Across the United States over 60 universities and colleges have seen students and faculty organising encampments in a growing movement against the massacre in Gaza. A whole generation is being politicised and drawing conclusions about the nature of imperialism, the role of the police and the state and the need for collective action.

Fifty years ago today, the Portuguese Revolution began when a section of the military moved against the dictatorship, unleashing a powerful workers’ movement. This article draws out the lessons from this inspiring, but also tragic episode in history.

Lenin’s position on the national question was a key element in the Bolsheviks’ success in the Russian Revolution. His article The Right of Nations to Self Determination, published in April-June 1914 as a polemic against Rosa Luxemburg and others, is one of his most outstanding works on the subject.

From 12 to 14 April, Marina di Massa was flooded with the revolutionary enthusiasm of hundreds of militant communists, gathered for the National Congress of Sinistra Classe Rivoluzione (SCR), the Italian section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). This congress marked a historic turning point in the struggle for communism in Italy. During the discussion, the comrades of SCR decided to launch a campaign to build a Revolutionary Communist Party in Italy, which will officially be founded in the autumn and will form an integral part of the Revolutionary Communist International.

Protests against Israel’s American-backed genocidal onslaught in Gaza are escalating on campuses across the country. On April 17, students at Columbia University in New York City set up the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” demanding the university divest from Israel and companies that profit off the slaughter. The protest coincided with Columbia President Minouche Shafik’s appearance at a Congressional hearing aimed at slandering the Palestine solidarity movement as antisemitic.

A new Revolutionary Communist International (RCI) will launch in June. In the run-up, we need YOU to go out and paint every street, in every neighbourhood, in every nation RED. Read on for all the tools you need to announce the coming of the RCI in your area, workplace, school or college; to win new comrades to our ranks; and to strike fear into the hearts of the bourgeois politicians, bankers and bosses. Help us spread the word: The Communists Are Coming! (#CommunistsAreComing)

On Thursday 18 April, 28 workers were fired in retaliation for their occupation of offices in California and New York in protest against Google’s assistance to the Israeli military through ‘Project Nimbus’. The draconian action of the Google bosses against these brave workers shows their determination to stamp out this example. They know that without the permission of the working class, the imperialists’ war machine would grind to a halt.

Today we are proud to republish a very important article by Alan Woods, which we ask our readers to carefully consider. Through marxist.com, In Defence of Marxism magazine, and our publishing house Wellred Books, the IMT has conducted an all-round struggle for Marxist theory. But in doing so, we have addressed not only questions that are obviously connected to the workers’ struggle, but also others (apparently) far removed from it, from cosmology to culture to the class struggle in Roman antiquity. Some so-called ‘Marxists’ have mocked this approach, but as Alan Woods explains, their mockery is sorely misplaced.

On 11 April, La Directa, a left-wing Catalan media outlet, published an interview with journalist Jesús Rodríguez in which he explained that he had gone into exile because of the judicial persecution he is suffering in the hands of the corrupt Spanish regime. His crime? Conducting journalism in a professional manner. On behalf of the Revolutionary Communist Organisation, we express our total rejection of this spurious prosecution and our complete solidarity with comrade Jesús Rodríguez and the other people who have also decided to go into exile.

A new Nakba is not only a dream of the Israeli far right, but would also be a profitable opportunity for the ‘free market’. Several western companies are speculating in the occupied Palestinian territories, and the banks have promoted this with more than $300 billion in investments and shares already tied up in the territories.

As part of the British section of the International Marxist Tendency's series on the historic crimes of Stalinism, and in defence of the genuine ideas of communism, Rob Sewell examines the disastrous ‘Popular Front’ policy in the 1930s, which consigned the revolutionary working class to defeat.

This week in our Lenin in a Year series, we republish a short but punchy article by Lenin, originally written in 1913 for the Bolshevik paper Prosveshcheniye (Enlightenment). In it, Lenin traces the unbroken thread that places Marxism as the successor and synthesis of the most progressive and revolutionary ideas that came before it.

“Blinken was so impatient that he almost snatched the binder out of Kristersson's hands”, is how Swedish bourgeois newspaper Aftonbladet reported on the Prime Minister of Sweden handing over the final NATO signatures to the US Secretary of State. Along with the new Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA), the war hawks in Washington have got all they could ever have hoped for – and more.

Glauber Braga, a left-wing member of the Brazilian parliament for the Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSOL), is currently being threatened and victimised for boldly standing up against provocations from the far-right Free Brazil Movement (MBL). Communists of the International Marxist Tendency give their full solidarity to comrade Glauber Braga, who was absolutely correct to oppose the harassment and bullying of these far-right thugs. 

On Friday 15 March, Colombian President Gustavo Petro took to the streets of Cali. In the speech he delivered on the day, he proposed a constituent assembly as a route out of the various problems his presidency has encountered in attempting to pass the reforms for which he was elected.

It is not often that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the communists agree on something. But the deep crisis of capitalism that we are facing today is an existential threat that cannot be ignored by the most serious strategists of capital. Therefore, the latter are increasingly reaching the same conclusion as Marxists despite coming from the opposite side: that revolution is around the corner.

With uncertainty and instability rocking the real economy globally, gambling investors are once again turning to speculation in search of a quick buck. But the whole of capitalism is a casino. It’s time to overthrow this bankrupt system.

From 22 March to 24 March, the annual national congress of the Austrian section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) took place. 225 participants discussed the crisis of capitalism, the upswing of the class struggle and the tasks of communists – worldwide and in Austria.

On Saturday 13 April, Iran announced that it had launched an attack on Israel with over 300 drones and missiles. That afternoon, Joe Biden left the comfort of his beach house in Delaware and hurried back to the White House amidst a looming sense of crisis. The same night, the President met with members of the National Security team regarding the unfolding missile attacks in the White House Situation Room. 

The deepening crisis of capitalism is causing immense political instability across the world. In this context, a rise in the number of ‘authoritarian’ and ‘populist’ governments has provoked much discussion over the rise of ‘strongman’ politics. But what exactly does this mean? In this article, Ben Gliniecki considers the nature of the capitalist state and the concept of ‘Bonapartism’, as developed by Marx, in order to answer this question and provide a perspective for the impact of the class struggle on politics today.