The end of the year is always a time for retrospection. For capitalists, 2025 has been an excellent year. Things are going really well for billionaires and there have never been so many. According to a study by Swiss bank UBS (and they know what they’re talking about!), there are 287 more of them this year. The world's 2,900 billionaires can raise their glasses to the stock market, which is ending the year on a high note. The values of all kinds of speculative assets, from gold to copper to AI companies, are breaking record after record.
Fortunes are being swallowed up by the whims of the rich. Luxury hotels are being built on a private island off the coast of Bandol and in the middle of the Oman desert... At the same time, an NGO estimates the damage caused by global warming at $120 billion for the year, exacerbating disasters that primarily affect the poorest: floods in Southeast Asia, devastating hurricanes in the Caribbean, and drought elsewhere.
The world is rapidly moving towards widespread war. And how many millions of people have already died in the multiple conflicts that are ravaging the planet? How many survive, threatened by famine and disease, among ruins and in refugee camps?
The billions that capitalists accumulate are produced by exploiting workers and, while this handful of parasites sip champagne, the majority of the population is condemned to a constant struggle for survival.
This barbaric evolution, accompanied by the sound of cannons and the clatter of boots, is the consequence of the economic war being waged by large capitalist groups. The leading imperialist power, the United States, holds the fate of peoples in its hand and enforces its gunboat diplomacy in Syria, Venezuela, Nigeria, and elsewhere. Officially, the aim is to fight terrorism or drugs, but Trump, the sheriff of the White House, no longer even tries to hide US goals behind noble objectives. He justified the siege of Venezuela and the destruction of several of its ships with a blunt “they took our oil, we want it back.”
In Ukraine, talk of the rights of peoples has given way to the question of how to divvy up the country's wealth between Russia and the United States, while second-tier powers, including France, are fighting for a piece of the pie. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, when Trump claims to be making peace in the Kivu region, it is to satisfy the greed of American corporations for its mineral wealth.
And what about the situation in the Middle East, where the United States, after helping Netanyahu destroy Gaza and its population and colonize the West Bank, boasts of having brought about peace? It is the peace of graveyards and ruins for the people of Gaza, while imperialist leaders hope to profit from the reconstruction.
In rich countries like France, we are not yet directly confronted with the ravages of war. But the crisis and international rivalries are already hitting workers. There are more and more layoff plans, working conditions and wages are worsening for those who keep their jobs. And when government money goes to weapons and aircraft carriers, it means even fewer resources for healthcare, schools, or public transport.
Capitalism condemns humanity, but the working class can offer other perspectives. Ever since exploitation has existed, the oppressed have organized to fight it. Throughout the world, it’s often their struggles, large and small, that have changed the course of history.
The hope for a world free from exploitation, war, and domination rests with the workers, who keep society running. They are not condemned to a life of counting every penny and gritting their teeth to hold on to a job that crushes them.
We must change the world, and this can only come from our class, the working class, provided we become aware of the strength we represent and of our political interests, which are to overthrow the parasitic capitalist class that rules society.
The struggle to emancipate humanity remains a goal that only workers can achieve. The words of Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, written in 1848, remain as relevant as ever: “The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”
Nathalie Arthaud