The death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash was celebrated by hypocritical imperialist governments and newspapers in the West, who gloated at the end of the ‘Butcher of Tehran’ – while preserving harsh sanctions that subject millions of ordinary Iranians to hardship, and continuing to support Israel’s butchery in Gaza. The communists make no common cause with these characters, who are themselves murderers representing the same vile capitalist system as the Mullahs ruling Iran. From our own perspective, we say: Raisi’s bloodstained legacy is one of counterrevolutionary reaction. May the revolutionary Iranian masses soon bury the Islamic Republic alongside him.

Millions of people around the globe collectively reeled in horror on Sunday after an IDF airstrike laid waste to a tent camp for displaced civilians in Rafah, killing at least 45 people. Social media is filled with images of charred and dismembered men, women and children, murdered while they slept. Lenin once wrote that capitalism is horror without end: in Gaza, those words are being spelt out in the language of fire and blood for all the world to see.

On 17-19 May, 110 communists from all over Mexico (and abroad) met to found the Revolutionary Communist Organisation (RCO), which will be the Mexican section of the Revolutionary Communist International.

On 18 and 19 May, 120 comrades of Révolution– the French section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) – met for this year’s National Conference in Paris.

On 10 June, hundreds of communists will gather in Italy, joined by thousands participating online, to found a new Revolutionary Communist International, to fight for socialist revolution across the globe. Register now, and join us!

Honoré de Balzac is renowned as a prolific literary genius and was one of Marx and Engels’ favourite authors. He was a pioneer of the Realist style that would be taken up by such famous authors as Émile Zola and Charles Dickens. In this article, Ben Curry explores Balzac’s Realist method, the predominant themes of his vast body of work, known collectively as The Human Comedy, and the fascinating paradox that lies at its heart.

What began with teachers’ protests over pay rises has expanded into a week-long police riot and a grassroots rebellion of teachers, health, energy and other state workers in the province of Misiones, in the far northeast of the country, 1,000 km from the capital Buenos Aires.

In an electric atmosphere, nearly 400 communists gathered in Montreal from across Canada and Québec and officially founded the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP)! Our goal: to be the generation to overthrow capitalism in our lifetime, and lay the foundations for building a society free of exploitation, violence and oppression. 

By calling a general election, Rishi Sunak has signed the Tories' political death warrant. We will be delighted to see the back of them! But Starmer's government will be a faithful representative of the capitalists. We must build a revolutionary alternative.

Communists are often depicted by the ruling class as violent individuals who will settle at nothing until society is made to drown in its own blood. It came as no surprise to us, therefore, when Denmark’s largest digital media outlet, BT – interviewing a leading comrade of our Danish section on their historic decision to found a Revolutionary Communist Party – spent the interview trying to get the comrade to admit that they stand for violence.

Tory minister Michael Gove has accused the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) of antisemitism live on the BBC.

A local Marxist in the southern Ukrainian city of Pervomaisk, Bogdan Syrotiuk, was arrested by the SBU on 25 April. He is being held in a high security prison in Mykolaiv under poor conditions under charges of treason and aiding the Russian invasion. Some of our comrades have known Bogdan for a number of years, and it is clear that these are made up charges by Ukrainian state security against a known left activist in the area.

Yesterday the world’s media was rocked by the surprise news that the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, is seeking arrest warrants for war crimes, against Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, and Yoav Gallant, the Defence Minister.

New Caledonia has been rocked for several days by riots that have so far claimed six lives. This uprising is the result of repeated provocations by the French imperialist government. In 2022 – after Macron forced through a referendum on independence in spite of his promises to the contrary – we published the article below, in which we wrote: “The French government welcomes the result, but the problem is by no means settled – and is bound to resurface, sooner or later.” Since then, the government has pushed ahead with a process of electoral reform that constitutes a significant provocation for the Kanaks.

Fiona Lali recently shot to prominence, and stunned former British Home Secretary Suella Braverman, when she publicly branded Suella a “war monger” and a “liar” for her support for the genocide in Gaza. Fiona’s words chimed with millions of workers and youth who have seen this clip, and who are sick and tired of this rotten imperialist system, of the hypocrites who run it, and of the commentators, media and ‘opposition’ that do nothing to challenge it.