THE vast majority of sectors critical of capitalism agree that the global capitalist system is in crisis, or at least has serious problems.

On the one hand, the system is embarked on a dizzying race for the development of information technologies and artificial intelligence. 

But on the other hand, enormous cracks appear, because its logic of infinite accumulation and exploitation of natural resources is leading the world to an environmental collapse and is causing the concentration of wealth in fewer hands, at the cost of the precariousness of living conditions of millions of people.

Global order in tension

The current international order is made up of the multilateral organisations and the nation states that support it. There are several sectors that agree that we are in a transition, since the unilateral order that was inherited with the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the states of eastern Europe in 1991. 

After that collapse, the United States emerged as the main power and shaped the international order with an imperialist and hegemonic position around the world. However, in the last two decades, other states have emerged that are fighting for a more leading role and to counterbalance the US, starting with the People’s Republic of China, as well as the Russian Federation, India and other countries that are now part of the so-called Brics alliance, made up of rising powers and middle powers, and some countries from the global South that have some levels of industrialisation.

The growing aggressiveness of US foreign policy towards China and Russia, the tensions caused by the Russian military operation in Ukraine, the intensification of the Israeli military offensive in Palestine, and other open conflicts in the Middle East, are an expression of these open tensions and the reconfiguration of the international order towards a scenario of multipolarity.

Productive forces, technological development and social division of labour

A central feature of global capitalism is that it is in a dizzying race of competition for the development of information technologies and artificial intelligence. States and multinational corporations are in a race to develop devices to accelerate digital trade mechanisms, to further enhance digital tools and the growing applications that AI is acquiring to reduce and accelerate processes at the industrial production level, and also on a financial level. 

The productive forces, in this sense, are mutating, since there are changes in the means of production, as well as in the social relations of production, but the mechanism of exploitation and surplus value that is the essence of the capitalist system always persists.

But that pattern can be read on several levels. Of course, the advance in these technologies can be beneficial for citizens, and in turn there are several sectors of the capitalist economy that benefit from these advances and their devices. At the information technology level, we provide faster and more modern phones, tablets, watches and other devices.

But, on the other hand, these advances bring with them the consolidation of so-called surveillance capitalism, since the intensive use of applications and social networks that appear as “free” are actually based on a systematic use of the data and information that we provide as users to these corporations.

Global capitalism has its harshest expression in the international and social division of labour, since that is where the growing tendency to weaken the middle classes and the precariousness of the working class around the world can be seen. Another growing phenomenon is the growth of precarious or precariat workers, and of informal and illegal economies in Latin American countries. 

Likewise, the so-called Uberisation of the economy, which is the expansion of new forms of work in digital applications, in which more and more young people are employed around the world. 

The transition from a Fordist production model to an increasingly digitalised production, as well as an economic model focused more on services, and on the other hand this logic of digital jobs, is increasingly weakening the possibility of organising the working class and poses serious challenges to the forms of union organisation.

International far-right offensive

In the midst of this scenario, where the promise of democracy and freedom of neoliberalism and its social democratic partners falls to pieces, the darkest and most authoritarian face of capitalism reappears again: the extreme right and neofascism. 

These sectors are acting more firmly than the communists and the Marxist left in the face of the fact that the working class in capitalist countries has been hit by the most radical model of globalisation. 

A sector of the progressive left, which has focused more on identity agendas, such as gender, and ethnic and intercultural issues, has left the demands of the middle classes and workers in the background, which is why they are being quickly displaced by this far-right narrative on the crisis in various countries.

That is why the extreme right now promises a protectionist and conservative capitalism, in addition to eradicating the supposed “threat” of migrant workers, who they have turned into the new enemy that must be attacked. 

Faced with this scenario, where the global far right has been strengthened with some recent victories in Europe and the victory of Javier Milei in Argentina, they assume that they are in a new anti-communist and anti-progressive crusade and that is why they go out to air their narratives with all shamelessness on the social networks.

When the extreme right says that it wants to combat “cultural Marxism” it assumes that Marxism is hegemonic in the fields of culture and academia. Something that is totally false. 

But behind that is actually hidden a questioning of the entire UN agenda, such as the sustainable development goals, rights agendas, gender equality, environmental issues, sustainability, among others. This is a conservative, anti-rights agenda. This dimension cannot be abandoned either. That is why we must recover Gramsci in that dimension of the fight for common senses, for culture and for counterhegemony, because the extreme right has fully understood the centrality of that battle.

Where was internationalism?

The communist parties, except in countries where they are governments or part of coalition governments, in most cases are weakened except where established in some unions, and are generally marginal to electoral political life. 

In many cases, the past linked to the Soviet experience has served to condemn them to ostracism. In other cases, their inability to read the changes in society, to renew their languages ​​and leadership, has separated them from new political trends and social movements.

One of the things that the communists have put in the background is internationalism, which has been relegated to some statements at international meetings, such as the International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties. 

Really, beyond good intentions, today more than ever, in this new escalation of neofascism and capitalism in crisis, the articulate voice of the communists must be heard alongside the proletariat and the exploited sectors worldwide.

The extreme right is becoming internationalised and articulate, while now the communists seem more localist than ever. This is not a call to form a new international, something that in the past brought problems of being controlled by particular states.

But that implies getting out of our domestic problems, to understand that capitalist exploitation and the civilisational crisis are global, which is why we need more communication, debate and articulation of the struggles against imperialism, militarism and exploitative capitalism and more solidarity with the people in resistance and the exploited classes in struggle. 

It is one thing to understand that Marxism must adapt to national conditions, but another to understand that the majority of the enemies of the exploited classes and peoples — read as imperialism and the bourgeoisie — are today more transnational than ever.

The struggle must be one of resistance, to become one of gradual recovery of democracy, sovereignty and rights, always with a socialist horizon. We still have time and we can take some steps in that direction. Otherwise we will simply be observers of historical events.

Luis Garate is a journalist with a masters in international relations and is director of the Comunicambio portal. He is press secretary and a member of the central committee of the Communist Party of Peru- Patria Roja.