"The cleanup and coverup had as its only priority to get the freight rolling again. There is a military aspect in keeping rail freight running as surely as there was during Wilson's nationalization of the rails. The same reason that last year the federal government forced a settlement to avoid a rail strike is the same reason that Norfolk Southern incinerated the toxic mess left in the wake of the train crash. Disasters like these are recurring reminders of why capitalism must be overthrown."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-04-21/east-palestine-chemical-disaster-capitalism-goes-off-the-rails

"Each year, about 1 million workers in France are victims of work-related accidents. The media’s silence on the question is deafening. France counts the most work deaths in Europe, with 3.25 deaths for every 100,000 workers. In 2019, there were 804 deaths, double that of Germany and the EU average. France is the only EU country where the number of deaths is increasing, currently at 1,200 work-related deaths (including from work-related diseases) per year. Precarious work, negligent job training, use of temp workers, subcontracting, the gig economy, companies dodging judicial responsibility and the degradation of working conditions are to blame."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-04-23/the-invisible-slaughter-study-on-work-related-deaths-in-france

"We reproduce here an appeal from Gondolkodó Antikvárium, an internationalist bookshop and archive in Budapest, which is being evicted from its current premises."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-04-24/gondolkod%C3%B3-antikv%C3%A1rium-solidarity-call-for-aid

"The balance sheet below is an initial reflection on the wave of struggles against the pension reform introduced by the government. It may, on first reading, come across as pessimistic. However, while on the one hand only the truth is revolutionary, and that’s what we describe, on the other hand, given the movement’s size and the anger it has demonstrated against the current living conditions imposed by the capitalist crisis, it remains necessary to draw positive lessons from it, lessons such as how to struggle, and how to build a balance of forces."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-04-25/pension-reform-in-france

The UK is experiencing the biggest wave of strikes for a generation. Hit by inflation over 10%, cuts in the social wage and precarious employment, large sectors of workers had enough and started to fight. However, the unions are keeping the strikes separate from each other when a united strike would be the start of a real fight. Instead, the unions recommend bosses’ offers below the rate of inflation. What is the way forward for the working class’ struggles? Come to a public meeting to discuss this.

"What is above all impressive and important about this strike is the degree of self-organization where, at a general assembly on Friday, April 14, they elected their own strike committee and prepared the strike. As we see it, it is imperative that we organize our own struggle outside the unions. We can only rely on our own strength. This is obviously also how the train drivers see it, and that is why they have developed such an impressive degree of self-organization."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-04-28/sweden-the-wildcat-strike-on-the-commuter-trains-shows-the-way-forward

"Whilst they are stepping up their violence at home and abroad, we have to step up the resistance. Whilst their weapons are tear gas, batons, bombs and missiles, ours are consciousness that a new world is yet possible, and our collective organisation. The latter involves not only creating organisations of struggle wherever wage workers live and work but also an international political organisation to coordinate and guide that struggle against not just this or that state but the entire global system."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-04-30/may-day-2023-there-is-no-right-side-in-an-imperialist-war-no-war-but-the-class

"In short, all attempts which push the workers and their organs towards identifying with the current state of affairs ideologically through reformism and throwing support behind this or that capitalist—or even “anti-capitalist”—politician are to be combatted. Historically this sort of parliamentary cretinism has only resulted in defeat and capitulation, alongside attracting all sorts of non-socialist, revisionist forces to the party that are merely interested in self-gain."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-05-04/reformism-and-its-discontents

"The failure to unite the struggles and strikes, the usual practice of the so-called base unions (not to mention the traditional unions ...), is evidence enough of this tendency of trade unionism to fragment the proletariat. For them the fight against the common class enemy takes second place to the a numerous manoeuvres to strengthen their own organisation, with a political perspective, therefore, which does not go beyond the now innate opportunism of the unionised form of class struggle."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-05-06/base-unionism-political-struggle-or-struggle-against-politicians

"Teaching strikes in Scotland and Wales have already ended with below inflation pay rises of 7% and 8% respectively as across the board what started as a huge strike wave is fizzling out, a series of compromises between a government unwilling to pay and union leaders unwilling to fight. For any strike to succeed it must be led by the workers themselves, organised across workplaces and able to freely discuss their concerns, put forward their own demands and keep up pressure against management instead of surrendering its autonomy to a middle-man, only interested in getting them back to work. Can you afford to wait for the next round of balloting?"

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-05-08/education-funding-crisis-or-structural-crisis

"In the book Evans attempts to show that anarchist resistance to this process of state reconstruction was more widespread and serious than generally assumed. To this end, over the 200 or so pages we are presented with a chronological overview of the struggle between the oppositional and collaborationist currents within the Spanish anarchist movement that took place between the years 1931 and 1939. It is worth summarising that history before we comment on some of its political implications."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-05-11/revolution-and-the-state-anarchism-in-the-spanish-civil-war

"Elections are often touted as the cornerstone of democracy, the means by which people exercise their political power and shape the future of their society. However, under capitalism, the realities are far from this idealistic image. The working class will not see its own emancipation on the ballot paper, but only the parties and representatives of various bourgeois factions that are candidates for our exploitation."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-05-14/turkish-elections-the-crisis-of-capitalism-will-not-be-resolved-at-the-ballot

"The strike is yours! Decide on these tactics together, union mandated or not. Your greatest strength is your solidarity which cannot be reduced to the union. The generalized assault on our class requires a generalized struggle! While the prospect may seem far-off, nobody is going to initiate it for us."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-05-16/montreal-why-are-the-banq-workers-on-strike

"Only once we’ve replaced our rotten system of production for profit, with a system of production for need, will increases to our standards of living become permanent. Meanwhile, in the present situation, the real gain from any struggle can only be confidence in self-organisation, greater awareness of belonging to a wider working class and wider recognition within the class of the possibility that a different world is possible."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-05-19/the-present-wave-of-strikes-and-the-way-forward-for-the-working-class

"Capitalism is dragging humanity into an abyss. Rampant price increases, rising interest rates, collapsing banks and ecological disasters accompany the capitalists plunder of the planet in their drive for profits. Growing numbers of refugees are fleeing from immediate hell to anywhere they can. Meanwhile the war in Ukraine is dreadful confirmation of the ‘final solution’ capital has in store for the whole world."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-05-20/a-new-world-is-still-possible-but-we-have-a-fight-on-our-hands

"Both Russian and Ukrainian workers are suffering death at the fronts to defend ... what? The property and interests of their oligarchic cliques. For our rulers, defence of “the nation” makes sense since they own most of it. For the rest of the population, imperialist war means the loss of home and livelihood and for many, the loss of life itself."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-05-22/imperialist-war-or-class-war

"The purpose of the committees is to put internationalist nuclei in contact with one another, in order to define the rudiments of a common political intervention against the coming war, and to establish relationships with others that firmly situate themselves on internationalist terrain; relationships that will be of inordinate utility down the line, as they were in previous times."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-05-24/appeal-for-the-creation-of-a-nwbcw-committee-in-san-francisco-usa

"There is something suggestively symbolic about a state funeral for the decaying corpse of a corrupt and corrupting capitalist, the symbol of money that “unites and breaks faiths; blesses the accursed; makes horrid leprosy welcome; it honours thieves and gives them titles, reverence, praise in the assembly of senators” i.e. the bourgeois institutions. It truly reflects today’s decadent system."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-06-18/nunc-est-bibendum-on-the-death-and-state-funeral-of-silvio-berlusconi

"The news of the sinking of the migrant boat off the coast of Greece, with the loss of hundreds of lives, came at the same time as the grotesque state funeral awarded to the sexually predatory and crooked former Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. This provoked the following response from our Italian comrades. Since it was written, it has now been revealed that the trawler had been stationary for hours (and was not en route to Italy as the Greek authorities claimed) and there are some suggestions that the trawler may have sank when the Greek coastguard tried to tow it towards Italian waters. News of this has sparked protests in Greece itself."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-06-21/another-massacre-in-the-mediterranean

"For our part, the ICT has taken the internationalist position a stage further by trying to work with other internationalists who can see the dangers for the world working class if it does not get organised. This is why we have joined in with the initiative to develop committees at a local level across the world to organise a response to what capitalism is preparing for workers everywhere. We are only at the start of this work and not all internationalists have yet joined it. Many have not understood what is at stake and some have not understood that we need to pave the way to practical organisation now while we still can and before it is too late. The following document is not only a balance sheet of what we have experienced after one year of No War but the Class War (NWBCW), it is also a clarification of what it is about and hopefully will go some way to banishing doubts and misunderstandings."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-07-05/the-no-war-but-the-class-war-initiative

"Three days after the death of Nahel Merzouk, 17, who was shot dead on Tuesday 27 June in Nanterre by a police officer who stopped his vehicle, riots have reached a rare level of violence in banlieues across France, in overseas territories and even in smaller cities usually less affected by these kinds of uprisings. The rioters have set fire to various sites of State power: town halls, prefectures, high schools, police commissariats… the list goes on."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-07-06/on-the-recent-riots-in-france-and-the-proletarianisation-of-the-banlieues