The bourgeoisie knows full well that the proletarian masses do not want war, and the huge demonstrations in Italy in recent weeks against the genocide in Gaza confirm this clearly.

Bourgeois regimes define all their conflicts as “existential” in order to convince workers to accept the risk of sacrificing their own lives, as if their existence depended on the existence of the class regime that oppresses them.

And in fact, this is true: war is an existential struggle for every bourgeoisie. But not because it will perish if defeated by the opposing bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it would only lose a share of its profits, but it would always remain a privileged class, dominant over the working class. It would continue its business, with the privilege of fully enjoying the exploitation of its portion of the world proletariat. War is existential for every bourgeoisie for a very different reason: if it fails to convince and send the proletarians to the front to massacre their class brothers in uniform from another country, it will be suppressed by the proletarian revolution.

The bourgeoisie quickly learned to turn the workers’ generous desire for peace to the ends of its war. For this reason, in every country it tries not to appear as the aggressor but as the victim of aggression. War is always waged in the name of peace, endangered by the warmongering adversary. And the enemy is always a worse regime, an anomaly in bourgeois democracy, a madness, a fascism.

That fascism, that war, that madness, are instead part of the natural course of capitalism; indeed, they express its most intimate nature. War matures in the economic underbelly of capitalist society, and fascism is the content of bourgeois regimes, which becomes increasingly apparent as they progressively rush into it.

The regime, the head of state, and the exceptionally insane and evil ideology of the enemy are convenient for all bourgeoisies, because they justify conflict and prepare for war in “defense of peace,” democracy, and the homeland.

These concepts are well expressed by the most popular Italian song in the marches where opportunism still reigns supreme: “One morning I woke up and found the invader...” Defense of the homeland and liberation from fascism make an imperialist war a just war, for which the proletariat can, indeed must, fight and give its life.

The fundamental battlefield between revolutionary communism and opportunism is the trade union movement.

In Italy, the movement against the war in Gaza, which for months had been limited to small demonstrations, has grown remarkably since the end of August. One of the factors behind this sudden growth has been the grassroots unions, in particular the USB, which called a general strike for September 22 together with the CUB, SGB, and ADL Cobas.

The USB dockworkers in Genoa had already engaged in actions against the shipment of weapons and subsequently in a food drive promoted by a Genoese pacifist association, then partly loaded onto sailing boats – on which the national coordinator of USB dockworkers also set sail – which joined others from Spain, Tunisia, and Greece with the aim of bringing aid to Gaza by “breaking the naval blockade.” The food collection was met with enormous participation from the Genoese population, as was the demonstration held on the evening of Saturday, August 30, to see off the boats as they set sail.

At the end of the demonstration, with about 25,000 participants, a USB dockworker announced his union’s intention to promote a national general strike. This actually took place at a meeting with 600 participants at the Port Authority Club on the evening of Thursday, September 11, setting the strike for the following Monday, September 22.

Our comrades distributed a flyer specially drafted for the demonstration on August 30, the same one at the meeting on September 11 and at another demonstration on the 17th.

One of our comrades spoke at the assembly of the USB confederal coordination in Genoa, in front of 37 delegates, arguing that the war in Gaza should not be seen as an anomaly in capitalism—a sort of eternal struggle of democracy against fascism, of Good against Evil in secular form—but as a stage in capitalism’s march toward world war. He then pointed to the rebirth of a class-based trade union movement and the unity of workers in all countries as the way to stop this catastrophe. In Italy, the movement against the war in Israel must take the form of a struggle by the working class.

When the CGIL realized that the strike promoted by USB, CUB, SGB, and ADL had a high chance of success, it hastily decided to call another strike for the previous working day, Friday, September 19, with the clear aim of weakening, i.e., sabotaging, the strike on the 22nd. This cowardly action backfired, with many members and activists becoming angry with the CGIL leadership and striking on the 22nd.

Our comrades took part in both the demonstrations for the strike on the 19th, with the leaflet already distributed on August 30, and on the 22nd, with a new text.

The strike on the 22nd was a great success, especially due to the success of the demonstrations in over 70 cities (20,000 participants in Genoa, over 50,000 in Rome) but also, in some categories, due to the level of participation: the figure of 11.3% is very positive for schools, where in recent years the most successful strikes, even when called by the CGIL, have not exceeded 7%; at INPS (the Italian social security agency), participation was 47%; among railway workers, it was 30%.

It is extremely significant that this movement of popular indignation, which suddenly exploded, has been channelled into the trade unions of the working class and that young people and the middle classes have instinctively joined in the initiatives promoted by the unions. It is also significant that the strike was organized by the grassroots unions.

It should also be noted that the vast majority of participants in the demonstrations go far beyond the sphere of influence of the Palestinian bourgeois political organizations and beyond the parties to which the leaders of the grassroots unions belong, allowing our party to carry out its propaganda.

It is opportunism that directs these unions and these demonstrations. The party’s expected and always claimed task is to fight against opportunism in the trade union movement, to thwart the bourgeois maneuver aimed at diverting the spontaneous, generous but naive pacifism of the workers for the purposes of propaganda for the next imperialist war.

In our interventions, with our leaflets—the only ones at these demonstrations to give workers a clear direction of struggle consistent with revolutionary communism—we have highlighted how the working class is the only social force capable, if directed by the Communist Party through the transmission belt of class-based trade union organizations, of preventing the outbreak of the Third World War, to which capitalism is leading us, or of stopping it if it should begin.

Opportunism seems to assert something similar, but it plays on the ambiguity of its statements and on the naivety of the working masses. We can roughly distinguish two groups of opportunist propaganda in the demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza.

A majority of the leaders of the organizing organizations (but a minority among the demonstrators as the movement has grown) trust in the action of certain bourgeois states, which, they say, are better than those they point to as solely responsible for the war. The conflict in Gaza, they say, is not the result of a clash between imperialisms, in which the Gazans are crushed, but only of the special wickedness of the United States and Israel. A cultural fact, one might say, if not worse: the Americans, the Zionists, the Jews…

These groups end up seeking salvation in the intervention of states, with workers fighting for bourgeois “left-wing” governments, not realizing that this alternation and false opposition is a trap to prevent the proletariat from taking the path of struggle, of offensive, that is, of revolution, remaining instead nailed to the “defense of democracy from fascism.”

Most of the masses who filled the huge demonstrations between late August and early October are not so naive as to not understand how anti-proletarian and militaristic all the states of the world have become. Nevertheless, the illusion remains that only a demonstration of popular opinion can induce the governments of so-called democratic countries to change their policies and stop the war.

This leads to falling in line with the lies of the bourgeois left-wing parties and the parliamentary toy. We remain silent on the fact that all bourgeois states will be led into imperialist war by material forces that they will never want or be able to stop, and that they will do whatever is necessary to convince the proletariat to fight and die. This can already be seen in a party such as the PD, with its contortions on the question of European rearmament.

Bourgeois pacifism does not put an end to war. When the “fascist” Italian government sent a frigate to escort Italian citizens aboard some of the “Flotilla” boats—as Spain and Turkey had done—the representative of the most left-wing party in parliament (Fratoianni of Alleanza Verdi Sinistra), after congratulating the Foreign Minister, said: “Our frigate should violate the blockade and ensure that aid reaches Gaza.” Entering a war zone with warships means entering the war! If the Italian bourgeoisie today were to take the opposite side in the conflict between imperialisms, that is, against Israel and the United States, and had sent a contingent to fight alongside the so-called “Palestinian resistance,” that is, Hamas and the bourgeois states that support it or have supported it, these warmongers disguised as pacifists would be the first to put on their helmets, or rather, they would impose them on the workers!

The possibility of bourgeois Italy changing sides may seem remote today, but let us remember that it did so in two world wars. Italian capitalists have always cultivated an anti-American party, giving it space and political maneuverability. Even sectors of the bourgeois right are known to have this orientation, if only because, as is well known, it was Mussolini who waged the anti-American war, following Hitler’s lead. The Italian bourgeoisie has also always cultivated friendships with Palestinian nationalist parties and parts of the Arab world, as well as with the Iranian regime. Former President Cossiga explained how UNIFIL in Lebanon turned a blind eye to allow Hezbollah to arm itself south of the Litani River. The Italian bourgeois regime cultivated its imperialist backyard in the Mediterranean, on its southern shore and further afield, before and after the Second World War. Since 1945, this has taken place within the limits imposed by US imperialism. In view of the third world war, a new about-turn is by no means impossible, in keeping with the honored tradition of our bourgeoisie.

It is up to the Communist Party to prevent the workers’ movement from falling for these deceptions and maneuvers. Most workers will never want war, but without the presence and roots of the International Communist Party within the unions, they would easily be disoriented by opportunism, which will justify participation in the conflict with every petty argument.

Only the working class can prevent or stop imperialist war, with its increasingly powerful strike movement. But this will mean revolution, as October 1917 teaches us: the Bolsheviks were the only party in the history of capitalism to stop war.