Featured

55,000 education workers in Ontario, Canada (organised by the public sector union CUPE) are waging an inspiring struggle against the rotten provincial government of Doug Ford. Defying legal threats and dirty constitutional attempts to force them back to work and impose wage cuts, the workers are on indefinite strike action to protect their living standards against soaring inflation. This example is drawing other layers into the fight, and there is talk of an Ontario-wide general strike.

One hundred and five years ago, the Russian working class seized power. To celebrate the anniversary of these remarkable events, we are excited to make the following eye-witness account of revolutionary Russia in 1920 available to an online audience. Many of these astonishing articles and photographs have not been seen since their publication over a century ago. They are a priceless panorama of the Russian Revolution in its third year.

The International Marxist University 2022 was four days of online discussion dedicated to understanding the fundamental principles of Marxism, hosted by the International Marxist Tendency on 23-26 July. The event was a tremendous success, with over 7,000 registering. If you weren't able to attend, or want to relive your favourite moments, we've included videos of all the sessions below, the videos have been edited to remove the pauses for translation. Edited audio files are also provided.

The past few months have seen central banks scrambling to raise interest rates to control inflation. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve introduced another 0.75 percentage point hike, and the Bank of England will follow suit today. This spate of rate hikes caused mortgage rates to multiply, government borrowing rates to spiral, and now a recession looms. This will be painful for ordinary people, but will the ruling class achieve its aims?

Image: Esquerda Marxista

Bolsonaro’s defeat is a victory for the working class and the youth that opens up a new political situation in the country. Popular hatred for the reactionary government overcame the widespread and brazen use of the state machine in the electoral contest; the fake news; and the policy of class conciliation on the part of Lula and the PT.

Faced with a fuel blockade by the country’s most powerful gang and with a mass movement demanding solutions to the growing economic crisis, the Henry regime in Haiti is hanging by a thread. Led by the United States, the imperialists are openly discussing a military intervention to defend the Henry regime and restore order. An intervention and occupation by imperialist troops will be a disaster for the workers and poor of Haiti, and must be opposed.

Negotiations have broken down between the Ontario government and 55,000 education workers. Even before a strike has been launched, Minister of Education Stephen Lecce has tabled draconian legislation to take away the democratic right to strike of education workers. Going one step further, the government is also using the notwithstanding clause to eliminate collective bargaining rights altogether and impose a rotten contract on education workers who are among the poorest unionised workers in the province.

On Sunday, Lula of the Workers’ Party (PT) narrowly defeated the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro (50.9 percent to 49.10 percent) in the second round of the presidential elections. While workers and youth are rightly celebrating this result, we should also note that Bolsonaro exceeded expectations, and managed to increase his vote by over 6 million between the two rounds, compared to an increase of 2.6 million for Lula.

The following is a statement by our Brazilian section, Esquerda Marxista (Marxist Left) offering solidarity with worker, youth and neighbourhood activists who have resolved to break up road blockades by hardline Bolsonaro supporters, refusing to accept the result of Sunday’s elections. Our comrades will participate in these efforts, and call for the main left and trade union organisations to back them.

The 20th Congress of China’s ruling Communist Party (CCP) has further consolidated the power of the party-state over society, with President Xi Jinping at its head. Xi has formally inaugurated his third term as supreme leader of the country – a feat only matched by Mao in the history of the People’s Republic of China. The senior leadership of the CCP is now entirely staffed by Xi’s trusted lieutenants. The heavily-stressed theme of this Congress was the necessity of the party-state’s leadership as the country enters the coming period.

The editorial board of the IMT’s Arabic website, marxy.com, is very proud to announce the publication of the Arabic translation of Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution, by Alan Woods, editor of marxist.com. The book is a masterful account of the history of the Bolshevik Party, rich with lessons about how, over years of patient work, it came to lead the Russian masses to power in 1917. Read on for information about an Arabic-language launch event this Sunday, and the author’s preface (in English), which discusses the legacy of the 2011 Arab Revolution.

26 October marked 40 days since the murder of the Iranian-Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, by the regime’s morality police. Being the final day of the traditional Shia mourning period, it was met with massive protests, becoming a new highpoint of the movement, with protests in nearly every major city. In many Kurdish towns, a general strike broke out; across the country, bazaari strikes were held in support of the movement; and in Tehran Metro conductors went on strike in support of the revolutionary youth. 

A century has passed since the Italian capitalist class handed power to Benito Mussolini’s fascists. Below we present a series of articles by Sinistra Classe Rivoluzione, the Italian section of the IMT, on the events leading up to Mussolini’s infamous ‘March on Rome’, the first three of which are compiled below (and the fourth will soon be available in Italian on their website). It is important we understand the lessons of fascism’s rise to

...

Since the start of the academic year, comrades of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) have been raising the red flag on campuses worldwide. We have documented much of this excellent work and the eager reception Marxist ideas have received under the hashtag #CommunismOnCampus. We include many of those reports here.

Capitalism is incapable of offering a decent and dignified existence to workers and the poor, yet provides unimaginable luxury for the elite. While billions struggle to find enough to eat, the billionaires dine like royalty. The necessities of life are increasingly unattainable, yet capitalist governments plough billions into instruments of death. To quote Marx, these are the economics of the madhouse.