War over the Strait of Hormuz and the Historical Crisis of Capitalism
The Middle East is once again approaching the brink of a broader regional war. The escalating confrontation between Iran and the United States in the Strait of Hormuz, direct U.S. strikes on Iranian targets, Iranian missile and drone attacks, and Israel’s continuing devastation in Lebanon all indicate that the region has entered a new phase of militarization and violent geopolitical realignment.
Reports speak of U.S. attacks on Iranian positions following attacks on American naval forces in Hormuz, disruptions to maritime traffic, Iranian strikes against Gulf targets, and rising oil prices. In Lebanon, the war has already left thousands dead and wounded while forcing massive displacement and destruction upon the population.
Yet this war cannot be reduced simply to security disputes, diplomatic tensions, or the decisions of individual governments. What is unfolding today in Hormuz, Lebanon, Gaza, and across the region is the concentrated expression of a deeper crisis: the historical crisis in the total reproduction of capital. The world order that emerged after the Cold War — built upon neoliberal globalization, dollar hegemony, expanding global markets, and U.S. dominance — is no longer capable of reproducing capital in a stable manner as it once did. Under these conditions, the state, militarism, trade wars, control over energy routes, and geopolitical restructuring increasingly become direct instruments for managing capitalist crisis.
The Strait of Hormuz is therefore far more than a narrow maritime passage. It is one of the principal arteries of global energy circulation, trade, and value transfer within the world economy. The struggle over Hormuz is not merely about “security” in the limited military sense. It is a struggle over markets, energy, global surplus value, and strategic positioning within a world capitalist order that is increasingly fracturing. This is precisely where the confrontation between Iran and the United States, Trump’s trade and military policies, NATO’s crisis, the rivalry between China and Russia and the war in Lebanon all become interconnected moments of a single historical crisis.
Within this framework, Israel is not merely another regional state but part of the military and geopolitical architecture of Western capital in the Middle East. Israel’s devastating assaults on Lebanon and Gaza must be understood in relation to broader efforts to redraw the regional balance of power. On the other side, the Islamic Republic of Iran — despite all its “anti-imperialist” rhetoric — also operates within the logic of militarized and state-directed capitalism. The conflict between Iran and the United States is not a conflict between two different social systems; it is a conflict between capitalist powers over influence, energy, markets, and strategic routes of capital circulation.
The real cost of these wars, however, is not borne by governments or ruling classes but by workers and the oppressed. War means inflation, collapsing living standards, destroyed infrastructure, displacement, poverty, insecurity, militarized policing, and political repression. War does not unfold only on military fronts. It unfolds in wages, housing, schools, hospitals, streets, and in the daily lives of millions. Capitalism manages its crisis through bombs, sanctions, militarization, and the transfer of social costs onto society itself.
For this reason, opposition to war cannot remain at the level of moral outrage or humanitarian appeals. Anti-war struggle, if separated from the struggle against capital itself, will remain fragmented and powerless. Workers in Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, the United States, and Europe have no interest in the victory of any of the competing war-making states. Neither the United States and Israel represent freedom, nor does the Islamic Republic represent anti-imperialism.
Against nationalism, militarism, and war blocs, the task of internationalists today is clear: to connect the struggle against war with the struggle against capitalism. It is necessary to move toward the creation of anti-war and anti-capitalist centers of struggle capable of linking resistance to destruction, poverty, repression, and exploitation within a common internationalist and class perspective.
No to war! No to nationalism! No to capitalist states!
Toward anti-war and anti-capitalist centers of struggle!
Internationalist Workers’ Organization – IWO
8 May 2026
Iran in the Shadow of WaCrisis, Neo-Fascism and Class Perspectivesr
The war atmosphere that has emerged following the direct confrontations between Iran, the United States and Israel is not merely an external or security crisis. War has now become part of the internal crisis of Iranian society itself — a crisis that simultaneously affects the state structure, economic reproduction, social life and the balance of political forces.
Military attacks, heightened securitization, economic pressure, inflation, instability and fears of wider war have pushed a society already burdened by deep political and economic crises into a new stage of instability.
Yet war has not resolved the crisis of the Islamic Republic; it has deepened it. Over the past decades, the Iranian system has evolved from state capitalism into an increasingly militarized-security form of capitalism. The fusion of military institutions, the security apparatus, rentier networks and state capital has produced what many ordinary people describe as the “Islamic mafia of state capitalism.” In such a structure, war and militarism are not merely instruments of foreign policy but mechanisms for preserving power and managing internal crisis.
Rising military expenditures, collapsing living standards, intensified repression and the inability to contain the crisis of social reproduction all demonstrate that the crisis of the Iranian state is not simply political. It forms part of the broader crisis of capitalist reproduction under current conditions. The state attempts to transfer the costs of crisis onto society through inflation, austerity, repression and war mobilization, while large sections of the population face poverty, unemployment and the erosion of social life.
In the years preceding the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, the Iranian workers’ movement had begun to create real possibilities for organization and independent presence. Organized strikes and protests by workers in فولاد (Steel), Haft Tapeh, the oil sector, teachers and retirees demonstrated that wherever the working class succeeds in building forms of collective organization and solidarity, it can become one of the most advanced political forces within society.
The struggle of the فولاد workers was not limited to strikes and street protests. It became a direct confrontation with the state-security capitalist network itself. Workers sought to preserve unity, collective discipline and solidarity against the constant efforts of the state and employers to fragment, exhaust and defeat the movement. The experience of فولاد showed that where the working class develops independent organization and durable forms of solidarity, it can resist the security and repressive methods previously used against Haft Tapeh more effectively.
During this same period, working-class circles and internationalist tendencies also attempted to create an alternative horizon independent of nationalism, reformism and bourgeois opposition politics. Efforts emerged around workers’ councils, broader solidarity and linking workers’ struggles to an anti-capitalist perspective. Yet despite these advances, such efforts failed to develop into a sustained and nationwide class pole.
Although the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising became one of the broadest social movements of recent years, the absence of a strong and independent working-class political alternative meant that the working class could not impose its own direction upon the movement as a whole. As the uprising was gradually pushed back and the war atmosphere intensified, conditions emerged for the growth of nationalist, right-wing and war-oriented tendencies.
The twelve-day war and the political climate that followed accelerated this process. Sections of the right-wing opposition and their media networks sought to transform social discontent into a project for foreign intervention, extreme nationalism and the reconstruction of a pro-Western bourgeois alternative. Under these conditions, sections of the bazaar, the urban petty bourgeoisie and even layers of the impoverished population lacking an independent class perspective were drawn toward forms of blind revolt and militaristic politics. What is gradually emerging today is not merely a conventional right-wing opposition, but tendencies of an Iranian neo-fascism seeking to transform war, insecurity and political collapse into a basis for nationalist mobilization and capitalist authoritarian restoration.
Against both the Islamic Republic and these neo-fascist tendencies, the central question remains the future of class struggle and the possibility of an independent internationalist horizon. The relative weakness and defeat of independent workers’ struggles cannot be explained solely through internal factors. They also reflect the broader crisis of the internationalist workers’ movement globally. At a time when the global working class has been pushed back for decades and communist perspectives have weakened, scattered internationalist efforts inside Iran have likewise failed to become a decisive political force.
Nevertheless, the present crisis may also create conditions for the return of social struggle. War, inflation, collapsing purchasing power, the breakdown of social services and growing inequality are placing unprecedented pressure on workers and the oppressed. The state seeks to transfer the burden of crisis through repression, securitization and nationalist mobilization, yet this same process may generate new waves of workers’ and social struggles.
The decisive question is whether this social anger will once again dissipate in fragmented and directionless forms, or whether a class-based, anti-war and anti-capitalist alternative can emerge. At a time when both the Islamic Republic and neo-fascist opposition tendencies seek to drag society toward different forms of capitalism, authoritarianism and nationalism, the need for an independent working-class horizon has become more urgent than ever.
The future of Iran lies neither in foreign intervention, nor in war, nor in power struggles between rival factions of the bourgeoisie, but in the expansion of independent working-class struggle linked to an internationalist and anti-capitalist perspective.
Internationalist Workers’ Organization – IWO
May 2026
War Economy and the Bloody Profits of Capital
Contemporary wars are no longer merely military conflicts or temporary crises. From Ukraine and Gaza to Lebanon, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the world has entered a phase in which war, militarism and the military economy have become permanent components of global capitalist reproduction.
At a time when the global capitalist order faces deep economic, social and geopolitical crises, states and capital increasingly resort to war, militarization and the reconstruction of war economies. Today’s proxy and regional wars cannot simply be reduced to geopolitical rivalries or the ambitions of states. These wars simultaneously express the historical crisis in the overall reproduction of global capitalism — a crisis that no longer remains confined to markets and economic stagnation, but now encompasses the political, social and geopolitical structures of the capitalist order itself.
Capitalism can no longer manage its crises solely through the mechanisms that characterized the era of neoliberal expansion: global markets, privatization and relatively stable accumulation. Global economic growth has slowed, competition between major powers has intensified, debt crises have deepened and social reproduction has entered a critical stage in many countries. Under such conditions, the state, militarism and war increasingly become tools for managing crisis.
Regional and proxy wars must therefore be understood as part of capitalism’s attempt to reorganize accumulation, control energy routes, rebuild state power and transfer crisis onto society. The Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea, Ukraine and Taiwan are not merely geopolitical flashpoints, but strategic nodes in the circulation of capital, energy and global supply chains.
At the same time, war has become one of the most profitable sectors of the global economy. According to SIPRI, global military spending reached nearly 2.9 trillion dollars in 2025 — the highest figure ever recorded. NATO countries alone accounted for more than 1.5 trillion dollars in military expenditures, representing over half of total global military spending.
During the same period, the revenues of the world’s 100 largest arms-producing companies rose to nearly 680 billion dollars, another historic record. Corporations such as Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon), Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics experienced enormous growth in contracts and profits following the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the escalation of global tensions.
But the issue is not simply the sale of weapons. Contemporary wars have simultaneously become arenas for demonstrating and testing new military technologies. From drones and intelligent missile systems to AI-based warfare technologies, every war now functions as a real laboratory for military and security industries. After every “successful” military operation, new waves of arms orders and military contracts follow, while governments continue expanding military budgets.
From Ukraine and Gaza to the broader Middle East, global capitalism is increasingly integrating military industries, digital technologies, artificial intelligence and security systems. War is no longer merely a means of territorial conquest, but part of the restructuring of the global economy and the reorganization of capitalist power itself.
Yet the real costs of these wars are not paid by military corporations or governments, but by the working class and the oppressed. Capitalism transfers its crisis onto society through inflation, rising prices, austerity, cuts to social services, forced migration and the expansion of securitization. The war economy does not exist only on battlefields; it extends into the everyday lives of millions who experience the global crisis of capital through poverty, insecurity and the erosion of social life.
The growth of military budgets alongside cuts to welfare, education, healthcare and social services demonstrates that states increasingly redirect social resources toward rebuilding military and security power. In many countries, war has become a justification for police control, repression of protests, intensified nationalism and the creation of permanent states of emergency.
Under these conditions, opposition to war cannot be reduced to moral condemnation or abstract pacifism. War has become part of the logic of crisis-ridden capitalist reproduction, and it cannot be confronted without confronting the capitalist order itself. Just as global capitalism uses war to restore profitability, expand geopolitical control and transfer crisis onto society, the working class cannot align itself with any of the existing war camps.
Neither the United States and NATO, nor Russia and China, nor the regional powers of the Middle East represent the interests of the working class. All represent different forms of capitalist competition and class domination, while transferring the costs of crisis and war onto ordinary people.
In the face of the globalization of war and the expansion of the war economy, the necessity of rebuilding an internationalist and anti-capitalist politics has become more urgent than ever. The struggle against war cannot be separated from the struggle against capitalism, militarism, nationalism and capitalist states themselves.
The decisive question today is not choosing between rival war camps, but organizing an internationalist, anti-war and anti-capitalist movement capable of transforming resistance to war and exploitation into a common horizon for the global working class.
Toward rebuilding the internationalist politics of the working class
Internationalist Workers’ Organization – IWO
9 May 2026
The Crisis of Capitalist Reproduction and the Globalization of protest
Social uprisings and protests in recent years are n longer merely local, temporary or purely political phenomena. From the global movement against the war in Gaza to the protests in Istanbul, from workers’ strikes across Europe to anti-police and student movements in the United States, from the cost-of-living crisis in Latin America to the social uprisings in Iran, the world has entered a phase in which the crisis of capitalism is increasingly being transferred directly onto social life and the streets.
What is unfolding across the world today is not simply a collection of scattered protests, but the expression of capitalism entering a deeper crisis of reproduction — a crisis no longer confined to markets, debt or recession, but one that directly affects the reproduction of everyday life itself. Inflation, housing crises, collapsing purchasing power, job insecurity, the destruction of social services, forced migration, war and militarism all demonstrate that capitalism is no longer capable of reproducing the same forms of social and economic stability that once sustained it.
The global movement against the war in Gaza was one of the clearest expressions of this situation. Millions took to the streets across Europe, the United States and many other countries against war, genocide and Western support for Israel. Universities became sites of occupations and protests, while the strong presence of migrants, youth and sections of the working class pushed the movement beyond the traditional framework of purely humanitarian activism. In many countries, the question of Palestine became linked to the cost-of-living crisis, racism, migration and opposition to militarism.
At the same time, new waves of strikes and social protests emerged across Europe and the United States. Protests against the cost-of-living crisis, workers’ strikes in France, Britain and Germany, mass demonstrations in Turkey against inflation and repression, and social uprisings in Latin America all point to the intensification of social contradictions on a global scale. In the United States, the housing crisis, debt, rising living costs and expanding police control have increasingly transformed cities such as Los Angeles and New York into arenas of social anger and unrest.
In Iran as well, the social uprisings of the past decade cannot be separated from the background of organized workers’ struggles. Strikes and protests by workers in the steel industry, Haft Tapeh, the oil sector, teachers and retirees played an important role in bringing questions of organization, class solidarity and collective struggle back into social life. At one stage, the slogan of workers’ councils moved beyond small working-class circles and became part of the broader language of social protest. Although this process was pushed back through repression, the absence of an independent nationwide perspective and the intensification of war and securitization, the Iranian experience remains part of the same global process through which the crisis of capitalism returns to the terrain of everyday life and class struggle.
These developments cannot be understood separately from the broader crisis of the global capitalist order. The post-Cold War system, built upon neoliberal globalization, free markets and endless accumulation, has entered a phase of structural instability. States increasingly resort to militarization, securitization, emergency policies and repression. Regional wars, competition among global powers, the return of borders, intensified nationalism and the expansion of authoritarian politics are all part of capitalism’s attempt to manage its historical crisis.
Yet the return of social protest and the intensification of class struggle should not be confused with the automatic return of an independent working-class or communist perspective. The deepening crisis of capitalism may generate strikes, uprisings and social unrest without the working class emerging as an independent political force. Just as capitalist crisis creates the conditions for social struggle, it can also strengthen nationalism, populism, neo-fascism and various forms of bourgeois politics.
Across many countries, social anger has increasingly been absorbed into right-wing, anti-migrant, nationalist and authoritarian currents. In Europe and the United States, the rise of the far right and neo-fascism is itself part of this crisis. In the Middle East, war, insecurity and economic collapse have strengthened authoritarian and militaristic tendencies. This demonstrates that even periods of heightened class struggle do not automatically signify the political return of the working class in any historical sense.
The historical defeats of the workers’ movement in the twentieth century continue to shape the present situation. Without a critical return to Marx, without drawing class lessons from these defeats, and without overcoming the historical crisis of the European left and European Left Communism, no genuine anti-capitalist alternative can emerge. Large parts of the dominant traditions of European Left Communism have, over recent decades, become trapped in sectarianism, Eurocentrism, theoretical stagnation and a fatalistic understanding of capitalist crisis, failing to respond to structural transformations in capitalism, changes in class composition and new forms of social organization.
At the same time, the present crisis also creates new possibilities. The globalization of crisis, war and social pressure has made the need for linking workers’ and social struggles internationally more urgent than ever. Anti-war mobilizations, migrant struggles, workers’ strikes and movements against austerity — however fragmented and uneven — point toward the gradual return of the question of internationalism to the center of the global crisis.
But this process can only become a revolutionary and class perspective if it is connected to the organization of an internationalist workers’ movement capable of going beyond national borders, nationalism, war camps and bourgeois politics, transforming fragmented social struggles into an independent force against the global capitalist order itself.
Without the emergence of such a movement, even the broadest protests and the sharpest forms of social struggle can be absorbed into right-wing politics, militarism, authoritarianism or the reconstruction of capitalist order. The decisive question today is therefore not merely the return of the streets, but the necessity of rebuilding the internationalist politics of the working class on a global scale.
Forward toward rebuilding the internationalist politics of the working class
Internationalist Workers’ Organization – IWO
9 May 2026
Artificial Intelligence, Mass Layoffs and the Restructuring of Class Struggle
The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and automation has made the world’s new stage of crisis and instability increasingly visible. In only a few years, major technology corporations, banks, media companies, service industries, transportation systems, educational institutions and even sections of programming and content production have launched large-scale restructuring and workforce reductions. Millions of workers and salaried employees across the world now face job insecurity, temporary contracts, declining .wages and the threat of complete displacement
Artificial intelligence is no longer merely a new technology. It has become part of global capitalism’s attempt to manage its historical crisis. Capitalism is turning toward automation, digitalization and AI under conditions marked by declining profitability, weak economic growth, intensified global competition, crisis in social reproduction and expanding militarism and war. Under these conditions, capital seeks to transfer the costs of crisis onto society through reducing labor costs, increasing productivity and intensifying social control.
Technology corporations and governments present AI as the “great revolution of the future,” but behind this propaganda lies a vast process of layoffs and the destabilization of labor. Large sections of administrative, service, media, translation, design, customer support, educational, accounting, transportation and even programming jobs are rapidly being downsized or eliminated. In many countries, corporations use AI not to reduce working hours or improve social life, but to dismiss employees, intensify labor and expand surveillance over workers.
This process is not limited to manual labor. Sections of the salaried middle class, specialists, media workers, programmers, translators and even university employees are increasingly being pushed toward precarious and unstable conditions. What is expanding today is not the “end of work,” but the expansion of proletarianization and social insecurity on a global scale.
Alongside these transformations, a new wave of theories proclaiming the “end of the working class” and the disappearance of proletarian historical agency has once again emerged. These arguments are not new. From the theorists of the “Third Wave” and post-industrial society in the 1980s to advocates of the “network society” and information capitalism, sections of the middle class and its associated intellectuals have repeatedly attempted to turn technological change into an ideological weapon against the workers’ movement.
Today, with the rise of artificial intelligence, it is once again claimed that the working class has fragmented into a powerless “precariat” lacking historical identity or transformative capacity. Yet these theories reflect less the material reality of contemporary capitalism than the inability of these currents to understand changing forms of class struggle and the structural transformation of capitalism itself.
Digital capitalism has not abolished wage labor; it has expanded new forms of exploitation, control and labor dependency. Behind AI networks, data centers, digital platforms and the algorithmic economy stand millions of workers in production chains, logistics, transportation, mining, warehouses, programming, platform labor and social reproduction — workers who continue to form the real foundation of value production and capitalist reproduction.
Capitalism now faces a profound contradiction. On the one hand, it seeks through automation and AI to reduce dependence on labor power and cut costs. On the other hand, the capitalist system itself remains dependent upon the extraction of surplus value from wage labor. Capital attempts to eliminate living labor while remaining unable to reproduce itself without it. This contradiction deepens the crisis of digital capitalism itself.
Artificial intelligence has simultaneously become part of the military and security structure of contemporary capitalism. Modern warfare increasingly depends on drones, intelligent systems, data analysis, digital surveillance and algorithmic control. From Gaza and Ukraine to the borders of Europe and the United States, global capitalism is increasingly integrating digital technology with securitization, social repression and militarism.
Yet just as digital capitalism creates new forms of exploitation and control, it also generates new forms of struggle and resistance. Class struggle is no longer centered solely in the traditional factory. Logistics workers, warehouse workers, transportation workers, platform workers, data-center workers, technology-sector employees and distribution networks have become central to the structure of contemporary capitalism — and new forms of strikes, organization and resistance are emerging precisely in these sectors.
The strikes at Amazon, protests by Uber drivers, walkouts by digital service workers, struggles among logistics and transportation workers, and even protests by sections of technology workers against military and surveillance contracts demonstrate that the contradiction between capital and labor has not disappeared. It has entered a new phase.
But the return of class struggle in the age of artificial intelligence should not be mistaken for the automatic emergence of an independent working-class alternative. Just as digital capitalism can produce new forms of exploitation and control, it can simultaneously strengthen individualism, competition, nationalism, authoritarianism and new forms of right-wing politics.
The decisive question today is therefore not opposition to technology itself, but opposition to a social order that places technology in the service of profit, war, surveillance and class domination. Without a critical return to Marx, without drawing class lessons from historical defeats, and without organizing an internationalist workers’ movement, new technologies will deepen crisis, militarism and exploitation rather than contribute to social emancipation.
The decisive issue today is not the “end of the working class,” but the necessity of rebuilding the internationalist politics of the working class in the age of digital capitalism and intelligent warfare.
Toward rebuilding the internationalist politics of the working class
Internationalist Workers’ Organization – IWO
9 May 2026
