Blogs

Grenfell Tower – the smoke & the mirrors

There is an ever-growing stream of media commentary on the Grenfell fire, increasing daily as the public enquiry unfolds. There are some elements in the media with the goal of obscuring or excusing the plain facts as part of a pre-emptive defence manoeuvre to protect those most implicated in what caused the fire and the 72 deaths. That they feel the need to use such distortions to defend the Grenfell landlords and those who ordered and oversaw the Grenfell refurbishment that fitted the lethal cladding only increases the suggestion of a general doubt on all sides about their innocence.

Abolish ICE? Yea, but…

A critique of calls for the abolition of ICE that argues that in order to be effective the abolition of ICE must be paired with the struggle for the abolition of capitalism, states, and racism.

Dauvé versus Marx

Juvenile convicts at work in the fields, 1905.

In critiquing Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch Gilles Dauvé highlights limitations in his own conception of the creation of the proletariat internationally, and his understanding of Marx’s work on slavery. These limitations are not unique to Dauvé, but as someone libcom cites as an influence, especially due to his insistence on the proletariat as a negative rather than positive category, and who has been influential on the communisation tendency generally, we should expect better.

Bakkavor Factory Newsletter Issue no.4

The Bakkavor food factories in west London are a prime example of the tension between structural oppression of each individual worker - most of them migrant women workers - and a collective potential of working class power. It ain't always easy, but we continue to work within that tension.

Italy: The “Government of Change” is Still Anti-Working Class

In Naples, in early June, a Malian man was shot by three youths in a drive by shooting. As they fired they chanted “Salvini, Salvini”. Matteo Salvini leader of the League (formerly the Northern League) only got 17% of the vote in Italy’s election but in the new “government of change” in coalition with the Five Star Movement has become Minister of the Interior. This is an ideal role for him to play his racist card.

叙利亚与国际左翼:《雅各宾》对亚瑟尔·穆尼夫的访谈

目前为止,这个访谈录大概是最有助于我们理解叙利亚草根革命如何变成有国外势力参与的内战的一个中文资料,包括:阿萨德政权的性质、叙利亚活跃的各类反对派组织的复杂局面、地区和全球势力在当地的利益诉求、以及对左翼“反帝国主义”认识框架的反思。

Welcome to Intransigence

Intransigence is an online journal which is a joint undertaking between a few groups (Workers' Offensive, Gulf Coast Communist Fraction, Internationalist Workers Group, and Klasbatalo Collective) and individuals in North America. It is subtitled “Publication of the Internationalists in North America”. Its self-proclaimed goal is “to aid in the regrouping effort that is currently underway, serving as both a medium for internal discussion and a means of publicizing these views.”

Putting it all on Red - The Michael Laski Story

A tale of gambling, violence and betrayal in 60s America. Starring a romantic rebel hounded by his inner demons.

Brexit – Ruling Class Strategic Chaos Unleashes Parliamentary Pantomime

The latest ministerial resignations of David Davies, Minister for Brexit, and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson only underline the complete confusion at the heart of the government and the British ruling class in general. We have catalogued both this comedy of errors and what is causing it in previous articles on the Brexit decision.

Response: A digital capitalism Marx might enjoy

This is a response to an article originally posted on the MIT Technology review . The article claims that the nature of capital has changed so much from the newly industrialized economies Marx knew that there is a fundamental change in capitalism Marx could agree with. They take this position in favor of labor, but we will see just how good their analysis and proposal for the position of the laborer in future society is.

Intro to communism through the camping trip

This was written a while back and is meant to be a simple intro for those new to communism. This intro is made to help assist newcomers to some of the simple misunderstandings surrounding communism.

Welcome to “Emancipación” (Spain)

We welcome the formation in Spain of a new nucleus of the future world party of the proletariat, one of the many fruits of the work of the Nuevo Curso blog collective from which they have sprung. We see them as a new, young and vital expression of the development of a movement based on the historic acquisitions of the class and look forward to working and exchanging with them as they develop. We reproduce here the translation of their initial founding announcement, as well as the introduction to it by Nuevo Curso. -Internationalist Communist Tendency

AMLO or the "anti-imperialism" of the Mexican bourgeoisie

We have translated the following article on the Mexican election from the Spanish blog Nuevo Curso. We share its estimate that the new government will be as anti-working class as all previous Mexican governments despite the rhetoric of the new President, López Obrador. We also agree that his appeal to the Mexican ruling class lies in his aim to eradicate graft and end the impunity of the corrupt in the system.

Living The Dream with The Maritime Defence Committee during the 1998 Wharf Dispute

It's been 20 years since the MUA dispute. What went on and what lessons are there for class struggle today.
This is the latest episode of Living The Dream hosted by The Word From Struggle Street

A serious public transport strike in the Netherlands

Stop work pressure - less work pressure, less people sick

There is some serious strike action going on in the Netherlands in regional public transport. This is like a breath of fresh air in a country where the Right is on the rampage and workers' struggles have been quite subdued for much too long.

State Socialist Anti-Communism

Something of a reply to the essay by Michael Parenti, "Left Anti-Communism: The Unkindest Cut" and a retort to the tenancy of modern Stalinists to attack their left opponents by calling them "anti-communist". This article argues that state socialism as a project and ideology was/is effectively anti-communist.

RWU Convention solidarity workshop report-back

China to US class composition & schematic of supply chain

On April 5-6, 2018 Railroad Workers United held their biennial convention, just prior and in coordination with the Labor Notes Conference, in Chicago. Supply Chain Study/Research Group facilitated a workshop entitled "Struggles Along Supply Chains: Rail & Cross-Sectoral Solidarity" that modeled possible solidarity actions during a hypothetical strike at an Amazon warehouse. Warehouse worker organizers from SI Cobas in Italy, Angry Workers of the World in the U.K., and Workers Initiative from Poland participated, along with Chicago warehouse workers, Seattle Amazon tech workers, longshore workers from the Pacific Northwest, and a room full of rank-and-file railroaders.

Living The Dream in the time of #metoo Part 2

Why isn't consent a solution to gendered and sexual violence? What can we make of the legacy of 70s feminism? How does feminism force us to rethink power and politics? All this and more in Part 2 of our 2-part Living The Dream #metoo special from The Word From Struggle Street .

Palestinian Workers Continue to Die for a Capitalist State

They no longer hit the headlines but the Palestinian “Great Return Marches” along the Gaza border with Israel continue. Since March 22 the world has been witnessing yet more horrific scenes in the long conflict between the Israeli state and the dispossessed Palestinians on whose land that state was built. By June 2 the continual shooting of Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza by an Israeli Defence Force (IDF), safely bunkered inside its own border, had produced 124 dead and at least 13,000 wounded. In all that time only one Israeli soldier has been injured.

On the Future International

The following article was originally published as draft for discussion by the CWO in Revolutionary Perspectives 11. After further discussions and revisions the version published here has now been adopted by the Internationalist Communist Tendency (ICT) as a whole. As originally stated it is intended to be part of a longer document or pamphlet of the ICT.