"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

"As global tensions mount, the working class is paying the price at home. Last year the highest number of firms in 30 years went bust. Others are scaling back or shifting production elsewhere. From universities to high street names like Wilko, to major local employers like Port Talbot steelworks, thousands have lost jobs. Meanwhile, as the national minimum wage reaches its 25th birthday and trails behind inflation, dependence on benefits and food banks is soaring among employed and unemployed workers alike."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-04-27/the-problem-is-the-system-not-who-runs-it

"Another May Day in the midst of bombs and massacres. Another May Day, when the threat of a new global carnage becomes ever more real. A carnage that eclipses even the darkest dystopian nightmare and threatens survival on planet Earth. From the Ukraine to the Middle East and the Red Sea, from the Congo to Sudan... Everywhere, armed conflicts are on the rise and with them the suffering of the people. This escalation of violence is by no means simply due to the ill will of individual politicians or states, as pacifists on all sides claim; it is the logical consequence of a crisis-ridden capitalist system that is forcing "our" rulers into militaristic attack mode."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-04-30/may-day-2024-down-with-nationalism-and-war-workers-have-no-country

"After such a long period of retreat workers have to reacquire the confidence to struggle, not only against wage cuts, unemployment and austerity but now against the greater danger which capitalism poses to us all. It cannot be under-estimated that building class unity is the most important task facing revolutionaries. We thus welcome the Prague Week of Action and all other serious attempts to bring genuine internationalists together to fight the growing drive of the world capitalist system towards barbarism. These conferences and initiatives could be a first step, provided that we all recognise the extreme danger of the situation and as a consequence concentrate on what unites us rather than what has divided us."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-05-01/to-the-internationalists-attending-the-prague-week-of-action

"There is no shortage of organisations already declaring themselves to be the Party or a new International. A document claiming to be the manifesto of such a body needs to provide workers with the tools to navigate the challenges ahead. The IMT’s manifesto, while couched in revolutionary rhetoric and aesthetics, smuggles in all the Trotskyist baggage of its past. In light of this, their claim to have “broken radically with reformism and cowardly ‘left’ opportunism” is revealed to be nothing more than an empty phrase to bolster recruitment. Sooner or later, the same old cracks are bound to emerge."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-05-03/revolutionary-communist-party-out-with-the-old-in-with-the-old

"The collapse of living standards felt more or less acutely by the working class across the globe is being met by the only solution the state can rely on, concentrating more and more misery on a growing surplus population while grinding down the remaining ‘productive’ sections of our class. Shifting demographics and nativist anxieties may obscure this fact, but the working class in all countries is being bled by the same common oppressor and only our united action can fight back against it."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-05-10/rwanda-plan-capitalism-offers-no-asylum

"The letter unsurprisingly does not contain any groundbreaking new information, but illustrates Marx’s thoughts, which we analyse below, on world revolution and the necessity for workers to organise themselves as a party prior to said revolution. The first thing that leaps from the letter is Marx’s conception of revolution as an international affair, in contrast to, in the words of Rosa Luxemburg, the “domestic affair” Karl Kautsky and his epigones would reduce it to. After all, it had always been clear to Marx and Engels that communist revolution could not take place in one country alone."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-05-28/marx-s-newly-unearthed-letter-reaffirms-the-necessity-of-internationalism-and

"In preparation for a public debate they are organising, the Péntek esti kísértetjárás collective in Hungary has sent us a set of question about revolutionary defeatism. We share our answers here, as they are a concise elaboration of our perspectives for today."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-06-13/revolutionary-defeatism-today-some-questions-answered

"It’s election fever! Following on from South Africa, India, and the EU, this year will also see the parliamentary pantomime play out in France, Iran, the UK and the USA. With the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and a refugee crisis in the background, it is issues of “national security” which will dominate the headlines. The “choice” is, as always, which capitalist party is best suited to represent the capitalist interests of “our” capitalist state."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-06-21/voting-changes-nothing-not-voting-is-not-enough-for-the-resumption-of-the-class

"The French government’s rout at the last elections has brought the political impasse of the bourgeoisie to light. Since the announcement of the dissolution of the National Assembly, electoral manoeuvring is in full swing. Macron sings once more the praises of “the Republic’s values”, which can barely hide the system’s sinister reality: social regression across the board, rise of nationalism and anti-immigrant laws, and finally march to war and militarisation of society. The far-right is already largely surpassed by the parties that govern us! On the left, the ghost of the 1936 Popular Front is deployed to offer an alternative in defence of “democracy”."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-06-23/popular-front-in-france-a-deception-in-1936-a-deception-in-2024

"Strikes among nurses and in the health sector in general are unusual in Sweden and the dispute has received a lot of public attention and support, perhaps because it was fuelled by the slogan "save healthcare" – the conditions of those working in the health sector will ultimately be the conditions of all those in need of care. However, when an agreement was finally reached and the strike was called off on Friday 28 June, the results were meagre."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-07-07/the-healthcare-strike-in-sweden-unions-never-fight-for-real

"The New Popular Front, a coalition of centre-left and left-wing parties, has won the largest number of seats in the French National Assembly. But, as this article published by our comrades in France in the run up to the election shows, there is nothing to celebrate."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-07-08/france-at-the-elections-capitalism-always-wins

Imperialist proxy wars are raging in Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere. Behind these wars stand the major imperialist powers who threaten to extend the conflicts into a global confrontation – a new world war. The capitalist class worldwide are screaming ever louder for nationalism and demanding sacrifices. The truth is that the atrocities we see today are the true face of capitalism. They are a preview of what is to come if capitalism is not overthrown. What stance should workers and revolutionaries take on these wars and the drift towards global war? Come to a public meeting to discuss these issues.

"It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our comrade Olivier, which took place on July 3rd. Only mortal illness was able to crush the generosity, passion and tenacity of a true revolutionary militant, who for more than fifty years fought to radically change this world, the inhuman world of the bourgeoisie, a world which has long outlived its usefulness."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-07-17/in-memory-of-olivier

"The war in Ukraine has commenced a new stage in the worldwide drive to war, in which the ongoing slaughter in Gaza is another escalation. In times like these, it is helpful to look to the past, to see how it can inform our perspectives today. We have previously written about the 1943 uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto and the activities of Polish socialists unsuccessfully trying to chart an independent political course under the occupation. 1 August marks the 80th anniversary of yet another historical juncture – the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. This tragic episode, which now forms a key element in Polish nationalist mythology, provides an insight into our understanding of the difference between national uprisings and revolutionary class struggle."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-08-01/warsaw-1944-a-lesson-from-history

"As the Secretary General of the United Nations said in February, the world is now entering “an age of chaos” where war means “a dangerous and unpredictable free-for-all with total impunity”. He even went so far as to say that unlike during the Cold War, when “well-established mechanisms helped manage superpower relations”, those mechanisms are missing “in today’s multipolar world”. His observations are incontestable but his solution, of course, was simply to suggest making the UN more effective, ignoring the fact that far from being a body for peace it has always been just another forum for acting out inter-imperialist rivalry. To understand the current drift to a more generalised war we have to look elsewhere."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-08-10/an-age-of-chaos-or-of-deepening-capitalist-crisis