The latest crisis bulletin from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a stark reminder that the capitalist bosses stand ready to sacrifice millions of workers’ lives to preserve their profit system. The IPCC now projects global temperatures to rise even higher than the deadly target of 1.5 degrees Celsius agreed upon by the bosses at the 2015 Paris Accords (Guardian, 4/6). Extreme weather-linked disasters—wildfires, floods, droughts, hurricanes—are certain to get worse. Barring a fundamental change of course, one of three plant and animal species may be extinct by 2050 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). None of these trends are “natural” or inevitable. All are the products of capitalism and the bosses who rule us—the parasites who must be destroyed for the good of the international working class.
Following the ruthless logic of capitalism, the top imperialist powers—the United States, Russia, and China—are doubling down on life-destroying fossil fuels as they intensify their competition over energy supplies, markets, and distribution routes. The world’s latest blood-soaked conflicts, from Ukraine to Yemen to Ethiopia, reflect the raging volatility and high stakes of these imperialist struggles. The rulers are hurtling down a path toward world war and nuclear destruction—the ultimate “climate change.”
Under capitalism, all current and future scenarios spell death for workers, from endless proxy wars to mass starvation. Only the working class, armed with its mass communist Progressive Labor Party and international Red Army, has the power to end this misery. Through communist revolution, we will turn the guns around on the imperialist butchers and build an egalitarian society on a habitable Earth.
Bloody oil war in Ukraine
The imperialist bloodbath in Ukraine is a clear result of the necessity of oil and natural gas to the bosses’ system. The pitched battle that has already killed thousands of workers and displaced millions more is directly connected to Ukraine’s importance as a hub for pipelines that channel Russian energy throughout Europe. The struggle to dominate Ukraine has nothing to do with the capitalists’ phony framework of “democracy versus authoritarianism.” In reality, it’s a brutal power struggle over energy supremacy.
Capitalist nations across Europe are so dependent on Russian gas to power their economies that it continues to flow through Ukrainian pipelines seven weeks after the start of the invasion. Despite desperate efforts by the U.S. imperialists and their NATO allies to sanction Russia into submission and isolate President Vladimir Putin on the international stage, the Russian bosses have so far weathered the storm. The value of the ruble recently bounced back to pre-war levels (CBS News, 4/8). Even with the U.S. and Europe threatening to end their dependence on Russian fossil fuels (a mostly empty threat to date), President Vladimir Putin and his gang of billionaires have found opportunistic buyers in India and China for billions of barrels of crude oil (oilprice.com, 4/9).
In the wake of their humiliating collapse in Afghanistan, the U.S. imperialists have shot themselves in the foot yet again in Ukraine. If anything, U.S. sanctions have drawn Russian and Chinese imperialists into a tighter alignment against their shared enemy in the West. After Russia was cut off from global financial systems, China bought Russian oil and coal in their own currency, the yuan, instead of the once-standard U.S. dollar, a direct challenge to U.S. economic dominance and control (Markets Insider, 4/7).
Big Fascists’ desperation = more volatility
U.S. President Joe Biden and the finance capital Big Fascist wing of the U.S. oligarch ruling class are desperate to deflect blame for skyrocketing fuel costs to save face among voters and maintain their slim edge over their Small Fascist rivals, the “America First” wing now centered in the Republican Party. In this fight-to-the-death internal rivalry, “climate justice” will take a back seat every time. So it was no surprise when Biden announced a plan to release a million barrels of oil per day over the next six months from the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The U.S. then convinced over 30 allied capitalist nations in the International Energy Agency to release millions more (NPR, 4/6).
But even as the Big Fascist imperialists struggle to contain gas prices and show some unity in their ranks, their growing weakness is glaring. Beyond their inability to prevent rival Russia from grabbing more of Ukraine, or to stop their European “allies” from forking over more than $1 billion a day for Russian gas and oil (Los Angeles Times, 3/7), the U.S. bosses have watched their once-firm influence over the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula slip away. Biden tapped into the Strategic Reserve after failing to convince the capitalist bosses in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to produce significantly more oil. They reluctantly agreed to a modest increase—and only after the U.S. bosses promised more Patriot missiles for the Saudis’ continued slaughter of workers in Yemen (WSJ, 3/21).
While the shock to the global oil market has meant a bonanza in profits for Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-run oil company, there are political reasons for the Saudi rulers’ hesitancy. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has not forgotten Biden’s attacks on his regime after its brutal 2018 murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. What’s more, the Saudi bosses have drawn closer to President Vladimir Putin since Russia joined its oil cartel OPEC-Plus in 2016 (Energy Intelligence, 2/28).
As the U.S. empire grows more isolated, so too will its desperation. As China and Russia strengthen their relationship and once-reliable allies cut deals at the U.S. expense, the Big Fascists will be pushed to take more aggressive measures to regain lost ground—with workers paying the price.
Communism will end crises of capitalism
From Chernobyl to Washington, DC, from Somalia to Iraq, workers suffer from the imperialist drive for profits. But in all of these places and more, we see our class fighting back. We must keep fighting for our common class interests as we build the PLP. We need an international communist revolution to stop the capitalist bosses and their oil wars from spilling our blood.
Only a communist society can create an ecologically sustainable future. Only a communist world will eliminate production based on profit and replace it with a system based on workers’ needs. The working class has the capacity to smash the lethal fossil fuel industry at the point of production and to end the carnage of imperialist war for all time. To fight back against the bosses’ nationalism, racism, and sexism, we need communist internationalism to raise working-class consciousness and build for revolution. Our fightback, based on political education, collective actions, and the international growth of our revolutionary communist PLP, will lead us to victory. Join us!