Many questions arise in the current political period and in the Trump era. Is capitalist globalization finished, and if so, what global process are we entering in? Will the rising Chinese neo-imperialism, based on a multilateral policy, be able to reorder the global economy? What processes can be opened in Latin America, and especially in Brazil, by Trump’s policies? Will new bourgeois governments emerge independently of imperialism? Will there be possibilities for governments breaking up with the bourgeoisie, like those that were established by Chávez and Evo Morales, supplanting the current progressivist actors that conciliate with the bourgeoisie? How do we, revolutionary Marxists, intervene in unity of action and in anti-fascist fronts, and at the same time build an anti-capitalist alternative? Is it possible to build new parties with mass influence that surpass the progressivists?

It is necessary to address all the problems we face in this period of many uncertainties, conscious that only through the course of processes and open debate is it possible to forge an accurate revolutionary policy. The parameters we must discuss are the outcomes of the World Congress, and from there, project them into the global political situation unfolding with Trump in the government of the leading imperialist country. The following notes are intended to be a contribution to this task.

1. The global situation is escalating

The systemic global crisis has not only deepened, it accelerated; the Gramscian “interregnum” as a “period of emergence of the new that ends the old” has become more pressing. Since Trump brought the neo-fascist right to the government in the world’s leading power, we have entered a period of more decisive confrontations, marked by growing international disorder—wars, divisions in the global bourgeoisie, political and economic clashes, new imperialist interventions on the one hand, and, on the other, the likely multiplication of resistance struggles and anti-fascist, anti-imperialist, and popular social mobilisations.

The dilemma of “socialism or barbarism” sounds significantly stronger today. Neo-fascism has become a threat comparable, or even greater, than Nazi-fascism a hundred years ago. Its most dramatic expressions are the genocide in Gaza—which is relentlessly shocking the world—and the scientific denialism that pushes toward climate collapse and the possibility of the doom of humanity. Neofascism, and more specifically Trump’s imperialist neofascism, is the main enemy of workers and peoples worldwide, and our historic task is to defeat it. A resounding victory over it will only be possible through worker and popular mobilisation, with new upheavals, insurrections, and revolutions.

2. Differences between fascism and neofascism

To approach the new shape of fascism, we should answer two questions: what differentiates the classical fascism of Hitler and Mussolini from today’s neofascism? And how did we reach this new form of fascism a hundred years later?

Classical fascism was the response of factions of the big bourgeoisie to revolutionary situations. With the support of a desperate petite bourgeoisie in the midst of acute crises, it confronted the working class with militias and forces like the Gestapo, employing a civil war methodology. It prevailed in contexts of exhaustion of revolutionary processes, imposing historic defeats on the proletariat and its allies through counterrevolutions. These regimes managed to temporarily revive some national economies until the catastrophe of World War II.

Today’s neo-fascism emerges in a different context: the capitalist crisis has become chronic and combines multiple dimensions—social, economic (stagnation and permanent indebtedness), ecological, political (of bourgeois democratic regimes), and global geopolitics—with the confrontation between the declining imperialism of the US and the rising neo-imperialism of China. This crisis, amid a concentration of capital and wealth like never before, generates a series of profound processes, which express themselves in multiple ways: massive waves of immigrants fleeing wars, climate catastrophes, and in famine, increasing inequality and poverty. The genocide in Gaza and climate catastrophes are its most visible effects.The organizational and programmatic weakness of the working class amplifies this crisis. 

The bourgeoisie throughout the world needs to implement permanent economic counter-reforms, and to do so, it requires increasingly authoritarian regimes. A sector of this bourgeoisie—which includes the powerful Big Tech companies and the fossil fuel monopolies—embraces neofascism, relying on layers of the petite bourgeoisie and sectors of the working class. As Bellamy Foster says, “The Trump doctrine is rooted in new class alignments associated with MAGA neo-fascism and its close, yet contradictory, connections to the billionaire class, particularly in the high-tech (big tech) and oil sectors. The class basis of fascism in Marxist theory always resides in an alliance between monopoly capital and a lower-middle class.”

Unlike classical fascism, neofascism does not emerge from revolutionary defeats, but rather from within the bourgeois-democratic regime through elections, opening up reactionary situations. That makes it more unstable than the fascism from before. The recent Argentine elections in the largest province (40% of the country) are illustrative. Milei’s government has just suffered a crushing defeat in the country’s main province, which represents nearly 40% of the population. In other words, all kinds of reactions are provoked because there are no historical defeats for the working class. If fascism previously relied on armed militias to crush workers’ organizations, today, in addition to the application of authoritarian and repressive measures that restrict freedoms and attack class organizations, it relies on a more sophisticated weapon: digital militias, capable of colonizing consciousness on a massive scale.

Although fascism as an ideology never disappeared after 1945, it invigorated and became a present and structural threat with the new period opened by the 2008 financial crash, the crisis of overproduction, and the recession or stagnation that followed.

3. A schematic periodization that explains neo-fascism

• After World War II: the defeat of fascism and the destruction of productive forces in the conflict ushered in a period of economic boom, the result of reconstruction. This cycle, followed by the rise of the working class, forced the bourgeoisie to grant social improvements: the so-called welfare state, concentrated in the United States, Europe, and the imperialist countries, also impacting the USSR and the bureaucratized workers’ states.
• 1970s crisis: The end of the permanent rise in profit and accumulation rates during the so-called “30 glorious years” (approximately 1945-1975) became evident with the crisis of overproduction in the late 1960s, the oil crisis of 1973, and the abandonment of the gold standard by the United States in 1979. Neoliberal globalization began with the response of capital, beginning with Reagan and Thatcher. This included financial deregulation, brutal adjustment plans, and widespread privatizations. During this period, there was a transfer of industrial plants to Asia, and especially China, due to cheaper labor. Neoliberalism—in addition to privatization was characterized by what Nahuel Moreno defined as a “permanent economic counterrevolution.” The restoration of capitalism in degenerated workers’ states (whether through collapse, as in the USSR, or controlled from the top, as in China) was an essential part of the neoliberal redesign of the world, which brought about what we call capitalist globalization. However, a process of economic growth did not begin; there was a sharp increase in the concentration of wealth and growing inequality, maintaining the low growth of the system (with the exceptions of the “Developmentalist Tigers” and China).

• Globalization and Technological Revolution: The globalization of capital and the digital interconnection of production and finance defined new economic and social characteristics for the new imperialist phase. But the economic growth remained below the necessary for a steady rise in accumulation. Financial speculation dominated the period, generating bubbles, such as that of 1987, the Russian and Asian crashes of the 1990s, the dot-com crisis (2000), and the US mortgage crisis that triggered the bankruptcy of banks and brokerage firms in 2008.

Under Clinton and Obama, the permanent adjustments continued, now combined with partial concessions to agendas related to diversity (feminism, the LGBTQ+ movement, and, to a lesser extent, the anti-racist struggle). These gains were achieved through social mobilisations: the new feminist wave, LGBTQ+ struggles, and the Black upheaval following the assassinaiton of George Floyd.

• 2008 marks the beginning of a new historical period; Since then, capitalism has entered a chronic, multidimensional crisis: economic, social, ecological, and political. The world has become more chaotic, with wars (Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, DRC, Myanmar), famine, and mass migration, while climate change ravages every region. The development of productive forces occurs, contradictorily, at the cost of militarism, destruction, and deaths, turning them into increasingly destructive forces.

Neofascism grew in this context, not only because of the multiple crises but also because of their combination with the weakness of the labour and mass movements after the fall of “real socialism.” As Roberto Robaina points out in his latest book, fascism has always existed. It is a structural current, but it regained influence in the bourgeoisie, in mass sectors, and in institutions during this period.

Why? Because the bourgeoisie increasingly needs authoritarianism to implement its economic counterrevolution and confront global disorder: without curtailing freedoms, the austerity policies cannot be sustained. Without authoritarianism, it is difficult for the imperialist powers to confront the global disorder. It is no coincidence that we have Trump, Meloni, Putin, Orbán, Bukele…

Neo-fascism gained a social base among workers and middle classes battered by the crisis, attracted by personalistic “anti-system” leadership and a reactionary nationalism that, in advanced countries, relies on anti-immigrant white racism, and in dependent countries on the seek for authoritarian figures to bring order to social chaos and the lack of public security.

The other fundamental factor in its growth was the failure of the governments of “democratic” liberal regimes (social liberals, as the Fourth International calls them) and of so-called progressivism in many countries.

Today, neo-fascism is present in the United States, spreading to virtually every European country with uneven strength, to Russia and Turkey, to the autocracies of the Middle East and Latin America (Milei, Noboa, Bukele, Kast), to Japan (with Sanseito) and the Philippines, and emanating from Western countries through international networks and gatherings. China is a special one-party dictatorship, a neo-imperialism based on state capitalism, which we will discuss later.

4. Trump Administration: Neofascism and Aggressive Neocolonial Imperialism

Trump represents the vanguard of the new global fascism. It can be said that he has globalized imperialist neofascism by assuming power in the most powerful state in the world. His project combines national-populist neofascism with an aggressive neocolonialist imperialism that seeks to pull the United States out of its decadence.

Domestically, his administration is characterized by authoritarian policies to change the political regime. His policies erode hard-won democratic rights day by day: persecution of those who support Palestine, ethnic cleansing against immigrants, which could reach 400,000 on his first year in office (on this term), increasing militarization of internal security ( directly involving the Armed Forces in internal security, as occurred in Los Angeles, Washington, and now Chicago), scientific denialism, and an economic policy subordinated to the interests of large corporations—particularly the fascist core of Big Tech, first and foremost, which has forged a very close agreement with Trump, crypto-finance, and extractive and energy capitals. He has passed in parliament for the budget law that frees taxes for the rich and cuts funding for fundamental social programmes. Although his personal style may seem improvised and erratic, his policies—with contradictions that we will analyze later—advance with an already defined logic.

5. An aggressive foreign policy that further disrupts world order.

On the international stage, Trump’s policy maintains the underlying objective of his predecessors: to regain imperialist hegemony in face of China’s rise. However, he introduces a qualitative change: a much more aggressive and disruptive strategy, breaking international agreements and multilateral organizations (the Paris Agreement, WHO, WTO, UNESCO, among others), with tariff increases that threaten to disrupt the global supply chains, political interference, as in Brazil, and military interference in Iran with the bombing of uranium enrichment facilities, and now in Venezuela. His unconditional support for Netanyahu’s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine, his use of tariff protectionism as political blackmail, his delusional expansionist aspirations (annexing Greenland, controlling the Panama Canal, or integrating Canada into the US), and his plan to recolonize Gaza — governed by the US – all demonstrate the aggressive and recolonizing imperial nature of his project. Despite the unpredictability of his tactics, his megalomaniacal imperial spirit predicts an increasingly destructive future.

By supporting Israel, he has advanced the destruction of Gaza and the weakening of Iran’s allies in the Middle East. Targeted bombing attacks against Iran may be the first step toward more direct interventions. At the same time, they reveal the difficulties the US faces in launching ground invasions similar to those carried out under the Bush administration. It is not ruled out, however, that he will resort to new forms of more or less selective military intervention, such as against Venezuela, currently under direct threat of surgical intervention or a blockade supported by new forms of hybrid warfare.

It is very difficult to predict how far Trump’s policies will go. In the war in Ukraine, Trump began by favouring Putin, weakening Zelensky and the European Union, a historic ally of the US, without reaching any peace agreement so far. What we have seen after the summit with Putin is an intensification of the offensive by Russian imperialism. The protectionist tariff policy has generated more inter-imperialist contradictions with every country, and consequently more disorder in global politics. The genocide in Gaza is provoking rejection not only by the masses, but also by important sectors of the world’s intellectual community, including governments in very different ways, with the complicity of European governments standing out above all, and the silence of China and Russia. His protectionist policies and tax cuts for the wealthy exacerbate inequality and threaten the US with inflation and economic stagnation. His repressive policies against immigrants are beginning to provoke rejection from his own ranks. This is why discontent is growing among workers and the middle class, as it continues to exist within the bourgeoisie itself in his own country. His ultimate fate will depend on the reaction and mobilisation in his own country, and in that sense, the midterm elections will be an important opportunity to gauge that reaction.

6. Division within the US and global bourgeoisies

The dispute between the US and China is at the heart of the multiple contradictions that are expressed in the global disorder. It is the dispute between a decadent imperialism and an emerging one. We will then examine some of the characteristics of Chinese state capitalism, its potential to realign or attract bourgeois countries and sectors, and its continued growth as a competitor that presents itself as a reorganizer of the multilateral economy and the world order.

The Western European bourgeoisie is also suffering from the rise of fascism and is also divided. While overall they need more authoritarianism to implement austerity policies, significant sectors of capital continue to defend globalization, multilateralism, and the bourgeois liberal regimes. The resistance of this bourgeois sector is, however, weakened because the crisis requires heavy-handed bourgeois governments, and therefore they need to cede space to the far right. Van der Leyden in the EU and Macron in France are examples of this necessity, which is becoming apparent in other countries as the far right grows. The governments of neoliberal democracies, with their austerity policies, create despair among the masses and pave the way for neofascism. But at the same time, inter-bourgeois contradictions are crucial to the policies for confronting fascism. Because they open gaps for the expression of popular mobilisation, popular and workers’ uprisings, which, as we know, are the only way to consistently confront neofascism. In the case of France, they strengthened a Popular Front with a progressive programme and France Insoumise as its spokesperson.

7. China: The rise and its role

As already stated, global polarization is centered on the growing confrontation between the US and China for the world’s leadership. This is why it is so important to define what China is and the characteristics of its role as an emerging imperialist player. The clash with the US is not only commercial, but structural: both are competing for markets, technology, and spheres of influence.

Most Marxist analysts correctly view China as a state-capitalist system with a dictatorial, one-party bureaucratic regime. The Communist Party and the state apparatus directly control strategic sectors (energy, transportation, banking, telecommunications, and arms industries). The State plans and regulates based on capital accumulation, following a logic of global competition and the pursuit of profit, extracting surplus value from the exploitation of workers in its own country. This planning is also based on the Chinese bourgeois, who coexist with the bureaucracy, and foreign companies that also manufacture in China, such as Apple and Tesla. It is estimated that approximately half of China’s GDP comes from private companies and joint ventures, many of which are integrated into global value chains. The State keeps the control in key sectors but allows and encourages a strong national business community (Alibaba, Huawei, etc.). Hence, it resembles a hybrid model: strong state intervention, but within a framework dominated by market capitalist logic, the law of value, and accumulation through surplus value. China is today the world’s second-largest economy in terms of nominal GDP and the first in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). Its large state-owned and private conglomerates (Huawei, Sinopec, Tencent, Alibaba, BYD, etc.) are among the largest global corporations. There has been a strong concentration of capital in banks, strategic industries, and megaprojects, and China is actively competing in cutting-edge technologies, artificial intelligence, renewable energy, etc.

Therefore, China is an emerging imperialism or neo-imperialism; it has gone from being a semi-peripheral country to becoming a center of capital accumulation that exports investments, controls markets, establishes unequal relations with dependent countries, and contests global hegemony—all characteristics of the imperialist stage defined by Lenin. While they don’t have the global dominance of the US, an imperialism that has around 800 military bases around the world, China is moving toward an increasingly imperial dispute role within the framework of the global disorder caused by the Trump administration. For now, using different forms than Western imperialism (China is more focused on investment and infrastructure than on open military interventions). In any case, China is increasing its military presence, although more limited than the US, with a military base in Djibouti, naval patrols in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, with an accelerated modernization of its navy and air force, defending its zone of influence (South China Sea, Taiwan, Pakistan, Africa). Its latest display of weapons in the military parade of arms with Putin and Kim is a further demonstration of its military intentions.

China exports financial capital and has imperialist relations with dependent countries. Many Chinese projects reproduce the extractivist logic of a dispossessing and extractive imperialism in large mining investments, in oil, copper, and lithium. It benefits from the generation of asymmetrical imperialist trades. At the same time, it extracts surplus value from the factories installed especially in Mexico and Brazil, and its economic loans to countries are made with the interests of the world market, thus creating debts and financial subordination.

China and the BRICS. The BRICS are not a representation of the global South against imperialism; this element is very different from the Third Worldism of the non-aligned movements of the 1960s. Not a single word from China, Russia, or India about the genocide in Gaza. As Ze Correa’s document says, “they have strengthened as a diffuse network of pragmatic national interests, driven by capitalist classes that have been growing faster than those of the old US-Europe-Japan core coordinated by Washington. This is the reason for Trump’s enormous hostility toward the BRICS.” The one who has benefited most from the BRICS is the Chinese neo-imperialism. However, if the axis formed by China, Russia, and India—the latter hit by Trump’s tariff hike—is consolidated, this bloc, which met a few days ago in Saigon, becomes a political and economic force of huge relevance in the dispute with the US. It is demonstrated that Trump’s foreign policy only creates new opportunities for China and its strategic alliance with Russia, and possibly India. Part of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, exporting raw materials, is increasingly moving in that direction.

8. In this new global situation, resistance and anti-imperialist consciousness levels are growing

A growing process of resistance to neo-fascism is developing globally, with deep roots that go beyond the current social unrest often highlighted by the mainstream bourgeois press. It is a conscious rejection of imperialist and neo-fascist policies, the most visible breaking point of which has been the criticism of the genocide in Gaza.

Gaza has been a watershed to the mass movement. Faced with the complicity of many countries, including Russia and China, and/or the passive rejection to the real time televised genocide, sectors of the mass movement mobilised worldwide, as has occurred in European countries, Asia, and the Arab world. Thus, the genocide acts as a trigger for advancing the level of consciousness, even when carried out by more vanguard actions, as in Latin America. The new Freedom Flotilla has evolved to an internationalist action the likes of which we have not seen for many years. The confluence of more than 40 countries, representatives, and personalities demonstrates this advance of consciousness level in a massive vanguard. The flotilla participants from 44 countries demonstrate this advance in the consciousness of a mass vanguard ready and steady for anti-imperialist internationalist action. The flotilla and the international solidarity movements for Palestine are the expression of a vanguard that is radicalizing and seeking solutions outside the limits of capitalism. Greta Thunberg is a symbol of this youthful impulse.

In the US, the mobilisations for Palestine were a trigger that broadened the mobilisation and this radicalization in consciousness. The mobilisation against ICE in Los Angeles, the No Kings protest, and the demonstrations against the military intervention in Washington. A new demonstration of mobilisation has been the youth uprisings in Serbia and now the rebellion in Indonesia and the youth upheaval in Nepal, two countries where street mobilisations have been facing government repression.

New political processes are emerging in response to the crisis and to the rising of neo-fascism. A mass sector disappointed with the Democratic Party’s inability to confront Trump led to its revolt. Within this framework, figures such as Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mandani (DSA) expressed an alternative: the latter even achieved an electoral victory in New York with a socialist platform and support for Palestine. Although the DSA is not a major party, it constitutes a starting point for a third party for the working class.

The failure of the progressivist movements of the beginning of the century (Syriza, Podemos)—largely co-opted by bourgeois institutions—opens the possibility that these new formations, or parties that still maintain a certain independence, such as the PSOL, will be strengthened in this new scenario. In Britain, Jeremy Corbyn’s new party is emerging; in France, France Insoumisse is gaining force. In South Africa; a split from the ANC gave rise to a new organization; in Greece Zoe Konstantopoulou, the former speaker of parliament in the Tsipras government, created a new party. We will certainly see a broader process of new left-wing formations. In the current situation, these political organisations or movements may or may not take on more anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist formations. Within the PSOL, there is also an opportunity to weaken the reformist factions.

That will not be a linear or simple process, but the conditions for building anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and eco-socialist alternatives within the framework of the struggle against neo-fascism are in place.

9. The anti imperialist struggle in Latin America

The position in the dispute between the US and China.

Latin American countries, unequally, remain dependent, semi-colonial countries that suffer the imperialist yoke. Traditionally, the region has been Uncle Sam’s backyard, but for the past two decades Chinese neo-imperialism has become a major competitor. According to ECLAC data (cepal.orgUpi), total foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America and the Caribbean was USD 188.962 billion in 2024. Of that total, the United States accounted for 38% of FDI in 2024, whilst China, in contrast, barely accounted for 2% of that investment flow. ECLAC clarifies in its report that the figure attributed to China may be underestimated, as many Chinese funds arrive through third countries or through contracts that are not formally registered as FDI (cepal.org). They are not counted as traditional FDI, as they enter through third countries, contracts, concessions, or asset purchases (cepal.org). The real amount of Chinese investment could be much higher if we consider loans, financing without FDI registration, and strategic agreements (such as ports, energy, and telecommunications).

The US dominates private direct investment (especially in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America) and maintains its dominance in formal direct investment and trade with Mexico and the Caribbean. China dominates state financing, strategic infrastructure, and natural resources. China: It will go from being marginal in 2000 to becoming Latin America’s second-largest global trading partner by 2025, with a leading role in infrastructure, energy, mining, and technology. Thus, the conclusion drawn from ECLAC data is that the economic landscape has become dual: North America (Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America) is more closely tied to the US; South America (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Peru) is increasingly interdependent on China. Both mean that South America remains essentially part of the global division of labour, exporting raw materials.

This power dispute gives the bourgeoisie, especially in South America, room for political and economic options. Those bourgeois sectors attempting a more independent policy from the US have room for maneuver through China. These margins don’t mean independent development, but they do allow them to maneuver in the face of pressure from US imperialism.

Trump’s imperialist interference in LA and his national neo-fascist allies is the main enemy we have. 

Yankee imperialism needs a more aggressive policy toward Latin America, and especially South America, in the face of China’s advance, and to achieve this, it relies on neo-fascist governments that turn to be its subjects.This situation also transforms the anti-fascist struggle into an anti-imperialist one.

Trump’s interventionist movements in recent months – initially in Brazil – and now his warmongering in Venezuela, are not tactical, but apparently strategic. Venezuela is the world’s most important oil reserve, but it has a nearly dictatorial authoritarian regime that has weakened its connections to the masses, thus facilitating the current offensive. In Brazil, meanwhile, the tariff hike is explicitly aimed at favoring Trump’s ally Bolsonaro and the far right in order to change the political regime. This is the most serious aggression the country has suffered since the direct intervention in the 1964 military coup. Trump wants a Milei in the most important country on the continent, rich in mineral resources, oil, and agrobiodiversity. It also serves to try to weaken one of the BRICs’ pillars, to gain strategic leverage against China.

Are the Latin American bourgeoisies capable of confronting imperialism at this global stage? 

They can maneuver, they have some leeway, but they are not going to lead the break up with imperialism. If we briefly recap, at the beginning of the century, we had a first wave of upswing with the large mobilisations and insurrections in Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela, leading these last two countries to political independence from imperialism. (This was also when the break up occurred with the attempt from the US to establish FTAA.) In these two countries, there was a change of political regime via the constituent assemblies, and therefore a political break with the respective bourgeoisies. To achieve this, they made a political rupture with the bourgeoisies of their countries. The fact that this wave did not spread to other countries, due to bureaucratization, disputes between caudillos in Bolivia, and the death of Chávez, stalled and ultimately forced these independent processes to retreat. 

Then, we experienced a second wave of revolutionary upsurge starting in 2017-2018 in Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile, and later in Colombia. In these two countries, popular insurrections brought new leftist organizations to the government. These were Petro in Colombia and Boris in Chile (Castillo in Peru was more contradictory; he was not able consolidate his term). As part of this process of progressivist governments, we must add the triumphs of Lula (Brazil), Claudia Sheinbaum (Mexico), and, more recently, the Broad Front in Uruguay. There is an important difference between this new period and the previous one. In these latter cases, the governments that emerged did not break with their respective bourgeoisies and remained trapped in bourgeois establishment by not promoting reforms in their political regimes. This explains why they are class conciliation governments, with some progressive reforms; the most advanced undoubtedly come from Petro’s government, which relies on popular mobilisation, while the others have remained prisoners and have transformed themselves into the bourgeois state’s administrators.

Does this analysis rule out the possibility of the emergence of governments similar to those of Chávez or Evo, in other words, governments that lead their countries to a position of independence from imperialism? It is a difficult question to answer, which raises doubts, since an independent project is difficult to carry out in this global stage of technological and financial dependence – on either of the two powers and the interconnection of global production chains. What could happen is that class conciliation bourgeois governments conciliate with bourgeois sectors for a time, relying on the Chinese bloc. In general, the bourgeoisies of Latin American countries are associated with imperialist interests, and the largest corporations have significant capital invested in imperialist countries. Therefore, it seems to us that only a sustained popular mobilisation and a ripple effect on other countries and radical governments, even greater than those of Evo and Chávez, could emerge, leading to major confrontations with Yankee imperialism. That is to say, we cannot rule out governments with a more substantial  rupture than those of the early 2000s. If there is a new revolutionary wave and anti-capitalist alternatives rise, that perspective could open up, as planned by the Third International and later by the Transitional Program.

Class struggle opens new paths, once again

Latin America entered a period of elections that began with the catastrophic defeat in Bolivia as a consequence of the division and bureaucratization of the MAS and the policies of the Arce government. However, we subsequently had the crushing defeat of Milei in Argentina, an early ally of Trump who implements ultra-neoliberal policies and attempted regime change. His electoral defeat is a consequence of his agenda’s beginning to fail as a result of the economic depression, massive debt, corruption cases within his administration, which promised to end the “political caste,” and popular rejection resulting from the increase in famine and poverty. Since he took office, workers and popular protest has remained at the forefront, and in the elections, it was channeled in the province by populist Peronism and a governor who appears to be the Peronist presidential candidate. Kicillof is a governor who used the provincial budget (which is the largest of all provinces) to conciliate with his local mayors, and unlike Milei, used it not only for concessions to the impoverished sectors, but also for certain infrastructure projects to benefit bourgeois sectors and the countryside. That is why, in the election, he also enjoyed the support of the impoverished middle-class industrial and even rural sectors. The fact that Peronism (also semi-renewed by Grabois’s candidacy) appears as an alternative indicates the weakness of radicalization and the limited capacity of the FIT to become a mass alternative.

FIT did not go bad in the elections; it maintains its influence in urban sectors where the working class holds sway, but it has not made the necessary leap to become an alternative to struggle for power.

Argentina’s election indicates that the dispute in Latin America is still open. The instability and precariousness of the Milei government may indicate the weaknesses of neo-fascism’s ability to perpetuate itself in power (without imposing historic defeats to the working class) on the continent and the possibility and necessity of building mass anti-capitalist alternatives.

Is there a possibility of consistent anti-imperialist governments? 

We believe that it will objectively require a more solid revolutionary upsurge than those that have existed until now, and that anti-capitalist alternatives will be built, which for now are only just emerging or do not exist. This radical process can be built as the crisis progresses, and it could not be achieved without building an anti-capitalist alternative with mass influence. The prospects for anti-capitalist governments—as proposed by the ecosocialist manifesto—of a front built through popular power is a difficult but not impossible task, and it is on the table worldwide. It may or may not be achieved, but it is necessary, and the future is not decided yet.

10. Tactics and Strategies

The defeat of fascism often requires broad unity of action, including voting, as was the case in Brazil for Lula-Alckmin or in the United States when it voted for Kamala. Unity of action means an explicit or implicit agreement for a specific action. It can take place in mobilisations or elections. For example, this is the most likely case that will occur in the upcoming Brazilian elections. Lula will undoubtedly outline progressive points against Trump’s imperialist interference, but he will do so again in alliance with bourgeois sectors, as in the last elections. In other words, we will vote for Lula without supporting his policy, to defeat Bolsonaro’s neo-fascism.

It would be different if the anti-fascist front had an anti-imperialist programmatic content. In this case, we would have more points in common and could have a relatively common organization to carry it forward, as was the case with the NPA in the New Popular Front in France. We say that this front in Latin America must also be anti-imperialist because the far right, which also exists in dependent countries, is dominated by US imperialism across the board. The examples of Milei, Bolsonaro, and Bukele show the obsequiousness and copying of their policies across the board, including the sinister support for the genocide from Israel.

The difference between unity of action in support of a broad democratic front is different from a workers’ front or an anti-fascist front. In these cases, we are talking about organizations and parties that have their origins in the workers’ movement and are independent of bourgeois parties. Such was, for example, the anti-fascist united front that Trotsky called for in Germany between the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. The anti-fascist united front, understood in this way, is a superior form of unity, implying a certain degree of common organization among workers’ parties or radicalized petty-bourgeois sectors.

In any variant, revolutionaries must maintain full political and organizational independence. In unity of action, the common point is the need to defeat the far right. Within the Fronts, there is a certain common programme and a common organization to carry those programmatic points forward.

In any alliance we form, we must have our own independent organization in order to sustain, in the face of the chronic crisis of capitalism, an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and eco-socialist program.

11. Tasks and Program

As we have stated throughout the text, neo-fascist totalitarianism, its denialism, and the barbarism in Gaza are awakening new consciousness. And in the face of the capitulation or weakness of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaderships, a political space is opening up for the building of independent alternatives.

In a schematically way, the Latin American left is divided into three positions:

The most reformist sector believes that the solution to the crisis for Latin Americans is to return to national industrial development, looking to the Chinese bloc as the allied power to make it possible. Utilizing the BRICS and negotiating with them, using national currencies, or building an alternative to the dollar is a possible solution in the face of the Yankee offensive. But neither China nor the BRICS are the solution because they are far from being an egalitarian community of countries; rather, they have been built as an essential avenue for the Chinese expansion that we have already characterized in this text. These are the campist positions that, in most cases, end up on a reformist path. Within this camp are also organizations that, educated within the Marxist left, in fact, turn the anti-fascist united front into a strategy of almost unconditional support for class conciliation governments, justifying it as the only barrier to stopping fascism.

There is another sector, vanguardist and ultra-leftist, that in the face of the global crisis acts essentially with socialist propaganda and self-proclamation as a revolutionary party. Reality shows that in most cases, this path leads to building organizations that end up becoming sects, either big or small. We cannot disregard this sector, because in some cases, these are new organizations that have emerged and are falling into this policy as a way of affirming themselves as revolutionary and anti-capitalist.

As reaffirmed at the last World Congress, we continue to maintain that, in most cases, the building process of revolutionary organizations is part of broader processes that are already in place and that will surely continue to emerge in the coming period. Today, we have much more dynamic and less inflexible PSOL and DSA, which could also emerge in Britain with the formation of the New Party. The global situation will increasingly favor old and new vanguards that, outside of the reformism frame, break up with class conciliation and seek a new direction. These are the processes in which we must take part primarily to loyally build these alternatives, building within them the consciously revolutionary socialist wings.

It is not easy to build an anti-capitalist and ecosocialist program that allows us to have success over the broad vanguard and mobilise workers. The old socialist model failed, and in the face of the crisis, it is difficult to envision a new one. As the ecosocialist manifesto states, the transitional program methodology is absolutely valid and relevant.

Based on this method, we must articulate a stack of slogans that advance toward a break up with exhausted capitalism. It is not easy to build a new economic model for the 99%, but there are slogans that can help us to achieve this. Reality itself gives us some starting points. A sector of our class is beginning to understand the need to confront neo-fascism and imperialism. Transitional slogans, some more basic than others, have become the order of the day, such as the taxation of billionaires, popularized by Sanders and Mamdani in the United States (and also present in Brazil and other countries); the nationalization of banks under social and worker control, an indispensable policy to curb speculation and prevent capital flight; the auditing of public debts; against free trade we defend the nationalization of foreign trade; to regain popular control over the process of alienated consciousness by US Big Tech, we propose its nationalization; to combat neo-extractivism, we affirm the nationalization of mining exploitation under popular control.

At the same time, it is urgent to link this program to the ecosocialist struggle against neo-fascism and its scientific denialism. Imperialism and the far right, with their climate denialism, wars, and arms race, threaten life and nature. Trump and his allies are also the main enemies of the climate. The so-called “energy transition,” promoted by sectors of the bourgeoisie, is a timid and deceptive response: it replaces fossil fuels with renewables, but without questioning the logic of accumulation and unlimited consumption. Actually, it is a business restructuring, where big energy, mining, automotive, and technology companies reposition themselves as “green,” appropriating subsidies and new markets for themselves.

The ecosocialist proposal presents the opposite: a just, democratic, and planified energy transition, under social rather than corporate control, as part of a break up with the current capitalist production model. The preparation of our program connects the demands of the current period, uniting the most immediate demands — as the struggle against neo-fascism — with the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and eco-socialist demands very well established in the Ecosocialist Manifesto of the Fourth International, our international organization. In short, we are anti-fascist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist, and we fight for the popular power of workers and the people to achieve an eco-socialist world. A difficult, but not impossible task.

12. Internationalism grows in this new situation

Our ingress into the Fourth International has been a qualitative step in the building of MES. And it is very significant that it has occurred on the eve of this new moment of class struggle, of more tasks and more internationalist commitments, at a time when international solidarity is growing in response to the barbarities provoked by neo-fascism and its imperialist policies. At this moment, the central point of the internationalist struggle is in Gaza, and among the many demonstrations, the Freedom Flotilla emerges as an internationalist example of solidarity that unites many organizations from 44 countries, political figures, artists, and intellectuals. As our three brave comrades taking part on in it say, they are filled with courage in the face of the vast global impact it has had amidst the escalation of Zionism in its cleansing of Gaza. This flotilla revives the idea of ​​the International Brigades, whose greatest historical precedent is those carried out during the Spanish Civil War and Revolution. It is most likely that from now on, new internationalist actions, increasingly massive, will be repeated, in which the Fourth International will be on the front lines. Our most immediate task is to bring new organizations to the Fourth International, and this is a path that is opening up. Surely, along the process, a new mass International will emerge, as the Fourth International advocates. But for this to happen, it is now necessary to strengthen the Fourth International so that it can be the most active facilitator of this task. 

COP 30, with its political and infrastructure limitations, will be a new gathering of ecosocialist internationalists. And the main activity in the coming period is to build the Anti-Fascist Conference, to be held in March in Porto Alegre, the center of the WSF, convened by the PSOL, PT, and PCdB of Rio Grande do Sul with the support of several organizations, including the Fourth International. In this endeavor, anti-imperialists have the responsibility to transform it into a major event in the struggle against neo-fascism and imperialism, a first step toward a new platform of struggle.

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