The world’s imperialist powers are debating the best way to prepare for the next potential world war—a conflict that would no doubt exceed the wholesale killing of the working class in World War I (50 million) and World War II (100 million). Will 2014 prove a repeat of 1914, the first eruption of global war? Can the U.S. uphold its military guarantees and forge credible coalitions, or will it forsake its allies as imperialist rivalries sharpen?
These are the big questions coming out of the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where leading capitalists hold their annual convention. U.S. and U.S.-leaning billionaires and their lackey politicians, think tankers, and media stars assemble at the luxurious resort to ponder the future. Their earnest deliberations, of course, are more focused on their profits than the millions of workers’ lives they are all too willing to put at risk. This year’s main sponsors at Davos included imperialist heavyweights JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as British and French oil giants BP and Total. The theme was especially ominous: “Reshaping the World.” 
But the bosses’ vision is limited by their class outlook. Their “reshaping” ignores the role to be played by the international working class. In the same way, their analysis of World War I failed to account for the outbreak of the 1917 communist revolution that established workers’ power in what became the Soviet Union. (Caught short, seventeen capitalist countries tried to crush the Soviet revolution with an eight-year invasion. They failed.) Nor, a generation later, did the bosses anticipate the communist seizure of power in China that was sparked by World War II.
Both of these revolutions transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of workers. Both inspired more billions of workers worldwide. Unfortunately, they were also the first communist-led revolutions and made serious political errors. Under the guise of socialism, the Soviet Union and China eventually reverted to capitalism. Both societies had retained too much of the baggage of capitalism, notably a wage system that created inequalities between different groups of people.
Two World Wars —Two Communist Revolutions
But for the international working class, the positive lessons of history remain clear. Two world wars generated two communist revolutions. As today’s leading imperialists prepare to fight it out for profits, markets, energy and cheap labor to exploit, our class must organize itself for the next imperialist world war. We must prepare for a successful communist revolution that will have learned from previous mistakes.
In particular, we must win workers to see the necessity to abolish capitalism’s wage system. We must rely on the collective wisdom of our class to distribute the fruits of social production according to the communist principle: “From each according to commitment, to each according to need.” No more bosses, no more profits, no more racism, no more sexism. And no more imperialist-driven wars.
For U.S. rulers to uphold their military guarantees, they must deal with U.S. workers who stand in growing resistance to a draft. Workers are disgusted with the decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the millions of casualties there. They are fed up as they see hundreds of thousands of GIs return home without limbs, emotionally broken or suicidal. In addition, economic crises are afflicting tens of millions, driving masses out of their homes and into poverty and raging unemployment. Our youth cannot find their first jobs. Aging workers are suffering permanent joblessness.
These conditions fall mostly on black, Latino and Asian workers and youth because of the racism intrinsic to capitalism. Without racism, and the divisions and super-exploitation that stem from it, the rulers’ profit system could not sustain itself. This is why we’re seeing the bosses train their mad-dog police on these targeted groups.
The Progressive Labor Party has a job to do — to lead workers to the understanding that the bosses’ oppression will end only when its source — the profit system — is destroyed. Communist revolution can emerge from still another global imperialist war, but it won’t happen spontaneously. We must build PLP into a mass party in the two dozen countries in which we are now organizing.
Meanwhile, the bosses’ think-tankers plod their path towards wider wars. One insightful insider at Davos was leading economist Nouriel Roubini, who had predicted the mortgage bubble and the bosses’ latest economic crisis two years before it happened, in 2006. He has toiled for the bosses’ International Monetary Fund, the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the U.S. government. Roubini tweeted, “Many speakers compare 2014 to 1914, when WWI broke out and no one expected it. A black swan in the form of a war between China and Japan?” Later that day, January 23, he noted, “Echoes of 1914: backlash against globalization, gilded age of inequality, rising geopolitical tensions, ignoring tail risks.”
In economist lingo, “black swan” and “tail risk” mean surprise events with catastrophic consequences.
World War I A Product of Imperialist Rivalry
But while noting the growing opposition to the effects of globalization (the bosses’ code word for imperialism) and inequality, Roubini ignores the fact that World War I was no surprise. Capitalist historians cite the surprise assassination of the Archduke of Austria as the war’s trigger in an effort to hide its underlying causes. In fact, the leading imperialist countries were already fighting for control of colonies in Africa and Asia with naval blockades and military conscription to build up their armies. For a parallel, one need look no further than the current battles for control in Africa. French troops are descending on that country’s former colonies as the U.S. and China vie for control of oil, gas and vital minerals on the same continent. Can global conflict be far behind?
Then there’s the Far East. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, seemingly spoiling for a U.S.-backed military showdown with China, backs Roubini’s grim assessment: “[He] has escalated the war of words, telling ... the Davos conference ...that the increasing tensions between China and Japan were similar to the competition between Germany and Britain before World War I... [Abe] then went on to argue that China’s annual double-digit increase in military expenditures was a major source of instability in the Asia-Pacific region. Mr. Abe previously stoked controversy in December when he visited the Yasukuni Shrine, where Japanese war dead are commemorated, including 14 Class A war criminals” (New York Times, 1/24/14).
But while Abe hopes to goad the U.S., Japan’s post-World War II protector, into supporting near-term (and possibly nuclear) war with their mutual Chinese foes, ill-prepared U.S. rulers aren’t so quick on the trigger. Preempting Abe, CFR director Joseph Nye thinks the U.S. and its allies have more time to build up for a confrontation with China. “Whereas Germany in 1914 was pressing hard on Britain’s heels (and had surpassed it in terms of industrial strength), the U.S. remains decades ahead of China in overall military, economic, and soft-power resources” (World Affairs, 1/13/14).
Warmakers Desperate to Rally A Reluctant Working Class
Nye’s procrastination meshes with CFR president Richard Haass’s warning that U.S. policy makers need both time and urgency to rally the home front for a potential World War III. The publicity for Haass’s new book Foreign Policy Begins at Home notes:
A rising China, climate change, terrorism, a nuclear Iran, a turbulent Middle East, and a reckless North Korea all present serious challenges. But U.S. national security depends even more on the United States addressing its burgeoning deficit and debt, crumbling infrastructure, second class schools, and outdated immigration system.
The problem facing U.S. rulers is that their retrenchment from costly open warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, a calculated measure to help them prepare for wider global war, risks misinterpretation by key allies. Commenting on Davos, London’s influential Financial Times (1/20/14) noted:
The most important emerging theme in world politics is America’s slow retreat from its role as global policeman. Some of America’s closest partners now talk openly of a diminished U.S. global presence. Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, recently gave a speech in which he said: “The United States gives the impression of no longer wanting to get drawn into crises.” As a result, he said, America’s allies are increasingly factoring in their calculations ... the possibility that they will be left to their own devices in managing crises.
U.S. Rulers Direct Worldwide War Machine
Secretary of State John Kerry seized the Davos pulpit to fire back. There he tried to reassure the critical U.S. allies that are now uncertain about U.S. support and continued U.S. control of crucial Mideast oil:
I must say, I’m perplexed by claims I occasionally hear that somehow America is disengaging from the world – this myth that America is pulling back, or giving up or standing down,” Kerry said. “In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. “The most bewildering version of this disengagement myth is about a supposed U.S. retreat from the Middle East. You can’t find another country, not one country, as proactively engaged, or that is partnering with so many Middle Eastern countries as constructively as we are, on so many high-stake fronts.
Kerry said U.S. military engagement across the globe was “as broad and as deep as at any point in our history.” A recent article by whistleblower Nick Turse on the liberal TomDispatch website backs up Kerry’s militarist promises. It reveals low-profile U.S. global war preparation despite the Iraqi and Afghan drawdowns:
[I]n 2012 and 2013, U.S. Special Operations forces were likely deployed to — or training, advising, or operating with the personnel of — more than 100 foreign countries. And that’s probably an undercount. In 2011, then-Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told TomDispatch that Special Operations personnel were annually sent to 120 countries around the world. They were in, that is, about 60% of the nations on the planet.
Build Progressive Labor Party
How many workers are aware that military deployments cover more than 1,000 U.S. bases worldwide, particularly in oil-rich regions? The bosses are warning us that they are ready to send us into the most lethal wars in world history. In the meantime, they heap wage cuts, home foreclosures, racist attacks and permanent joblessness on our backs to pay for those wars. Our only answer must be to build the Progressive Labor Party into an organizing force for the international working class. Our only goal must be to enable communist revolution to emerge out of the ruling class’s hellish war plans.