"When Onorato Damen rose to speak in the Italian Chamber of Deputies in March 1925, parliamentary democracy, such as it existed in the Kingdom of Italy, was in its dying days. Three years earlier, Benito Mussolini had been installed as Prime Minister by King Victor Emmanuel after the “March on Rome”, despite the Fascists having only 35 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. This was a reward for Fascist violence against striking workers, and offices and members of workers' organisations, which was being unleashed on the streets of Italy since the Biennio Rosso (the Two Red Years, 1919-20)."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2025-10-07/parliamentary-democracy-and-fascism-the-two-faces-of-the-bourgeoisie-two

"No one can have missed the wave of conservative populism, narrow minded nationalism and outright racism that is sweeping across large parts of the world. Even though it hits us very differently, it affects us all – and it is therefore a crucial aspect to address for our class."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2025-10-26/racism-divides-class-struggle-unites

"In this system whose inexorable need to accumulate profit generates increasingly brutal tyranny and wars without end, the only hope for any way out of the hell humanity has created for itself remains with the working class: the class whose labour produces the goods and provides the services from which all profit is produced and through which the system is reproduced. The class who across all nations of the world are sent to kill and be killed by one another in defence of the profits of our exploiters; yet who have no inherent quarrel with one another."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2025-11-10/nationalism-war-repression-austerity-symptoms-of-capitalist-crisis

"The far-right – backed by investment bankers, property moguls and hedge fund tycoons – hopes to capitalise on people’s misplaced anger. Blaming the failures of capitalism on ‘the other’ is a very old tactic of the ruling class. As long as workers are divided against each other we will not unite to defend our interests as a class. A divided working class can also be more easily dragooned into accepting war, and the austerity that pays for war. In fact, the drive to war is what underpins the current rise in nationalism."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2025-11-12/nationalism-a-weapon-of-the-ruling-class

"In the mainstream press, some of these have been dubbed ‘Gen Z protests’. In fact, these are revolts that cannot be limited to generational or national boundaries. From one side of the world to the other, they all have similar complaints: high unemployment and no job security; corruption and inequality; low pay and high prices; cuts and underfunding of social services (especially healthcare and education), and the needless deaths they cause."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2025-11-14/the-working-class-is-still-fighting-but-what-world-are-we-fighting-for

Attacks on wages, working conditions and public spending are an inevitable response by capitalists to their profit crisis. According to most on the left, joining a trade union is an imperative for socialists: the workers’ only hope of resistance. And yet, while austerity is in full-blown force, trade unions prevaricate and stall over their only useful tool – strike action. Everything within their power is done to minimise disruption to business or the country at large. Is the problem just bad leadership or should we be thinking outside the trade union framework? We will discuss these ideas and more at our public meeting in Manchester.

"The political crisis of German capitalism continues to set the agenda and cause tensions and conflicts within the ruling class. We have already outlined in previous reports the three essential components of the strategic and economic defense of German imperialism: (1) The loss of affordable energy sources as a result of the war in Ukraine; (2) The need to align with American imperialism following the Russian invasion and to set aside ambitions of European leadership; (3) The structural crisis of German industry, which has lost markets in China and fallen behind in global competition. In addition, US tariffs are weakening German exports."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2025-12-22/report-from-germany

In 2025 we published 77 articles on the English section of our website. Here’s a rundown of the 5 most read ones.

1. May Day 2025: Against Capitalist Crisis, Against Imperialist War! No War but the Class War!
2. Rare Earth Magnets are Pulling the World Apart
3. Understanding Marxism, Capitalism and Socialism: A Review Article
4. "A Majestic Prologue" - The Russian Revolution of 1905 (Part I)
5. Parliamentary Democracy and Fascism: The Two Faces of the Bourgeoisie (Two Speeches by Onorato Damen from 1925)

"The US government’s actions against Venezuela in recent days – massive airstrikes killing at least 40 people, and the apparent abduction of President Maduro by US special forces for a show trial in New York – are a huge escalation of tension in the region and another indication of the drive to generalised war across the world that has been evident for several years now."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-01-06/us-attack-on-venezuela-some-initial-thoughts

"2025 left us with the bitter aftertaste of "ceasefires" and "peace deals" which did nothing to resolve the underlying causes of ongoing conflicts (or indeed even to stop the killing), rumblings of a trillion-dollar AI bubble which could trigger another financial crash, and yet more climate conferences which failed to agree on any real course of action to stave off the collapse of the ecosystem (leaving COP's own president to declare that bypassing official negotiations is now a necessity). Then of course there was the wave of mass protests which, while they demonstrated the deep anger and utter desperation felt by millions around the world, were, at best, only able to replace one corrupt leader with another. Everywhere we look, we are seeing military preparations, persecution of the "other", and attacks on wages and conditions of workers. But there is no such thing as an absolutely hopeless situation. And in order to understand how humanity can get out of the current impasse, we also need to understand how we got here."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-01-09/a-critical-juncture-for-humanity

"The spark of the recent protests in Iran emerged from Tehran’s bazaar. The removal of the preferential exchange rate by the government of President Mahmoud Pezeshkian—which triggered a sudden surge in currency prices—appears to have cut off or seriously threatened the rent-based incomes of sections of the currency mafia and oligarchic layers. This was likely the principal driving force behind the mobilization of bazaar merchants. At the same time, this development ignited broader mass protests, unleashing a new wave of street confrontations that has continued to expand, once again bringing long-standing grievances among the impoverished layers of society to the surface."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-01-11/dispatches-from-the-uprising-in-iran

"The Tesla strike recently passed its two-year anniversary, and the attention and PR war have entered a new phase. The conflict has been described as decisive and is the longest in Sweden in a century. It pits a powerful company owned by one of the world's richest men, Elon Musk, against a Swedish trade union fighting for what it considers to be the most fundamental thing: a collective agreement."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-01-12/tesla-strike-in-sweden-only-through-united-struggle-can-we-fight-the-attacks

"The abduction of Maduro was only the logical outcome of the abandonment of the so-called “rules-based order” that the US once (hypocritically) claimed gave it moral, as well as political, leadership of the “free world”. Yet this is about more than just the overthrow of one dictator. It is yet another front in the struggle between the US and its new imperialist challenger, China."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-01-17/beyond-venezuela-the-road-toward-generalised-war

"When people rise against poverty, repression, and humiliation, they are right to do so. But what must be met with absolute scepticism—and fought relentlessly—are the ready-made narratives that are imposed on these uprisings by the left and right wings of capital. These narratives are not neutral explanations: they are weapons. They are designed either to smother revolt at birth or to divert it into channels that serve ruling-class objectives."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-01-24/iran-workers-face-enemies-on-all-sides

"CWO militants, alongside other internationalists, have had a constant presence at the UoL picket line. These two speeches were made by a CWO militant and student on 22 January, the first day of strike action in 2026, and provide an example of our intervention in favour of self-organisation, class unity, and the revolutionary perspective."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-01-25/two-speeches-from-the-university-of-leicester-picket-line

"The progressive impoverishment of the working class and of segments of the petty bourgeoisie, the advancing degradation that undermines the most basic relationships of coexistence in large urban spaces — a consequence of the commodification of every aspect of life — the diseases, even fatal ones, caused by the devastation of the ecosystem, climate change, wars, even nuclear apocalypse: this is what capital has in store for us, the only “solution” to its insoluble contradictions. The picture is extremely dramatic, but an alternative does exist, and it is in the hands of the class on whose exploitation this social system is based, a system which can no longer offer anything progressive to humanity, but only more suffering and destruction."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-01-26/on-the-brewing-imperialist-war

"We welcome the formation of Class War, the nucleus of a new group in South Asia. These comrades have initially come together through the work of NWBCW South Asia, but increasingly felt the need for a permanent political organisation as their natural next step. Planting the seeds for a future revival of the class is by no means an easy task, but we hope to travel along this road together. Meanwhile, NWBCW South Asia will continue to operate as a joint initiative with other internationalists in the region."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-01-30/welcome-to-class-war

"While various reactionary and imperialist forces continue to exploit the situation, the latest protests in Iran have been drowned in blood. Current estimates of the death toll vary from at least 3,000 to over 30,000. Tens of thousands more have been injured or arrested. We are yet to find out the real scale of the violence. Now, as the Internet blockade eases up, more stories emerge from workers’ organisations in Iran about the bloody repression unleashed by the regime. Here we publish just some of them in English."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-01-31/workers-testimonies-of-the-bloody-repression-in-iran

"Despite our political differences, the fact that some anarchists are still attempting to excavate an internationalist tendency within their tradition is a positive development. Although the book would have benefited from a deeper framework for contextualising the current drive to war, we nevertheless hope it will spark a wider discussion among anarchists, particularly in the face of current attempts to revive the splintered anarchist scene in the UK."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-02-01/review-of-their-wars-our-dead-anarchist-reflections-on-anti-militarism

"Wherever any protest, any movement, or any struggle takes on a character of confrontation with the rule of capital, it is first met with deafening propaganda from the guardians and supporters of capital, who fuel intellectual confusion by presenting shallow and false narratives. If the movement continues, it then faces the iron fist of both “authoritarian” and “democratic” regimes alike."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-02-11/in-iran-and-elsewhere-intensifying-the-class-struggle-is-the-only-way-out

Our new book, "The Economic Foundations of Capitalism's Rise and Decline", is out now!

The book can be ordered by emailing us at uk@leftcom.org and asking for our banking details, or by donating the cost of the publications required via Paypal using the “Donate” button. For more info, see: https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-02-10/the-economic-foundations-of-capitalism-s-rise-and-decline