"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

"On the international front nothing has changed. The same tendency towards the formation of two armed camps that the war brought about is continuing. It is significant that China re-affirmed its support for Russia during the crisis and, with other BRICs like South Africa and Brazil not joining in Western campaigns of condemnation, the alliance remains firm. Imperialist interplay goes on, with the USA weaning Modi’s India away from Russian arms dependence due to its fears of China, whilst Iran has finally entered the Shanghai Cooperation Council as a full member. Those who thought the Wagner Group revolt would lead to peace in Ukraine are going to have to wait a lot longer as the globe becomes even more dangerous and divided."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-07-10/the-wagner-group-revolt-and-future-course-of-the-war

"Martin, the lifelong communist militant and comrade of the IWG passed away in June 2022, leaving the world and his family too young. In his personal life he was a fan of science fiction, the Grateful Dead and was a US Civil War historian. We remember the communist militant comrade Martin and continue the struggle for revolutionary class consciousness, and ultimately a new society, with him in our thoughts."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-07-11/in-remembrance-of-comrade-martin

"With only the incentive to produce greater and greater profits, the only future under capitalism is a barren wasteland. In recent decades, more and more capital has been poured into oil and gas, as imperialist warfare provides the incentive for speculation and profit, from the Gulf War to the current war in Ukraine. The capitalist system can only intensify the cycle of ecological disaster but can never cause it to cease."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-07-23/capital-is-content-to-fuel-the-fires-in-north-america

"The key argument of the degrowthers is that capitalism must stop accumulating. As we have argued above, this implies the collapse of the system and its replacement by cooperative production controlled by the producers themselves. Degrowth literature continually skirts around this central issue, which leaves the door open to uncritical and even conciliatory positions towards social democratic and Stalinist politics, which in addition to maintaining capitalist society are inherently ecologically unsustainable."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-07-25/degrowth-and-marxism-a-critique

"We cannot wait passively, for the union to throw crumbs at us. We cannot wait to be sacrificed as lambs to the slaughter, while UPS and capitalist enterprises around the world squeeze every nickel and dime from the pores of the workers. We can only depend on our strength in numbers, and on our creativity as an international class. As our main weapon, strikes need to be transformed. They need to cease being an affair whose pace is set by union functionaries. They need to be transformed into an affair directed by the mass of workers, whose access to the megaphone isn’t barred by their lack of official credentials."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-07-31/ups-struggle-strike-while-the-iron-is-hot

"In the meantime capitalism has brought us a new round of inflation and interest rate rises which are bringing misery to millions. This has led to scores of strikes in the UK and elsewhere in an attempt to redress the balance. As long as they remain within the framework of accepting the current system of wage slavery the system is safe. But that is not the only threat capitalism poses."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-08-01/the-state-we-are-in

"The revolutions of 1848 belong to a now bygone era. Yet, the events of 175 years ago have inevitably shaped the modern world. For our rulers, they leave behind a contradictory legacy. For workers, they represent the dawn of a new movement."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-08-09/1848-the-working-class-bursts-onto-the-scene-of-history

"Even in our so-called ‘Communist Left’ circles, it is a little-known fact that Amadeo Bordiga spent most of 1923 (3 February – 26 October) in a Rome prison cell where, as well as preparing his own defence and that of his thirty or so fellow-accused, he drafted a political manifesto on the crisis facing the barely two year old Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I), a manifesto he intended for discussion by the whole membership."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-08-14/amadeo-bordiga-s-prison-manifesto

"In the event the tentative agreement is voted down, it opens up another possibility for a strike. If it occurs, it is critical the strike does not comprise one act in a war of positions between management and IBT functionaries, and is instead undertaken by workers as workers; that is, as members of a class whose living and working conditions are attacked by capitals’ frenzy to a) increase revenues, and b) reconfigure national economies for war."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-08-19/balloting-on-tentative-agreement-at-ups-workers-mobilizations-in-the-usa-are

"Niger has just experienced its fifth coup d'état since gaining independence in 1960. It remains one of the poorest peripheral states, towards the bottom of the Human Development Index, on the far fringes of capital accumulation where the effects of the deepening set of crises are most brutally felt. The workers and toilers right across the Sahel are paying a growing price for the ever changing machinations of various states in their brutal struggle for survival in the world imperialist arena."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-08-24/niger-s-coup-d-%C3%A9tat-yet-another-chapter-in-intensifying-imperialist-rivalries

"Like in 2007/8 we wage workers are going to find ourselves in another ball game and we'll have to stand together and fight as one, regardless of union allegiances. Even now we can challenge the attacks on living and working conditions by doing more than holding a union banner. The more workers can see beyond their own personal predicament or workplace struggle, the more we are likely to succeed."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-08-28/the-real-fight-is-yet-to-come

"At first glance, the drive to generalised war can seem inexplicable. Humanity only stands to lose from it, and yet we seem to be inching towards it every day. However, it is not the result of pure madness, or pig-headed politicians and generals making the wrong choices. There is an inescapable force, rooted in the search for greater profits which drives the international capitalist system into crises that cannot be resolved through peaceful means. So long as we live in this system, in which antagonistic states clash to defend the particular interests of their own national capitals, we will continue to see bloody conflicts paid for by people with no skin in the game; namely, the global working class."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-08-30/the-drive-to-world-war

"Don’t think that everyone will suffer equally; the ruling class have the means to escape the worst of this crisis. The ones who will bear the full brunt of the ecological crisis are none other than the working class and the rural poor. But if the unbearable weight of such a system and its consequences lies heavy atop our shoulders, so too does our power to change it."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-09-04/capitalism-reaches-its-boiling-point

"It is particularly in the run up to elections that different factions of the capitalist class unleash their ideological arsenal in order to win enough votes to earn their place at the trough. The UK’s ruling class parties are already testing out their propaganda, playing off the identities of their voter base. What gets lost in the picture is that this is purely a contest for who will be the custodian of the British capitalist state for the next five years. Behind all the culture war mystifications, designed to excite the electorate, are hidden the real interests of every capitalist state: the accumulation of capital."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-09-06/class-unity-our-answer-to-divide-and-rule

"Regular readers of Revolutionary Perspectives will know that we have been republishing, with minor additions, the article “The Economic Foundations of Capitalist Decadence”. Originally published in 1974 this was one of the founding documents of the Revolutionary Perspectives group which became part of the Communist Workers’ Organisation in 1975. Written half a century ago its central premises have stood the test of time, and in the first two parts we have only made light edits to the original. However, in this part we enter the period through which, for all the turmoil and change of the last half a century, we are still living. Given that turmoil, we have naturally developed a longer perspective than that posed in the original."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-09-08/capitalism-s-economic-foundations-part-iii

"Unable to revive the rate of profit, capitalism is incapable of overcoming its crisis of accumulation. Although in recent decades the state has withdrawn — albeit never completely — from the direct management of companies and entire sectors of public services, it has nevertheless only changed the mode of its intervention in favour of capital."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-09-12/considerations-on-the-new-state-capitalism

"In truth, the green transition is a green façade for what can be summed up as “war ecology”. Whereas the architects of the New Deal in the 1930s sought to secure workers’ submission to rearmament under the auspices of social legislation, today, right- and left-institutional parties alike seek to secure submission to rearmament under the auspices of not only social but environmental legislation."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2023-09-14/war-ecology-will-not-save-the-planet