Italy – MAY 1, 2026: THE CRISIS OF IMPERIALISM AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE STRUGGLE AGAINST REFORMISM
We hereby share an unofficial translation of the 1st of May statement published by Nuova Egemonia on 2nd of May.
THE CONTRADICTIONS OF IMPERIALISM
The imperialist aggression against Venezuela and Iran, and the prospect of a warmongering campaign against Cuba, go hand in hand with the expansionist ambitions and genocidal policies of the State of Israel against the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples. While these are the most striking examples, alongside the ongoing inter-imperialist war over the partition of Ukraine, the international situation is characterized virtually everywhere by an intensification of the offensive by the various imperialist powers (the US, countries in Europe, Russia, and China) against oppressed peoples and a new division of markets, sources of raw materials, spheres of influence, and control over the main communication routes and transit routes for goods. All of this is reflected in a general trend toward fascism and the offensive waged against the rights, interests, and living and working conditions of the masses.
THE FALSE PATH OF REFORMISM AND PACIFISM
Imperialist wars and war policies, an inevitable manifestation of capitalism’s dying phase, require more openly dictatorial governments and corresponding “police states,” while also having a severe impact on the masses in terms of their interests and their living and working conditions. In the current situation, marked by the now complete breakdown of the global economic balance, the unbridled arms race and warmongering ventures are paid for by the masses, who are already severely affected by the ongoing and irreversible economic and social crisis. Imperialism reveals itself as a dying system that seeks to drag the oppressed peoples of the entire world, as well as the working class and the masses of the imperialist countries, into its agony, with the aim of perpetuating its own hellish existence.
In the face of all this, various revisionist and opportunist forces are attempting, in every country around the world, to promote the idea that a world proletarian revolution is impossible and that it is necessary to take a so-called “democratic” and “peaceful” third way. A path that would be that of a supposedly possible new world order, characterized by a logic of peace and founded on a supposed emerging “multipolarism.” These forces extol peace and the possibility of countering the offensive of imperialism and the fascistization of States, in the name of a “bourgeois democracy” that in the past allegedly guaranteed freedom, rights, and progress for the peoples and the masses.
In Italy, for example, a broad coalition of reactionary (M5S), “left-wing” populist and reformist (PAP, radical left), and opportunist forces raises the banner of restoring and enforcing the Constitution in opposition to repression and war. This is as if the entire political history of Italy from 1947 to the present had not demonstrated that the Constitution, due to its bourgeois nature and its liberal-corporatist framework, has always served capitalism and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie; or, when this has not been the case, has always proven to be devoid of any effectiveness or practical applicability.
In the face of repression, the offensive against workers and the masses, rearmament policies, and imperialist wars, certain centrist and maximalist forces are raising the banner of the “struggle for peace.” In Italy, this approach is represented by forces such as the FGC/FC [Translator’s note: Communist Youth Front/ Communist Front], which would like to revive—in a completely different historical and political context—the slogans launched by Stalin’s USSR after World War II for an international movement in support of the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies.
As early as April 25 of last year, the FGC stated: “We began promoting the slogan ‘Partisans of Peace’ at the April 25 events, drawing on the experience of the mass movement of the same name which, at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s, saw the protagonists and fighters of the partisan wars in Italy and across Europe mobilize against the creation of NATO and against imperialism”…” In the face of the winds of war, the relevance of this choice is once again confirmed. We call on everyone to take to the streets behind this slogan, to make it their own, to promote it, and to oppose attempts to exploit April 25th…”. We have seen that this year the FGC has adopted the exact same arguments and approach. The problem is that while in the late 1940s this struggle served the cause of the world proletarian revolution, today it stands in opposition to the need for its organization and preparation.
THE APPARENT OMNIPOTENCE OF THE IMPERIALIST SYSTEM AND THE REALITY OF THE TENDENCY TOWARD REVOLUTION
The international situation, the offensive against oppressed peoples, and rising fascism place the problem of the proletarian revolution on the agenda in every country in the world—not a supposed world order of peace based on “multipolarism” in the shadow of Russian imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism, nor the cowardly pacifism of the so-called “struggle for peace” accompanied by a return to a mythical “bourgeois democracy” of the past.
The wars and imperialist ventures of recent decades, together with the international rise of fascism, are an expression of the structural crisis of the global capitalist economy, accompanied by the intensification of the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed peoples and by the irreversible breakdown—at the strategic and politico-military levels—of the balance of power among the major imperialist powers.
Unlike in the past, there is no imperialist power or imperialist pole today capable of waging a world war with any prospect of managing, at least for a certain phase, the reconstruction of some balance among the various parts of the imperialist system’s economy. While the U.S., the leading military power, is also in relative decline, this does not mean that other imperialist powers such as Russia, China, Japan, or Germany are capable of asserting themselves economically in its place as the leading power.
If we consider this fact, together with an assessment of the experience of imperialist wars over the past few decades—and in particular the inter-imperialist war in Ukraine and the aggression against Iran—we see World War III emerging as characterized by a protracted war of position waged by the imperialist powers against the oppressed peoples and within the relations among the imperialist powers themselves. World War III has already begun and is inevitably accompanied, as far as the imperialist countries are concerned, by the advance of processes of state fascistization—processes that are, moreover, clearly evident in the U.S., Russia, and China, and particularly present in Italy as well.
While imperialism may appear—and as we have seen, revisionists, reformists, and opportunists of all stripes speculate on this very appearance—to be so strong as to seem invincible and omnipotent, an objective assessment of the current state of the imperialist economic and political system and of how that situation will evolve over the coming decades reveals that this system is at a dead end and is heading toward its own ruin. The contradictions that plague it are, moreover, empirically observable—albeit relatively and in specific forms—precisely in the enormous difficulties that the U.S. on one side and Russia on the other face in addressing and resolving the issue of control over the Middle East and the other countries of the former social-imperialist USSR, primarily Ukraine, now subject to the U.S. camp, and that of the major European countries.
In this context, it is also becoming increasingly clear that the ongoing uprisings of oppressed peoples, accompanied by the great revolutionary peasant struggles in Latin American countries—led by the great New Democratic revolutions in India, the Philippines, Turkey, and Peru, along with the national liberation struggles of the Palestinian people, the Iranian people, Cuba, Venezuela, and many other countries around the world, are spreading and strengthening within the context of the development of the third imperialist world war, merging the anti-imperialist struggle with that for New Democracy in the perspective of socialism. It is precisely in this sense that the terminal crisis of imperialism objectively brings to the fore—and increasingly so in terms of building the subjective conditions—the trend toward world proletarian revolution. In the imperialist countries themselves, the economic offensive against the proletariat and the masses, exacerbated by rising unemployment and precariousness, by spending on the arms race, and by price increases due to the economic crisis and international crises, is combined with repression and a frontal assault on the political and trade union rights of youth, wage workers, and exploited and intermediate strata of the petty bourgeoisie.
Opposition is growing among young people and the most progressive sectors of the working class and the masses against the imperialist system, imperialist war, and fascism; against genocidal attacks on oppressed peoples; and against the bloody offensive against the New Democratic Revolutions.
AMONG THE YOUNG COMMUNISTS, THE IDEA THAT REVOLUTION IS NECESSARY IS TAKING HOLD
In Italy, among the most politically aware and militant sectors of the working class, the youth, and the oppressed communities of the South and the Islands, there is a growing realization of the need to reject the illusion that there is a “bourgeois-democratic” and peaceful way out of fascism and the contradictions and wars of imperialism. The political and military experience of the communists during the anti-fascist resistance—which had already initially fueled the struggles and revolutionary formations of the late 1960s and early 1970s—is now once again energizing the opposition of young communists and young revolutionaries who are increasingly at odds with the nauseating and hypocritical indoctrination of the radical left, the pacifists, and the centrists.
The exodus of young people from “Rifondazione Comunista” in search of organizations capable of supporting the prospect of a New Resistance and a proletarian revolution is a microcosm of this ongoing process.
THE PROCESS TOWARD THE UNITY OF REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNISTS AND THE FORMATION OF THE PARTY
The unfolding of the ongoing Third World War, the economic offensive against the masses, the heroic example of the Palestinian resistance, the steadfastness of the Iranian people, and the glorious epic of the New Democracy people’s wars, together with the advance of fascism in Italy—to which the social-fascists of the PD and the reactionaries of the M5S have contributed in every way—are all fundamental factors in a process, currently still in its embryonic stage, of convergence and unification of the revolutionary communists and the formation of a revolutionary political and social bloc, which will victoriously resume Gramsci’s Path on the basis of the most advanced ideology of the Communist Movement and the international proletariat, represented by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, including the universal contributions of Gonzalo Thought.
NUOVA EGEMONIA
