2024 has been a year of war, revolution and crisis on every continent. From the horrors of the Gaza genocide, to the revolutionary summer in Kenya and Bangladesh; from viral assassinations, to to the re-election of Donald Trump. The communists have been offering analysis and perspective at every step of the way, and now: it’s time to put this dramatic twelve months in review with 2024 WRAPPED!

Over the last few weeks, the Turkish-backed offensive by Hayat-Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has managed to topple the Assad regime. In the western media this has been generally celebrated. One thing that has not been reported on, however, is the simultaneous Turkish advance into a part of the Kurdish Autonomous Area in North Eastern Syria (AANES), more commonly known as Rojava.

A growing layer of people, especially among the youth, are looking for radical answers to the crises that plague our lives. The founding conference of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RKP) in Germany is living proof of this. From 30 November to 1 December, 260 comrades and visitors from across Germany met to launch the RKP and discuss its perspectives and tasks. 

The name of Frantz Fanon is intimately associated with the anti-colonial struggle of the postwar period, and his major work, The Wretched of the Earth, is regularly cited as a handbook for anti-imperialist struggle around the world. In this article, Jorge Martín separates the real Fanon from his postcolonial interpreters, and explains both the strengths and the flaws of his ideas.

On the weekend of 30 November, 122 communists from 23 Swedish cities – and a delegation from Finland – gathered for ‘Communism & Revolution’, a weekend of Marxist education designed to arm revolutionaries with the ideas they need to build a party that can smash capitalism.

Once again, this week has been defined by sharp turns in world politics. In Syria, the Assad regime collapsed after a sudden offensive by Islamist groups, taking the whole world by surprise. In the US, the assassination of a US healthcare CEO was met with an enormous outpouring of sympathy for the killer, in a clear expression of the simmering class rage beneath the surface. In Ukraine, it is becoming increasingly clear that Zelensky – darling of the West – is becoming hated by the population.

The Revolutionary Communist Party has been founded. This party will smash all obstacles to become a leading force in the masses’ struggle against the rotten Pakistani regime and imperialism.

The collapse of the concrete canopy at the train station in Novi Sad on 1 November, in which 15 people were killed, was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many in Serbia. Among the victims, a large number of them young people and children, two are still in critical condition.

After evading authorities for five days, Brian Thompson’s alleged assassin was finally caught at a McDonald’s in Altoona, PA. Dubbed “The Adjuster” on social media, Luigi Mangione has been received as a modern-day folk hero. The following is an update and supplement to our original article, written before his capture.

We publish below the short, 262-word, hand-written manifesto which was allegedly in Luigi Mangione’s possession at the time of his arrest. We publish it in full here on account of the fact that the capitalist press has refused to do so, although they sparingly quote from it.

Protests have rocked the Georgian capital of Tbilisi for eight days straight, with angry crowds surrounding the parliament building, bearing Jersualem Cross and EU flags and hurling fireworks at police lines. The opposition at the head of the movement denies the legitimacy of the ‘pro-Russian’ Georgian Dream regime. Meanwhile, western politicians lavish praise on the protestors and threaten sanctions, seeing an opportunity to drag Georgia firmly under their sphere of influence – all (naturally) in the name of upholding ‘democracy’.

Wednesday morning, Americans woke up to the news that UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Brian Thompson, had been shot to death in a targeted attack outside a Manhattan hotel. The country’s capitalists and their representatives shed collective tears for the death of one of their own. One of the first to react was Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, Kamala Harris’s running-mate in the last election, who described Thompson’s death as “a terrible loss for the business and health care community.”

We are living through an epoch of war and revolution. In Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and countless other countries, wars and civil wars are raging, all with the backing and complicity of various imperialist powers. In these turbulent times, the ideas and methods of Lenin – who fought a relentless struggle against warmongering chauvinism during the First World War – provide the clarity that is so desperately needed in the world today.

This is a transcript of the introduction to a discussion on ‘Perspectives for France’ held at the Founding Congress of the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR) on 30 November and 1 December 2024.

The Syrian regime has collapsed. Bashar al-Assad has fled the country. His army has disarmed, and his government has capitulated. The prisons have been overrun, and thousands have been released. Meanwhile, thousands of Syrians have taken to the streets in celebration.