Since Macron’s martial speech against Russia, many workers are asking themselves if he’s just being dramatic or if we’re really heading for war. Some of it is Macron play-acting. Like all European leaders, he knows full well that Putin has no desire to invade Europe and doesn’t have the means to do so.

Macron is fond of posturing as a wartime leader, something that he already did during Covid. It helped get him re-elected in 2022 and is today setting him firmly at the center of the political stage. But every country is re-arming and for reasons that are far more fundamental than the careerism or the craziness of this or that politician.

Tension is rising everywhere due to the escalating trade war. The struggle for supremacy over one region or another, for minerals, crude oil, energy and markets is rife. Competition between predators has for a long time plunged entire regions into bloody wars, and not only in Ukraine. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sudan and the Middle East are also ravaged by wars fueled by the appetites and maneuvers of the major powers.

Yes, the situation is serious. Putin started a fratricidal bloodbath by invading Ukraine to counterbalance pressure from the West and to protect the interests of the Russian oligarchs. He is both a dictator and an assassin. But Western leaders, who stoked this war in order to defend their own imperialist interests, are no less greedy, cynical or murderous.

Trump is negotiating with Putin to share out Ukraine because he wants a “return on investment”. And what are European leaders doing? They’re impatient to be called to the table so that they too can grab a slice of the pie!

The war in Ukraine is a long way from being over. Macron and Starmer want to impose the presence of French and British troops there. Will they guarantee the ceasefire or will it be the pretext for more fighting?And how will the rivalry between the U.S. and China evolve? How far will the trade war between the U.S. and Europe go?

No one can predict which fight will become an armed conflict. It’s not even possible to predict which alliances would then hold true. At the start of the 70s, Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State, explained that “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests”.

Trump has made this cynical rule his own and it’s the rule of every single one of the bourgeoisie’s political leaders, including European leaders, even if, today, they want to project a good image of themselves by talking of democracy and the rights of peoples.

But above all, it’s how the bourgeoisie operates– and the bourgeoisie pulls all the strings. One of the basic rules of capitalist society is that nothing must get in the way of major capitalists and financiers amassing billions, not respect for fellow humans or the planet, not respect for any moral values. And if war is necessary to increase their capital, there will be war.

This is the social class that is capable of sending us to our death for its interests. This is the class that already exploits and kills us for its profits. This is the class that dominates us and which we must fight.

Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping or those in a secondary role like Macron, will come and go but not the bourgeoisie and its capitalist system that is at the basis of exploitation and wars. For them to disappear, they must be overturned, i.e. capitalists must be expropriated and society and the economy must be run collectively on a worldwide scale.

Today, workers don’t feel capable of doing this. Worse still, this is no longer a prospect for them because they don’t see themselves as a social class capable of acting for its own interests and changing society from top to bottom.

And yet workers make up an incomparable social force. Without them, nothing can be made, not even war. We’ve seen this in the past – in February 1917, this happened when Russian peasants and workers stopped making war by revolting against such abominable butchery. Not only did they overthrow a tsar but they also grasped power to try and build a completely different society.

The past battles led by workers prove that the exploited are capable of conscious and independent political intervention. It is the only way to stop society from evolving in a reactionary, nationalistic, warlike and barbaric way.

Nathalie Arthaud