"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

"For the Iranian working class this massive bloodletting is a setback. It amounts to a huge loss of life, but caused by the interests of rival imperialisms. The class struggle has been undermined, and the end result has been large pro-regime demonstrations amounting to workers rallying to the nation and strengthening the barbaric capitalist Islamic regime. The few rays of light in this dark situation are the statements we have received from workers’ groups in the country."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-02-21/iranian-workers-raise-the-banner-of-class-war

"The quality of life for the worldwide working class is plummeting as the burden of the international crisis of capital is placed on our shoulders. This burden is felt all the more acutely by the people who are made to suffer for the crime of living in contested territory. US sanctions on Venezuela have contributed to a complete crash in living standards, with the average Venezuelan losing 11kg of body weight, reaching near-famine levels as even inputs for agriculture become scarce."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-02-23/venezuelans-suffer-under-the-scramble-for-oil

"Whatever vehicle the left in Britain uses for its electoral and reformist aims, it will have the same effect. They may call for solidarity with migrant workers, yet by funnelling popular anger into the parliamentary morass, they rob the working class of the ability to actively create solidarity with all workers through our own struggle. They call for wealth taxes yet don’t question the system that robs that wealth from workers in the first place. Worse yet, they take from us the very words to describe our situation and the means by which we may free ourselves, by describing “capitalism” as merely a few of the most obvious injustices of the system, and “socialism” as a few superficial tweaks to a fundamentally oppressive system."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-02-24/your-party-and-the-green-party-two-more-dead-ends

"Roy’s positions cannot be understood alone but only in context of the social movement across the world at that time. If anything, Roy’s life allows us to draw some important lessons for political activity in our own time."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-02-25/m-n-roy-and-the-national-question

"Increasingly, the anarchy of nations trying to scramble for advantage is risking full scale world war. There are plenty of limited wars going on – the civil wars in Sudan and Congo, the war in Ukraine, and many others – which constantly threaten to spill out of their regional limitations. The war in the Middle East is doing just that. After the attack on Israel by Hamas and other allied militant groups in Gaza on 7 October 2023, we warned that this risked a widening of the conflict. Since then Israel has attacked Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria; the US has attacked Iran; Iran has attacked Israel, Syria, the UAE, Saudi Arabia; and Yemen has attacked Israel. All these attacks increase the risk of widening and intensifying the conflict. This is the inevitable result of a capitalist system that has no solution to its own contradictions, which have been building since the end of the ‘post-war boom’, the period of reconstruction after the Second World War."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-03-05/middle-east-in-flames-next-step-toward-global-capitalist-war

"The drums of war are beating again, this time along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the impact is far beyond the mountains of the Durand Line. This is not a border issue; it is another tremor within the global crisis of capitalism and a step towards imperialist slaughter."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-03-07/no-side-to-choose-along-the-durand-line

"We publish here a translation from our comrades in Battaglia Comunista on the condition of the working class in Italy. Much of it will make for familiar reading to workers beyond Italy as well."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-03-17/wages-employment-and-the-out-of-tune-trumpets-of-the-bourgeoisie

We, as internationalists, consistently oppose taking sides in imperialist war. Instead, we advocate for working class struggle against war. Time and again, we are asked what this looks like on a practical level. (As though sacrificing oneself for a national flag is practical!). At our next public meeting in Manchester, we will talk about revolutionary defeatism – fighting the class war instead of national war. We will trace the history of working class resistance to both world wars and beyond, and discuss its importance to us today as war fever spreads.

"As a multitude of reactionary commentators now celebrate the "death of woke", it bears repeating that the communist critique of identity politics in its various forms (including the most successful identity of all, nationalism), comes from a very different place. It is not about driving a wedge further between workers of different identities – something which only benefits the ruling class of both the left and the right – but of finding a way to overcome such divisions through class unity."

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2026-03-23/the-american-ideology-intersectionality-against-the-working-class

With unprecedented strikes by the US, Israel and Iran spilling across the Persian Gulf and disrupting the international supply of oil and gas, we are closer than ever to a new global conflagration which is drawing in forces from across the world. The way to a new world war is already littered with the bodies of workers across the Middle East, Eastern Europe and beyond. How many more will be lost before the working class can reconstitute itself as a political force? Join us to discuss the roots of the current imperialist war in the capitalist system and most importantly what internationalist communists can do in response.