The Solidarity Network Community
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The working class, the fight against capitalist barbarism, and the building of the World Party of Socialist Revolution
Statement of the WSWS International Editorial Board
1. New Year 2024 begins under conditions of escalating international crisis. At the dawn of the millennium, there were rosy predictions that world capitalism, under the benevolent and “unipolar” rule of the United States, was entering a new epoch of universal peace and prosperity. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the demons of the “short twentieth century”—above all, the specters of Marxism and socialist revolution—had been buried for once and for all. Wall Street cried out to the world: “My name is Capitalism, King of Kings. Look on my works ye Mighty and despair!” But it has taken less than a quarter-century to dissolve that arrogant boast into a colossal wreck. The new century of triumphant capitalism has proven to be the shortest of all. The fundamental contradictions of the world capitalist system that produced the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century have not been resolved and remain the driving forces of the intensifying economic, social and political upheavals that are sweeping across the globe.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the normalisation of mass death and suffering
1. As the New Year begins, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to exact an immense toll on the lives and health of the global population. At present, the world is enduring yet another wave of mass infection, debilitation and death, fueled by the heavily mutated, highly infectious and immune-resistant JN.1 variant, which rapidly became dominant globally in December. The lies of every capitalist government and the corporate media, epitomized by Joe Biden’s declaration in September 2022 that “the pandemic is over,” stand exposed as nothing but propaganda.
The resurgence of the extreme right and the global breakdown of democracy
1. Just as genocide is being openly adopted as an instrument of policy in the imperialist-backed Israeli assault on Gaza, and mass death has been normalized in the ruling class response to the pandemic, fascistic and authoritarian movements are again part of the mainstream political landscape throughout the world. In the absence of any genuinely anti-capitalist response by the middle-class and pseudo-left organizations to the intensifying economic crisis and deteriorating living standards, the political gains are being accrued by the extreme right.
The growth of the class struggle and the fight for socialism
1. The previous sections of this statement have concentrated on the major elements of the crisis of the world capitalist system at the beginning of 2024: 1) The escalation of imperialist militarism, spearheaded by the United States, resulting in a proxy war against Russia, the overt preparation for war against China, and, in Gaza, the adoption of genocide as a legitimate instrument of state policy; 2) A massive regression in social policy, exemplified by the deliberate repudiation of basic public health measures to counter the COVID-19 pandemic and save countless millions of people throughout the world from illness, debilitation and death; 3) The extreme concentration of wealth in the upper echelons of capitalist society, resulting in staggering levels of social inequality in the advanced capitalist countries and on a global scale; which underlies 4) The world-wide erosion and breakdown of democratic forms of rule and the resurgence, on a scale not seen since the 1930s, of authoritarian and fascistic political organizations and governments.
