The succession of singular events, or unheard events if one prefers, at the global level, which would have seemed unlikely two or three years ago, makes people dizzy and breaks down "preconceived ideas" and certainties. The widespread consciousness that the world is at a crossroads and that the future of the human species is at stake is becoming a fairly widespread idea in all classes of society. The contradictions of all kinds of the capitalist world have accumulated and dangerously exacerbated since the 2008 crisis. They are now bursting one after the other. Their two main factors, the capitalist crisis and the imperialist war, feed on each other. They announce what capitalism is preparing for us if it is not defeated and destroyed: the generalized imperialist war. This increasingly direct interaction between the reality of the crisis and the perspective of generalized war is reflected in multiple particular contradictions affecting the other dimensions of capitalist society. By breaking out in their turn, they provoke various tremors and, in the first place, in the bourgeois political systems of all countries, starting with the main imperialist powers: the unpredictable Trump, the insoluble Brexit, the growing paralysis of the European Union, the ’populists’ in power in Brazil, Italy, Eastern Europe, etc. [1] But far from solving them, these political upheavals in turn exacerbate the capitalist crisis and the imperialist war. How much does the Trump caricature, as a result and agent of both, illustrate it!

Inexorably, capitalism drags humanity into even more misery and economic and warlike sufferings. In reality, the alternative is between international proletarian revolution or a 3rd world imperialist war. Not only will this choice be made in the long term, but it already determines the approaches and responses brought to the various present situations and conflicts by the social classes. For the ruling class, no one can doubt it: economic, political and ideological attacks closely associated with massive repression against the exploited classes, and especially against the proletariat, are at the core of its policies in all countries. Facing the international proletariat economically, by further lowering the price of its labour force, but above all politically and physically – through bloody repression – is a necessary precondition for capitalism to engage effectively against rivals in the generalized war and with a minimum of insurance against the revolutionary risk.

In reaction, the result is a break-up and renewal of workers’ and social struggles, which we cannot list here but which are developing on all continents. The mass strike dynamic that ran through Iran and neighbouring countries throughout 2018, the wildcat strike of Matamoros and northern Mexico that is still ongoing and affecting the maquiladoras factories that mainly supply the United States, the strikes of American teachers within the first imperialist power itself and, in its own way, the yellow vest movement in France set the tone, and acted as a signal, of the international workers’ struggle. The historically decisive massive confrontations between classes have begun. They will decide whether the outcome is march towards generalized war or the opening of a revolutionary period.

The proletariat approaches these mass confrontations with strengths and weaknesses. One of the latter lies in the insignificant reality of its vanguard political minorities and their influence within it; and in the weakness and dispersion of its communist groups that are the most developed expressions of its class consciousness. If the former are largely due to objective conditions and dimensions on which revolutionaries can only partially act – they must nevertheless do so as much as possible – the latter are their own and it is up to them alone to actively work to overcome them. Gathering, debating, clarifying, acting in unison, speaking together if not with a single voice when possible, are their competence and responsibility. To commit oneself resolutely and with conviction to this path is to participate in the activation of awakening of the class and struggle on the one hand and, in the long run, in the regrouping of the most dynamic communist forces into an international party. And more concretely, it means preparing and actively participating in the class confrontations that are arising before our eyes.

February 2019.