When I get up in the morning, put on my shoes and tie up the laces, I often ask myself: “who made those shoes?” Likewise, when I sit at the table to have breakfast, I wonder, “who made the table and who worked on the farm that produced the oats in my porridge?” When I go for my annual check-up at my local doctor’s surgery, I wonder: “to what class does the nurse belong?” You may be wondering why I ask myself these questions. Well, it is because we are bombarded by the idea, apparently in defiance of my experience, that the working class no longer exists; that it has been dissolved and now we are all mostly ‘middle class’.

Once hailed as Europe’s bulwark of stability, Germany is entering a period of deep turmoil. The era of economic growth and class peace is at an end. Now, Germany is experiencing an intense crisis, as all the pillars of its former ‘success model’ are crumbling, causing profound divisions in the ruling class and a ferment among the masses.

9 September marked the first All-Ireland meeting of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) which met in Dublin. Comrades came from around the country including Dublin, Belfast, Derry, Meath and Limerick, with a comrade attending from the international centre of the IMT, making a total of 15 attendees. Comrades were all filled with a mood of revolutionary enthusiasm, and after a day of political discussions comrades left with heightened spirits, ready to spread the ideas of Marxism and to build the Marxist tendency in Ireland!

Recent figures have shown youth unemployment in China now stands at over 20 percent – double its pre-pandemic level. When young people in China look around, we see a world filled with turmoil, suffering, and injustice. In our daily lives, we often feel immense tension, pressure, anxiety and pain. Young people might well ask ourselves: what has happened to our world? How did this happen? And most important of all: what must we do about it?

A new generation of communists is being forged by capitalism’s crises and catastrophes. “He who has the youth, has the future,” Lenin famously proclaimed. We call on radical young people to get organised and join us in the fight for revolution.

On 16 August, the Syrian regime issued a new resolution to deepen the suffering of the Syrian people, 80 percent of whom live below the poverty line, by increasing fuel prices by up to 200 percent. This decision has led to a reduction in purchasing power such that many Syrians are unable to even buy bread. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and pushed the poor in Syria to start to take to the streets after a long period of inactivity.

Sweden is often presented as a model of class collaboration, stability and a robust welfare state. The truth is that it is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Decades of cuts and privatisations has led to massive discontent, aggravated by one of the highest falls in living standards in Europe in the past two years.

On Saturday 16 September in Trieste, Italy, comrades of Sinistra Classe Rivoluzione, the IMT in Italy, who were holding a stall as part of the “Are you a communist? Then get organised!” campaign, were suddenly attacked by fascist thugs, who overturned the stall, physically assaulted the three comrades and then ran off. A few hours earlier, the national page of another fascist organisation had posted a poster of our campaign.

If the meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) major economies in India was intended as a show of unity against Russia, it succeeded in producing precisely the opposite result.

In our recent article on the UAW contract battle, we said that this would be a big test for Shawn Fain and the new UAW leadership. We explained that the key question would be whether the new UAW leaders would try to lead a struggle within the limits of what is acceptable to the capitalist system, or whether they would challenge the very system that demands poor wages and conditions. The Flint Sit-Down strike of 1936–37 and other class-struggle plant occupations threw down the gauntlet to the employers: Who really runs the factory—the workers or the owners?

Autoworkers have endured decades of eroding wages and worsening working conditions as the Big Three auto companies—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—have shored up their profits by taking it out of the hides of the workers. But these workers are saying “enough is enough!” As a result, 150,000 union auto workers are gearing up for strike action in the US, as their contract with these companies approaches a September 14 expiration date.

The state of Texas is often viewed as an impenetrable cesspool of conservatism. Texas and other Southern states are known for the frequent attacks by the ruling class and their state governments against workers, women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, etc., and many people write off the state entirely, thinking that this stranglehold can’t be broken.

The announcement at the recent BRICS summit that this bloc of countries would be expanded to include six new countries generated a wave of optimistic, almost pious statements from prominent leaders of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), extolling the virtues of this enlarged group of countries from the so-called ‘Global South’.

Meta, the social media giant that owns Facebook and Instagram, began blocking all news from its platforms in Canada in August. The news ban followed the federal government’s passage of Bill C-18, the Online News Act, which required big tech to pay media outlets for content they use or repurpose on their platforms. Google also planned to begin blocking news in Canada by the end of the year, when C-18 comes into effect. For communists, the banning of news on platforms owned by billionaires underscores the need for an independent workers’ press through the production and distribution of a physical newspaper.

A motion is up for discussion at this week’s TUC Congress, calling for ‘solidarity with Ukraine’. Instead of backing the Tories and their imperialist aims, the labour movement must fight for an internationalist, class-based position.

On Friday 9 September, at around 11 o’clock at night, Morocco was struck by a powerful earthquake, which, according to the US Geological Survey, had a magnitude of 6.8 on the Richter Scale. The epicentre was near Oukaïmden, about 75 kilometres south west of Marrakesh. Thousands of people have lost their lives in a disaster whose impact was worsened by the criminal neglect and incompetence of the regime.

It has been 50 years since the coup d’état against president Allende in Chile. In this article, Carlos Cerpa Mallat describes the events that preceded the coup, how the transition from dictatorship to the current regime took place, and draws the main political conclusions of that tragedy, which are necessary to arm the new generations.

Today marks 50 years since the coup that overthrew the government of Salvador Allende in Chile. To remember the revolutionary struggles of this period and to emphasise the invaluable lessons contained therein, International Marxist Radio is back for a special episode.

Monday 11 September marks the 50th anniversary of the 1973 coup that overthrew president Salvador Allende in Chile and installed the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. We will be publishing a series of historical and contemporary articles analysing the events of the coup, starting here with a document written in 1979 by Alan Woods, analysing the history of the Chilean labour movement and the period of the Popular Unity coalition government of Allende. Who was behind Pinochet's coup? What interests was he defending? What were the policies of the Allende government and why despite all warnings was he unable to prevent the coup?

Monday 11 September marks the 50th anniversary of the coup that overthrew president Salvador Allende in Chile. This article, written by Alan Woods two years before these events, warned against the threat of a military coup if the Popular Unity government failed to mobilise the masses and carry out a genuine socialist programme. We have also republished a longer piece, written by Alan Woods after the coup, which can be found here.