By Larry Holmes
January 21, 2026

The writer is the First Secretary of Workers World Party.

In assessing the new world situation, we should start here in the U.S. At this moment, the epicenter of the struggle is Minneapolis. What’s happening there poses a fundamental question that is germane to the changing world situation, the global class struggle and the struggle for world socialist revolution. The same conditions, the repression and the angry mass response of the people are spreading and will continue to spread throughout the country.

There is more talk among the masses of the need for revolution today than at any time in memory, and that is a tendency that’s going to grow. Today, there is more talk and some organizing around calls for a general strike and strategies that involve disrupting things and engaging a broader section of the working class in this form of struggle. People see that the large protests serve a purpose, but they are not enough. This is another incipient sign the struggle must move in a more militant mass direction. It is the beginning of a process that inevitably paves the road to revolution.

If one were to suggest that we are in a revolutionary or pre-revolutionary period, we could argue that such a suggestion was premature. The capitalists are no longer able to reverse their demise and must rely on repression in order to maintain their rule. However, the working class is not yet ready to consign the billionaires and their system to history. Still, the undercurrents of revolution are alive and stirring.   From Minneapolis and beyond, the masses are rising up to defend themselves against a fascist police state. That defense is in the process of evolving into a mass offensive against the whole system, a system that is making existence unbearable.

Major features of the new world situation

The biggest historic development is the decline of U.S. imperialism, which has been and remains both the center of world imperialism and the center of the world capitalist system. Along with this, there is the end of the U.S. imperialist-led world order of the past 80 years, which generally means the fracturing of the U.S.-led alliance with the other major imperialist powers, mostly in Europe. The threat to take over Greenland and Trump’s renewed economic warfare against Europe to achieve this is an example of the inter-imperialist divide. The period of a unipolar, U.S. imperialist-led world that was declared after the collapse of the Soviet Union is over.

Then, there is the new stage in the centuries-long history of capitalism. The term “end stage capitalism” is subject to different interpretations, and it is not predictive of the life expectancy of capitalism. Rather, the term distinguishes present reality as compared to previous periods. The magnitude of the capitalist crisis now is such that the ruling class can no longer conceal that its heydays are over, never to return.

A financial crisis far bigger than 2008, which collapsed the world financial market, is like a gigantic cloud hovering over its head, ready to unleash a storm any moment. All that capitalism can do is wreak havoc on society and the world as it desperately clings to life. It is precisely this desperation that is driving everything in the direction of a wider, unthinkable world war.

Who can stop the threat of fascism? 

There are many definitions of fascism. Our definition is based in the revolutionary Marxist theory of capitalist crises, class struggle and historical experience.  Whether you describe the character of the danger as fascism, or authoritarian dictatorship or a police state, this danger is not just a racist, power hungry, unstable and erratic president. The danger emanates from the desperation of a wide section of the U.S. billionaire capitalist class to save the empire through brazen imperialist expansion, threats, bullying and war.

Smashing working-class resistance here is also a critical part of the plan. In lieu of, or because of, the inability to organize armed, fascist mobs, ICE has been turned into an extrajudicial fascist mob, armed, deputized and paid by the government. The question is who can stop the threat? It’s possible that the escalating political and economic crises will cause such a big defection in the ranks of Trump’s support in the ruling class that Trump’s power will be eroded. All the same, relying on the Democratic Party and the bourgeois opposition to stop Trump is a mistake.

The danger of fascism does not come from Trump; it is the product of the crisis of U.S. imperialism and the capitalist system. The Democratic Party can’t and won’t stop this. Not only in the long run, but now, only the organization and mobilization of the working class can stop fascism.

Decline of imperialism

By comparison thirty-five years ago U.S. imperialism was much stronger economically and able to dominate the world through coercion, economic warfare, coups, threats and military interventions. This ability was a material factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, China, with all of its contradictions, has not only succeeded in blocking U.S. and world imperialism’s goal of fomenting counterrevolution and rendering China subservient to the U.S. imperialist-led order. Instead, China has been able to develop its productive forces to the extent that it rivals and even exceeds the economic strength of the U.S. Along with this astonishing achievement, China’s sheer strength and its economic programs around the world have increasingly marginalized U.S. imperialism’s drive to maintain hegemony.

This has strengthened the Global South and deprived U.S. imperialism of its former capacity (as well as that of other major imperialist powers) to bend and break countries to suit their interests. Of course, Venezuela is a reminder that U.S. imperialism is still driven to try to do this.

Russia has played an important role in the global changes. Russia is a regional capitalist power, but due to its military strength and its determination not to allow itself to be subjugated by U.S. and European imperialist domination, it occupies a unique and major position in the new world situation. To protect itself against isolation, Russia has forged an alliance with China and the Global South.

The alliance at the center of what is often referred to as the new “multipolar world” is not ideological. This alliance of countries is not based on class struggle or a shared dedication to socialism. There are capitalist countries in it that have a foot in both the anti-imperialist and pro-imperialist camps. The foundations of the alliance are the strength of China and the desire of the Global South to liberate itself from the tyranny of U.S. imperialism.

At the militant forefront of this alliance are the liberation movements of the Palestinian people and liberation movements throughout the Global South, including Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Today, these liberation movements are more consciously seen as being not just outside of the U.S. but inside of it and part of the working-class struggle at home. Most clearly, the character of the struggle against U.S. imperialist hegemony is that of a worldwide rebellion to crush colonialism and neocolonialism once and for all.

These sea changes have given rise to an entirely different world, a world that in a contradictory, uneven way is much closer to the path to socialist revolution than at any time in history. It is important to see this new world situation as the background against which to view all other developments.

Imperialism catalyzes revolutionary struggle, and at the same time imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism, becomes a barrier to aspirations of the people of the world who are fighting for liberation. Weakening or removing that barrier unleashes new revolutionary achievements and development.

World events are creating precisely these conditions for liberation. This is the potential of the new world situation that is in progress. Our task is to determine how we can help this process from the vantage point of our location in the world class struggle, here inside the belly of the beast.

Forging working-class internationalism and the need for a united front

The world situation demands that revolutionary forces take on, as our principal task, the opening of a renewed and determined struggle inside the U.S. to defeat imperialism in conjunction with other forces around the world. This will require a new united front steeped in class struggle. Preferably, such a united front’s vision will not be limited to the struggle at home but encompass the interconnectedness of class struggle everywhere.

Moreover, a united front should understand that defeating U.S. imperialism is a prerequisite to the success of the next phase of global revolution. The strategy of a new united front should be guided by the need to reach larger sections of the working class with the message that defeating imperialism is in their long term, as well as their short-term, interests.

Forging such a united front is not only a question of classwide self-defense; it is the only way to fulfill the task that history has placed before the working class at this unprecedented moment. That task is the defeat of imperialism, the end of capitalism and striving to be a decisive force in creating the conditions for socialist revolution. Of course, there must be different forms of unity, including unity for the purpose of achieving a goal or set of goals. But there is no substitute for the essential unity around the most advanced, revolutionary goals. Broader unity is essential to our task.

Problems of the working-class movement – Can they be overcome?

There is no avoiding the questions: how can the present world situation favor a break with imperialism and capitalism and openings towards socialism when the working class and the revolutionary forces, especially at the center of world imperialism, are so weak? When will the readiness of the working class match the magnitude of the objective conditions created by a dying system?

We do not live in denial. Instead we are revolutionary optimists who understand that no state of affairs is static. The working class and the advanced forces required to provide guidance will overcome all obstacles and rise to the challenge.

It would take a considerable review of both revolutionary theory and the events, over a long period of time, in order to understand the reasons that have held the working class back from reaching its revolutionary potential. The great revolutionary leaders of the working class and the liberation movements from the past are no longer here to help answer these questions. However, they left a treasure trove of revolutionary, scientific theory to guide us.

Revolutionaries, both within the ranks of our organization and within the ranks of other organizations and movements in every part of the world, must and can do this theoretical work — not apart from the living struggle, but integrated with it. We believe and reassert the centrality of the working class, a class analysis and the class struggle to the revolutionary project. We believe that especially now, if the centrality of class does not guide how we proceed — or is not prioritized in formulating strategy, demands and direction — all of our efforts will be at a decisive disadvantage.

We need more discussion of the ways in which the working class, in virtually every respect, is vastly different today than it was even a generation ago. Understanding this is the key to understanding how to organize our class.

Struggle to end capitalism will become a mass struggle

The struggle to end capitalism must be taken off the back burner and pushed to the forefront. This in no way competes with or diminishes the immediate struggles; to the contrary it informs and elevates these struggles, be they local, national or international.

People need to eat, have shelter, receive health care and everything else in the struggle for survival, including to enjoy freedom from repression and oppression, and this reality will frame today’s struggles. But more than ever before, people realize there’s no future under capitalism.

Seasoned revolutionaries know that they cannot be effective if they are too far ahead of the working class, but there is also such a thing as being too far behind the people. Our job is to be aware of this contradiction and act accordingly.