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Unrest on Every Continent: How Communists Are Mobilising

Spectre Of Communism · 2024-02-13

Core Argument

The central thesis of this episode is that the global capitalist system is entering a phase of acute, multi-front crisis, and that this crisis is generating explosive class struggles across every continent simultaneously. The argument is not simply that there is unrest, but that this unrest reflects the terminal exhaustion of bourgeois political forms — from the ANC in South Africa to Peronism in Argentina, from Macron's Bonapartist gambits in France to the imploding state institutions of Pakistan and the discredited two-party system in the United States. The claim is that the ruling classes everywhere are running out of viable political vehicles, and that this creates an unprecedented opening for genuine communist forces to build mass revolutionary leadership. The episode is structured as a global survey, with each national report intended to demonstrate both the specificity of local conditions and the common pattern: capitalist crisis delegitimises reformist and nationalist alternatives, radicalises layers of youth and workers, and creates the objective basis for communist organisation.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on several classical Marxist concepts, though they are deployed implicitly rather than as explicit theoretical categories. The underlying framework is Trotsky's theory of combined and uneven development: the episode moves from South Africa to Argentina to France to Pakistan to the United States, treating each as a distinct but interconnected node in a single world system. The concept of Bonapartism hovers over the French section's analysis of Macron — a leader who rules without a stable parliamentary majority, relying on constitutional tricks and police repression because no bourgeois party can command popular consent. The Argentine analysis implicitly deploys the Marxist distinction between formal and real subsumption of labour: Milei's programme is not merely deregulation but an attempt to smash the remaining institutional defences of the working class. The Pakistan section's treatment of the Baloch and Pashtun movements draws on the Marxist approach to the national question — oppressed nationalities whose struggles, while not socialist in themselves, can become vehicles for revolutionary consciousness when linked to working-class leadership. The US section's analysis of the 2020 George Floyd uprising as "the biggest mass movement in American history" is grounded in the Leninist understanding that spontaneous mass movements create the raw material for revolutionary organisation, but require a conscious vanguard to give them political direction. The episode sits firmly within the Trotskyist tradition of the International Marxist Tendency (now the Revolutionary Communist International), rejecting both Stalinist models of "socialism in one country" and reformist strategies of gradual change within capitalism.

Conjunctural Relevance

The episode is precise about the current moment, and the details matter. South Africa: the ANC has fractured into three factions, Jacob Zuma has been suspended and endorsed the MK party, and the 2012 Marikana massacre remains the defining class trauma — the moment when the liberation movement openly sided with capital against workers. Youth unemployment is now higher than under apartheid, and the "born-free" generation has known nothing but capitalist crisis. Argentina: Milei won with 30% in the first round, then secured the runoff with support from Macri's traditional right. His "chainsaw" programme — 300 laws repealed via emergency decree, an Omnibus law targeting 600 more pieces of legislation — has already provoked the earliest general strike in Argentine history (24 January), with 1.5 million on the streets. The Peronist government of Alberto Fernandez left office with over 40% poverty and 200% inflation. France: Macron has no parliamentary majority and is forced to rely on Marine Le Pen's National Rally to pass legislation, including an anti-immigration law that was effectively Le Pen's law, later partially struck down by the Constitutional Council. The farmers' protests (tractors surrounding Paris) are the latest expression of a generalised anger that has produced mass mobilisations every year since 2016. Pakistan: elections scheduled for 8 February amid a wave of terrorist attacks, state repression against Imran Khan's party, and the discovery of mass graves in Balochistan. The Baloch movement is being led by young women — a historic development in a deeply patriarchal tribal society. Inflation is officially 37%, unofficially much higher. United States: 56% of Americans believe the economy is already in recession despite official low unemployment. The Biden-Trump rematch is between "two of the most hated candidates ever". The 2020 George Floyd uprising (26 million on the streets) is described as a "harbinger" of what is to come. The US section has more than doubled its forces in the last five months.

Where the Argument Continues

This episode is a survey, not a deep dive. Each national report opens questions that are developed elsewhere in the corpus. The South African analysis of the ANC's degeneration and the Marikana massacre is treated at greater length in earlier Against the Stream episodes on the South African class struggle. The Argentine discussion of Milei's rise and the general strike connects to the IMT's broader analysis of the Latin American "pink tide" collapse, which is the subject of multiple Spectre of Communism episodes. The French analysis of Macron's Bonapartism and the role of the Constitutional Council is part of a longer thread on the crisis of bourgeois democratic forms in Europe, developed in episodes on the gilets jaunes and the pension strikes. The Pakistan section's treatment of the national question — Baloch, Pashtun, Kashmiri movements — connects to the IMT's theoretical work on the Marxist approach to oppressed nationalities, which is elaborated in internal documents and in the In Defence of Marxism journal. The US analysis of the 2020 uprising and the radicalisation of youth connects to the IMT's pamphlet The Coming Revolution in the United States and to ongoing Spectre of Communism episodes on the American conjuncture. The episode deliberately leaves open the question of how these disparate struggles can be unified into a single revolutionary offensive — that is the strategic question the RCI exists to answer, and it is the subject of the organisation's internal congress documents and the Marxist Theory of the State series.

Connections

  • Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution — the classical text on how multiple crises combine into a revolutionary situation, and the methodological model for the kind of conjunctural analysis this episode attempts.
  • Trotsky, The Transitional Programme — the strategic framework for how Marxists intervene in mass movements that are not yet socialist, which underpins the episode's approach to the Baloch movement, the farmers' protests, and the George Floyd uprising.
  • IMT/RCI, The Coming Revolution in the United States — the pamphlet that develops the US analysis in greater depth.
  • IMT/RCI, In Defence of Marxism journal — ongoing theoretical work on the national question, the state, and the crisis of bourgeois democracy.
  • Against the Stream episodes on the gilets jaunes, the pension strikes, and the South African class struggle — these provide the detailed narrative that this episode summarises.
  • Spectre of Communism episodes on Latin America and the collapse of the pink tide — the Argentine analysis is part of this broader regional assessment.
  • Lenin, The State and Revolution — the theoretical foundation for the episode's insistence that the working class must take power, not merely change governments.

Key Quotes

  1. "The ANC now defending the profits of the bosses against the same mine workers who have been struggling for better living conditions — that was a real turning point in the situation."

  2. "Milei received about 30% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election and then in the runoff he got the support of the main bourgeois parties... so it's not surprising that he had a certain appeal — he was the outsider, the anti-establishment candidate at a time when people had tried a right-wing government and a so-called centre-left government and both had failed them."

  3. "The only big party appearing as an opposition to Macron for now is Marine Le Pen's National Rally... the risk for the bourgeoisie to have a kind of Meloni in Italy — a coming to power of Marine Le Pen — would risk to put in the street thousands of youth, of hungry people wanting to take over the whole play."

  4. "The most significant movement recently we saw in Balochistan... this movement is totally organised by the women, the young women — in Balochistan young women are mostly no one can imagine that the women can lead this kind of movement."

  5. "Only 42% of Americans are satisfied with these presidential options... people are breaking from this idea of lesser evil... the 2020 George Floyd uprising was the biggest mass movement in American history, 26 million Americans on the streets — that was just a harbinger of things to come in the belly of the beast."