the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Apr 20, 2026
When Trump, with his usual bravado and bluster, proclaimed that the U.S. government was close to an agreement to end the war with Iran, it may have excited the big investors on Wall Street, who bid up stock prices, looking for short-term speculative gain. That’s probably what Trump intended.
But for everyone else in the world, other than billionaire Wall Street speculators, things are looking much different. Even if some agreement is reached between the Trump regime and the Iranian regime, any pause in the war in the Middle East against Iran will only be a temporary respite.
The consequences of this barbaric war have already been devastating. While Trump acts like an unhinged madman, proclaiming himself doing “God’s work,” the war he ordered has killed thousands of people in Iran and Lebanon, including hundreds of children. Millions of people have been forced from their homes and many now have no home to go back to. U.S. bombs have blown up factories, steel mills and other productive infrastructure in Iran.
Israel, the U.S.’s partner to the war, took advantage of the U.S. assault on Iran to invade Lebanon, to push the population out of southern Lebanon.
The blocking of the Strait of Hormuz disrupted supply chains worldwide. Vital oil and gas supplies are blocked, along with fertilizer and other chemical products, causing shortages and raising prices around the world. China and many other countries in Asia depend on oil from the Middle East. Farmers from Africa and most of the world depend on this fertilizer, endangering food production.
The damage already done to the world’s economic infrastructure may be irreparable. At best, it will take years, if not decades, to patch back together a broken system that rests on oil. At least 20% of the world’s supply remains at risk. In typical fashion, capitalists everywhere have rushed to maximize profit, not to prevent further damage to the system.
The whole world is tied together economically, and the consequences of this current war will lead to more explosions in the future.
Wars are the consequence of the normal functioning of the capitalist system. But wars compound crises which again generate further wars. The capitalist economic system has been in an ongoing crisis for decades.
The economic damage caused by this war against Iran has made the crisis worse, which means competition between capitalists will intensify. This can only lead to the number of wars increasing. Wars in one region easily spill over into another region.
Today the number of active wars has reached a level unseen since the end of World War Two. Today nearly half of the world’s population live in countries affected by war. Today we can say that we are already in World War Three.
The population in this country is already paying a price for the war against Iran. Corporations use wars to price gouge and increase their profits, so gas prices have shot up and the prices of food and many other products are following. The government has already cut social programs to pay for the military budget. If the military budget is increased to 1.5 trillion dollars, like Trump says he wants to do, that money will be taken from programs that the population needs.
The U.S. government is now going to automatically put the names of young working class men on a list for the draft. The government is preparing for when it will be ready to use them as cannon fodder in the next war. When the U.S. government goes into its next war, the price we pay will not just be in dollars, it will be in lives. With today’s weapons reaching across oceans, nobody will be safe.
The capitalist leaders of this world and their political representatives are perfectly ready and willing to sacrifice our lives for the sake of capitalist profits.
The only way to stop this madness of war rests with the working class here and in the rest of the world. When the working class begins to respond to the capitalists’ wars and attacks on its standard of living, the working class can feel its power, opening the possibility that it will organize against this insane capitalist system, with the goal of building a system to serve us all. That is the hope for humanity’s future.