English translation of a text from comrades in Ecuador
Internationalist communism against imperialism and anti-imperialist social democracy
A month ago, on our Instagram account, we published a brief statement from Anti-Capitalist Workers of Iran in which these comrades affirm that what is happening in the country is a class war; that both the Islamic government and its monarchist opposition are capitalists; and that the only radical solution is the autonomous and antagonistic proletarian struggle for communist revolution in Iran and all over the world. The post was well received by most of our readers.
However, some leftists of Capital commented with the following pearls of the bourgeoisie: “it is a geopolitical conflict, not a class conflict,” “these are violent protests financed and directed by the US and Israel against the popular, anti-imperialist, and revolutionary government of Iran.”
To this, we responded by defending the struggle of the proletariat in the Iranian region against the Iranian bourgeois State and with a radical critique of anti-imperialism as an appendage of the imperialist war and inter-bourgeois struggle. We also argued that it is not a conflict between nations but between classes; hence, in communist analysis, class analysis takes priority over geopolitical analysis.
Then, the leftists of Capital threw more pearls of the bourgeoisie at us: “if you criticize anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism, and Islamism, then you are pro-imperialist, pro-Zionist, and Islamophobic,” “you idealize the proletariat and revolts,” “you confuse a project with a slogan,” “it’s a religious struggle, not a class struggle,” etc.
Against all this social-democratic bullshit, and in order to make it clear and not be misunderstood in any way, we consider it necessary to state that we are against imperialism, colonialism, Zionism, Islamism, fascism, etc. from a proletarian, communist, and internationalist position. A revolutionary position that we will clarify below.
Se7en clarifications on the internationalist communist position today
1/ We stand with the international proletariat against the international bourgeoisie and, therefore, against all States without exception until their abolition.
In the global capitalist system, all States without exception (Iran, Israel, the US, China, Russia, Ukraine, the Palestinian National Authority, Venezuela, etc.) are capitalist or bourgeois. All States without exception are national factions of the global bourgeoisie and the global State which, with different hierarchies – from the top to the bottom of this pyramid – compete with each other to accumulate more capital and more power than the others, dividing up the global surplus value, markets, and strategic resources of the planet.
This is because, along with the exploitation of the labor force and commercial exchange, competition is a key driver of the capitalist mode of production and social reproduction as a whole or as a historical-world system. In fact, the logic and dynamics of how capitalist States function, both “inside” and “outside,” is a combination of competition and collusion between their factions.
In this framework, there is not a single imperialism, but several imperialisms in competition and, today, at war: mainly, US imperialism and its bloc, which includes Israel and Ukraine, versus Chinese imperialism and its bloc, which includes Russia, Iran, and Palestine.
Inter-imperialist competition, in turn, is only possible on the basis of the exploitation and massacre of the international proletariat, but also of its resistance (contrary to what some so-called “Marxists” and “anarchists” bray, in Iran, Palestine, Venezuela, etc., there is indeed a bourgeoisie, a proletariat, surplus value, and class struggle).
The basis of international relations is class relations, which are conflictual by nature, because where there is exploitation there is a conflict, where there is domination there is a resistance.
At its core, then, rather than a “geopolitical conflict” or a conflict between nations, war is a conflict between classes – and factions of classes – on an international scale.
In short, the basis of imperialism is capitalist exploitation and, therefore, class struggle, the driving force of the history of class society.
More clearly – and this is the decisive factor and, moreover, the dividing line between revolutionaries and reformists in all countries with regard to war – ultimately, all capitalist and imperialist wars are wars against the proletariat: either to destroy it as “surplus population” and revive the global economy in crisis, or to destroy it as a “dangerous class” for the bourgeois order, even more so if it participates in revolts and insurrections, as it has done throughout the 21st century, “the era of riots.”
And vice versa: the struggles of the proletariat against “its own State” in “its own country” are local battles in the global war against the international bourgeoisie, against the world capitalist system or, if you prefer, against imperialism.
Yes: capitalism, imperialism, war, counterrevolution, and class struggle are inseparable… and explosive; they form an indivisible whole… but also a dynamic and changing one, which is why it can be transformed, not only into its opposite, but into a new world, into a higher social form, through – and only through – class war and world communist revolution.
Therefore, our position on this as internationalist communists is the following one: the world proletariat confronts all imperialist powers and blocs and, as a result, it confronts all Nation-States. The world proletariat confronts the world capitalist State until its abolition and replacement by the World Commune.
2/ We are for the defeat of all Nation-States at war, or rather, for the transformation of imperialist war into revolutionary class war. In short, this is what revolutionary defeatism and proletarian internationalism mean.
Another way of expressing this position is: “No war but class war” within one’s “own country” against one’s “own bourgeoisie” and one’s “own State” until they are abolished at their roots.
The opposite of this is the defensism of one or another bourgeois Nation-State at war (e.g., Ukraine, Palestine, Iran, Venezuela) under the banner of “anti-imperialism” by many social democrats, chauvinists, and counterrevolutionaries disguised as “Marxists” and “anarchists.” This position is also known as “campism,” because it defends one of the state and imperialist camps or blocs at war.
Well, we consistent internationalists and defeatists are anti-defensists or anti-campists. We affirm clearly and strongly that only the world communist revolution can abolish imperialist war or capitalism and its wars.
In this framework, we support the struggle of the proletariat in the Iranian region against the Iranian bourgeois State, the struggle of the American proletariat against the American bourgeois State, the struggle of the proletariat in the Venezuelan region against the Venezuelan bourgeois State, and so on in all regions or countries without exception.
Consequently, we are for the unification and radicalization of the global class war until the abolition of global class society. Because, given that today it is not only the working class but also the capitalist class, the proletariat will only truly unify when it fights for its own abolition as a class; that is, in the heat of the communist revolution, which will be global or it will not be at all.
One class: one struggle until the world communist revolution.
3/ We affirm that only by abolishing the global capitalist class society can imperialism, colonialism, Zionism, Islamism, fascism, etc. be abolished.
It is not a question of cutting off just one or several tentacles, but of cutting off the head of the entire capitalist octopus. It is not a question of cutting off just one or several branches, but of removing the very root of the rotten tree.
The same applies to its false critics and opponents or to its tentacles or branches on the left: anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, anti-Zionism, anti-fascism, etc. Because the social revolution is either anti-capitalist, total, and global, or it is nothing. Everything else is not only fragmentation and deviation from the class struggle, but capitalist counterrevolution in different guises.
4/ We are against capitalism, its far-right defenders, and especially its false critics on the left.
The left wing of Capital, or historical and international social democracy, is the false critic and opponent of capitalism, because its program is to reform it from within the State, not to abolish and overcome it; that is, to be the new exploiting and ruling class.
Consequently, it always sides with one or another state-national faction of the global ruling class in inter-bourgeois struggles and imperialist wars; in this case, it sides with the China-Russia-Iran imperialist bloc against the US-NATO-EU-Israel imperialist bloc. All of these blocs are above and against the proletariat of those countries. As a case in point: local Stalinist-anti-imperialists publicly expressing their “solidarity with the Islamic Republic of Iran” against the “color revolution promoted by the CIA and Mossad” that “seeks to destroy the social progress achieved by Iran in five decades of revolution” (sic.). That’s simply awful!
The history of class struggle in the 20th century shows that, paradoxically, anti-imperialism, national liberation, national sovereignty, etc., have always been the appendage of one imperialist camp or bloc at war with another and, at the same time, the promoter of capitalist modernization through the Nation-State on the peripheries of world capitalism. This is precisely what social democracy or the left wing of Capital is in its “Third Worldist” or anti-imperialist and nationalist version. In short, anti-imperialism and nationalism against the proletariat and the revolution.
That is why, like fascism/anti-fascism, imperialism/anti-imperialism is a false dichotomy or a formula for confusion. On the contrary, the real antagonism from a worldwide historic scale is between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, revolution and counterrevolution, communism and capitalism.
Within this real antagonism, in turn, lies the antagonism between communism and social democracy. Because social democracy co-opts or frames the proletariat to divert its struggle class against class towards inter-bourgeois conflict and imperialist war. Because – let us not forget it – the main objective of social democracy is to be the new capitalist class within each Nation-State, whether through the ballot box (electoralism) or through arms (armed reformism). Social democracy is counterrevolution in the guise of “revolution” within the proletariat. Social democracy is, therefore, the main enemy within the proletariat itself.
Therefore, as internationalist communists or revolutionary minorities of the international proletariat, we are against all factions or variants of historical and international social democracy: anti-imperialists, anti-colonialists, nationalists, Islamists, anti-Zionists, anti-fascists, Stalinists and “Marxist”-Leninists in general, campist or defensive “anarchists” of a State at war (Ukraine, Palestine), postmodern anti-colonial leftists, etc., because in reality none of them are anti-capitalist, but rather pro-capitalist and therefore counterrevolutionary.
5/ We do not idealize or romanticize the proletariat and its struggles. The proletariat does not have a “communist essence” and neither an internationalist one. Being an exploited class does not automatically mean it is a revolutionary class. The proletariat is a living contradiction or a contradiction in progress.
In fact, the proletariat synthesizes within itself all the contradictions and struggles that run through the capitalist social fabric, since it constitutes its base and its majority. This is even more so in a historical-world period of a counterrevolutionary nature, as is still the case today – although a few elements and tendencies of a pre-revolutionary era are beginning to appear on the horizon, for example, in Iran and the US, due to their “internal wars” or class wars.
In this context, the proletariat is divided, and there are factions within it that fight for the interests of national and international bourgeois factions in order to survive or continue to reproduce themselves as an exploited and dominated class.
To put it more clearly: if this or that faction of the proletariat in this or that country (for example, Iran and Venezuela) fights in favor of this or that government and/or this or that imperialist power, it is for material survival, just as in ancient times or at the dawn of capitalism some slaves fought for their masters for the same reason.
On the contrary, when the proletariat fights for world social revolution (1848, 1871, 1917-1923, 1936-1937, 1968-1977, 2026-2037-2049?), it is because it has no other historical alternative to satisfy its collective needs. Revolution is a material or physical fact because it is determined by material or physical needs.
It is the material conditions of existence that determine the interests, struggles, and character of the historical period of class struggle all over the world, not the will, consciousness, or activism of its participants. (This is an ABC of the materialist conception of history that, from time to time, needs to be reminded to ourselves and others.)
Under current conditions, the proletariat is divided and at odds with itself because it is weak as a revolutionary class. And this weakness of the proletariat as a revolutionary class makes the bourgeoisie, the far right, and social democracy strong in that they are different social and political embodiments of the same capitalist counterrevolution. Moreover, in a counterrevolutionary period or context such as the present, the majority of the proletariat is counterrevolutionary.
However, the contradictory and uneven development of capitalism and the class struggle also produce factions of the proletariat that struggle to stop surviving in the capitalist social hell and start living in another way. More precisely, proletarian factions that fight against Labor/Capital and the State, against all factions of the bourgeoisie, against the far right and social democracy, and, above all, against their own condition as the working class. Capitalism produces its own gravedigger: the revolutionary proletariat. (This is an ABC of materialist dialectics that, from time to time, we must remind ourselves and others of.)
That being said, the revolutionary struggle is in reality impure, contradictory, and contingent. This does not mean that the extreme left of Capital, which calls itself the “revolutionary left,” is truly revolutionary, and much less that we make concessions to reformist and opportunist activism, not at all. It means that the revolutionary struggle inevitably mixes and clashes with the non-revolutionary and counterrevolutionary struggles of other factions of the proletariat (for example, in the current mass protests in Iran, where anti-capitalist proletarians and partisans of workers’ councils are involuntarily mixed in the streets with pro-monarchist proletarians, and both are confronted by pro-Islamic regime proletarians, etc.).
This makes the struggles of the proletariat in general more contradictory, complex, and limited in the current historical period or in “the era of riots.” In short, a chaos whose outcome is contingent, because it can lead either to revolutionary rupture or to the restoration of capitalist order, depending on the concrete conditions and the balance of forces.
Yes, the class struggle today is chaotic, because it emerges from the systemic chaos in which historical and global capitalism finds itself.
Consequently, contradiction and chaos also exist within proletarian internationalism and revolutionary defeatism, both in practice (for example, and above all, in the struggle of the Gazan proletariat against both the occupation by the Israeli army and the armed apparatus of the Palestinian bourgeoisie; and, to a lesser extent, in the struggle of the proletariat in uniform who desert the war on the Russian-Ukrainian border and the networks of solidarity with deserters there and throughout Europe) as well as in theory (different and controversial positions on this issue among the radical minorities of the international proletariat).
Even so, with all its contradictions, complexities, and current limitations amid systemic chaos, class struggle exists, class war exists, revolts exist, and the necessity and possibility of social revolution exists.
Moreover, given the global capitalist catastrophe that characterizes the current context, the social revolution of the future will also take a catastrophic form. In fits and starts, and by trial and error, communist society will spring up from the underground and from the ruins of capitalist society.
Communism is not a utopia, an ideology, and certainly not that red-and-yellow-flagged capitalism that was the USSR and its satellite countries. Communism is the real and anonymous movement of the exploited and oppressed that subverts capitalist conditions of existence, that develops before our eyes, and that forcibly but tentatively interrupts the history of class society. Its light and shade breeding ground is antagonism, class war. That is why communism is a contradictory movement, but it is.
Iran 2026 is a concrete example of this. Yes, with all its contradictions, the current uprising in the Iranian region is a class war, not a “geopolitical conflict” – even if it has geopolitical implications – nor a “religious struggle” – even if it appears to have religious overtones – as some leftists of Capital bray.
Moreover, because of its strategic position in the global capitalist system – oil, industries, markets, international relations, etc. – and its continuous mass revolts – namely, five uprisings since 2017 to date – even if this revolt is defeated, Iran will be one of the epicenters of the future global social revolution.
6/ We do not claim that class struggle “inevitably” leads to communist revolution and that social democracy is “to blame” for its failure to triumph to date. The proletariat defines its existence through its struggles, both against the bourgeoisie and within itself. This includes the struggles of the revolutionary proletariat against social democracy and, above all, against its own class condition. The reproduction or rupture of the capitalist class relationship depends on the context, content, intensity, and extent of such struggles.
This dilemma becomes visible in situations of open class antagonism such as revolts. Revolts are contradictory in nature because they emerge from the class contradictions and antagonisms of capitalist society. Therefore, the result or outcome of a revolt, such as the current revolt in Iran, depends on how these class contradictions are resolved and, in particular, the internal contradictions within the proletariat and its struggles.
This is what we mean when we talk about the content of struggles. And if we emphasize the content and not the form of struggles, it is because revolution is a question of real content and forces – communist social relations and forces vs. capitalist social relations and forces – and not of forms of organization – autonomous or heteronomous, horizontal or vertical, etc. In fact, in the current revolts there is self-organization, but there is no revolution. The communist revolution is the only solution or overcoming of the living contradiction that is the proletariat through its abolition as a class and, therefore, of all classes. This, and nothing else, is the content of the communist revolution in the current historical period in which capital has really or totally subsumed labor and, therefore, the proletariat. This, and nothing else, is revolution conceived as communization (*).
Self-abolition of the proletariat, which, in turn, is only possible through the production of communism and communist social reproduction; that is, through the production of communist social relations among proletarians who associate and struggle to cease being proletarians and to reproduce all aspects of their lives – from food to gender relations, basic services, and the use of free time – in another way: in a real human community or free association of individuals who place all their material conditions of existence under their common power and use for the satisfaction of their collective needs and the free development of their potentialities and human relations, as well as their relations with nature.
Of course, it must be clear that, although necessary and possible, the communist revolution is not “inevitable.” From a historical and revolutionary materialist perspective, today the slogan “Communism or Extinction” is realistic but contingent: it could be either one or the other. It depends on the outcome of the antagonism or class war in the context of the ongoing capitalist catastrophe.
7/ We do not confuse “project with slogan,” expectation with reality, or watchword with real movement. The communist critique or the revolutionary positions that we maintain, develop, and refine as a minority, with intransigence and against the current of both the dominant ideology and the left wing of Capital, are the bittersweet fruit of the concrete and arduous struggle of the revolutionary proletariat against class society from a worldwide historic scale. They are its product and, in a certain context, its factor.
Indeed, in the current counterrevolutionary context, the revolutionary positions of the proletariat are certainly minority, fragmentary, and defensive, but they are necessary against the counterrevolution outside and within its ranks for resistance, learning from defeats, and foresight and preparation for future battles.
In contrast, in a revolutionary context, our positions become massive, unified, offensive, and equally necessary, but in order to contribute to the “reversal of praxis” (Bordiga) and the victory of the social revolution. They go from being a product to a factor of history; that is, only in revolution does revolutionary theory become a material force and make history.
Along with the acceleration of the catastrophe of capitalist civilization, the development of the class antagonism is the only thing that can transform the former into the latter. More precisely, the transition from a period of counterrevolution into a period of revolutionary upsurge, in which the appropriation and use of communist theory by the proletarian masses becomes a material necessity or, rather, a requirement of their revolutionary practice.
In any case, communist critique or revolutionary theory is necessary: it is not “just theory” or “just words,” but both a form of critical – albeit abstract – relationship between the proletariat and capital and, above all, “the weapon of criticism” (Marx) or a theoretical-practical weapon that proletarians all over the world need to appropriate, sharpen, and share until it is replaced by “criticism of the weapon” (Marx) to bury class society and bring about classless society.
In other words, revolutionary theory or communist critique is an (abstract) form and a moment of the revolutionary practice of the proletariat until the possible revolutionary abolition/overcoming of itself as a class of labor/capital and, therefore, of the capitalist social relationship. For this reason, although they are not identical, revolutionary theory and practice are inseparable. Revolutionary theory is a conscious practice of revolutionary criticism and rupture which, depending on the context or period of class struggle, is a historical product and a defensive weapon or an offensive weapon and a historical factor.
It should be clarified that, although we defend what we called in a previous text “communist theoretical practice” against and beyond reformist activism in times of capitalist counterrevolution, we understand but do not share the idea that “the practice of the proletariat is theory” (Théorie Communiste), as we consider it one-sided and even theoristic. We emphasize: both in a period of revolutionary upsurge and, above all, in a period of counterrevolution, revolutionary theory is a form and a moment of revolutionary practice, no more and no less. But, “the weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon” and “every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes” (Marx).
That is why we add: for revolutionary theory to become a material weapon, it must be linked to revolutionary strategy and revolutionary organization in the heat of a cycle of concrete class struggles and, by implication, to their dynamics and their evolution. This is already a topic for other texts, debates, experiments, and lessons learned as revolutionaries.
Proletarians Tired of Being Proletarians
Quito, February 2026
Source in Spanish: http://proletariosrevolucionarios.blogspot.com/2026/02/precisiones-sobre-la-guerra-de-clases-y.html
English translation: The Friends of the Class War / February 2026
(*) Class War’s Note:
Although we are constantly annoyed by this “little” word (“communization”) and we are not enthusiastic supporters (to say the least) of the use of this highly fashionable concept, we nevertheless understand it here, as well as in most of the texts we publish from other groups, collectives, and organizations in our internationalist proletarian community of struggle, as a “wakeup call” to emphasize that our class war, the movement to subvert this world, the proletarian and communist revolution, is first and foremost and essentially a SOCIAL revolution, not a POLITICAL one. We leave the latter to proponents of Leninism and Bolshevism who, as factions of historical social democracy, i.e., the bourgeois party aimed at the proletariat, have fully proven their willingness and material capacity to whitewash the ignoble and atrocious dictatorship of value and capital over our lives… This had to be said, a minima!
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