Since the last quarter of the 20th century, the capitalist world system has reached a historical threshold. This threshold is not just an economic contraction or a financial turmoil; it is the name of a systemic crisis in which relations of production, class structures, forms of State and the international balance of power have undergone a fundamental transformation. The necessity of capitalism's expansion has become so deep that it can no longer be solved by finding new markets; the acceleration of capital accumulation has sharpened inequality on a world scale; monopoly capital has become a power above national States. Therefore, today's conflicts are not competition between States in the classical sense, but an attempt by global capital monopolies to reorganize the world geography.
The most obvious indicator of this structural crisis is the historically unprecedented level of income inequality. The fact that of the world's income is received by of the world's population, and that only %7 of this is made up of local collaborating elites shows how narrow the class structure of capitalism has become. This picture is the contemporary equivalent of Marx's law of ’centralization of capital’. Capital is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands; this minority controls not only economic power but also the political and ideological apparatus. This is why states today have become instruments representing the interests of monopoly capital, not those of the peoples. The class character of the state is no longer shaped according to the needs of the national bourgeoisie, but of the global capital monopolies.
This is the fundamental character of the Third World War. This war is not a war of nations but of classes. More precisely, it is a struggle for redistribution between monopoly capital and its regional collaborators. The Middle East is at the center of this war not only because of the abundance of energy resources, but also because the region has historically been the sphere of influence of imperialist powers. Powers such as the US, the EU, Russia and China have mobilized to reorganize the energy lines, trade routes and political regimes in the region according to their own interests. Although this reorganization is ostensibly legitimized with discourses such as “democracy”, “human rights” and “fight against terrorism”, in essence it is an operation to protect the interests of monopoly capital.
Another decisive aspect of this war is proxy wars. Instead of engaging in direct conflict, monopoly capital wages war by using regional collaborator classes and the states under their control. For this reason, the conflicts in the Middle East are not the reflection of the peoples, but of the conflicts of interest of the monopolies of global capital. The occupation of Iraq, the dismemberment of Syria, the destruction of Yemen, the constant siege of Palestine, the containment of Iran, the redefinition of Turkey's regional role are all fronts of the Third War of Sharing. It is the peoples who are fighting on these fronts, but the real parties to the war are the monopoly capitalist forces.
The structural crisis of capitalism has led to the authoritarianization of political regimes, not only in the Middle East but across the world. Because as capital accumulation deepens, democracy becomes an obstacle for capital. When the demands of the peoples contradict the interests of capital, the State puts its repressive apparatus into action. This is why the rise of authoritarian regimes in many parts of the world today is the political consequence of the crisis of capitalism. In order to protect its interests, monopoly capital weakens democratic mechanisms, establishes ideological hegemony through media monopolies, strengthens the security apparatus and suppresses the peoples' capacity to organize.
This process has also radically changed the structure of the working class. The traditional industrial proletariat has shrunk with the automation and digitalization of production, and in its place a new proletariat has emerged that is precarious, flexible, fragmented and unorganized. New forms of labor such as platform work, subcontracting and telecommuting have made the working class more invisible, more vulnerable and more fragmented. This situation has increased the control of monopoly capital over the working class, weakened trade union organization and led to the dissolution of class consciousness. But at the same time, it has also created the basis for a new international class solidarity, as it has created a common mechanism of exploitation on a global scale.
Another dimension of the Third World War is financial exploitation. Finance capital breaks away from production and makes huge profits through speculation; it controls states and peoples through debt mechanisms. The IMF, the World Bank, credit rating agencies and international financial monopolies work like an invisible government that determines the economic policies of countries. For this reason, the economic independence of many countries has virtually disappeared and national sovereignty has been redefined according to the interests of finance capital. This situation constitutes the economic front of the Third World War.
All these processes show that capitalism is historically blocked. The system has become unable to resolve its internal contradictions; the necessity of expansion has left no way out except to create new war zones. Therefore, when the redistribution in the Middle East is completed, monopoly capital will set its sights on Africa. Africa's huge natural resources, its young population and its structure open to exploitation will be the stage for the fourth war of division. This war will not be a short-lived conflict, but a long struggle for hegemony that will last two hundred years. This is because capitalism's space for expansion has narrowed and the system has been forced to exploit new geographies in order to sustain its own existence.
Faced with this picture, the task of the working peoples of the world is clear: to globalize the struggle. If capital is globalized, labor must also be globalized. It is imperative to weave a worldwide revolutionary line against the worldwide attack of monopoly capital. Re-examining Marxist-Leninist theory will strengthen the theoretical basis of this struggle. Understanding the current forms of imperialism, decoding the mechanisms of digital exploitation and analyzing the new forms of proletarianization will determine the strategic orientation of the revolutionary movement. Today there are two choices before humanity, either Barbarism or Socialism. This choice is no longer a slogan, but a historical necessity.