It’s been an amazing start to the new academic year for the MSF, with thousands signing up to Marxist societies across the country, participating in meetings and reading groups, and organising on campus. Join the Marxists! Join the revolution!

The Tory government is on a collision course with the European Union over the question of trade and the North of Ireland. The capitalists on both sides are losing control of the situation. An explosive cocktail is being prepared.

Last weekend, Italy saw one of the biggest demonstrations in the last 20 years as more than 200,000 people rallied for a massive anti-fascist protest in Rome. This was a colossal response to an attack against the national headquarters of the CGIL trade union a week earlier by the neo-fascist organisation Forza Nuova. The sheer scale of this demonstration shows the real strength of the working class. Only class struggle can defeat fascism.

55 years ago today, the Welsh village of Aberfan was hit by an avalanche of mining waste, killing 144 people, of which 116 were children. This did not need to happen. As with the Grenfell fire in 2017, warnings by local residents were repeatedly ignored by local officials and state bureaucrats. As we have seen time and time again, the capitalist system has a callous disregard for human life.

In a referendum on 26 September, a million people in Berlin voted for the expropriation of the major landlords. In the so-called “Deutsche Wohnen & co enteigen” (DWE) referendum (which in English translates as “Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen and co.”), 56 percent of voters voted to expropriate 240,000 apartments owned by the biggest profiteering landlords, including Deutsche Wohnen, with 39 percent voting against. This is the biggest breakthrough in the class struggle in Germany for decades. It gives a flavour of the militant mood building among workers and youth.

On 20 October, over 80,000 members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) answered the leadership’s call to take to the streets across 14 regions of South Korea. A further 50,000 workers also walked off their jobs at 2pm.

The Turkish working class is beginning to move as a series of strikes and protests spread across the country. Factory workers; textile workers; construction workers; health workers; postal workers; service workers; miners; airline workers; press workers; municipality workers; and more have begun fighting back against union busting, unfair contracts, layoffs, dismissals, and unpaid wages.

Politicians and journalists have responded to the killing of Tory MP David Amess by calling for ‘civility in politics’. But this is pure hypocrisy, coming from the same people who have whipped up hatred for years. The real divide is a class divide.

The USA has been hit by a ‘Striketober’ of industrial action across a range of sectors: from healthcare to construction; carpentry to coal mining; media to communications; snack foods and cereal manufacturing. In all, 100,000 workers voted to authorise strike action this month.

On Friday 28 May, forty thousand people gathered on Prešeren Square in Ljubljana to protest against the reactionary policies of Janez Janša. In a way, the protest is a culmination of social movements that began even before Janša’s round of austerity measures in Slovenia. Trade unions; civic, student and academic organisations; as well as the Levica (Left) party, took part in the protests.

Squid Game is the latest production from South Korea that brilliantly exposes the brutal reality of capitalism – that of extreme competition. As the series tops the Netflix charts worldwide, Korean workers are preparing for a general strike.

Across the world, businesses are facing a severe shortfall of workers, leading to a standstill in production and a breakdown in supply chains. The capitalist market means anarchy and crisis. Only socialist planning can offer a way forward.

The International Marxist Tendency proudly presents the Winter 2021 issue of the In Defence of Marxism theoretical journal! This latest edition is themed around the topic of historical materialism. We publish below the editorial by Alan Woods.

The decision of the Metropolitan Police in Britain to take no action over allegations raised in the US courts that Prince Andrew was involved in the abuse of a minor, will come as a surprise to absolutely no-one.

On 7 September 2021, the self-proclaimed Interim National Unity Government (INUG) declared a state of emergency and declared a civil war against the military junta. It is not difficult to declare war online by announcing a state of emergency. It is even easier for those who are safely in exile in the United States. If you have a good internet connection, you can declare war at the stroke of a keyboard.