Internationalist Communist Tendency's blog

As the bourgeoisie wracks its brains for solutions to this epochal crisis, the tax lever has become one of the main tools that left reformists believe will end capitalist aggression and bring substantial benefits to the depleted pockets of the proletariat.

In our first part on reproductive struggles in class society, we highlighted some of the facts and dangers surrounding abortion and contraception. We also commented on the family unit and prostitution – two phenomena Marxists deem to be flipsides of one another and inseparable from the struggle for reproductive freedom. In this piece, we shed light on sterilization, sex selective abortions, religion, and bourgeois laws as specific to the needs of capital, noting the consequential damages to the proletariat.

The COVID-19 pandemic has left the entire working class living with a new level of uncertainty. There have now been cases reported on every continent after researchers and military personnel on Antarctica recently reported their first cases.

Statement of the Internationalist Communist Tendency

The article which follows is a transcript of an introduction to an online meeting of CWO members and sympathisers on 21 November 2020.

With each new jolt to the capitalist structure its crisis deepens. The disruption of production and distribution caused by the coronavirus pandemic has only added to the existing woes of the system. And, as ever, the working class is being fed illusions about the beneficial effect that state intervention would bring to their conditions and to the "community" in general, irrespective of class.

Capitalism’s continuous plunder and destruction of the natural environment is forcing animals such as bats, rodents and other small creatures into our cities. They bring their diseases with them and pass them on to humans. We have no immunity to these new viruses and the result is epidemics like SARS, MERS and the present pandemic Covid-19. Capitalism is the real mother of the virus!

While capitalism’s latest child, Covid-19, rains death down on us, capitalism’s destruction of the planet is actually taking us down a path towards human extinction. According to a United Nations report published in September, the world has failed to meet any of the targets set in 2010 to protect biodiversity and one fifth of all countries are at risk of their ecosystems collapsing.

With the election of Biden to the post of “leader” of the so-called “free world”, many are celebrating. The US ruling class are, of course, delighted to see the back of Trump whom they accuse of having made a complete mess of protecting US interests. The embarrassment of the previous four years can now be swept under the carpet and business as usual can recommence.

Today (28/11/20) marks 200 years since the birth of Friedrich Engels. For this occasion we reproduce an article from Revolutionary Perspectives 1 (Series 3), originally published back in 1995 for the 100th anniversary of Engels’ death.

We are publishing this article to commemorate last year’s shooting in Yuendumu, shortly before the 5th year anniversary of the Sydney Long Bay Jail Killing, and for the 16th anniversary of the Palm Island Riots. Its content is largely reflective of these events and other deaths in custody. We wish to advise Indigenous readers that this piece mentions the names and stories of people who have died at the hands of the bourgeois state.

The COVID-19 pandemic has swept across the world, infecting tens of millions, killing over a million so far and leaving many survivors with recurring or permanent health conditions.(1) The region of Oceania has had tens of thousands of virus cases and around a thousand deaths. However, it has been hit even harder in the form of other pandemic related factors, such as border closures, unemployment, and a rise in mental health issues and domestic violence.

In this first piece on reproductive struggles in class society we bring to focus some of the facts and dangers surrounding abortion, as well as the family unit and prostitution, two phenomena that Marxists deem to be flipsides of the same coin, and inseparable from the struggle for reproductive freedom.

The media on 5 November was greatly agitated by the news that a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 had been found in intensive rearing of minks on Danish factory farms. This mutation weakens the ability to produce antibodies, a fact which could compromise the effectiveness of future vaccines.

Statement from the Internationalist Workers' Group, affiliate of the ICT in the USA.

As well as exacerbating the decline in living conditions of the international working class the deepening world economic crisis is sharpening imperialist competition.

The expansion of university education, which is now a relatively common feature of the working-class condition, has not and cannot deliver the goods in terms of prosperity, well-being and any other measure of progress for societies trapped within the constraints of class division.

Review: The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and How to Build a Better Economy by Stephanie Kelton (published by John Murray, 2020).

Article from Bilan et Perspectives #19, magazine of our French comrades.

On 22 October 2020, the Constitutional Tribunal (Trybunał Konstytucyjny, TK) of Poland, stacked by justices from the conservative ruling party Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS), ruled that termination of pregnancies is unconstitutional even when prenatal testing or other medical rationales show a large likelihood of severe and irreversible foetal impairment or an incurable life-threatening disease of the future child.