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The World in 2022: The Gathering Storm

Marxist Perspectives · 2022-07-29

Core Argument

The central thesis is that the world capitalist system is entering a period of acute crisis that will produce revolutionary situations across multiple countries, but that the missing element remains revolutionary leadership. Alan Woods argues that the surface appearance of stability and reaction masks deeper processes of decay, polarisation, and mass radicalisation. The war in Ukraine is not an aberration but an expression of insoluble inter-imperialist contradictions, and its outcome — whether Russian victory or defeat — will accelerate revolutionary developments. The article insists that the crisis of capitalism is simultaneously a crisis of reformist leadership, and that the task of Marxists is to build the revolutionary International before the objective opportunities slip away.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is rooted in classical Marxist method, particularly the dialectical law of the transformation of quantity into quality and the concept of things turning into their opposite. Woods draws explicitly on Lenin's 1917 writings on "honest defensism" to analyse the Russian working class's initial support for the war, and on Trotsky's 1938 characterisation of the world crisis as a crisis of working-class leadership. The article applies the Marxist theory of war as the continuation of politics by other means (Clausewitz via Lenin) and the Leninist principle that "the real enemy is at home." There is no deployment of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall or overaccumulation as formal categories; instead, the economic analysis proceeds through empirical indicators — debt-to-GDP ratios, inflation rates, trade deficits, and default risks — interpreted through a Marxist lens of capitalist crisis and class struggle.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article is situated in mid-2022, four months into the Ukraine war. It identifies several concrete conjunctural features:

  • Ukraine war: Russian forces advancing in Donbas; Ukrainian losses unsustainable (200 killed daily); Western weapons arriving too slowly; splits emerging between US, France, and Germany over war aims; Ukrainian fiscal crisis requiring $9bn monthly; first signs of US public opinion turning against war support.
  • Sanctions failure: Russia earning more from fossil fuels than before the invasion; India's Russian oil purchases doubling; Italy importing four times pre-war levels of Russian oil.
  • Global economic crisis: US inflation at 40-year high (9%); S&P 500 down 20%; global debt at 350% of GDP; UK heading for recession; German economy facing 12.5% GDP loss if Russian gas cut.
  • Revolutionary outbreaks: Sri Lanka's insurrection forcing president's flight; Ecuadorian strikes; Pakistan on verge of social explosion; 19 countries facing potential default affecting 900 million people.
  • Political instability: Draghi's fall in Italy; Macron losing parliamentary majority; Johnson's demise in Britain; first national rail strike in 30 years; US midterms approaching with Biden approval at 39%.

Where the Argument Continues

The article leaves several threads open for further development. The analysis of the Russian working class's "honest defensism" and the tactical implications for Marxists in Russia is stated but not fully elaborated — this is taken up in subsequent IDOM articles on the war's domestic impact in Russia. The characterisation of Sri Lanka as a revolution without leadership that "allowed power to slip through its fingers" is a recurring theme in Against the Stream episodes covering subsequent developments in the island. The prediction that "some of the most determined revolutionaries will come from the ranks of disillusioned Trump supporters" is a provocative claim that receives further treatment in later analyses of American political polarisation. The article's economic crisis framework — particularly the "cascade of defaults" thesis — is developed in subsequent IDOM pieces on Pakistan, Argentina, and the global debt crisis.

Connections

The article sits within a broader Marxist tradition of conjunctural analysis, most directly comparable to Trotsky's wartime writings in the New International and his analyses of the interwar crisis. It connects to Lenin's The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (cited directly) and Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism for its understanding of interimperialist rivalry. The methodological approach — distinguishing surface appearances from underlying processes — echoes Engels's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and the dialectical materialism of Anti-Dühring. Within the IDOM corpus, this article should be read alongside Alan Woods' earlier The Crash of 2008 and its Consequences and the ongoing series of analyses of the Ukraine war published on marxist.com. The treatment of reformism's bankruptcy connects to the tradition of the Transitional Programme and Trotsky's The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International.

Key Quotes

  1. "If we just look at the surface, this prediction seems improbable. But if we dig deeper, it is quite correct. And that is precisely our task: to dig deeper, using the scientific method of dialectics."

  2. "Our task is to fight against our own bourgeoisie and our own imperialist ruling class, not to be pushed – directly or indirectly – into an alliance with them, on the grounds that we must fight the evil Putin. However evil he may be, the gentlemen in Washington and London are a thousand times more evil and counter-revolutionary."

  3. "Power was in the hands of the masses, but it was allowed to slip through their fingers. The failure to overthrow the government has allowed Ranil Wickremesinghe to manoeuvre in parliament to regain the initiative... Power was lying in the streets, waiting for somebody to pick it up."

  4. "The workers see the war as a defensive war against the aggressive actions of NATO and US imperialism. Therefore, they will be prepared to tolerate Putin and put up with the negative consequences of the war for a time. But the patience of the masses has definite limits. At a given moment, especially if the war drags on for too long, that will change into its opposite."

  5. "The real explanation for this delay is the complete absence of leadership, the utter bankruptcy of the leaders of the workers. In particular the so-called 'Left', who have everywhere revealed themselves to be spineless... Having lost all confidence in the power of the working class to change society, they act constantly as a brake on the movement."

  6. "In 1938, Trotsky said that the world crisis can be reduced to one thing: the crisis of leadership of the working class. And this is still true today. We have seen the decisive role of leadership in Sri Lanka. And the same tragedy will be repeated time and time again, until the working class is armed with the only programme that can guarantee its ultimate success."