"It has now been 100 years since Lenin’s body was embalmed and put on public display in Moscow, a grotesque gesture from a “red” bourgeoisie which went hand in hand with the systematic distortion of Lenin’s real contribution to the socialist movement. Times have changed and the Russian state no longer considers Lenin to be its “founding father”, instead holding him personally responsible for the disintegration of its Empire, while in many countries of the former Eastern Bloc statues of Lenin are being taken down as part of “de-communisation”. As such, the centenary of Lenin’s death will hardly be a blip in the grand scheme of things. However, in today’s world of crisis and war, the idea of “communism” seems more popular than it has been for decades, particularly among the young generations. So for those who see the need for a world beyond capitalism, this equivocal anniversary is an occasion to revisit the man whose name became inescapably wrapped up with the idea of “communism”."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-01-21/lenin-and-leninism

"In previous articles, we have criticised those responses of the capitalist left to the war in Ukraine which have "either been outright support for one or the other of the imperialist fronts (NATO or Russia), or a fake pacifism which hides the same positions." We argued that such positions only serve to divert the working class from the struggle for socialism, a world without war. What we haven't addressed in as much detail are those in the Trotskyist, Stalinist, and Maoist milieu who have attempted to put forward an ostensibly internationalist position."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-01-24/a-brief-critique-of-part-time-internationalism

"While the international bourgeoisie write the script for an increasingly generalised imperialist conflict, which they all hope will revitalise their economy at the expense of their rivals, the consequences of the death agony of their system is suffered above all by the world’s workers. Over-exploited in times of peace, massacred in times of war, the working class alone offers the only path to the end of the nightmare."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-01-27/gaza-and-beyond-the-bitter-fruits-of-capitalism-nationalism-and-imperialism

"We are in the foothills of world war. What is happening to the population in Kharkiv, Kherson or Gaza today is a taste of what could be coming to a street near us in the not too distant future. Imperialist war means total war. This is not just a war between two armies or even between two states but between two imperialist interests. And those interests are the interests of the rich everywhere. It makes sense for them to fight for “the country”. After all, they own it. It makes no sense for workers who own only personal property, and their ability to work to make profits for the capitalists."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-01-30/only-the-working-class-can-prevent-world-war-three

Capitalism is pushing us to war. From Ukraine to Gaza, Yemen and beyond, powers large and small are enrolling workers to kill and die in defence of the interests of capital as their system is unable to throw of its permanent economic crisis. The British state – along with other NATO partners – is now openly warning the population that a new World War is coming. Parties right and left urge us to support this or that warring faction but the interests of the workers are global not local. We have no property to defend and no nation is worth one drop of workers' blood. The only war that workers have any interest in is the class war. In this meeting, we'll give an overview of how we see the current imperialist proxy wars and how they relate to the 'crisis of capitalism', and we'll discuss what can be done by workers in the face of these wars.

"The 28th climate change summit known as Conference of the Parties (COP28) was held in December 2023 and was even more of a farce than any of the previous 27 conferences. While the world is now undeniably facing a catastrophic climate crisis, which if unchecked will lead to the collapse of civilisation or even extinction of Homo sapiens, our leaders have made clear that they are not prepared to do anything serious about this if such action threatens the profitability or the accumulation of capital."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-02-01/cop28-and-the-myth-of-green-capitalism

"Capitalism is founded on the “chronic and unresolved systemic issue” of the exploitation of the vast majority of humanity to support a minority of others in ease and comfort. For them it is not important that human beings are suffering wretchedness, homelessness and poverty. What is important is that money is being made out of them. Part of the tragedy here is that we already have the capacity to solve the crisis and house everyone: there are more than 600,000 empty homes in the UK, and more than 800,000 “second homes”. But we will only be able to use the resources that exist already to help people when we no longer have to justify that help as profitable."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-02-05/we-don-t-feel-at-home-in-this-world-anymore

Imperialist war is raging in Ukraine, in Gaza and the Middle East. Cities are reduced to rubble, millions are refugees and millions more are starving and homeless. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, while over half a million workers in uniform have been slaughtered. For what? All for the benefit of the capitalist class and for the benefit of their profits. Workers are being mobilised as cannon fodder by the howls of nationalism coming from our rulers. Now we are being told to prepare for conscription in a future world war. All this is the outcome of capitalism and the only way this can be stopped is by the overthrow of capitalism. Only class struggle and international class unity directed to turning capitalism’s wars into class wars of workers against capitalists can achieve this. For a start this means unity of Russian and Ukrainian workers, unity of Palestinian and Israeli workers against their own capitalists. It means no support for any section of the capitalist class and their wars.

"In the 20th century world, imperialist war was the outcome of capitalism’s cyclical crisis writ large, the means by which “a great portion of capital” (Marx) was annihilated, thus providing the basis for a renewed round of accumulation. Yet there is a marked contrast between the inter-war years and the post-Second World War years when both the upturn (the boom) and, especially, the downturn of the cycle (since the collapse of Bretton Woods) have been much more prolonged. This is due in no small part to international capital having learnt from history to fear a return to the trade wars and autarchic policies of the Thirties which led to the Second World War."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-02-07/capitalism-s-economic-foundations-part-iv

"The fate of humanity in 2024 is in as dire a condition as it has been for decades. On a personal level, many, even in the richest countries in the world, are finding it hard to make ends meet and personal indebtedness is at record levels. In the US alone household debt was $17.25 trillion at the end of the third quarter in 2023 and equals $103,358 per household. The figures are similar for the UK where the Trussel Trust distributed 3 million food parcels (to 3% of the population) last year. The debt is nice for the finance capitalists who run the world – not so nice for those paying increased interest rates. And states further down the global power pecking order fare even worse. And now the cancer of imperialist war is spreading across the world as their latest “solution”."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-02-10/capitalism-offers-only-a-future-of-devastation-and-decline-but-there-is-a

"Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest against the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the shift to the right. The revelations published by the research network Correktiv seem to have struck a nerve. Many are now asking themselves: what next?"

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-02-18/not-just-against-the-afd

"We present here three translations of recent articles from our comrades in France and Italy. They deal with the ongoing farmers’ protests that have erupted in Europe, and are now spreading to Britain and, once again, India (where a similar movement back in 2020/1 managed to repeal the controversial Farm Bills). The agricultural crisis is a reflection of the wider crisis of capitalism, which, without the active intervention of the working class, is plunging the world further and further into the abyss."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-02-19/on-the-farmers-protests

"In Erzincan, nine workers were buried under cyanide-laced soil in a landslide that occurred as a result of the stacking and clustering of mined soil in a mine. This was caused by the Anagold mining company's negligence and avoidance of maintenance and repair costs. Although some sub-contracted workers warned their supervisors, no measures were taken and the mine continued to operate. The cyanide-laced soil, landslides and rains will not only poison the environment and swallow the workers, but will also seep into the Euphrates River basin, making the entire hinterland uninhabitable. The state, the biggest partner and protector of the capitalists, has turned a blind eye to this disaster for both workers and the environment."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-02-20/turkey-massacre-of-mine-workers-in-erzincan

"The last decade was marked by an international wave of mass protests – according to some studies, the largest the world has ever seen. In some countries governments came tumbling down, in others repression put an end to any dissent, while elsewhere the movement simply petered out. But nowhere did the protesters get exactly what they wanted (difficult as that is to ascertain considering the sometimes contradictory demands being raised). The new book from the US journalist Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, attempts to examine why this was the case."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-02-22/the-mass-protest-decade-and-the-missing-revolution

"The slaughter underway in the Middle East is another episode in the new phase of armed confrontation between opposing imperialisms which began with the war in Ukraine. On the one hand stands NATO-USA-Europe, on the other Russia-China-Iran. This is true in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and in other theatres of war. All evidence that conflict between the big imperialist powers, the race towards the catastrophe of a generalised war, is accelerating."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-02-29/yes-fight-and-strike-against-war-but-against-all-capitalist-factions

"In his first volume of Capital, Karl Marx wrote that capitalism “comes into the world dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and gore”. Child labour, slavery and slums, this all enabled the owners of capital to bring in unheard of profits. On a more recent, national scale, the same process could be said to have introduced the latest phase of British capitalist history, with which we are currently contending. This more recent bloody episode came in the shape of the 1984-85 miners’ strike, the violent suppression of which allowed British capitalism to turn the screw on the working class with the predictable results we see accumulating day by day in terms of deprivation, inequality, political oppression and incremented exploitation all for the sake of prolonging the life of an unsustainable economic order which has nothing bar worse to offer the vast majority, either in the UK or globally."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-03-12/forty-years-since-the-outbreak-of-the-uk-miners-strike-a-defining-moment-in-the

"Between the months of January and March 2024, CWO comrades held three public meetings (in Manchester, London and Birmingham) and gave presentations at two other events (an NWBCW Liverpool public meeting and the Sheffield Radical Bookfair). In recognition of the seriousness of the world situation, the topic of discussion at each of these meetings was centred around the drive to war, the meaning of internationalism, and the tasks of revolutionaries."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-03-18/cwo-public-meetings-on-internationalism-a-balance-sheet

"In the current historical phase, world capitalism is demonstrating its decadence as a productive and social form, which can be seen in its ever greater difficulty in valorising capital for productive investment due to the tendential fall in the rate of profit. Speculation seems to be the simplest, but also the least effective, escape route because it ends up re-emphasising the very causes that provoked it. The bursting of financial bubbles add to the crises of the economic system that created them, further depressing its productive base; as well as increasing imperialist tensions in geometric progression. Given these circumstances, talking about the self-determination of peoples, of wars of national liberation, of the independence of peoples is simply a historical oxymoron. An oxymoron which fully includes the nationalist claims of Hamas, and the idea that the Houthi dynasty has political and economic autonomy. In their different ways they are both swallowed up within imperialist scenarios as useful supporting actors, as tools to be used in proxy wars, if not as victims destined for massacre through the ravenous strategies of imperialism itself."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-03-27/the-houthi-dynasty-like-hamas-is-in-the-hands-of-imperialism

"The various faces of leftism and even sections of anarchism urge us to support one side or the other in the name of “anti-imperialism” or the “lesser evil.” But the Gaza war, the Ukraine war, and all the others, are inter-imperialist wars; there is no anti-imperialist side in these wars. What these wars represent are steps towards a global war where the major imperialist powers will mobilise workers to fight it out. The only real anti-imperialist struggle is the fight against capitalism itself, and the only way to oppose imperialist wars is on the basis of class struggle."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-04-03/workers-have-no-country-fight-war-with-class-unity-and-class-struggle

"The political impact of all this on the working class is negligible. Even if there are more changes in the coming years, they will be no more than a changing of the guard amongst different sections of the bourgeoisie. Both the people who
are looking for solutions in AKP alternatives and secular people who are voting CHP agree that the current economic crisis is unacceptable, but both poles are mistaken in seeing a single political party or leader as responsible for it and in their method of reacting to it. What needs to be done is to spread the awareness that these crises are inherent to capitalism and cannot be solved under this system, no matter what colour the electoral maps are painted."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-04-06/local-elections-in-turkey-no-change-for-the-working-class

"The Leicester strike has gone down in labour history as the forerunner of the two year Grunwick struggle of “strikers in saris”: a step forward in race relations, equal pay and for more enlightened trade unionism. For those of us who want to see an end to capitalist exploitation and a world of truly emancipated human beings, there are different lessons to be learned."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-04-25/looking-back-at-class-war-in-the-1970s-fifty-years-since-the-strike-at-imperial