

On January 26, 2026, a massive fire tore through a warehouse complex near Ruby Crossing in the Anandapur area of Kolkata, West Bengal. The warehouse was used by WOW! MOMO, a large Chinese food chain, owned by Indian capitalists, operating across the length and breadth of the country. The fire reportedly broke out at around 3:00 AM, originating in an adjacent decorator’s godown, before rapidly engulfing the nearby WOW! Momo warehouse. Initial reports confirm the recovery of 16 charred bodies, while 23 workers remain missing. Subsequent investigations revealed that both structures lacked even the most elementary fire-safety arrangements.

The fire minister arrived at the site only a day after the incident ; an arrival that itself stands as a damning indictment of the state’s criminal indifference toward the proletariat. His statement was as hollow as it was routine: “A probe has been initiated to ascertain the cause. We are also checking if a fire audit was done.” This bureaucratic phraseology is the familiar funeral chant of bourgeois governance uttered after the workers are already reduced to ashes.

Kolkata, like countless other cities across India, has a long and bloody history of such infernos. Yet instead of improvement, the situation has only worsened. This is no accident, no aberration, no “administrative lapse.” It is the law of motion of capitalism itself.

Marx long ago exposed the truth: under capitalism, human life is degraded into a commodity, valued only insofar as it produces surplus value. With the incessant and intensified accumulation of capital, and with the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the bourgeoisie compensates by squeezing the proletariat ever harder;　cutting wages, extending working hours, and stripping away even the bare minimum conditions necessary for survival. Safety becomes an “unnecessary cost,” and workers’ lives become expendable inputs.

This incident is not an exception, it is the rule of capitalism.

As always, the city will not truly mourn the deaths of “a few workers.” There will be no collective rage, no sustained outrage. The event will be absorbed into everyday normalcy, swallowed by a deafening silence. A section of bourgeois liberals will perform their ritualistic protests, preaching individual boycotts of this or that corporation. Such gestures may soothe their consciences, but they strike no blow against capital. Boycottism does not threaten the system, it decorates it with the illusion of dissent.

What is urgently required is not moral outrage, nor consumer activism, but a strong, consolidated mass movement consciously directed toward revolution. The reformist left, primarily social democrats, who systematically divert every upsurge into safe, parliamentary, and ultimately sterile channels. The chasm between the anger of the proletariat and the grievances of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals i.e. the modern raznochintsy is not being bridged. The genuine historical tasks of a communist party are being abandoned. In the absence of a revolutionary vanguard, the spontaneous movement of the masses oscillates, exhausts itself, and inevitably crashes into a dead end, often leaving behind conditions worse than before.

The continuous normalization of the institutional murder of workers by big corporations is nothing but the accumulated historical frustration of betrayed struggles. It is the direct product of movements deprived of revolutionary leadership. The social democrats and reformists left obsessively catalogue the “failures” and “inefficiencies” of corporations and the bourgeois state, implying that capitalism could somehow be managed better, more humanely, and more responsibly.

This narrative is rooted in a vulgarized, distorted caricature of Marxism. Capitalism is not failing , it is functioning exactly as it must. This is everything the exhausted capitalist epoch can offer. And it will only offer more death, more misery, more barbarism.

The system is rotting, staggering forward in its death agony. It does not call for cosmetic alternatives built on the same material foundations. It calls for its complete overthrow.

Long live the World Socialist Revolution!

Lenin – Clara – Trotsky – Rosa!

Long live! Long live!

The post Justice and solidarity with WOW! MOMO victims!! appeared first on Asia Commune.

아침에 읽는
〈노동자 연대〉 구독구독

정기구독  후원다양한 온라인 채널스마트폰 앱  종이 신문 구입처

〈노동자 연대〉 570호 

 입력 2026-01-20 19:05알렉스 캘리니코스

그린란드를 둘러싼 미국과 유럽의 갈등에 관해 맨 먼저 지적해야 할 것은, 둘 다 그 섬의 운명을 결정할 권리가 없다는 것이다. 그럴 권리는 오직 그곳의 다수 주민 [그리고 선주민 — 역자] 이누이트에게 있다.

그린란드는 덴마크의 식민지다. 덴마크는 1815년 덴마크-노르웨이 동군연합이 해체될 때 그곳을 단독 지배하겠다고 선언했다. 미국은 1917년 덴마크령 서인도 제도(오늘날의 미국령 버진 아일랜드)를 사들이는 조약을 체결하면서 덴마크의 그린란드 지배를 인정했다. 트럼프는 덴마크로부터 그린란드를 사들여 이런 식의 식민지 땅따먹기를 되풀이하려 한다.

그린란드는 대체로 미개발된 천연자원이 풍부한 곳이다. 그리고 북극으로 가는 관문에 있기도 하다. 지구 온난화로 빙하가 녹으면서 북극권은 제국주의 경쟁의 주요 무대가 됐다. 미국, 중국, 러시아 등의 강대국들이 북극의 항로와 광물을 차지하기 위해 경쟁하고 있기 때문이다.

또, 트럼프는 미국의 이익을 위해 그가 개발하려 하는 “골든 돔” 미사일 방어 체계에서 그린란드가 중요한 구실을 해야 한다고 말한다.

덴마크의 사회민주당 정부는 미국이 그린란드를 병합하지 않아도 트럼프가 원하는 바를 이룰 수 있다고 호소해 왔다. 사실 덴마크는 미국의 나토 동맹국들 가운데 가장 순종적인 축에 속한다.

1951년에 체결된 협정에 따라 미국 군대는 그린란드를 사실상 아무 제약 없이 이용해 왔다. 덴마크는 미국이 주도한 이라크·아프가니스탄 점령에도 동참했다.

그러나 그린란드 위기는 미국이 동맹국들에 부여하는 가치가 하락했음을 반영한다.

1945년 이후 미국의 패권은 선진 자본주의 국가들을 미국에 엮어 놓는 방식으로 행사됐다.

그러나 트럼프는 그 때문에 동맹국들이 미국을 등쳐 먹고 미국의 부와 힘에 편승해 왔다고 주장한다. 트럼프는 이제 “미국 우선”을 주장한다.

트럼프는 그린란드를 확실히 미국의 통제하에 두기 위해 그린란드를 병합하려 한다. 그리고 병합에 반대하며 그린란드에서 보잘것없는 군사 훈련을 벌인 유럽 8개국(영국 포함)에 10퍼센트의 관세를 부과하겠다고 위협하고 있다.

그 유럽 국가들은 트럼프에게 나토 우방들이 그린란드의 안보 문제를 심각하게 여긴다는 것을 보여 주겠다는 의도였지만 오히려 커다란 역효과를 냈다.

관세 부과 위협으로 유럽연합과 영국은 난처한 처지에 놓였다.

그들은 그동안 트럼프를 달래려 해 왔다. 영국 총리 키어 스타머는 트럼프에게 후한 아첨을 해 왔고, 유럽연합은 지난여름 대미 수출품에 15퍼센트 관세 부과를 수용하는 굴욕적인 무역 협상을 체결했다.

이를 통해 그들은 트럼프가 우크라이나를 러시아의 먹잇감으로 던져 주는 일을 막기를 바랐다. 그리고 미국이 계속 나토를 통해 유럽의 안보를 뒷받침해 주기를 바랐다.

그러나 이제 그린란드를 둘러싼 대치로 서방 제국주의 블록 내에 깊은 균열이 생기게 생겼다. 물론 트럼프의 관세 발표는 대개 협상의 서곡이다.

한 투자 전략 회사가 작성한 “관세 대처 전술”은, 트럼프가 고율의 관세를 발표하는 시점이 대개 시장이 폐장하는 주말이었다고 지적한다. 트럼프는 관세 유예 기간을 설정해 협상할 시간을 벌고, 결국에는 양측 모두 성공으로 내세울 만한 내용으로 타결하는 패턴이라는 것이다.

지난가을 미·중 무역 전쟁도 그렇게 전개됐다.

과연 그답게 트럼프는 그린란드를 둘러싼 새 관세를 2월 1일부터 적용할 것이고 6월에 관세를 더 올리겠다고 발표했다.

트럼프가 원하는 것이 단지 돈이라면 무역 협상 때와 마찬가지로 액수를 흥정하다가 결국 각자의 몫을 정할 수 있을 것이다. 그러나 이번에 트럼프가 원하는 것은 거대한 섬이다. 훨씬 타협이 어려운 것이다.

틀림없이 트럼프는 성공적인 베네수엘라 침공으로 자신감을 얻었을 것이다. 유럽 정부들은 그동안 트럼프를 지지한 것을 후회해야 마땅할 테다.

유럽연합은 일단 말로는 대차게 대들고 있다. 미국에서 오는 수입품에 대한 806억 유로에 달하는 보복 관세 패키지를 도입하겠다는 것이다. 그러나 스타머는 영국이 보복에 나서지 않겠다고 하려는 듯 보인다. 그다지 놀랍지도 않다.

미국 재무장관 스콧 베선트는 이렇게 말했다. “유럽 지도자들은 제정신을 차릴 것이다. 자신들이 미국의 안보 우산 아래에 있어야 한다는 점을 이해할 것이다.” 그럴지도 모른다.

그러나 캐나다 총리 마크 카니가 지난주 베이징을 방문해 무역 협정을 체결한 것은 오랜 동맹이 훼손되고 있음을 보여 준다. 트럼프의 깡패짓은 훨씬 불안정한 골육상쟁의 시대를 열고 있다.

출처: Alex Callinicos, ‘Greenland row shows a dog-eat-dog world’ (2026. 1. 19)

번역: 이원웅

주제

제국주의

국제〉

미국

국제〉

유럽

이 기사가 좋으셨다면? 기사 후원하기 (1000원부터)

SOURCE.

https://ws.or.kr/article/38541?fbclid=IwdGRzaAPc

The post 알렉스 캘리니코스 논평:그린란드 위기가 보여 주는 골육상쟁 제국주의 appeared first on Asia Commune.

mperialism activates the money-creation machine to cope with the crises that emerge from the collapse of capitalism.

Daniel Campos – The Marx International

The announcements made by US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on September 18, 2025, signaled the start of a new round of financial bailouts and rescues of the global capitalist economy. This round is the fifth that the central banks of imperialist countries have carried out since 2008, hence the name QE5, which comes from the number 5 after the term “Quantitative Easing “ (QE), meaning the easing of rules for creating money. Following those announcements on September 18, Powell and the FOMC implemented three interest rate cuts, from a range of 5% to 3.5%, the level required to create cheap money and thus carry out the bailouts.

Trump is pressuring the Fed to act quickly, calling Powell “a fool ,” and the FOMC’s decisions have triggered a political crisis within the Fed, which is divided on how to address the crisis for the first time in decades. You might wonder: Are the world’s most important central banks going to create money to solve global poverty? Not at all. Financial bailouts and rescues are massive amounts of money that will end up in the pockets of the 1% oligarchy that dominates the global economy—millionaires who live in mansions with fleets of cars, own private islands, and travel in expensive jets. Financial bailouts and rescues are an irrational immorality because they involve squandering enormous amounts of wealth in the bottomless pit of global corporations.

The Fed is, in effect, the world’s central bank, because it prints the dollar, the global currency of capitalism. Therefore, the decisions made by its chairman, Powell, directly impact the outlook and future of capitalism. Why does Trump call Powell stupid? Is it because he’s in a “hurry” to lower interest rates? Why does his pressure trigger crises at the Fed? The answer to these questions is that QE5 will face a completely different crisis scenario than previous bailouts.

In the image, financial commentator Jeff Cox reports on Trump’s insults to Powell.

The crisis of capitalism is of historical, civilizational, and epochal magnitude, and its main expression is the bailouts and rescue packages. These operations, called QE1 in 2008, QE2 in 2010, QE3 in 2012, and QE4 in 2019, addressed a capitalist landscape in the throes of a severe crisis, but compared to the current situation, they seem like a joke. QE5 will have to confront an unprecedented worsening of the global capitalist crisis, which we can define as a true “perfect storm.” That explains Trump’s “haste,” the clashes with Powell, and the open crisis at the Fed.

These are all reactions born of the desperation of the ruling classes, who are perfectly aware of the disaster they have caused, the impending catastrophe they are hiding from the people. In this article, we Marxists will explain in detail what the “perfect storm” of global capitalism that is coming consists of. And at the end of the article, we will explain the impact that the global class struggle has on the capitalist economy, and how that impact is already clearly manifested in the rising prices of gold and precious metals.

QE5 in the face of capitalism’s “perfect storm”

What challenges does QE5 face? Since 2020, capitalism has been experiencing a consistent collapse due to several critical factors, including global recession, supply chain disruptions or global bottlenecks, the collapse of trade, the destruction of productive forces, widespread precarity, poverty, environmental devastation, climate change, bubbles, speculative maneuvers, crashes, bankruptcies, pandemics, wars, and so on. What’s new is that this collapse has given rise to six major crises simultaneously, some of which had been brewing for some time, constituting a “perfect storm” for capitalism. 

Each of these six crises threatens to burst the “bubble of everything” —that is, the complex of speculative bubbles plaguing global capitalism, such as the ETF and financial services bubbles, the China bubble, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) bubble, the world’s real estate bubbles, and so on. Bubbles are a term from bourgeois economics that refers to the masses of over-accumulated capital invested in an asset, commodity, or product, seeking extraordinary profits. When that commodity or asset fails to achieve the expected returns, the bubble bursts, leaving behind a desolate landscape of mass bankruptcies, layoffs, and closures, leaving that sector of the economy in a state resembling a barren wasteland.

The image shows the ” everything bubble,” which had already surpassed $20 trillion in 2023, far exceeding both the dot-com bubble and the subprime mortgage bubble. Source: Federal Reserve Board of Governors

We will analyze the six crises separately, but it is necessary to clarify that these crises are developing simultaneously; that is, they are mutually reinforcing. The separate analysis is purely for pedagogical purposes, to aid understanding, but the elements of analysis can only be fully grasped if they are understood as simultaneous crises that interrelate unevenly and in combination within the broader context of the global capitalist economy.

1) The development of global stagflation

To confront the collapse, central banks injected approximately $30 trillion in 2019, 2020, and 2021 in the largest bailout operation in history to date: QE4. But by injecting in just three years the same amount of money as in the previous twelve, this brutal creation of money out of thin air led to the explosion of global inflation in 2021, as you can read by clicking here. Fearing runaway inflation and in an attempt to prevent further global price increases, the leaders of global imperialism halted the bailouts and withdrew money from circulation in an operation called “Quantitative Tightening” (QT). This was the second QT, as the first had been implemented between 2015 and 2019.

QT failed to curb the inflation that had become structurally entrenched in capitalism. But the implementation of QT’s monetary tightening unleashed widespread bankruptcy: In the second half of March 2023, global imperialism faltered as a wave of bankruptcies erupted in the United States, beginning with Silicon Valley Bank, followed by First Republic Bank, Signature Bank, and 186 other banks declaring themselves in danger. In Europe, Credit Suisse, one of the ten global corporations that dominate the world economy, collapsed. In other words, in seeking to curb inflation, the authorities of global capitalism pushed the global economy into recession. Thus, the combination of QE4 and QT2 resulted in a disastrous situation of capitalist stagflation.

What is stagflation? The combination of recession and inflation, the worst symptom of a capitalist crisis. The term was coined in 1965 by the then British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ian MacLeod, in a speech to Parliament when he said: “We now have the worst of both worlds, not just inflation on the one hand or stagnation on the other, but both together. We have a sort of ‘stagflation’.” (Ian Norman MacLeod, House of Commons Official Report, November 17, 1965) . That term, applied to England in 1965, is now applied to the entire world. Stagflation looms over all countries because it spreads inflation and recession across the populations of all five continents.

Why is stagflation “the worst of both worlds” for the officials of capitalism? Because stagflation is a midwife of revolutions, provoking a popular reaction. The masses of the world, gripped by inflation that drives up the cost of living and bankruptcies that cause mass unemployment, are compelled to take to the streets and overthrow governments, carrying out revolutions. We have the example of what happened in Iran, where the runaway hyperinflation caused by the collapse of the rial sparked the revolution against the Ayatollahs, or the rampant inflation in imperialist countries that has triggered the massive strike movement in Europe, with general strikes in Belgium, France, and Italy, as well as the development of the unionization movement, the “new unionism,” and the growth of new labor organizations in the United States.

In stagflation, the problem isn’t just inflation, but also the recession that plagues the world’s economies, and especially imperialist countries. One of the most dramatic chapters of the global capitalist crisis is the crisis in Germany, due to its global implications and the impact it has on Europe. The German economy is the second largest in the world’s imperialist capitalist economy, considering that the US is considered the world’s leading economy with a GDP of $ 30.6 trillion, followed by the European Union (EU), the Eurozone excluding the UK, with a GDP of $21.717 trillion, and then China with $19.5 trillion. Germany is the heart of the Eurozone, and its performance sets the outlook for the entire EU. However, in 2025 alone, 24,000 companies went bankrupt in Germany, as you can read by clicking here.

Germany is historically considered the industrial heartland of Europe, but the EU’s recessionary trend stems from Germany being one of the worst-performing imperialist economies globally. Among the hardest-hit sectors, one in six major bankruptcies in 2024 originated in the automotive industry, but the mechanical engineering sector is also at risk. The construction industry suffered a severe blow last year, with a 53% increase in bankruptcies, while the healthcare sector saw 23 major bankruptcies recorded last year, and two-thirds of hospitals and clinics anticipate a crisis by 2026. All of this has led to rising unemployment, further exacerbating the situation for workers and the people of Germany.

The German people face a severe housing crisis affecting a broad spectrum of their population. A housing shortage has left more than 9.5 million people, mostly families, living in precarious conditions. The failure of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s housing plan exacerbated the problem in large municipalities and university towns in a nation like Germany, largely composed of renters. The housing crisis is yet another chapter in the global crisis of capitalism, a tragedy not only for the German people but for all people in imperialist countries, sub-metropolises, and semi-colonial states.

https://data.worldbank.org/share/widget?end=2024&indicators=NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG&locations=DE&start=1965

The image shows Germany’s collapse. From the era of the “German miracle” in the postwar period with 7.5% growth, to 5% growth during globalization, in the 21st century Germany has plummeted to 0.5%. Source: World Bank. You can browse the image to see the different data points.

This entire scenario influences Donald Trump’s actions. The crisis of the world’s largest economy, the US, followed by the crisis of the second largest, the EU, and then the third largest, China, which we will discuss later, is what desperately pushes Donald Trump to pressure the Fed to lower interest rates and thus offer cheap money in bailouts to revive the economy. But by pursuing this policy, Trump only provokes a political crisis at the Fed, because officials are aware that injecting massive amounts of fictitious capital will trigger inflation and provoke more uprisings and revolutions. Meanwhile, they fear that if they don’t inject these bailouts, the world will head toward a wave of bankruptcies and recession.

Cornered by the impasse of the global crisis and Donald Trump’s desperation to avoid the midterm elections amid a recession, Fed officials were divided and voted by a narrow margin to cut interest rates. Powell’s term ends in May, and Trump will already be seeking to replace him amid insults, because he wants quick bailouts, but Fed officials are terrified of exacerbating inflation in the US and the world. Regardless of what the Fed does in the future, Trump has triggered a political crisis within the Fed by insulting its chairman and leading to division over the push for QE5, which, if continued, will further aggravate the crisis of capitalism and spark revolutions across the globe.

2) Breakdown of the globalization regime

Beginning with the Thatcher and Reagan governments in the 1980s, a new period of capitalism emerged in which a new regime of accumulation, known as “neoliberalism,” “globalization,” or the “New Economy,” was consolidated unevenly and in combination. We commonly refer to it simply as “globalization .” Within this economic regime, global corporations emerged as the dominant new forms of accumulation. The central characteristic of globalization is a violent economic, political, and military counteroffensive against the masses worldwide, aimed at imposing low wages, deregulation, privatizations, and the dismantling of workers’ and popular gains, while simultaneously carrying out a widespread semi-colonization of underdeveloped countries by capitalist powers.

As part of this process, the sub-metropolises of imperialist capital emerged, such as China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, and India—the so-called BRICS countries—with an accumulation of investments that effectively relocates capital to smaller economies. Two pillars that sustained this economic regime of capitalism for 40 years were the absence of inflation and, although growth rates were mediocre, the absence of recession. The axis of accumulation shifted to China and the United States, with collaboration between the two in global trade through the massive influx of imperialist capital that flowed to China, taking advantage of the cheap labor resulting from the high rate of exploitation imposed by the capitalist dictatorship of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Simultaneously, with China’s entry into the WTO and its financing of US deficits through the purchase of Treasury bonds, a strategic agreement was established between imperialism and the sub-metropolis.

But the collapse of global corporations in 2008/09 made it clear that globalization as a capitalist accumulation regime had entered its exhaustion stage. The collapse of global corporations in 2008/09 demonstrated that globalization is an exhausted accumulation regime, and these corporations had to be bailed out for capitalism to continue to exist. Then came QE4, which dismantled the constitutive pillars of globalization: the absence of inflation and recession. From that point on, globalization broke down, stagflation emerged, and capitalism began its journey toward a new capitalist accumulation regime.

Are we already in a new accumulation regime? No. To inaugurate a new accumulation regime, capitalism must carry out a colossal burning of capital that allows for a new centralization of capital, one that surpasses and contains the bankrupt Global Corporations. The massive intervention of the central banks of imperialist countries, especially the Fed, points to two trends as to where things might go after the crisis of globalization: On the one hand, if the counter-revolution defeats the working class on a global scale, it could impose a new, superior form of accumulation based on the emergence of Global Corporations associated with the central banks of imperialist countries in a new form of monopoly-state accumulation that allows for the survival of capitalism. But if this does not happen, and the struggles of the working class triumph on a global scale, the intervention of central banks expresses the need for the expropriation and nationalization of the banks to lead to the elimination of capitalism itself and a global socialist economy. Both trends will not be resolved in the economic sphere, but in the sphere of international class struggle in the coming period.

3) The bankruptcy of global corporations

When the crisis erupted in 2007/08, the leaders of capitalist governments said that bailouts would prevent a recurrence of such gigantic financial institutions (euphemistically called ” Too Big to Fail”) that had to be rescued with public funds. But reality shows the opposite: So many years of bailouts have transformed global corporations into larger and more dangerous monsters than before. They have almost doubled in size because they have continued to accumulate capital at breakneck speed, building up enormous masses of fictitious capital, exposed to debt and all kinds of complex assets such as derivatives.

Global corporations are a handful of companies that control the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) process, vital to the functioning of capitalism, because they determine where capital flows and investments go. In financial jargon, these companies are called “bulge brackets”; they appear as backers in all kinds of purchase and sale agreements for large companies, and through this means, they dominate global capitalism. The countries where these companies are located are the US, England, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, and Switzerland. These companies represent imperialism, in Lenin’s definition, and the countries where their parent companies are located—the US, England, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, and Switzerland—are the imperialist countries.

The different categories of “Bulge Brackets” (BB)

The following are clearly BBs: JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup (USA), UBS (Switzerland), and Barclays (England). Potential BBs include: Jefferies and Wells Fargo (USA), BNP Paribas (France), Mizuho (Japan), and RBC (Canada), while Deutsche Bank (Germany) is in a “questionable” position .

It is precisely these operations by global corporations that inflate speculative bubbles, such as real estate bubbles, which have doubled twelvefold and spread to 11 countries, now affecting some of the world’s most important cities, including London, Geneva, Paris, Zurich, Tokyo, Vancouver, and San Francisco. Speculative maneuvers within the real estate industry have driven up housing prices and generated the world’s most significant housing crisis, affecting millions of families with foreclosures, evictions, and displacements at levels not seen since the 2009 financial crisis.

One of the oldest speculative maneuvers in capitalism is the share buyback, a tactic that involves artificially inflating a company’s share price regardless of its economic performance. The company itself buys back its shares, thus increasing their value and making the company worth more, even if its operations are disastrous. After 10 years of bailouts, multinational corporations used the injected funds to carry out massive share buybacks, further exacerbating the problem of corporate size and the artificial growth of stock markets. This increase has nothing to do with the performance of the economy, which is stagnant and teetering on the brink of recession.

The image shows speculative bubbles in 2025. Those at risk of bursting are in red, while those that are overvalued are in yellow.

If the “too big to fail” companies are now even bigger, it’s because they received monstrous injections of capital over 18 years, which the executives in charge of these companies used to speculate and expand their fortunes. Multinational corporations are run by professional swindlers, white-collar criminals, who are permanently outside the law. The wealth and overaccumulated capital of these large companies that dominate the world economy is inversely proportional to the hunger, poverty, and misery suffered by billions of people worldwide.

These corporations, whose size is monstrous and ever-growing, plunder, pressure, liquidate, and expropriate the global economy, its various sectors and social classes, including capitalist sectors, the middle class, nations, companies, branches of production, commerce, industry, states, provinces, regions, zones, and cities. From the speculative development carried out by these corporations, not only have old speculative maneuvers like share buybacks been revived, but new and highly dangerous speculative products and maneuvers have also emerged. In the 2007-08 crisis, the new speculative products that arose at that time, such as mortgage-backed securities (MBS), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and credit default swaps (CDS), played a major role.

These products are incredibly complex because they offer a single package of numerous speculative securities of varying value and quality. For example, CDOs are products comprised of thousands of individual mortgages bundled together to form a mortgage-backed security with different tranches. For instance, lower tranches are filled with high-risk mortgages that could default, while higher tranches are considered safer. They are given sophisticated, strange, and obscure names like Abacus 2005-3, Class V Financing, and Jupiter High Grade. JP Morgan issued US$128 billion of these, and Citigroup issued US$110 billion, giving them the opportunity to remove debt from their books and improve their financial image. These securities were purchased by governments, insurance companies, pension funds, farmers’ unions, university endowments, large banks, and others who, deceived by capitalists, fill their coffers with these time bombs that could explode at any moment.

And increasingly complex speculative products are emerging, such as the square CDO, which is composed of the lower tranches of hundreds of other CDOs, or the synthetic CDO, which includes a package of CDSs. Even riskier financial instruments have emerged, posing a growing threat, such as Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), which are larger funds. They don’t bet on the price of a commodity or asset, but rather on the price of an index—for example, a commodity index, a stock market index, a volatility index, a technology stock index, and so on—any index.

ETFs are larger than synthetic CDOs and package much more. For example, if someone wants to bet on the oil price index, they buy the ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg ETF (SCO). If they want to bet on the price of a cybersecurity company index, they buy the PureFunds Cybersecurity ETF (HACK), and so on. The development of ETFs has raised all sorts of warnings from analysts and journalists, who denounce them as “weapons of mass destruction” that have distorted stock prices. Outside of ETFs, this whole range of financial products, such as stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, etc., are called ” derivatives” because they are contracts whose value is derived from an underlying asset.

Global corporations are riddled with derivatives contracts. For example, Deutsche Bank’s current exposure to the derivatives market totals €54.7 trillion, five times the GDP of the entire European Union and 20 times the GDP of Germany. This enormous mass of fictitious capital, if defaulted, could unleash an unstoppable chain reaction of bankruptcies and devastate entire sectors of the global economy. This dangerous exposure of Deutsche Bank is just one example of the very serious dangers these entities pose to the global economy, a situation repeated with other multinational corporations such as JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, and so on. This is why the authorities of capitalism cannot allow the bankruptcy of a corporation, a country, or practically any economic agent, and they bail out everything they can.

Derivatives are instruments not used to create jobs or stimulate the economy, but rather by managers and executives of multinational corporations to distribute dividends, pay bonuses, and high salaries. The financial bailouts and rescues that began with QE5 demonstrate what Karl Marx stated in Capital: “In times of crisis, the appetite for money intensifies. ” In other words, the crises of global corporations act like a bottomless pit whose demands require more and more money to keep the system alive. For this reason, global corporations are perpetual creators of more disasters and even greater crises looming in the coming period.

4) The crisis in Japan

A silent earthquake began to ravage the global capitalist-imperialist economy on November 10, 2025, when the Bank of Japan raised the Japanese bond yield by 1.75%. This began to affect global pension funds, cryptocurrencies, mortgages worldwide, and more, due to the collapse of the Japanese carry trade. We will explain the collapse of this speculative maneuver, which capitalists around the world had employed for over 36 years and which became a fundamental tool of capitalism, now in crisis.

Japan has been facing a long-standing crisis for 36 years, ever since the Tokyo real estate bubble burst in 1990. From then on, Japan’s economy languished, with zero growth, zero interest rates, and zero inflation, showing barely any signs of life. Consequently, Japanese imperialist companies and their large financial corporations focused on exporting capital out of Japan using a maneuver called “carry trade.” This involved borrowing yen with zero interest rates and buying other assets with higher interest rates to generate substantial profits. Japanese capitalists and speculators invested trillions of dollars in foreign markets around the world.

When the widespread bankruptcy of global corporations erupted, Shinzo Abe’s government injected over $10 trillion in financial bailouts and rescue packages in 2013. With what became known as “Abenomics,” the masses of cheap Japanese capital multiplied and reached new and gigantic proportions. In doing so, Japan provided a massive, invisible flow of capital to the global capitalist economy by printing money at a 0% interest rate, which inflated stock markets, assets, pension funds, corporations, and all kinds of businesses.

https://data.worldbank.org/share/widget?indicators=NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG&locations=JP

The image shows Japan’s economic collapse. From the “Japanese miracle” of the 1960s and 70s to zero growth following the bursting of the Tokyo real estate bubble in the 1990s. You can explore the interactive image to access the data.

But the outbreak of global inflation spoiled Japan’s seemingly endless party, hitting the country hard and triggering its first inflation surge in 36 years. This forced the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to raise interest rates on November 10, 2025, to combat inflation. However, by raising interest rates, the BoJ effectively halted the carry trade, effectively stopping the machine that handed out easy money to capitalists and speculators worldwide.

Capitalists continue to warn of the danger of the end of one of the largest printers of cheap money, which has ceased to create money. “There is a risk in Japan… The carry trade is disappearing, and people aren’t measuring the domino effect that Japan can cause , “ noted Bertrand de Montauzon, CEO of Brightgate Capital.A 1.75% increase in Japanese interest rates may sound minimal, but it is enough to trigger a global earthquake because masses of Japanese capital began leaving the rest of the world and returning to Japan, which could push thousands of companies worldwide into bankruptcy.

The capital that Japan used for decades to finance the world’s capitalist enterprises with an invisible but constant flow, practically giving away money for free, is now losing money if it remains abroad and returns to speculate within its own country. This shift in capital behavior will expose the global corporations that accumulate enormous amounts of bad debt, and they will no longer have the backing of massive amounts of Japanese capital to cover it. According to data from the Ministry of Finance, Japan’s foreign investments amounted to 666.86 trillion yen, the equivalent of 4.54 trillion dollars, which are now vanishing—something the governments of the world’s imperialist countries cannot prevent, thus setting the stage for a global tsunami of bankruptcies.

5) The China crisis

The world’s largest factory is in complete crisis: its growth has plummeted from 14% to 5%, which is considered a recession. It has developed a real estate bubble estimated at approximately $30 trillion, the bursting of which has the potential to destroy half the global economy, and which is now slowly imploding . And now, from a country where capital from all over the world used to flow in to invest, the “Great Withdrawal” has begun, with capital fleeing . Let’s analyze the crisis in China, which is also exacerbating the global crisis of capitalism.

First and foremost, it’s important to clarify a point stemming from the fact that a sector of bourgeois public opinion constantly raises the “specter” of China as a rival to the US, and there is confusion within a sector of activism due to the actions of charlatan leaders of global leftist groups who label China an “imperialist” country . The reality is that the millions of products arriving worldwide bearing the “made in China” label , and the companies and banks that appear under the Chinese flag, are not Chinese themselves, but rather the expression of imperialist capital presented under a Chinese name. All major Chinese companies operate on Wall Street, in London, and in Hong Kong under imperialist supervision and have received millions of dollars in massive investments from American, European, and Japanese imperialist capital for decades. Therefore, the entire movement of companies and capital with Chinese names is nothing more than the expression of the activity of Chinese bourgeoisie associated with imperialist capital.

China has multinational corporations and large companies, but it doesn’t possess global corporations or bulge brackets, which is why it lacks the capacity to control or contest the destiny of the world economy. The charlatans who speak of a Chinese “empire” are impressed by Chinese brands and companies, but they haven’t seriously studied the origins of the capital that sustains them. The reality we see every day is that, far from witnessing a “third world war” between China and the US, the Chinese government, beyond occasional, understandable friction, is completely subordinate to the imperialist order and accepts its role in the international division of labor imposed by imperialism.

Having clarified that point, China is sub-metropolis born from the crisis in Japan, which, when it collapsed in the 1990s, forced imperialism to seek another pillar of support. It found in China a higher rate of exploitation, impossible to achieve in Japan, Europe, or the US. This high rate of exploitation was achieved against a young, defenseless migrant proletariat from the countryside, lacking tradition and knowledge of their rights, and brutally repressed by the capitalist dictatorship of the Communist Party of China (CPC). The imposition of terrible levels of exploitation and precarious work on millions of people allowed for the “glorious 15 years” of constant growth and expansion of China’s capitalist economy between 1992 and 2007, generating enormous profits for global corporations and the CPC’s ruling oligarchy.

But China’s “party” ended when the global capitalist crisis hit China hard in 2008/09, and Xi Jinping’s government was forced to respond with financial bailouts to rescue bankers and corporations operating in the country. With these bailouts, the CCP government channeled massive amounts of money to provincial and city governments to launch housing loan programs initially intended for the bourgeoisie and the upper petty bourgeoisie. But the business grew exponentially, generating such substantial profits that the loans began to extend to sectors of the working class and the general population.

Soon, these working-class sectors were unable to repay their mortgages, rendering these immense amounts of loans “uncollectible” and transforming into a gigantic speculative bubble on the verge of bursting. The “Chinese bubble” was concentrated in the crisis of real estate giants such as Evergrande Group, Fantasia Holdings Group Co., Central China Real Estate Ltd., and Guangzhou R&F Properties, among others. The CCP oligarchy could not halt the wave of construction contracts for fear of bankrupting the entire economy, so they continued building houses and apartment buildings, even though no one could live in them. Thus, the Chinese real estate bubble had striking manifestations such as the existence of “ghost cities” in Ordos, Inner Mongolia; Tianducheng, famous for being a replica of Paris; and Shenyang, a complex of European-style luxury mansions, to name a few. Enormous complexes and cities where no one lives.

Faced with the worsening crisis and the risk of the real estate bubble bursting, the imperialism already experienced in bubbles like the Tokyo real estate bubble, the US subprime mortgage bubble, and those in Ireland and Spain, intervened in China to prevent it from becoming another Japan. US imperialism came to China’s aid by establishing an agreement on August 26, 2022, between the Public Enterprise Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), a corporation under the control of the US Congress, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), and the Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China. The agreement stipulated that the US regulates, inspects, and controls Chinese companies operating on Wall Street, which are the most important in China because they receive the largest flow of investment, as you can read by clicking here.

US officials and accountants from the PCAOB began auditing, supervising, and controlling the accounting records of all major Chinese capitalist companies, under the laws of the US imperialist state—a practice that continues to this day and has allowed US inspectors to complete their reviews in mainland China and Hong Kong without difficulty . Simultaneously, US-China summits began to be held regularly, and during Janet Yellen’s visit to Beijing from July 6-9, 2023, agreements were reached to help the bubble burst “softly.” Through this collaboration with the US, China was able to proceed with declaring Evergrande and some other corporations bankrupt, attempting to prop up China as its economy headed toward recession.

It was this entire process of the “implosion” of the Chinese bubble, comprised of bankruptcies, layoffs, and the destruction of parts of its production sectors, that caused the economy to fall into recession. China left behind the 10% to 12% GDP growth, with peaks of 14% during the “15 glorious years,” only to now plummet to 5% growth, which is considered a recession—a true collapse that reached negative peaks of -6%. Thus, what was once the “engine” of growth for the global capitalist economy has disappeared; it no longer exists. Now, China has become a lead weight on the world economy, which is why the capital that once flowed into China is now beginning to withdraw.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, which during the “glorious 15 years” had reached flows of over $200 billion, has now plummeted to $200 billion by 2025—a negative figure, meaning a massive outflow of capital from China. This drastic decline represents the lowest point for investment in 30 years. But the fall in FDI in China is not solely a product of the bursting of the real estate bubble and the overall strategy of imperialism.

The image shows the dramatic decline in foreign direct investment in China since the 1990s. It reached $200 billion in 2009 and plummeted to a negative $200 billion between 2024 and 2025. Source: Bloomberg/ State Administration of Foreign Exchange of the People’s Bank of China

The decline in foreign direct investment (FDI) and the process of the “Great Withdrawal” are also a product of the falling rate of profit in China, a result of the resistance that the workers and people of China have been waging against the CCP dictatorship. For more than 10 years now, the Chinese working class and the indigenous peoples that make up the multiethnic Chinese state—in reality, a prison of peoples—have been engaged in a struggle against the capitalist dictatorship of the CCP.

The struggle of the Uyghur people residing in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in 2014, the Hong Kong revolutions of 2014 and 2019, the wave of workers’ strikes in Guangdong between 2011 and 2014, and the wave of strikes and protests that erupted across China following the Foxconn strike in November 2012, as well as the “White Papers” mobilizations in 2012, were the most visible expressions of a changing political situation in the country. And now the people were beginning to confront the dictatorship. In May 2015, a wave of strikes erupted among workers at Yunda Express in Chengdu, Ligao Lighting Co. in Dongguan, POSCO Stainless Steel Co. in Zhangjiagang, and others, to name a few.

The implosion of the housing bubble has influenced the growth of workers’ struggles and protests, as seen with over 100 homeowners in the stalled Heda Xingfu housing project in Qingdao, Shandong Province, who blocked National Highway 204. Similarly, in Xianyang, Shaanxi Province, and the coastal city of Dalian, Liaoning Province, hundreds of homeowners organized demonstrations against the forced demolition of their properties, to name just a few examples. It is this growing resistance of the Chinese people and workers that prevents employers from achieving the same levels of exploitation they enjoyed before such struggles existed.

This situation is leading many multinational corporations to shift their investments to countries like Vietnam, India, and Indonesia, which, in some sectors, have similar levels of exploitation to China. If foreign companies continue to withdraw or reduce their operations in China, the country’s economic growth could be affected in the medium and long term. The uncertainty caused by the economic slowdown, with its sluggish growth and declining domestic demand, is causing imperialist capital to lose confidence and reconsider its investments in China. To try to reverse this situation, Xi Jinping’s capitalist dictatorship has launched a new round of bailouts and rescues by the end of 2025, seeking to revive the economy by establishing programs like “Cash for Junk,” which aims to provide subsidies for citizens to trade in their old appliances, phones, and vehicles for newer models.

For this program, the CCP dictatorship doubled the budget to 300 billion yuan, approximately $42 billion, financed through the issuance of ultra-long-term treasury bonds. Furthermore, the dictatorship raised the budget deficit target to 4% of GDP, up from the traditional 3%, allowing the government to inject more money into the economy through special bonds for local governments earmarked for social protection, offering child allowances, implementing direct aid for families with more than one child, and providing subsidies for childcare and early childhood education.

Furthermore, tax cuts for childcare and eldercare expenses are another set of measures to alleviate the situation of families suffering from poverty. On the other hand, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, moved forward with reductions in bank reserve requirements to release approximately 1 trillion yuan to facilitate consumer loans and loans to small businesses. Thus, the Xi Jinping government, operating from Zhongnanhai (the Chinese government headquarters), put millions into the pockets of the people so they could buy goods and prevent the economic collapse, in line with Donald Trump’s implementation of QE5. But no matter how many measures the CCP dictatorship launches to reduce social discontent, the profound changes brought about by the crisis in capitalist China will not prevent the outbreak of revolution.

6) The cryptocurrency crisis

Another factor exacerbating the crisis of capitalism is the cryptocurrency crisis. For the past six months, cryptocurrencies have been plummeting, with the total market capitalization falling from nearly $3 trillion to $2.71 trillion—a drop that has resulted in enormous losses. Cryptocurrencies are highly dangerous speculative instruments that have led to numerous scams, such as the one in which Argentine President Milei publicly defrauded hundreds of savers with cryptocurrencies, among many other public scams perpetrated using these financial instruments.

The image shows the collapse of Bitcoin over the last 6 months, from September 2025 to January 2026.

Since the global corporate bankruptcy of 2008/09, a host of pundits and charlatans have claimed that cryptocurrencies, and especially their star, Bitcoin, are the solution to all of capitalism’s problems. They said that cryptocurrencies are an alternative to the dollar, that any country that adopts them will emerge from the crisis, that cryptocurrencies could build a more democratic “new capitalism ,” and a whole string of other nonsense spouted by many of their most ardent defenders who call themselves “anarcho-capitalists.”

These same charlatans claimed that the dollar’s fall was a product of “the end of US hegemony.” They said that “the rise of China or Russia as alternative powers would bring a new order with the yuan, the renminbi, or the ruble as currencies.” And that Bitcoin would be “the ultimate alternative in this new order .” All false. The reality is that the dollar’s collapse is dragging down all currencies, all financial instruments, speculative securities, and now, cryptocurrencies are also being dragged down with it. And this has nothing to do with a question of “hegemony,” as the ignorant keep repeating, but rather with something very simple: To the extent that financial bailouts and rescues create gigantic masses of fictitious capital, all existing capital masses are devalued.

This devaluation is a product of the Law of Value: the only thing that produces value is human labor. Capital, and any form of money such as financial instruments, have no inherent value; to acquire value, they must exploit human labor. In parallel with the collapse of cryptocurrencies, the prices of precious metals, gold and silver, rise, which is also an expression of the Law of Value.

The image shows how in the first days of 2026, while cryptocurrency prices collapse (in yellow), gold prices rise (in green).

Gold and silver keep rising in value because they are commodities that embody human labor; that’s why they have historically served as a reserve in central banks and as backing for all the world’s currencies. The leaders of capitalism, when implementing financial bailouts and rescues, act like sorcerers, believing they can violate the laws of science, or ignoring them altogether. These desperate capitalist leaders create gigantic masses of fictitious capital and violate the Law of Value, believing that nothing will happen to them and that there will be no major consequences. But the Law of Value, like the Law of Gravity, cannot be violated without consequences: No one who jumps from the 100th floor of an apartment building comes out unscathed.

The collapse of capital, the devaluation suffered by all capital worldwide simultaneously, is the inevitable result of the deepest laws of economics. All the charlatans who predicted a world of “bitcoins” are receiving a furious slap in the face from reality upon witnessing the current collapse of cryptocurrencies.

Furthermore, the ” cryptocurrency crisis ” has reached a critical point in 2026 as regulatory bodies of capitalism demand their entry into the speculative cryptocurrency market, where all kinds of illicit operations take place, including money laundering, organized crime funds, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and so on. We can call this period the end of the “Wild West” due to the regulatory pressure of laws like MiCA in Europe and new legislation in the US that have forced crypto companies to operate like traditional banks.

Forced to “launder” their operations, many platforms that couldn’t meet capital or transparency requirements have gone bankrupt or disappeared in recent months. This “laundering” process eliminates the anonymity and lack of controls that characterized the sector, which had previously granted impunity to the flow of funds. But another phenomenon is impacting the cryptocurrency crisis: it’s no longer a market for ” small investors ,” as the “anarchists” who believed they could become millionaires overnight by trading from a computer in their garage once envisioned.

Now, large investment funds and global corporations are beginning to take over the sector with instruments like ETFs, which are absorbing the entire business and acquiring major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, as well as “altcoins,” the alternative currencies that have now entered a “survival crisis.” This is how another of the great laws of Marxist economics is being fulfilled to the letter, sweeping away the “anarchist dream” of those who fancied a “democratic Bitcoin capitalism.” The law of the tendency toward centralization and concentration of capital, which Marx explained in Volume 1 of Capital, is being fulfilled—a trend that is beginning to develop in the speculative cryptocurrency business, which is evolving from a group of individual speculators to a concentrated business of large corporations.

The impact of the global class struggle on the economic crisis

The QE5 program faces this panorama of six combined crises that it can hardly resolve. Rather, it will act like a medicine that barely alleviates the pain, while the body of capitalism gradually decomposes and implodes. We have presented the different crises separately in summary form, but we have pointed out that this is not how they function in reality, where they operate by reinforcing each other. But we also want to emphasize, as we did at the beginning of the article, that nothing that happens in the crisis of capitalism is unrelated to what happens in the class struggle.

The crisis of capitalism is, first and foremost, the product of a revolutionary mass upsurge, a series of revolutionary waves unlike any seen in human history. This global revolutionary process is unfolding across five continents with three revolutionary waves, the third of which we are currently experiencing. These waves include mobilizations sweeping through Iran, Turkey, the “No Kings” movement in the US , the movement against ICE, Serbia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Morocco, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, France, the Ukrainian national revolutionary war, Syria, Rojava, the Palestinian national liberation Intifada, and more. This wave is striking both dictatorships and bourgeois democratic regimes in crisis, mercilessly shaken by a colossal revolutionary upsurge.

Financial bailouts and rescues are the defensive response of global imperialism to the global revolutionary upsurge. While propping up a dying capitalist system, they attempt to halt the revolution sweeping across five continents with unemployment benefits, food stamps for the hungry, and welfare assistance for young people. They want to divert the mobilizations with deception, but the people of the world have risen up to fight for their future, disregarding the pronouncements of governments, regimes, and capitalist institutions, and indeed, fighting against them all. One striking fact that profoundly reveals the impact of the class struggle on the crisis of capitalism is precisely the rise in precious metal prices.

Precious metals are a commodity that acts as a safe haven for capital. When capitalists are terrified of revolutions, they flee in panic to “safe investments” such as gold, silver, and other precious metals, which will never result in a loss because they do not depreciate. They also take refuge in the dollar, not because of the strength of the US economy, but because of the military might of the Pentagon and its seven fleets, which act as the ultimate military insurance for global capitalism. The striking fact is the rise in the price of precious metals, which is climbing to infinity around 2024 and 2025.

The image shows the dramatic rise in the price of gold. It remained relatively stable until 2024, after which it began its unstoppable climb in 2024 and 2025. Source: Trading Economics

The years 2024-25 are the years in which major revolutionary processes like the Third Intifada, in addition to questioning the pillars of capitalism, begin to express a clear advance in the consciousness of the world’s peoples, manifested in slogans like “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea,” “Death to the IDF,” and begin to show the development of new political phenomena such as the emergence of Generation Z, or the resurgence of the Black Panthers in the USA, a symbol of the process of self-organization and self-defense that is sweeping the world, giving rise to a new generation of activists who are the embryo of a new trade union and political leadership of the working class and the people.

Thus, this period of the 21st century reveals the combination of the February Revolutions, social revolutions against capitalism, with the political revolution, the process of the collapse of all the organizations and parties that led the mass movements in the 20th century. The crisis of social democracy, Stalinism, bourgeois nationalist movements, former guerrillas, and all reformist movements is the result of their losing their foundation as capitalism collapses. A capitalism without a boom and without reforms leaves reformism without a base of support.

As the global revolutionary process intensifies, capital flees to the safe haven of gold, abandoning investments, withdrawing from risky financial instruments, cryptocurrencies, China, and anything that smacks of danger or instability. This massive flight of capital from risky investments transforms everything that isn’t a safe haven into speculative bubbles. This is why bubbles are accumulating across the globe, as evidenced by the recent data revealing a speculative bubble surrounding the artificial intelligence (AI) boom .

While Trump rehearses new antics to distract the unwary by talking about an “invasion of Greenland,” we Marxists will take advantage of the revolutionary processes that will intensify amidst the inevitable failure of QE5 to continue rallying cadres, leaders, and militants around Marxism. There is no reformist solution to the crisis, and that is why reformism is dying worldwide. The only way out is revolutionary: the abolition of the capitalist system and its bankrupt global corporations that are collapsing on top of us all, a fall whose collapse the ruling classes, in their desperation, are only accelerating. With this analysis we are presenting, we Marxists are preparing to influence and guide the activism that will inevitably lead the revolutionary processes, so that together with the mobilized millions, we can put an end to capitalism once and for all and establish global socialism.

The post QE5 faces the “perfect storm of capitalism” appeared first on Asia Commune.

On 21 January 1924, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the lead architect of the 1917 October Revolution and the foundational theorist of the world’s first successful socialist state, died at the age of 53. His passing was not merely the death of a man but a seismic event in the history of the global class struggle. It marked the end of the Bolshevik Revolution’s first, most dynamic phase and opened a period of intense contestation over the socialist project’s future.

Lenin’s leadership was forged in the furnace of a collapsing Tsarist autocracy, a system of feudal-capitalist barbarity that oppressed workers, peasants, and entire nations within the Russian Empire. Lenin’s indispensable contribution was the translation of Marxist theory into a practical revolutionary science for the imperialist epoch. His works, such as What Is To Be Done?, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, and The State and Revolution, provided a ruthless analysis of capitalist monopoly, the role of the state as an instrument of class rule, and the necessity of a vanguard party to raise the consciousness of the proletariat from trade unionism to revolutionary politics. He understood that the peasantry, particularly the poor peasantry, were essential allies in the struggle, and that the “national question” was a pivotal terrain of anti-imperialist solidarity.

The October Revolution of 1917, under the slogan “Peace, Land, and Bread,” was a breathtaking act of popular power. It was the direct seizure of state authority by the Soviets, the councils of workers, soldiers, and peasants, which smashed the bourgeois provisional government that sought to continue a catastrophic imperialist war. As Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Lenin presided over the immediate decreeing of radical measures. These included the redistribution of landed estates to the peasants, worker control over factories, the disestablishment of the church, and the right of nations to self-determination. This was the dictatorship of the proletariat in action, a state form exercising authority in the explicit interest of the exploited majority against the former exploiting classes.

Lenin’s final years, however, was one of unimaginable siege and tragedy. The nascent workers’ state was immediately invaded by fourteen capitalist imperialist armies, including those of the United States, Britain, and France, in alliance with counter-revolutionary White Guard forces. This brutal Civil War, compounded by economic blockade and famine, forced the implementation of “War Communism.” This was a policy of necessary but severe centralisation and grain requisitioning to feed the Red Army. While it saved the revolution militarily, it wrought immense social suffering and eroded the worker-peasant alliance. Recognising this crisis, Lenin engineered the strategic retreat of the New Economic Policy (NEP). This allowed a controlled revival of small-scale trade and agriculture to rebuild the shattered economy, as he insisted it was necessary “to take one step backward in order to take two steps forward later.”

His death created a political vacuum at a moment of profound tension. The revolution was isolated, economically fragile, and administratively strained by the challenges of building socialism in a backward, war-ravaged country. The international revolution, fervently anticipated by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, had receded after failures in Germany and Hungary.  The ensuing struggle, often reductively personalised as a conflict between Stalin and Trotsky, was fundamentally a struggle over the path forward. It centred on the debate between “Socialism in One Country” and “Permanent Revolution.” This was a clash over whether the Soviet state could and must consolidate internally at the potential expense of international revolutionary impetus, or whether its survival was inextricably linked to instigating revolutions abroad. Lenin’s own late writings, his “Testament,” expressed grave concerns about bureaucratisation and the concentration of power, warning of a potential split in the party leadership.

The Fallout of Lenin’s death is inextricable from the history of the 20th century. The subsequent Stalinist consolidation, while overseeing rapid industrialisation and the defeat of Nazism at a colossal human cost, also solidified a model of socialism marked by bureaucratic centralism, the suppression of internal party democracy, and tragic purges. This model, for many, became synonymous with “communism” itself, a distortion with lasting consequences for the global left. It provided ideological fodder for anti-communist propaganda while also creating real contradictions for revolutionary movements worldwide. These movements had to reconcile the inspiring fact of a surviving workers’ state with its often repressive and authoritarian practices.

To remember Lenin is to engage critically and respectfully with a colossal revolutionary legacy. It is to recognise him as the premier strategist of revolutionary seizure of power in the age of imperialism, who demonstrated that the chain of global capitalism could break at its weakest link. It is to uphold his unyielding commitment to internationalism, his theoretical rigour, and his understanding of the state as an instrument to be seized, transformed, and ultimately withered away. Simultaneously, it requires a sober analysis of the contradictions that emerged in the revolution’s defensive isolation, the tragic choices of civil war, and the warnings about bureaucracy he himself issued. His body may have been embalmed and sanctified, but his true legacy is not a dogma to be preserved in a mausoleum. It is a living, critical method of analysis and action. It is the abiding belief that workers and peasants are not destined to be ruled, that imperialism is a parasitic and decadent system, and that collective, organised revolutionary action can shatter the old world and begin the arduous, imperfect, but necessary task of building a new one. The struggle for that world, to which he dedicated his life, continues…

The post History: Remembering Vladimir Ilyich Lenin on the Anniversary of His Passing appeared first on Asia Commune.

1 月 11 日中午12點，火花前往台北車站，針對美國入侵委內瑞拉，進行快閃性質的街講活動。本次行動控訴美國對於委內瑞拉的介入是一種帝國主義行為，委內瑞拉的獨裁者要由委內瑞拉人民推翻，美國的介入無法帶來自由民主，只會帶來資源掠奪並換聽命於美國的買辦政府上台。

川普不在乎委內瑞拉是否民主，而在乎委內瑞拉是否聽話，是否能夠讓美國順利獲取石油資源而已，從美國與原政權的副總統已經達成某種默契就可以看的出來。

火花也同步聲援伊朗的革命，期待人民能夠靠自己推翻神權的獨裁政府，並指出去年Z世代革命與前年孟加拉革命的例子，顯示人民的力量是巨大的，同時也向台灣人民喊話，中國對台灣的併吞意圖與美國對委內瑞拉的入侵是一樣的，都是帝國的擴張，火花將與所有被壓迫者站在一起，反對這個強者可以任意欺壓弱者的世界。

東海工學社與其他參與者也同步補充美國之前的擴張歷史，說明美國的行為是不正義的，美國的擴張只會把苦難帶給其他地區的人民，並不能帶來自由與民主。

最後參與者們高唱團結人民之歌的中文版，期許所有台灣人都能來關注這個議題，並拒絕任何形式的帝國擴張

#handsoffvenezuela #委內瑞拉 #美國 #帝國主義 #侵略

The post 美帝滾出委內瑞拉–北車快閃行動 appeared first on Asia Commune.

La Marx US

Renee Nicole Good, 37, was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis. Renee was a peaceful neighbor, poet, and artist who studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. But Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, under Donald Trump, labeled Renee a “domestic terrorist” —a complete fabrication, a falsehood used to justify the crackdown on activism fighting the Trump Administration’s anti-immigrant policies. Following Renee’s murder, protests erupted across the country, and we must unite to demand justice for Renee and strengthen the fight for immigrants’ rights.

A national struggle in defense of immigrants’ rights

Kristi Noem’s ridiculous statements were rejected even by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. The reality is that on Tuesday, January 6, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deployed more than 2,000 agents to the twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul with the objective of arresting and prosecuting Somali immigrants residing in the city. Among the officials and officers was Gregory Bovino, a high-ranking Border Patrol official who has become the public face of the raids in Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities.

But as has been happening in cities everywhere, Americans themselves came to the defense of immigrants of other nationalities living in our country. Renee was exercising her legal right to protest against ICE activity, to confront its abuses, defending people against ICE violence, which has inspired thousands of people across the country to patrol neighborhoods and provide support to those targeted by ICE, which represses, persecutes, and separates hundreds of citizens from their families and communities through deportation. 

When ICE agents confronted Renee’s car, they brutally shot her. In a scene reminiscent of the raids in Los Angeles and Chicago, protesters shouted at the agents and blew whistles, a common sound during these types of actions. “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and “ ICE out of Minnesota!” they chanted loudly from behind the police cordon. The mobilization demanding Justice for Renee is now sweeping across the country, from California to New York, from Boston to Minnesota; in every city in the country, a mass mobilization is confronting the government of Donald Trump and his immigration policy.

To make the national movement for the defense of immigrants ever larger.

Since last year, a movement has been underway in which hundreds of activists across the country, like Renee Nicole Good, have taken to the streets to protect their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and members of our immigrant communities. We have developed creative and combative tactics for the struggle, and now it is time to expand this movement, as we have been developing it as part of the Fourth American Revolution that is shaking our country and the world. To read more about the American revolution click here

Our country has been developing movements that then become global struggles since the fall of the Pentagon and the outbreak of the global capitalist crisis between 2008 and 2009, first with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement against the bankers and capitalism; in 2013, with the Black Lives Matter (BLM ) movement in defense of the rights of African Americans; then with the “Me Too” movement in 2017 in defense of women’s rights. And then more movements like…

In 2017, the “New Unionism” movement emerged, fueled by strikes against the management of the multinational food company Kellogg’s in October 2021 and the victory of Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York’s logistics hub, which gave rise to a new wave of union activism. Subsequently, the massive movement of mobilizations and university occupations in support of Palestine arose in 2024, which also gave rise to groups such as “Within Our Lifetime ,” led by Nerdeen Kiswani, a Palestinian-American activist from Brooklyn.

In 2025, the immigrant rights movement emerged in response to immigration policy, culminating in protests in Los Angeles, California, against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids targeting immigrants. Then, in June 2025, the “No Kings” movement arose as part of a series of protests held on Saturday, June 14, 2025, the 250th anniversary of the Armed Forces, which included a military parade in Washington, D.C., coinciding with President Trump’s 79th birthday. Now we must expand and strengthen the movement to defend immigrants’ rights, defeat ICE, and overturn Donald Trump’s policies. Join La Marx US to make this goals a reality.

SOURCE:

The post Justice for Renee Nicole Good! Long live the fight for immigrants’ rights! appeared first on Asia Commune.

Picture from wikipedia

Today we commemorate the birth of Cyril Lionel Robert James, a titan of revolutionary thought and a foundational figure in the tradition of Marxist-Pan-Africanism. Born on 4 January 1901 in Tunapuna, Trinidad, James dedicated his life to articulating and advancing the inseparable cause of global working class emancipation and anti-colonial liberation. His work stands as a profound correction to Eurocentric Marxism, insisting that the struggle of the Black people and colonised peoples generally was not a secondary concern but the very vanguard of the world socialist movement.

James’s intellectual journey began within the contradictions of the British colonial education system, which provided him with the tools of Western literature and history while he lived under a regime that denied basic rights to his people. This early experience forged a critical perspective that would define his life’s work. His move to England in 1932 placed him at the centre of the period’s great political ferment amidst economic depression and the rising fascist threat. He engaged deeply with the revolutionary movements of the time, contributing significantly to the International African Service Bureau where he collaborated with other seminal figures like George Padmore. This period was crucial for developing his unique synthesis of Marxist internationalism and unyielding anti-imperialism.

His literary and theoretical output constitutes a formidable arsenal for the left. His seminal work, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938), is not merely a historical account but a pioneering materialist analysis that positioned the enslaved Africans of Haiti as the most advanced revolutionary force of their age. James masterfully demonstrated how their successful insurrection was a central event in the making of the modern world, a direct challenge to bourgeois historiography and a timeless lesson in mass revolutionary praxis. In World Revolution 1917-1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International (1937), he provided a critical analysis of the Communist International, tracing its development and its challenges in fostering a genuine global revolutionary movement. His philosophical rigour is further displayed in works like Notes on Dialectics (1948), a demanding study aimed at training the revolutionary mind in a dynamic, non-mechanistic understanding of Marxist theory, focusing on the self-mobilising potential of the working class. Even his cultural criticism, such as Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In (1953), written during his unjust detention on Ellis Island, served as a radical exegesis, reading classic literature as an allegory for the alienating forces of capitalist modernity.

James’s political activism was as innovative as his writing. In the United States, he worked within and through various Marxist organisations, consistently focusing on the autonomous power of the working class. With collaborators, he produced groundbreaking analyses like The American Worker, which documented the everyday resistance on the shop floor, from wildcat strikes to subtle acts of sabotage, seeing in these actions the inherent rebellion against capital and the seeds of a future socialist society. His commitment was always to the self activity of the people, whom he viewed as the true authors of history.

His Pan-Africanist work was the international extension of this principle. James was a key intellectual architect of the 1945 Fifth Pan African Congress in Manchester, a historic gathering that marked a decisive turn from petitioning to a doctrine of mass anti colonial struggle. He served as a mentor and influence to a generation of independence leaders, most notably Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, imparting a vision of liberation rooted in popular sovereignty and socialist development. Throughout his later years, James remained an engaged interlocutor for liberation movements across Africa, the Caribbean, and within the Black diaspora, seeing in their struggles the same spirit of self-determination he had chronicled in San Domingo.

The legacy of C.L.R. James is a living, breathing guide for contemporary struggles. He taught that the revolutionary energy of the oppressed, particularly the Black working class in the colonies and metropoles, is the primary motor force for overturning the imperialist world order. He understood socialism as the direct, democratic rule of the working people themselves, and he approached culture as a vital terrain of ideological contestation and potential liberation. On the anniversary of his birth, we honour James not as a relic of the past but as a comrade whose work remains an essential compass for navigating the ongoing battles against capitalism, racism, and imperialist domination. His life reaffirms that the collective struggle for a just and equitable world is the only history worth making.

The post Today in History: Celebrating Pan-Africanist, Marxist Historian C.L.R. James on the Anniversary of His Birth appeared first on Asia Commune.

The Marx International

Iran has joined the revolutionary wave sweeping the world with a national uprising against the capitalist dictatorship of the Ayatollahs. The protests erupted on December 28, 2025, following the collapse of Iran’s currency, the Rial, which devalued by 69% against the dollar, trading at 1,370,000 Rials. Fed up with the soaring prices of basic goods, which rose by 42.2% in 2025, the people began an uprising that has been met with police repression for several days. The unrest began with merchants in the Grand Bazaar in Tehran, the capital, but quickly spread to Malard in Tehran province, Kara, Kerman, Zanyan, Hamadan, and Qeshm Island. University students joined the protests in Beheshti, Khajeh Nasir, Sharif, Amir Kabir, and at the Isfahan University of Technology. People chanted “Death to the dictator” in the streets, referring to Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Ayatollahs’ capitalist dictatorship.

The uprising of the Grand Bazaar merchants is a highly significant event in the class struggle because it represents a crucial sector of the middle class, which has sustained the Ayatollah regime for decades. Several Iranian unions have also joined the mobilizations, including those of teachers, truck drivers, and bus drivers, as well as the gold and iron guilds in the bazaars and in the provinces of Kurdistan and Khorasan. Security forces used tear gas to disperse protesters in Tehran, while residents of Malard, 45 kilometers east of the capital, clashed with armed security forces on motorcycles. However, the regime is failing to quell this third revolution taking place in the country. We Marxists support the struggle of the Iranian people: Long live the revolution in Iran! Down with the capitalist dictatorship of the Ayatollahs!

A revolution against the dictatorship of the Ayatollahs

The revolution in Iran is part of a global revolutionary process unfolding across five continents, a third wave sweeping through Turkey, Serbia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Morocco, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, France, the Ukrainian national revolution, Syria, Rojava, the Palestinian national liberation intifada, and more. The Iranian revolution is a slap in the face to those who claim a rise in fascism and the far right worldwide, because it strikes at one of the oldest dictatorships in the world, which is also the political center of the reactionary Islamic fundamentalist movement that has dominated the Middle East for decades.

However, the revolutionary process shaking Iran did not begin with these mobilizations of December 2025. It began in 2019 with a revolution called the “Persian Spring” and continued with the uprising of 2022. In other words, the current revolution in Iran is a February revolution, in Nahuel Moreno’s definition, a recurring February, because it constitutes the third uprising of the people against the dictatorship. We at Marx International have been arguing that a Second Arab Spring has been underway in the Middle East since 2019, because the “Persian Spring” of 2019 occurred in conjunction with the uprising in Iraq against the government supported by Islamic fundamentalism, and against the government of Lebanon supported by Hezbollah. That is to say, that revolutionary wave of 2019 began to target the fundamentalist Islamic leadership, driven essentially by the people’s weariness with the Shiite clergy, a retrograde and medieval religious current, who live in luxury just like the Vatican officials.

The mobilizations of merchants in the Grand Bazaar signify a rupture among sectors that have traditionally supported Islamic fundamentalism. At the same time, the Bazaar protests converged with actions by sectors of the working class, such as the sugar workers of Shush, who continued their demonstrations demanding unpaid wages, job security, and the reinstatement of their dismissed colleagues, and the railway workers of Dorud, who extended their strikes against privatization and job insecurity. Social workers, drivers contracted in strategic sectors like oil and gas, and miners from Takab also demonstrated, along with pensioners who mobilized in Tehran, Ahvaz, Isfahan, Rasht, and Kermanshah against the collapse of their purchasing power and access to healthcare.

Images quickly went viral showing a lone protester confronting security forces, evoking memories of the Tiananmen Square protests in China. The government, led by Pezeshkian, announced measures to appease the public, such as a “food basket” and a “bonus” for basic foodstuffs, but people fear hyperinflation that would severely impact working families, who have seen food prices rise by more than 70% and medical expenses by around 50%. Rising fuel prices, announced tax increases, and austerity measures have fueled expectations of further price hikes, leading businesses to raise prices, restrict sales, or even close down altogether.

Iran’s monetary collapse is part of the global crisis of capitalism. The bailouts and financial rescues carried out by imperialist governments have triggered inflation worldwide, which erupts unevenly across countries and regions. In Iran, the ruling classes are not affected by inflation as the working classes are, thus exacerbating social inequality under the Ayatollah regime, just as it does in all capitalist countries around the world. Imperialist sanctions against Iran have damaged the country’s economy, but the measures taken by the Ayatollah regime, which protects the profits and privileges of wealthy regime officials, have done far more damage to the people. The revolution is against the Ayatollah dictatorship, and we must support it with all our strength.

The Second Arab Spring and the Third Intifada are a single revolution

The current revolution is a continuation of the “Persian Spring,” which erupted in response to a 200% increase in fuel prices and then escalated into a protest against the current government and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on November 15, 2019. Within hours, the protests had spread to 21 cities. They began as peaceful gatherings, but the government’s repressive measures sparked a revolt against the entire government, which responded by killing approximately 450 Iranian citizens. Protesters destroyed 731 government banks, including the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, nine Islamic religious centers, and toppled propaganda of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, including statues. Fifty government military bases were also targeted by protesters.

The chants of the protesters were directed against the government and its leaders, with people shouting: “The clergy must be lost,” “Death to the dictator,” “Death to the Islamic Republic,” “The supreme leader lives like a god. We, the people, live like beggars.” Thus began the Second Arab Spring, which, unlike the First Arab Spring of 2011, was directed against the clerical leaders of Islamic fundamentalism, also demonstrating the development of the political revolution process against all the established directions of the mass movement.

The second revolution in Iran was sparked by the murder of activist Mahsa Amini on September 14, 2022. She died after being detained and beaten by the Guidance Patrols, Iran’s Islamic religious police, for refusing to wear a hijab covering her head and face, which religious authorities deemed “inappropriate.” Protests began in the Kurdistan Province cities of Saqqez, Sanandaj, Divandarreh, Baneh, and Bijar, and then spread to Tehran, Hamedan, Mashhad, Sabzevar, Amol, Isfahan, Kerman, Shiraz, Tabriz, Rasht, Sari, Karaj, Tonekabon, Arak, Ilam, and many other cities, resulting in the deaths of 66 members of the security forces, 516 protesters, and the arrest of more than 19,200 people.

The second Iranian revolution was also part of the global women’s revolution against capitalist, sexist, and patriarchal oppression. Women’s protests against the mandatory hijab began, but the “Guidance Patrols” systematically repressed them. Following Mahsa’s death, a national strike was called, stretching from the Kurdistan province to Tehran on September 18. Political parties in Iranian Kurdistan and Kurdish civil and political activists declared a general strike on Monday. Behind the movement the dictatorship emerged weakened, and Islamic fundamentalism suffered defeat after defeat, including the loss of Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards in Syria at the hands of the guerrillas who liberated the country from Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship. As part of the Second Arab Spring, the secular guerrilla movement arose in the West Bank, leading to the Third Intifada against Israeli Zionism.

In the midst of the Third Intifada, which defeated Zionist troops in October 2013, Israel bombed Iran. But Iran’s military response exacerbated Israel’s crisis because it caused enormous destruction and a mass exodus of Israeli settlers and citizens. Israel’s ” iron shield” failed; bombs rained down on Tel Aviv, and several demolished neighborhoods of the capital began to resemble Gaza. Israel’s brief “Twelve-Day War” against Iran shattered the myth of Israel’s “invincibility” and exposed the vulnerabilities, growing crisis, and weakness of the Zionist state.

However, the treacherous policies of the Iranian bourgeoisie, incapable of consistently leading the Palestinian people’s national liberation struggle, created the conditions for Iran’s new crisis. Hamas supported the Syrian revolution and welcomed the fall of Bashar al-Assad, confronting Hezbollah, which already revealed the deep fissures and crises within Islamic fundamentalism. Now, the Iranian revolution continues to fuel the Second Arab Spring, unleashing forces of new activism in the Middle East that emerge from Islamic fundamentalist currents, and which we urge to embrace Marxism. We, the Marxist International, support the revolution in Iran and stand for the overthrow of the Ayatollahs’ dictatorship as part of the struggle for global socialism.

SOURCE:

The post Long live the revolution in Iran! Down with the capitalist dictatorship of the Ayatollahs! appeared first on Asia Commune.