On January 3rd, 2026, the United States launched a military attack on the Venezuelan capital which resulted in the capture and removal of then President Maduro and his wife.
Regardless of whatever the justification given by the imperialist bourgeois state for doing so, it is very clear that this was little more than jockeying for control of evermore depleted natural resources and a portion of the Earth’s surplus value by ensuring the political domination of the Venezuelan working class. The United States has just engaged in an act of imperialist aggression to attempt to maintain its current position as the strongest capitalist power. Meanwhile Russia and China also engage in imperialist aggression, but for the purposes of furthering their own ambitions as up and coming powers. These imperialist actions must be recognized as nothing more than a manifestation of global capitalist competition.
Whenever the ruling class of a nation sees it necessary to engage in warfare to enlarge its own market share they send proletarians off to the battlefield, off to kill some other proletarians who follow the bidding of their own national ruling class. Whatever the outcomes of the battles or wars, the only ones who stand to gain in these conflicts are the ruling class, while the costs are always borne by the working class across all sides. Whether a bullet fired is from a gun on the defensive side or the offensive, the result is a dead worker who never should have been forced to die for the profit of others.
The signs are quite clear that Capitalism, which has already outlived its historical condition, grows closer and closer to a third imperialist world war. Palestine and Ukraine are two other examples of Imperialist powers vying for resources and strategic edge. Such military intervention will only continue to become more and more frequent and intense as the capitalist system draws closer to crisis.
It must be understood that such competition is unavoidable under Capitalism. It can not be avoided by getting a good member of the bourgeoisie to rule over us, nor even (though this would of course never happen) a truly revolutionary member of the proletarian class party into the bourgeois government. War will likewise not be avoided by allowing a different imperialist bloc to hold sway over Venezuela, nor any other region of the world.
Our only path towards a future without futile and highly destructive wars is the coming together of the workers of the world, united by our common interests. The abolition of nations, wars, wage slavery, and all the other manners of oppression present in our current system is an imperative that must guide us all. To achieve this there must be a refusal to compromise on our revolutionary ends. Support for a capitalist power for any reason at all can only be understood as a counterrevolutionary betrayal.
As such, our opposition is not to Capitalist aggression, but rather to the Capitalist system itself. Our support does not go critically to the Venezuelan nation or government, but uncritically to the proletariat of all nations. We stand for a united humanity, and we recognize that this cannot be achieved through the support of any nation or side in current imperialist conflicts. What we see today are symptoms of our own barbarism, of our continued existence within a system that has long outlived its usefulness and needs to be put to an end.
No war but the class war!
No defense of the homeland! No alliances with the bourgeoisie!
International unity of the working class!
After all,
Socialism or Barbarism, Communism or Extinction – There is no third way!
The most common response we have received to our critique of reformism as a viable strategy for the achievement of communism (other than an attempted refutation of Communism itself) is the defeatist belief that capitalism will, for better or worse, sustain itself indefinitely. That a mix of reform and suppression will eternally stabilize the system and prevent the proletariat from organizing themselves and revolting, or at least that it will do so for long enough that some existential threat brought upon the earth by capitalism kills everyone (namely climate change). Therefore, that in such an eternal system perhaps it is better to try and improve the system than to meaninglessly prepare for a future one that will never come.
This is an understandable belief, but it is also a false one. Every attempt at socialist revolution has to this point failed, yet we must remember that for centuries the right of kings held complete dominion over humanity, and even the idea of liberal capitalism was utopian, certainly more utopian than communism is by today’s standards. To believe capitalism is some unchanging form of society that will never be overcome is a misunderstanding of the nature of human society and its historical transformation.
What was it that usurped feudalism and replaced it with capitalism? What usurped the system that came before feudalism, and the system that came before that? Revolution. All of the sudden periods of massive societal change that have led to an entirely new era of human history have been what we call revolutions. It is because we seek to establish a new era of human history that we must inherently advocate for a revolution, the process of bringing about a new form of society. Every revolution has taken a completely different form as the conditions existing at the time that the revolution occurred were vastly different, and the fundamental transformation of the everyday existence of all humanity in its current form (from a class society with private ownership into a classless society with common ownership) can only be called a Communist revolution. From that point, we can only discuss what form the future Communist revolution will take.
In European late feudalism a wealthy middle class began to appear as overseas traders and bankers organized together into guilds. As a class they wielded considerable wealth, but because of their low birth they were not awarded the social privileges of the aristocracy (the class of lords and kings). In time and through a number of measures, this new class, which we now call the bourgeois, was able to transform its economic power into political power. This was the necessary revolution in which capitalism overthrew feudalism and the bourgeoisie overthrew the aristocracy as the ruling class.
In modern capitalism there is a small number of this new ruling class in each nation, and there is the rest of the population, which is the working class. The lines of power are drawn at the difference between those with massive amounts of property and those without. All that the working class has is their modest personal property, their instruments of labor (their own bodies and minds), and the chains that keep them in this coercive arrangement.
This means that in the transition from Capitalism into Communism, the revolutionary class must be the international working class (the proletariat). The working class is not able to carve out a section of the economy for itself as the bourgeois did under feudalism. Instead of gaining economic power and leveraging it into political power, this revolution requires the working class to first gain political power and then leverage it into economic power.
This political power cannot be won in the systems established by the ruling class. It must be won independently because all forms of current bourgeois politics are just that, bourgeois. The purpose of modern government is to organize the domination of the ruling class over the working class. The first objective the modern revolutionary movement must achieve is the overthrow and destruction of the bourgeois/capitalist system. To even passively accept the legitimacy of bourgeois rule (such as by advocating reforms like public power or asking the capitalist state to stop Project Blue) represents a failure in this critical first step.
The overthrow of bourgeois governments and systems across the world will of course be difficult and painful; accordingly, this is the part of the process that people most doubt will be possible. But as we will outline, the conditions that ensure it is possible will come about naturally.
Once the proletariat has fully established and secured its independent, democratic, and international power through mass assemblies and workers councils, only then can the process of the revolutionary transformation of society really occur.
This transition into an entirely new egalitarian world without exploitation is the core of the revolutionary process that we advocate for. In the rest of this article, we hope to articulate how and why the international proletariat can in fact, take all political power for itself and we will expand upon the exact turn of events that can bring about the victory of the world Communist revolution.
Capitalism Trends Towards Crisis – The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall
At the very center of this whole discussion is the undeniable fact that due to its own nature, capitalism trends towards periods of crisis, like in the great depression, the 2008 crash, etc. This trend is the process that ensures capitalism’s downfall is possible. Even the bourgeois politicians of the democratic and republican parties have to pay lip service to this decline in living standards with their talk of lowering prices; though they obviously can’t disclose its ultimate cause or actually solve these issues. This is because their real cause is the system itself.
The crisis of capitalism is first and foremost a crisis of abundance. Not one of overpopulation and lack of resources as it is so often portrayed by the interests of capital and the various reactionary fools that support them.
Imagine you are the owner of a business making cloth. Cloth is produced in large part by handlooms, which are able to produce a certain square footage of fabric each hour. With an investment into a power loom, you are then able to hire a worker to produce three times as much square footage of fabric in the same amount of time. This increase in productivity then allows you to undersell your competitors, and despite selling at a cheaper price; the more efficient production that uses less labor time means that your profit (revenue-cost) is higher.
Great, but now both you and your competitors will begin to expand their investment and must use these power looms by necessity (as the old method is far less efficient and has been made obsolete). As the majority of your profit comes not from the production of the cloth itself; but from the advantage your company had with this new production over the wider market, you eventually find yourself in a situation where you can no longer extract the same profits once the wider market adapts to meet the efficiency of your company. In response, you need another new technology to outcompete the others again. This cycle continues on and on.
What has been left out is what necessarily happens to the workers during this process. The tendency of the rate of profit to fall is always felt the hardest by the most vulnerable class in society, the working class. When the capitalist buys the new machinery, they often must lay off a number of their workers who have been made redundant. What happens to these people who have just lost their livelihood is absolutely irrelevant to the interests of the owner. At the same time, the less the capitalist has to pay their workers the better off the owner is. With the owner in a situation of constant and intense market competition, any compassion or support for a worker makes their company less competitive. If their company gave a generous severance package to their laid-off workers, that is a substantial amount of money that could have gone towards the purchase of new machines instead. It opens up the opportunity for their competitor to not be as kind and make the choice to not pay those they fire, or pay them very little. By any standards of morality and human respect, this is the worse option. By the logic of the capitalist market, this is the efficient option that is often rewarded by further success in economic competition.
These choices extend to hiring, training, wages, workers’ safety, etc. The more money put into labor, the less the capitalist can put into capital (machines and other investments), which are what allows them to outcompete other businesses. What this ultimately means is that capitalists making entirely necessary choices to remain individually competitive and profitable in the market eventually leads to an economy where nothing is profitable, even with extremely repressive and exploitative treatment of workers. As competition constantly intensifies, a race to the top means the methods to extract more and more profit run into the inherent limitations of both technology and the exploitation of workers, as there is only a certain rate at which technology can advance and only so much the workers can be exploited beyond the point at which they can no longer function.
While it is a very simplified explanation, this is essentially what is described by the “tendency of the rate of profit to fall”. The process where competition drives efficiency, but efficiency is associated with higher costs. At a certain point, a system that requires endless growth and perfect efficiency runs into the limitations of the real world.
Reform Cannot Prevent Crisis or Sustain Capitalism Forever
While this reality is often acknowledged as inherently unavoidable in a pure and stupid form of capitalism; there is a tendency we have noticed within the reformist left that claims such a process can be prevented from occurring by a more insidious and smart capitalism. One which employs welfare to appease the working masses and takes on large debts to be the new source of demand in a saturated capitalism. From this belief (which ultimately says that capitalism will sustain itself for eternity) stems the conclusion that we must therefore dedicate ourselves not to overthrowing the system, but instead making sure we have the right people in control of it so that it may take on a better form.
This belief itself stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the reasons capitalism enters crisis and the mechanisms by which economic policy can address it. As explained in the section on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, profit comes from outcompeting competition. The crisis of capitalism is predominantly caused by a saturation of capital in the market that leads to a loss of profitability as there is eventually no inefficient production to outcompete. It is not just a lack of demand that can be fixed by government stimulus.
This is not to say that such policies are incapable of delaying such a crisis. Historical precedent as well as general logic prove as much to be true. What is misunderstood however is the changes these policies represent in the real economy (the everyday lives of workers and the operations of capital) and the reasons they cannot satiate the needs of capital forever.
Firstly, such deficit policies (taken when capitalism enters crisis) do serve the needs of capital insofar as they raise general prices through inflation. While this raising of prices does raise the costs of production for business (through material costs), it also raises the price of whatever they produce to a similar amount. Any slight loss that results from this process is then recuperated by the lowering of real wages to the workers that results from inflation (If you get paid the same but everything costs more your real wages are less). This temporarily increases the rate of profit, but also necessarily presents an issue to the system of capital in that the workers will eventually reach a breaking point where they revolt against their gradual impoverishment.
This then necessitates social programs, which bolster the lives of the workers without needing a direct increase in pay from the capitalists. Yet in the same way as government investment into businesses impoverishes the workers, investment into workers will in turn impoverish the businesses. Workers having more money does mean more demand for consumer goods, but capital is primarily driven not by consumer goods but by its own reproduction.
Government policy is, much to the dismay of bourgeois economists, more of a lever than an actual driving force. It can create wealth only when there is room for growth within the capitalist system, beyond which point reformist policy can only move wealth from one section of the economy to another.
Yet to say that capitalism cannot sustain itself forever is not to say that it will overthrow itself. For revolution to occur, there is a second prerequisite beyond just crisis.
From Crisis to Communism
The role of the revolutionary minority of workers and the party that it forms is to be the historical memory and advisor of the whole working class. Class conscious workers who understand a revolutionary transformation of society is necessary to end their exploitation (Communists) must study class struggle across time and space and use the lessons learned from these events to build a unified political program.
Most people will not be ready for revolution until their only choices are to fight back or die. Although there is always a section of the working class that is willing to revolt at any given time, the proportion of the population who becomes willing and able to do so grows in relation to the degradation of their own material conditions. Mass working class militancy is a necessary prerequisite for revolution and it occurs only in times of serious crisis as the contradictions of the capitalist system become too obvious to ignore for the segments of the population who were placated and given some privileges when the system could still afford to do so.
It is in the period of crisis that the majority of the working class will be able and willing to rise to the occasion of overthrowing capitalism. Organized communist militants are not the driving force behind this trend as it is the system itself that pushes more and more workers to this point of desperation. Where communists do influence this process is in shaping how this dissatisfaction and anger ultimately manifest.
For a large scale working class uprising to become a successful Communist revolution a large enough proportion of the entire global working class must be actively working towards achieving Communism. The role of the Communist party is being a space for this revolutionary minority of the class to gather, organize, spread this understanding, and develop the revolutionary program for the whole working class to implement. History shows that a dedicated Communist organization with the correct theoretical understanding can rapidly multiply its membership to the point it can have a real effect on the revolution during the crisis, but for this to occur we must work to build our organizations as much as possible before this next period of crisis fully sets in.
Conclusion
Everywhere where workers and capitalists exist side by side, class consciousness, and therefore revolution, is possible. Rather than the intense suppression of the working class and its revolutionary minority being what makes revolution unlikely, it is a sign of just how desperate the ruling class is to fight this possibility. The more the fire of revolution spreads, the more the capitalists have to try to stamp it out. After all, if they had nothing to fear and revolution was truly impossible, they would not have to dedicate entire industries and organizations to its continued suppression.
Our current role as revolutionary Communists is to help the working class gain class consciousness and to use this understanding to reach its ultimate revolutionary conclusion. If the Communist programme is sufficiently understood and accepted by militant workers, then that movement of class conscious members of the working class can expand rapidly and will lead to the transformation of our society.
For decades now, workers have been reduced to passive observers as their lives are made worse, and projections of what the future will look like seem more bleak than ever. The question is whether or not this will be tolerated, whether workers across nations will realize the real power they hold, whether we can unite as one and build a new and better world.
To those who even now say the fight is already lost, then why not try? To those workers who oppose us, why would you comply with your master’s subliminal orders? And to those who read our words and know somewhere deep in your gut that there is truth to them, what are you waiting for? If what you fear is being singled out by the forces of reaction, why wait for them to embolden themselves before you organize? Whether you join the revolution or not, its failure will mean your death.
The success of the World Communist Revolution is the only path away from enslavement, despair, and death. It is the duty of those who recognize the possibility of true human emancipation to join in this monumental struggle from the moment they acknowledge that it exists. For it is also your struggle, its defeat or victory will be your own.
And remember
Socialism or Barbarism, Communism or Extinction – There is no third way!
Everyone is celebrating the victory over Project Blue. Mission accomplished, the mega corporation wanting to take our water is banished. Surely this is proof that the system works if only we mobilize and show up.
That’s a nice feel-good story, a victory for the little guy. If, however, we dig deeper beyond the understandable emotions that surround the Project Blue situation, we start to paint a different picture. One that tells us more about the entire practice of data centers and the system that necessitates them.
The Water Crisis
Most Sonorans today have conerns about long term water usage, yet there are few who understand the very scale of the issue, and fewer still who understand its ultimate cause. Water is a critical resource and is particularly vital for life here. It is essential that we manage our water more responsibly to support the needs of both the environment and our communities. The severity of this problem is exactly the reason we have to discuss this topic with clear eyed honesty. We have to make sure we’re on the same page about what we’re up against, as well as what will ultimately be required to address it.
Firstly, it’s worth noting that projects like this are small in their effects on our water use compared to the amount used in our inefficient agricultural systems, which account for 78% of our state’s water use.1 Meanwhile we’re only the 37th largest agricultural economy out of the 50 states.2
We should acknowledge that Project Blue would have used recycled water. The company in fact committed to making the facility water positive.3 They were proposing to use a system that would keep using the same water over and over again, and any inefficiency leading to real loss of water would be made up for at the full expense of the company. Detractors may point to the fact that this arrangement would rely on us taking the company at its word. But that’s why laws and agreements exist in our system; if they break their promise, the city government would have legal recourse to hold them to that promise, and they would have an inherent incentive to do so.
We’ve established that Project Blue would not have used as much water as we might think considering how it’s been typically discussed, but these facts don’t change that this was a win for at least slowing down the irresponsible water use practices we currently have, right?
Well, yes and no. We know now that in addition to this proposal, the same company behind Project Blue has other locations around Tucson already being prepared for their next proposal.4 If that wasn’t enough, a monstrous data center is about to be built in Eloy, potentially one of the largest in the nation.5 Not only are we going to have to struggle for who knows how long to prevent a data center here in our own city against a company that now knows exactly what to expect from us, but we also have to accept that we have no control over what happens in places like Eloy.
The Root of the Issue
That brings us to the question no one seems to be asking. Why is all of this actually happening? The profit motive. The fact of the matter is, this isn’t a problem contained to our city or our region or even our country. Everywhere, communities similar to ours are facing the unfortunate fact that data centers simply make a lot of money. Tech companies need to build them to expand their operations and stay competitive. They simply don’t get to choose whether or not to build data centers; the market demands it from them. If they didn’t build them, then their AI, or their search engine, or their spyware, wouldn’t be as efficient and cost effective as their competitors. In our highspeed and globalized economy, if you aren’t able to compete, you go out of business.
So while one city in Louisiana might say “no don’t ruin our beautiful swamp, build your data center in some desert somewhere” our community will tell that company the same exact thing but in reverse. The fundamental calculation doesn’t change, as long as we have an economy centered around profit, data centers will have to be built somewhere.
The downstream effect of this is that the company has an incentive to choose the most vulnerable communities to build its data centers in. Those who are most desperate for the tax revenue and jobs that the data center will bring. That community and its local ecosystem will face the same environmental costs ours would, but they will have to accept them out of desperation. These communities often lack significant infrastructure to begin with, which helps explain their desperation in the first place. It also means that building there is much less efficient and thus worse for the environment. This leads to a sad state of affairs where the most harmful and least efficient places for the data centers to be built are where they often end up.
Acceptance or Defiance?
One of the main reasons our city was chosen to be best suited for Project Blue was because of our relatively advanced water infrastructure, and particularly our water recycling system being so efficient.6 This isn’t out of some benevolent environmental concern, but because they wanted a secure long-term return on investment. The unfortunate reality behind all of this is that it would actually be better for the overall environment and for the company’s own bottom line for them to build a data center here rather than a place like Eloy.
So even if we do succeed at stopping construction of the data centers here completely (something that seems incredibly difficult), we will have to live with the fact that this “win” just means condemning another community with this burden. This is very similar to the dynamic where not building a copper mine in the Santa Rita’s or Oak Flat (for completely valid reasons of environmental conservation and indigenous sovereignty) will simply lead to a higher demand for Copper in the global market. This causes the opening of other copper mines in the global South, where the environmental and social consequences are just as significant, but the communities there are less equipped to mobilize against their construction. Ultimately, due to the competition to produce the cheapest goods inherent to the profit motive, environmentalism at its best under capitalism is reduced to being incapable of anything further than the stewarding of resources for their continued exploitation.
So what’s the solution? It would be easy to say we need to just let Project Blue build here, to accept that the lesser evil is to allow them to construct these data centers in a place with more regulations and better water recycling technology, even if it impacts us more. That’s the selfless utilitarian choice it would seem, but this answer is just as easy and just as mistaken as saying that Project Blues’ temporary disruption was a massive victory for conservation.
Instead, when learning the rules of the system we find ourselves in, and how little power we truly hold within it, we should not accept this state of affairs as a universal fact that we can’t change. We should instead recognize it for what it is, proof that our systems are fundamentally incompatible with true long-term environmental and social wellbeing.
Data centers will be built somewhere no matter what as long as there is a profit incentive to do so. That leaves us with two options. We can accept this reality and do nothing as corporations take our water and harm our ecosystems for their own profits. Or we can use this understanding to criticize the entire system as it stands, as an example of why we need something fundamentally different.
The Alternative
Instead of this competitive model for our economy, leading to the exploitation of people as much as the environment, why not build something better? While the need for more data is certainly important as our technology advances at a rapid pace, the needs of our communities and our water table are just as critical in the long term. Rather than having companies compete with each other with profit as the only metric of success, we could instead organize our economy democratically in a system by and for all stakeholders in these decisions.
A democratic form of decision making on this subject would involve experts on the need for more data cooperating with everyday people who rely on that same water to live, along with environmental experts who can express the water needs of our ecosystems. All of these stakeholders could have representatives with an integral part of the process. Not representatives as they are now, with our only choice being which member of a political elite we vote for, but true representatives. Everyday people who would have the responsibility of upholding a mandate for a short period of time and on a rotating basis. They would be recallable by the community they were elected to represent at any. They would genuinely just be any worker in a shop, any scientist from a lab, or any field researcher who normally spends their days knee deep in a creek. If we replace our current capitalist, bureaucratic, and competitive system with one based on true democracy on the basis of workers’ councils (Communism), then and only then could we truly say we are making decisions that we know would best benefit both the environment and our community.
Such a system will never come into existence via the reform of our current one, and certainly not by the reform of the state which exists to enforce it. Revolution is to some a scary concept, to others a joke. Both of these opinions are understandable given not just the propaganda constantly shoved into our faces, but also the relatively comfortable lives we lead. It is, however, the same crises that the profit motive necessarily creates that, in turn, create its own destruction. No matter what recourse is taken under capitalism, the lives of nearly everyone will get worse and the environment will be continuously destroyed. This is something that has happened historically for as long as capitalism has existed, and will continue to happen for as long as it exists. It is our job as Communists to organize before such crises happen; so that we are ready to create a better world when they do appear. Such organization can not occur within the reformist left, which is for all intents and purposes the left wing of capital. Only by building an independent movement of the working class, one that understands the necessity of revolution and the formation of a new system, will we escape our current cycle of exploitation and destruction.
Don’t fight the symptom of the problem. Fight its source. If you want to end data centers, great, then end capitalism.
Socialism or Barbarism, Communism or Extinction. There is no third way!
Addendum 08/31/2025
Weeks after the city backed out of the initial agreement because of the immense public pressure to do so, as of 8/25 7 it has been made public that the firm behind the proposed data center is now attempting to build in the same location without direct city involvement. Rather than having the city annex the proposed site and be subject to the regulations of the city, the company now seeks to buy the land from its current owner, Pima County.
This strategic pivot demonstrates how Capital adapts when faced with regulatory obstacles, seeking the path of least resistance for its accumulation.
If the county approves this sale, then the data center will be built with wells, and groundwater will be extracted directly from the aquifer for use. This method of sourcing water is significantly more disruptive to our local water system than if the site were to use recycled water, as was initially proposed. In fact, the initial agreement with the city required the use of recycled water as a prerequisite for the sale of the land at all.
This is just one example of some of the unintended consequences that are inherent to all forms of Non-Communist and reformist opposition tactics.
Project Blue was going to be built with recycled water because agreeing to this was the shortest and easiest path to securing a profit. Now that that avenue is shut, they are turning to the next easiest path, even at the cost of further environmental degradation. When construction is halted by the City, they turn to the County for approval instead. If the County refuses the sale, they will build a backup site in another County. If necessary, this process can continue all the way to the international level. After all, sweatshops and cocoa plantations worked by children exist in the places that are the weakest links in the chain of regulatory enforcement.
In a system where all real power lies in the hands of those who can best represent the ever growing needs of Capital, the supposed rights of the average citizen within that system is a dangerous illusion. For as long as an action remains profitable, the system ensures that by one method or another, it will be done.
This will never change until the underlying motivation of our society itself is addressed, destroyed, and then replaced. Until that day, this horrible reality will remain unchanged. In the meantime, reformism is not only utterly pointless, but also misleading to the workers who must instead organize for revolution.
The only way to end this system is to understand its underlying realities and to organize as a class until we are fully capable of truly opposing it. That means continuously advocating and agitating in the name of superseding Capitalism with the only possible system where decisions can be made for the good of all of humanity, and ultimately all life on Earth, Communism.
