Marxist-Leninist analysis of the class war today — imperialism, austerity, and resistance
The contradictions of capitalism continue to sharpen. Across Britain, France, and the world, the working class faces intensifying exploitation: soaring rents, collapsing public services, real wages falling behind inflation, and the ever-present threat of imperialist war. The ruling class responds to each crisis by shifting the burden onto workers while protecting the profits of capital.
The task of communists is to analyse these conditions scientifically and identify the points of struggle where the working class can advance its interests.
Housing is a human right, yet millions across Britain and France are priced out of homes by landlordism and speculative capital. In London, the average worker spends over 40% of their income on rent. In Paris, the situation is no better. Meanwhile, luxury flats stand empty as investment vehicles for the global bourgeoisie.
The solution is not "affordable housing" schemes that subsidise developers. The solution is the nationalisation of housing, the abolition of landlordism, rent controls tied to wages, and a massive programme of social housing construction. Housing must be removed from the market entirely.
Marxist-Leninist position: Housing is a right, not a commodity. Nationalise all rental housing. Build social housing on a mass scale. Abolish landlordism.
NATO — the military alliance of the imperialist powers — continues to expand, encircle rivals, and wage proxy wars across the globe. Britain and France are among NATO's most active members, spending billions on weapons while cutting social services. Military bases, arms sales, and "humanitarian interventions" serve the same purpose: maintaining the global dominance of Western capital.
The working class has no interest in imperialist war. Every penny spent on missiles is a penny stolen from hospitals, schools, and housing. The enemy is not abroad — the enemy is at home, in the boardrooms and the parliament.
Marxist-Leninist position: Oppose NATO and all imperialist alliances. No to arms spending — fund public services. Solidarity with all peoples resisting imperialist aggression.
Across both countries, governments of all colours have pursued austerity: cutting benefits, privatising public services, weakening trade union rights, and imposing anti-strike legislation. In Britain, the Tories devastated public services; Labour promises no reversal. In France, Macron rammed through pension "reforms" against the will of millions who took to the streets.
The trade union leadership, tied to social-democratic parties and the state, has repeatedly failed to lead a serious fight. The workers showed their power in the French pension strikes, in the British rail strikes, in the NHS disputes — but the leadership capitulated every time.
Marxist-Leninist position: Build rank-and-file organisation independent of the trade union bureaucracy. Fight for the repeal of all anti-union laws. General strike as a weapon of class war.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence and automation threatens millions of jobs while concentrating unprecedented power in the hands of tech monopolies. Under capitalism, AI means unemployment, surveillance, and deepening inequality. The profits of automation flow entirely to shareholders while workers are discarded.
Under socialism, AI and automation would eliminate drudgery, shorten the working day, and create abundance for all. The question is not whether to develop AI — Luddism is reactionary — but who owns and controls it. Technology must serve the proletariat, not enrich billionaires.
Marxist-Leninist position: Socialise AI and automation. Shorten the working week without loss of pay. Universal basic services, not universal basic income (which is a subsidy to capital).
The environmental crisis is real, but it is a problem of capitalist anarchy of production, not of growth itself. We are pro-growth. Workers should not starve so that liberals can feel virtuous about "degrowth." The reactionary environmentalism that puts human interests second — that values abstract "nature" over the material needs of the working class — is anti-Marxist. Humans are animals — but we are the smartest ones, the apex species, and our interests come first.
Capitalism does meet basic needs for many — if it did not, humanity would already be extinct. Profit itself is not inherently evil; even Soviet state enterprises operated at a profit, as Stalin explained in Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. The problem is not profit as such but extreme inequality in distribution. At any given moment, the resources available are finite. When one section of the population consumes in obscene luxury — private jets, multiple mansions, superyachts — there is physically less for everyone else. The result: millions of people are pushed so far down Maslow's hierarchy of needs that they suffer biological hardship — disease, malnutrition, shortened lifespans, chronic mental suffering — while the bourgeoisie hoards wealth it cannot even use. "Green capitalism" is a fraud not because growth is bad, but because capitalism cannot distribute rationally — it concentrates wealth upward by design.
Socialist planning solves this: direct production toward human need, eliminate waste, and industrialise further — including into space. The universe is effectively infinite; the observable universe alone contains hundreds of billions of galaxies, and multiverse hypotheses suggest reality may be literally infinite. There is no resource ceiling that justifies condemning workers to poverty. The Soviet Union demonstrated that planned economies can rapidly industrialise — that same planning capacity can manage ecological questions while raising living standards.
Marxist-Leninist position: The environmental crisis is a class question. We are pro-growth, pro-industrialisation, pro-human. Only socialist planning can direct production rationally. Nationalise energy, transport, and heavy industry under workers' control — and build outward.
France maintains a vast neocolonial empire across West and Central Africa through the CFA franc, military bases, and political interference. The CFA franc — a colonial-era currency still imposed on 14 African nations — allows France to control monetary policy and extract wealth from some of the world's poorest countries.
The recent wave of anti-French uprisings across the Sahel — Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger — represents a historic moment of anti-imperialist resistance. These peoples are throwing off the chains of French neocolonialism, and communists must stand in unconditional solidarity with them.
Marxist-Leninist position: End the CFA franc. Close all French military bases in Africa. Unconditional solidarity with the anti-imperialist movements of the Sahel and beyond.
"The working class of the oppressor nation must learn to support the struggles of the oppressed nations against its own bourgeoisie."
— V.I. Lenin, The Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1914)The answer today is the same as Lenin gave in 1902: build a revolutionary party. Not a discussion club, not a social media brand, not an NGO — a disciplined, organised, Marxist-Leninist party rooted in the working class, capable of providing theoretical leadership and practical organisation.
Study theory. Organise in your workplace. Connect with comrades. The revolution will not come spontaneously — it must be built, step by step, through patient, principled work.
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