2024 will mark the centenary of the death of one of history's greatest revolutionaries: Lenin. Communists do not honour such great figures through pilgrimages or ceremonies; we think the best way to honour a great revolutionary is to study and learn their ideas.

As the year comes to a close, the complete failure of the much-hyped Ukrainian counter-offensive has opened a chorus of mutual recriminations within Ukraine and between Kyiv and its imperialist puppet masters. Funding for the proxy war against Russia is drying up in Washington, Brussels and Berlin, and so western imperialism is now pushing Zelensky into a course of action which he is resisting as it spells his political (and perhaps physical) death: peace talks with Putin.

Builders, painters, dockers, factory workers, electricians, postal workers: all are now acting together to win collective agreements for the workers at Tesla, in a battle that has become a decisive showdown. In Denmark, Norway and Finland, dock and truck workers have announced that they will join the fight. 

Boris Kagarlitsky, one of the most prominent left-wing sociologists in Russia, was released on 12 December after four-and-a-half months in jail. He was fined 600,000 rubles (around 6,000 euro) and faces restricted internet access for two years, avoiding further time in prison. A global campaign for his release, in which IMT comrades were prominently involved, was a factor in this victory.

The pro-Palestine movement is being attacked through the curtailment of basic democratic rights. Meetings have been shut down. In some countries, demonstrations have been banned. And pro-Palestinian voices have been censored.

In recent decades, there has rarely been a printed Marxist paper in Hungary. This is why it is a tremendous achievement that supporters of the IMT could present the first issue of their newspaper, Fáklya, in early November, to a packed room in Budapest.

Today is the centenary anniversary of the death of John Maclean, a dedicated Marxist and class fighter, famous for playing a leading role in militant workers’ movements such as Red Clydeside in Glasgow. We pay tribute to his revolutionary legacy.

Mechanics at Tesla's 10 workshops in Sweden have been on strike since 27 October: the first of its kind at the EV giant. The action was taken after the Swedish industrial union IF Metall told its members to down tools in response to the electric car giant refusing to sign a collective bargaining agreement in a move derided by CEO (and world’s richest man) Elon Musk as “insane”. 

On 25 and 26 November, 188 young communists met in Berlin to discuss the German Revolution of 1918-1923, in order to arm themselves for the struggle against capitalism today.

Next month, on 9 December, Britain's Trades Union Congress will meet for a special congress to decide its response to the government’s latest draconian anti-strike legislation. The trade union movement must mobilise to defy the Tories, and to smash the bosses’ laws.

On 22 November, Dutch and European capitalism were shaken by an earthquake, as the party of the far-right demagogue Geert Wilders came first in the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, with almost a quarter of the vote. What do communists make of this development?

Shocking scenes have rocked Dublin. Far-right goons – showing their true, putrid colours – have used the stabbing of five people outside a school, including three children, to blame migrants and whip up mob violence. These events must be a wake up call: the left and the labour movement have been caught napping. The gloves must come off in the fight against the far right.

As with the war in Ukraine, different communist parties around the world have taken different and even opposite positions regarding the current Israeli bloodbath in Gaza after the 7 October Hamas attack. The stance of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) is one of principled support for the struggle of the Palestinian people, far removed from other communist parties, which have succumbed to the pressure of bourgeois public opinion. However, there are several aspects of the KKE position on Palestine/Israel we disagree with, and which we think are at odds with a genuine communist position. 

Throughout the self-proclaimed ‘civilised’ western world, the ruling classes have banded together to denounce Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October and have rallied around Israel’s ‘right of self-defence’ as it bombs Gaza to smithereens. But this is not the first time we have been told to accept a bloody war against an oppressed people in the name of the oppressor nation’s ‘self-defence’.

The question of how to combine the struggle for reforms under capitalism with the need to go further and fight for socialism has occupied a very important part of the debates and tasks of the world communist movement since its birth.