Comrades!

The terrible attack in the USA which has resulted in the death of many thousands of unarmed victims, the majority of them workers who have all our class solidarity, is, by virtue of the place where it happened and by the powerful symbolic value of the targets hit, a further step towards a war of vast extent. The outcome of this war is unpredictable given that 'the enemy' is not a clearly identified state but a sort of phantom whose shape everyone can draw to suit themselves. For the United States the phantom has taken shape in the form of the Islamic fundamentalist Bin Laden, a sheikh who - it is worth recalling - was for a long time on the CIA's payroll. Probably the real authors of the attack will never be known and in this context the only crime of Bin Laden is to have his bases in Afghanistan and to be in control of an army which could hold one of the most important oil routes from the Caspian regions as a bargaining chip. In the modern world control of the oil market is of fundamental strategic importance because this is how it is possible to govern the creation and partition of financial revenues accruing from oil.

Today the oil market is entirely under the control of the USA and their close allies in the oil producing countries and oil deals are made exclusively in dollars. This guarantees the United States a gigantic financial income and ensures an enormous flow of capital from abroad with which to finance their gigantic debt. Obviously, even the partial loss of this market or the birth of another market based on a different currency from the dollar, such as the euro, could drastically impede this process with dire consequences for the US economy which is already at the epicentre of the world economic crisis.

For the USA, therefore, getting its feet and hands directly on the Afghan route for Caspian oil a preventive war strike with the clear intent of preserving its own primacy. At the moment the euro is only taking its first steps and the formation of an imperialist bloc around it that can compete with the United States is no more than at the planning stage. However current events could soon mean the plans are accelerated.

In this situation the EU cannot do anything else but keep up the appearance of playing the nasty game whilst it awaits the time when it can escape from its imperialist agony and be an equal brigand in the game. Thus, on the one hand it extends its solidarity to its brother/enemy and on the other tries to put a brake on its imperialist impulse. Russia finds itself in a similar situation, with its old enemy on the doorstep.

Comrades, proletarians!

According to bourgeois propaganda we are facing a kind of holy war with so-called 'Western civilisation' on the one hand against 'Islamic extremism' on the other. But this is a trap which we absolutely must not fall into at the peril of unprecedented carnage in the history of humanity. It is not true that "we are all Americans" and it is not even true that there is a distinct bloc of 'Islamic people' or 'peoples of the Southern hemisphere' where everyone is equally a victim of the West.

What does exist is the bourgeoisie and the proletariat divided by their irreconcilable interests. And in every latitude the capitalists all follow the same objective: to realise the profits extorted from the surplus value of the workers. Today these gentlemen want to lead us to war because they have no other way out of the crisis which afflicts world capitalism. It is no accident that they are telling us that everything has changed; that in order to defeat the enemy it will be necessary to give up 'a little freedom' and have years of sacrifice.

War can be used as an excuse to obstruct whatever opposition might arise to question the present economic and social order. From now on even strikes and any other form of economic struggle can be seen as traitorous and therefore strictly curtailed or banned.

Comrades, proletarians!

If we want to avoid sweeping massacre and fratricidal struggle we must re-start the class struggle and re-establish the proletarian unity that will accelerate the process of rebuilding an authentic Communist Party on an international scale; a party that will have anti-Stalinism and revolutionary defeatism at the pivot of its strategy because only the transformation of the imperialist war into a revolutionary war for the construction of a socialist society will be able to put an end to capitalist barbarism, including its Islamic or pan-Islamic versions.