Blogs

There is an ever-growing stream of media commentary on the Grenfell fire, increasing daily as the public enquiry unfolds. There are some elements in the media with the goal of obscuring or excusing the plain facts as part of a pre-emptive defence manoeuvre to protect those most implicated in what caused the fire and the 72 deaths. That they feel the need to use such distortions to defend the Grenfell landlords and those who ordered and oversaw the Grenfell refurbishment that fitted the lethal cladding only increases the suggestion of a general doubt on all sides about their innocence.

Rosa Luxemburg argued before World War One that in the epoch of imperialism national liberation stands opposed to working class liberation. The recent death of Zimbabwe’s national liberation hero, Robert Mugabe, the conditions of the Zimbabwe working class, and the hellish state of the country as a whole, is yet another wretched demonstration of how true this is.

The following case reveals the strategical potential of solidarity networks: to create links between individual proletarians in structurally weak positions and the world of workers’ power in big workplaces.

Seventy years ago, on 1 October 1949, the People's Republic of China was proclaimed by Mao. Here we reproduce an article which originally appeared in Communist Review 8 (January 1990), published by the ICT (or IBRP as it was then) in the aftermath of the suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests.

The Trumps, the Bolsonaros, the Putins and the Xi Jinpings offer us capitalist barbarism and only the self-activity of the whole working class – the basis of working class democracy – can save humanity.

Climate change is not the only threat to humanity. A stagnant capitalist economy that survives on an increasing mountain of debt is intensifying imperialist rivalries. The slow death agony of the system is now manifest in so many ways. The post World War Two order that was imposed by the US in 1945 has been breaking down since the dollar ceased to be the world’s gold standard in 1971. Today the increasing rivalry between China and the US stretches from South America via the Middle East to the South China Sea.

Analysis of Fascist presence in black metal scenes in how to resist it.

We have been asked from several quarters to give our views on the new group, Emancipación. As a context for our reflections we start with a brief summary of our guidelines for debating, orienting and regrouping the world’s revolutionary forces.

Only in a communist world without states and borders will human beings be able to really tackle the damage that has been done to their natural surroundings.

A critique of a recent article from the Organizing Work blog, "You Say You Want A General Strike", examining recent general strike calls in slightly more depth.

By abstaining from bourgeois electoral politics and building our own revolutionary organizations we are best placed to build our own political forces up to take advantage of the political crisis of bourgeois rule that manifests itself in disaffection from the ruling parties. For workers, elections are an exercise of ritual humiliation perpetrated upon them by those who exploit them.

On re-reading this piece, what is striking about the picture of the working class in capitalism's self-styled service economy in 2006 is how much it resembles the situation today. After decades of capitalist restructuring in the face of problems stemming from the declining rate of profit (problems by no means confined to the economy of the UK) there are now recognisable constants in the socio-economic profile of the 'restructured' working class.

A IWW comrade and researcher asked us questions about our local experiences and thoughts on working class organising...

The role of China in the imperialist pecking order has been covered many times on our website (leftcom.org). Here we deal with China’s evolution from a largely agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse which has also created the world’s largest working class – and what comes with that is, of course, simmering class conflict.

The article which follows was written at the beginning of the month when the continuing deforestation of the Amazon led to the yet more murders of the indigenous population. Since then the crisis has deepened as the dry season burning of the Amazon to clear the way for farming has reached new heights.

Today, as the global economy flounders from crisis to crisis, Marx’s analysis of capitalism is the essential basis for a correct understanding of what is going on. Moseley’s book reaffirms key elements of this analysis. The previous obsession with the transformation problem has resulted in the undermining of these key aspects of Marx’s critique, actually making an understanding of twenty first century capitalism harder. Moseley’s book, though long winded and somewhat repetitive, serves a very useful purpose in exposing this undermining and its implications. For this reason alone it is worth reading.

The next few months will see the party political machines in full swing trying to draw us into the quagmire of democratic debate and that great privilege – a vote at the polling station. Neither of those arenas offer anything for the working class.

It did not take the fatal consequences of recent record temperatures in Western Europe, or the recent wildfires in California, monsoon floods in Nepal, India and Bangladesh or the Mozambique cyclones, to tell us that something has radically shifted in the world’s climate. The existential threat of human-created climate change to life on the planet has been understood for decades. NASA, among others, first sounded the alarm about global carbon emissions in 1988 and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed the same year.