"Early yesterday morning (19 July) several leading members of the rank and file, or grassroots, unions in Piacenza were arrested in their homes by the police. We have reported on the struggles of the workers in the logistic hub of Piacenza (which services Amazon, IKEA, TNT and FedEx) several times previously."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-07-20/class-solidarity-with-the-arrested-workers-in-piacenza

"The war raging anew in Europe between the great imperialist powers – Russia on the one side and NATO, the USA and Ukraine on the other – leads us to recall the action of the internationalists during the First World War."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-07-22/nwbcw-and-the-real-international-bureau-of-1915

"Johnson epitomises the shambolic flailing around of the ruling-classes, but he is one of many. Johnson was not the problem. We have never been interested in demanding a return to kinder, more respectable politicians. Our issues do not lie with moralistic cliches such as ‘integrity’ or ‘honesty’. Nor do we shout ‘Tories out!’ with its unsubtle implication of ‘Labour in!’. The problem lies with capitalism."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-07-26/new-prime-minister-or-new-system

"Short-staffing, hour cuts, demands for hour “flexibility”, denials of wage raises and benefits to unionized/unionizing stores, stone-walling of contract negotiations with unionized stores, not to mention the cuts in workers’ real wages through sky-rocketing inflation of basic goods. This comes on top of a concerted campaign by the bosses, Schultz most visibly of all, to crush the worker organizing efforts at Starbucks through firing workers leading the strike and union efforts, and sending out propaganda to the public about Starbucks’ supposedly great benefits that it offers workers. They never mention how these benefits, already crumbs off of the bosses’ table, are taken away the minute workers begin to fight for more."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-08-11/striking-starbucks-workers-when-our-conditions-are-under-attack-stand-up-fight

"Being for class war, for the revolutionary construction of an alternative system means starting today by denouncing imperialist war, it means rejecting the logic of the war economy, of sacrifices for the war effort, of alignment with democratic and pacifist fronts. It means affirming the need for class war and proletarian revolution, circulating, immediately and in every possible place and context, the point of view of the defence of class interests and the final necessity of a revolutionary rupture, by organising the best forces of our class around this point of view. Starting from these reflections, revolutionary and internationalist comrades in Rome – as is happening in other parts of the world – have formed a committee against imperialist war and for class war."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-08-12/no-war-but-the-class-war-statement-from-nwbcw-rome

"It is easy to forget that when COVID-19 restrictions were first relaxed economists were eagerly awaiting a bounce back of the economy. There was a general clamour among business owners, landlords, and Tory backbenchers to ‘let the economy breathe’. Almost a year after these restrictions began to be reduced to a minimal level in Western countries, the economy still has a hacking cough. There is only doom and gloom from professional economists and central bankers as the ‘cost-of-living crisis’ has become the inescapable backdrop to the current political scene, leading to plummeting approval ratings for most leaders in the capitalist heartlands and food riots in the periphery."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-08-14/the-cost-of-living-crisis-is-a-capitalist-crisis

"The climate crisis may have brought record heat to the UK this summer but it is not the only way temperatures are rising. After more than ten years of austerity in which real wages have been slashed, after more than four decades in which workers’ earnings as a share of the wealth their labour creates have fallen, there are a few signs that the latest attempt to make us pay is the last straw. The current situation, characterised by rising costs of living, stagnating wages and intensification of exploitation is only set to get worse. The class war is heating up."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-08-15/wildcat-strikes-in-the-uk-getting-ready-for-a-hot-autumn

"Not so long ago internationalists were ridiculed for insisting that capitalism threatens not only our livelihoods, but the very future of humanity. Nobody laughs now. Ever since the financial meltdown of 2007 revealed a system living on borrowed money it has become increasingly obvious it is living on borrowed time. The number of zombie (unprofitable) companies has grown while states have taken on even more debt to keep the tottering system afloat only for a litany of disasters to unfold. Environmental degradation and CO2 emissions have continued apace, leading to killer pandemics and relentless global warming which in turn is bringing increasing floods and famines. With no solution to the profits’ crisis, imperialist competition for the world’s resources has brought war and devastation to an increasing area of the world."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-08-17/the-unaffordable-price-of-capitalism

People in Ukraine today, like those in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere previously, are suffering the consequences of a system in freefall towards generalised global war.

As if the threat of climate change were not enough, the world capitalist system is bringing us famine, massive inflation and greater job insecurity, all for the profits of a few. Only the exploited of the world can halt this descent into the abyss, but we need to begin to organise now before it is too late.

To find out more about how we can fight back both to defend our living standards and our lives come along and join the debate.

"Our fight is different. When we say “No War but the Class War” we are declaring war on the capitalist system which spawns pandemics, climate change and the potential extinction of humanity. Our “war” is not nuclear nor conventional and our weapons are not bombs, artillery, drones and rockets. Our weapons are our class consciousness which recognises that “workers have no country” and our capacity for collective organisation. We need to create an international political organisation to fight the war and the system which causes it. This means not only highlighting the brave acts on both sides of the current conflict to “desert the war” but also publicising as widely as possible the growing fight against a system in economic free fall. We have not seen the historic choice of socialism or barbarism so starkly posed in over 80 years."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-08-19/the-war-in-ukraine-opens-the-way-to-global-imperialist-conflict

"Capitalism is like a runaway train heading for the void over a cliff. And no one in the whole capitalist spectrum, from far right to far left, has an answer. All they can do is come up with ever more inventive ways of blaming our class while making us pay for it all. And when we refuse to do so, they are already preparing for how they’ll fight with the gloves off."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-08-21/cost-of-living-goes-through-the-roof

"Predictably, the Chinese government’s response was to stage an unprecedented show of force, multiplying the number of flyovers of the island, parading their tanks through their cities and along beaches facing Taiwan, and launching batteries of missiles that never, as on this occasion, get close to the target. The challenge between the two superpowers is increasingly taking on the contours of an exhausting chess game in which each of the contenders tries to move their pieces to acquire a positional advantage, taking care not to provoke an open conflict, but being ready, just in case circumstances require it."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-08-27/nancy-pelosi-s-visit-to-taipei-opens-a-new-episode-in-the-us-china-crisis

"For decades workers have paid for the capitalist crisis in declining real wages, austerity and job insecurity. Now all over the world price rises of basic goods are at last triggering strikes and protests. In the UK, BT workers have been on strike for the first time in more than thirty years. More strikes by rail and tram workers, airport and airline workers, barristers, bus drivers, tube workers, baggage handlers, postal workers and refuse collectors are planned, or already underway. Ballots are in the pipeline for teachers, doctors, nurses and civil servants and even junior barristers. The working class cannot stand the onslaught any longer."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-08-29/workers-respond-to-the-bosses-class-war

"The article we are re-printing here is the first part of the first pamphlet ever produced by the CWO. It was initially published as a separate article in 1975, entitled The Economic Foundations of Capitalist Decadence, by the small collective of Revolutionary Perspectives which preceded the formation of the CWO. It has long been out of print, yet its uncomplicated explanation of key concepts of Marxist economics lays the groundwork for revolutionary militants today to understand that the same underlying material forces are at work in today’s global capitalism as in Marx’s day."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-08-31/capitalism-s-economic-foundations-part-i

"As mentioned in our recent article on wildcat strikes in the UK, back in May it was reported that over a thousand offshore oil and gas workers in the North Sea walked out across 19 rigs demanding their wages match inflation. And now, according to a statement circulating across social media, more action is being planned for 8 September. Not only is this being organised outside the unions, which have been deliberately dragging their feet, it appears that the workers have formed their own strike committee to lead the struggle. Although only limited information is available so far, if true, this is an encouraging step which deserves the solidarity of all workers. In that spirit, we reproduce here in full the statement signed by the Offshore Oil and Gas Workers Strike Committee."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-08-31/north-sea-oil-and-gas-fields-the-struggle-continues

"The Hague Congress of the International Workingmen’s Association (aka the First International) took place in September 1872. After a tumultuous session, Bakunin was expelled by a majority vote and from then on, the red and black tendencies of the workers’ movement went their separate ways. Or so it is said. 150 years on from that event we can look back with fresh eyes at what exactly happened and at the disagreements which continue to divide revolutionaries to this day."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-09-02/150-years-on-the-split-in-the-first-international

"Imperialist war clearly afflicts workers everywhere. We don’t just mean the obvious threat of famine or higher prices (which are products of the same economic crisis that is pushing the great powers to war) but in the way it imposes a war agenda on workers. Most absurd of all, is that both sides claim to be against “fascism” whilst making fascist thugs heroes in their cause. The fact is that ‘patriotism’, nationalism of all kinds, is the stock response of the capitalist class when workers try to resist wage cuts, job losses and increasing repression."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-09-06/the-ukraine-war-is-a-war-against-workers-everywhere

"Across the board, the working class finds itself struggling with declining real wages as the prices of food, housing, and fuel skyrocket. The price of food in Quebec has increased by 10% in just one year, whereas the rents of traditionally working-class neighbourhoods such as Verdun have gone up by as much as 20%. Workers across Montreal and across the world are striking to defend their basic necessities. With such inflation, the point is bluntly clear: the losses faced during the pandemic and exacerbated by the war are being unloaded onto our class. We are being forced to pay for our bosses' crisis."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-09-08/don-t-let-them-deal-you-a-bad-hand

"Often the dynamics of war lead to results that are diametrically opposed to the objectives pursued by the contenders; the conflict in Ukraine, instigated by the Russian Federation mainly to hinder NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe, has in fact accelerated the enlargement of the Atlantic Alliance in an extremely important region from a geopolitical point of view, Northern Europe. On the other hand, the ongoing war of "attrition", thanks to the fundamental Western – primarily US – support for Ukraine, risks "handing over" an extremely weakened Russia into the hands of China."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-09-09/sweden-and-finland-entering-nato

"We reproduce the following article in solidarity with Assembly, an anarchist group based in Kharkiv which has been reporting on workers’ struggles in Ukraine on both sides of the front line. In a recent interview, they said of themselves: “we give useful information for workers in their daily confrontation with bosses or officials, and our position with the condemnation of both warring states … is quite close to those who have nothing to defend in this bleak hole with no clear future.” They also criticise those anarchists who in the face of imperialist war “immediately merged with the ruling class in a single nationalist impulse”. Despite our political differences, it is clear that Assembly tries to chart an internationalist course in the most difficult of circumstances. Such critical voices are important as they demonstrate that class war does not stop, even under imperialist war. They also give lie to the claims of certain anarchists in the West who have made “listening to voices from Ukraine” synonymous with the defence of the Ukrainian state."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-09-10/a-report-on-socio-economic-unrest-in-ukraine

"Workers’ councils have a prominent place in our agitation. Recently we have received a number of questions regarding what we mean by workers’ councils, what we think is the relationship between political organisations and workers’ councils, and what might workers’ councils look like today. Our answers to these questions are, as always, informed by the experience of the class struggles of the past."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-09-12/the-meaning-of-workers-councils-in-the-21st-century