The global economy is in crisis, which is leading to an intensification of the conflict between the owners of the means of production and the owners of the labor force. Here we are referring to the class struggle, which is essentially expressed in the relationship between capital and labor, between capitalists and workers. When we talk about the global economy, we are highlighting the fact that the capitalist system as a whole is in crisis. It is not just the economy, but also politics and, with it, the entirety of life, of humanity, and of nature.

Capitalism, which is a product of the crisis, is being restructured, meaning a new phase in the relations of exploitation and plunder; a redefinition of the state’s role to ensure the objectives of the capitalist system, whether in the pursuit of profits, the capacity to accumulate and dominate, or the reproduction of a logic that perpetuates the system of exploitation and plunder. However, since capitalism is a social relationship, domination goes hand in hand with subordination, that of the subaltern classes, who resist the initiative of concentrated power, generating not only resistance but also recreating prospects for social emancipation. It is a revolutionary dynamic in the search for a new anti-capitalist order.

The conflict between the interests of the ruling class and the subordinate class plays out at the national, regional, and global levels. In every country, class struggle initiatives are underway, which are coordinated at the regional and global levels. Just to give an example, consider the national changes that took place in several South American countries during the first decade of the 21st century, which led to innovative regional proposals centered on non-subordinate integration in the economic, financial, political, communications, and cultural spheres. The impact on global society was significant, even leading to the development of initiatives to coordinate global campaigns, such as the World Social Forum in Brazil around 2001, which spread across the globe. Now, at the end of last March, once again in Porto Alegre, a global call was issued to organize an Anti-Fascist and Anti-Imperialist Conference, with the aim of challenging the numerous forums of the far right.

Crisis and Violence

It is noteworthy that the capitalist crisis and the levels of uncertainty it generates, including growing inequality, rising costs due to the return of inflation, and the threats posed by the spread of war and militarization, are exacerbating the criminal nature of contemporary capitalism. This happens through increased sales of drugs and weapons and human trafficking, as well as growing speculation in financial markets, which expand the role of fictitious capital to benefit a few highly concentrated social sectors at the expense of the vast majority of the world’s population.

An essential phenomenon of capitalism has been occurring since its very inception: violence, along with technological and productive ‘progress’, including increased life expectancy, has led to growing ‘devastation’ caused by preventable natural disasters, ranging from floods to droughts, including pandemics that affect the most impoverished segments of the population. Progress and devastation are a constant feature of our times, aggravating the problem of income and wealth inequality. Violence is at the root of capitalism and is perpetuated within the context of capitalist crises and restructuring processes.

Capitalism was built on a colonialist and imperialist logic, which meant the conquest of peoples and territories, along with the hunt carried out in Africa to enslave the workforce. These are mechanisms at the origins of capitalism that ensure its strategic continuity through new forms of exploitation of the workforce. Territorial seizure also entails domination over the “mother” and “father” of wealth, namely nature and labor. It is a constant that takes place in various forms throughout the history of capitalism.

Crises trigger violent restructuring; that is why we saw the two world wars between 1914 and 1945, or the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty, the military aggression against Iran, and the intensification of the blockade against Cuba, to name just a few obvious examples of contemporary imperial capitalist violence.

Nowadays, capitalism is attempting to restructure itself by reinforcing the trend toward economic liberalization, which is, curiously and paradoxically, accompanied by heavy state intervention to exert force against countries that seek alternative or autonomous paths. Therefore, this is a form of liberalization accompanied by unilateral sanctions that violate international norms established by the most powerful countries, for example, the norms established by the UN around 1945. The UN’s inability to enforce the international norms established by the hegemonic powers around 1945 reflects the crisis in the global institutional framework of the capitalist order.

The reality is a widespread trend toward job and income insecurity among working people, who make up the majority of the world’s population. In the same way, the logic of privatization and deregulation is being extended, favoring private capital initiatives with a view to restoring higher levels of production and profit accumulation. It is a dynamic seeking to maintain the hegemony achieved by the United States after 1945, which is now being challenged in Asia by China, a country that shapes international relations beyond the economic, financial, and monetary dominance established by Washington.

Alternative to Capitalism

Within this framework, there is a race for technological innovation, labor productivity, and the ability to concentrate the surplus, which is the result of social production, whose potential for universalization is becoming increasingly widespread. The growing universality of capitalism calls for an alternative response, one that seeks a different kind of society. This is not a new issue, we can discuss it within the tradition of organizing and fighting for the revolution.

The revolution was the strategy of the labor movement as anticipated in the Communist Manifesto during the struggles of 1848 in Europe, the cradle of the labor movement in its early stages. A strategy that was adopted under the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite”, the slogan of the International Workingmen’s Association around 1864, which materialised with the Paris Commune in 1871 and, even more so, with the Russian Revolution in 1917. These experiences served as the foundation for a vision that challenges and transcends capitalism.

After the capitalist offensive of the ’70s and ’90s of the last century, the political offensive of the far right is now emerging in this third decade of the 21st century, with its reactionary agenda to dismantle the historic gains of the workers’ and people’s struggle, in an attempt to revive the logic of exploitation and plunder. As always, the resistance of workers and the people opposes the criminal policies of the offensive waged by capital and the far right, and revitalizes the search for alternative paths that provide a historical perspective on the possibility of fighting for a different world order, free from exploitation and the plundering of the commons.

The experience of workers and peoples’ struggles is what builds liberating hope on every continent, for a new global institutional framework in which it is the peoples themselves who define the present and the future.

* Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the UBA, Argentina. Member of the Board of Directors of the Latin American and Caribbean Society for Political Economy and Critical Thought, SEPLA. Member of the International Union of Pensioners and Retirees of the World Federation of Trade Unions, UIS P&J FSM.