Featured

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in early July. Many of the details surrounding his assassination are still shrouded in mystery. While 27 suspects have been arrested and a total of 44 have been detained—including four police officers and 18 former Colombian soldiers—there remain many questions, including who organized the assassination and why.

Malaysia’s intensifying social and political crisis has reached a new height. Weeks of chaotic infighting within the ruling coalition, which have involved the monarch, led to the de facto collapse of Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s majority in parliament. While the ruling class is splitting at the top, the youth are protesting on the streets, doctors are striking, and across the board, the masses are expressing discontent against the regime.

For years, a toxic culture of rampant sexism has permeated Activision Blizzard, the video game development company behind titles including World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. This was blown open publicly on 20 July when California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging widespread sexism in the workplace, and calling the company “a breeding ground for harassment and discrimination.” The suit also alleges that women were paid less than men for the same roles, often forced into lower-rank positions, and were promoted less frequently than their male peers.

The 11 July Bulgarian parliamentary elections dislodged the right-wing GERB (“Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria”) party from power. Deep divisions in the ruling class now threaten to transform a crisis of the regime into one of the whole political system.

This document was approved by delegates at the 2021 World Congress of the International Marxist Tendency (full report here). It provides our general analysis of the main processes taking place in world politics, at a time marked by unprecedented crisis and turmoil. With dynamite in the foundations of the world economy and the COVID-19 pandemic still casting a shadow over the global situation, all roads lead to intensified class struggle.

Between 24 and 27 July, more than 2,800 Marxists from over 50 countries around the world gathered online for the World Congress of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). This congress had originally been scheduled to take place in 2020, but was cut across by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A decade after the 2010/11 revolution threw out the hated dictator Ben Ali, a wave of anti-government protest has rocked Tunisia. The government has been ousted in a palace coup, but there can be no faith in any bourgeois faction. The masses can trust only in their own strength. A new revolutionary upsurge by workers and youth is necessary to win a real future. 

Since 15 July, protests over a severe water shortage in Khuzestan province in Iran have developed into a powerful localised movement, which has now spread to all major cities of the province: Shush, Susangard, Izeh, Dezful, Kut Abdullah, Weiss, Mahshahr, Hamidiyeh, Chamran and several areas of Ahvaz. The regime has declared martial law but this has only had the effect of provoking protests in a further 16 provinces.

Socialist Appeal, the Marxist voice of Labour and youth, has been expelled from the British Labour Party, with the right wing saying they are ‘alien’ and ‘toxic’ to the party’s ‘aims and values’. But Marxism has a long history in the British labour movement, and the Labour Party. This article answers the lies, smears, and slanders.

One of the many slanders hurled at the Bolsheviks is that they were bloodthirsty intriguers who got their way through violent means. This is a criticism shared both by the hypocritical bourgeois, and elements on the left. These pacifists say that we need peace, love and understanding to counter the brutal repression of capitalism, not violent revolution. But will the ruling class ever really relinquish power without a fight? What is the real Marxist attitude to violence and pacifism? This lecture from our 2020 Marxist University explains. 

The shambolic, much-delayed Tokyo Olympics open tomorrow. The Games proceed without fans, and amidst general disapproval from Japanese workers and youth, who rightly fear the danger of spreading COVID-19, and are enraged at the cynical attempts by the bosses to force them to make up their shortfall from ticket sales.

The ebb of the Myanmar revolution has not led the military regime under General Min Aung Hliang to relent in its brutality against the people. The military is determined to drown the mass movement in blood, in part through weaponising the COVID-19 pandemic against the masses. This despicable cruelty will not be forgotten, and will only pave way for new struggles down the road. The following report was shared to us by a Burmese Marxist in order to illustrate the reality of the situation on the ground to the world.