Internationalist Communist Tendency's blog

In the context of global capitalism the war in Nagorno-Karabakh is just one more conflict that capitalism in its imperialist stage cannot solve.

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The following is our foreword (with additional footnotes) to the book Gramsci between Marxism and Idealism by Onorato Damen, which we translated and published last year. The book is still available to order, but you can now download the PDF of it for free HERE.

Review: Compendium of Karl Marx’s Capital by Carlo Cafiero. Published by the Anarchist Communist Group (ACG).

The crisis, which has been developing since the start of 2020, opens up new and unprecedented scenarios in class confrontations. For revolutionaries it is essential to clarify some basic points about the current period which are as original in form as they are classical in substance.

The demise of the USSR in 1990-1 was quickly followed by the splintering of Yugoslavia as rival imperialisms sought to draw different parts of it in their orbit. The Internationalist Workers’ Group article which follows reminds us of one particular horror of the war that followed.

Review of Marxism in a Lost Century: A Biography of Paul Mattick by Garry Roth (Haymarket Books/Historical Materialism Series).

Just as this piece was ready to go online, yet another blatant police shooting of a black US citizen in full sight has triggered angry protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Jacob Blake has been left paralysed from the waist down. Added to the re-run of nightime curfews, tooled-up police and National Guard lining up against protesters came a follower of "Blue Lives Matter": 17 year old Kyle Rittenhouse, with loaded rifle, promptly shot three people, killing two of them.

The communisers do not have a strategy for exiting capitalist society. The real and difficult problems of class consciousness, political organisation, bourgeois power and a period of transition are simply brushed aside as non-problems. What this represents is disillusionment and a cry of despair.

The following is a translation of a piece by our Italian comrades, a follow-up to the two articles we have recently published about the situation in Belarus. Since it was written, a number of developments have occurred.

There is now “a state of emergency” in Beirut. No, not to deal with the devastating explosion in its port which left 200 people dead or missing, over 6,000 injured and 300,000 homeless. The “state of emergency” is to protect the political and economic elite from the anger of the Lebanese population who were already on their knees before the explosion on 4 August.

In December 2018 we wrote an an article entitled Workers' Strikes in Iran: This Time it is Different about the end of the magnificent strikes and demonstrations of the Haft Tapeh sugarcane factory workers. The promises which were made to the workers then were once again broken, and when they had not been paid since March 2020 they resumed their strike on 15 June. As we write they have now been on strike for over 2 months.

Recently we have written about the background and escalation of the current opposition movement in Belarus, but in the days that followed the situation has already changed by quite a bit – with various developments in the struggle against Lukashenko’s regime. Particularly interesting are the news on the industrial action front.

Revolutionary Perspectives 16 Editorial

Roberts (in tandem with the likes of Carchedi and Maito) frequently makes decent critiques of the existing trends in the capitalist crisis. However, despite criticising others on the capitalist left for their neo-Keynesianism, he offers little more than the suggestion that nationalisation would solve capital’s problems. The brief article here reveals a fairly fundamental error. (CWO)

A review of the recently published book by the Angry Workers of the World "Class Power on Zero-Hours" published by PM Press.

The onus lies on the workers of Belarus to seek their own solution outside of the futile battle to refurbish the shabby window dressing of democracy.

The killing of George Floyd in plain sight by the Minneapolis police rightly shocked millions of people across the world. The killing of a black person by the police is not an unusual event, particularly in the US.

Some may wonder why we keep harping on about the working class. Let’s briefly explain…

The spread of COVID-19 to the United States earlier this year both triggered and exacerbated the economic crisis which has been building up for decades. Around 50 million workers in America have been thrown out of work since the start of the lockdown, the great majority of whom have no alternative source of income for the necessities of life.