Shame on America for the plight of the Negroes!

V. I. Lenin

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The proletarian is helpless; left to himself, he cannot live a single day. The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in the broadest sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can obtain only from this bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by the power of the state.

Engels
The Condition of the Working Class in England
1845

The Condition of the Working Class in England is Frederick Engels' groundbreaking first book, published in 1845. Written during his time in Salford and Manchester, the epicenter of the Industrial Revolution, the book gives a vivid, firsthand account of the harsh realities faced by factory workers in Victorian England. Originally written in German, it wasn’t translated into English until 1887. Engels combined his personal observations with reports of the time to paint a powerful picture of exploitation and poverty. His work caught the attention of Karl Marx, who found it deeply inspiring for their later collaborations.

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In this connection, a word or two as to the respect for the law in England. True, the law is sacred to the bourgeois, for it is his own composition, enacted with his consent, and for his benefit and protection. He knows that, even if an individual law should injure him, the whole fabric protects his interests; and more than all, the sanctity of the law, the sacredness of order as established by the active will of one part of society, and the passive acceptance of the other, is the strongest support of his social position. Because the English bourgeois finds himself reproduced in his law, as he does in his God, the policeman's truncheon which, in a certain measure, is his own club, has for him a wonderfully soothing power. But for the working-man quite otherwise! The working-man knows too well, has learned from too oft-repeated experience, that the law is a rod which the bourgeois has prepared for him; and when he is not compelled to do so, he never appeals to the law. It is ridiculous to assert that the English working-man fears the police, when every week in Manchester policemen are beaten, and last year an attempt was made to storm a station-house secured by iron doors and shutters. The power of the police in the turnout of 1842 lay, as I have already said, in the want of a clearly defined object on the part of the working-men themselves.

Condition of the Working Class in England, by Engels, 1845
Labour Movements

In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the “lower depths” of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class. Neither the senile rule of the Russian autocracy nor the senescent rule of international capital will be able to withstand this army. It will more and more firmly close its ranks, in spite of all zigzags and backward steps, in spite of the opportunist phrase-mongering of the Girondists of present-day Social-Democracy, in spite of the self-satisfied exaltation of the retrograde circle spirit, and in spite of the tinsel and fuss of intellectualist anarchism.

Lenin

On this day, 27 January 1949, at 12:40pm, Italian fascist Felice Ghisalberti was assassinated by two former anti-fascist partisans of the Volante Rossa as he came out of a restaurant during his lunch break.
The two former partisans (Paolo Finardi, pictured, right, and Elgio Trincheri, left) had been waiting for him in a taxi and, as he exited, ordered the driver to drive past and shot him from the windows before escaping.
Felice Ghisalberti was a former soldier in the Muti Legion of Mussolini's Nazi-backed army of the Italian Social Republic and had bragged about his involvement in roundups, burning houses and torturing women.
Ghisalberti also bragged about his involvement in the murder of legendary communist partisan, Eugenio Curiel (who Finardi knew personally) along with two other partisans. In 1946, Ghisalberti was found not guilty for the crime, despite having declared himself the perpetrator in a report to his commander commander and his co-defendants being sentenced to death.

Working Class History

🔴 Around 242 million children missed school last year because of the climate emergency, says UN

At least 242 million children in 85 countries had their schooling interrupted last year because of heatwaves, cyclones, flooding and other forms of extreme weather, the United Nations children’s fund warns in a report published today.

UNICEF said it equated to one in seven school-going children across the world being kept out of class at some point in 2024 as a result of climate hazards.

Some countries had hundreds of schools destroyed by weather, with low-income nations in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa hit especially hard, the report says.

In Europe, torrential rains and floods in Italy near the end of the year disrupted school for more than 900,000 children.

Thousands had classes halted after catastrophic flooding in Spain.

While southern Europe dealt with deadly floods and Asia and Africa had flooding and cyclones, heatwaves were “the predominant climate hazard shuttering schools last year,” UNICEF said, as the Earth recorded its hottest-ever year.

More than 118 million children had their schooling interrupted in April alone, UNICEF said, as large parts of the Middle East and Asia, from Gaza in the west to the Philippines in the south-east, experienced a prolonged heatwave with temperatures soaring above 40°C.

UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said:

Children are more vulnerable to the impacts of weather-related crises, including stronger and more frequent heatwaves, storms, droughts and flooding.

Children cannot concentrate in classrooms that offer no respite from sweltering heat and they cannot get to school if the path is flooded or if schools are washed away.

Around 74 per cent of the pupils affected in 2024 were in middle- and low-income countries, showing how climatic extremes continue to have a devastating impact in the poorest countries.

Flooding ruined more than 400 schools in Pakistan in April. Afghanistan suffered heatwaves followed by severe flooding that destroyed over 110 schools in May, UNICEF said.

Months of drought in southern Africa exacerbated by the el Nino weather phenomenon threatened the schooling and futures of millions of children.

The poor French territory of Mayotte, which lies in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa, was left in ruins by Cyclone Chido in December and hit again by Tropical Storm Dikeledi this month, leaving children across the islands out of school for six weeks.

Cyclone Chido also destroyed more than 330 schools and three regional education departments in Mozambique on the African mainland.

UNICEF said the world’s schools and education systems were “largely ill equipped” to deal with the effects of extreme weather.


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