Ridley Scott’s recent biopic Napoleon has evoked much criticism for its shallow narrative and plethora of historical inaccuracies. But who was the real Napoleon Bonaparte? How did a young Corsican from a relatively modest background become the strongman behind an empire that would dominate Europe?

For months, Indigenous activists, trade unions, and youth organizations in Panama have been on the streets, demonstrating against the extension of a massive Canadian-owned mine in the middle of a rainforest.

The 1970s was one of the most tumultuous eras of Jamaican history. The island country was thrown into a period of intense class struggle not experienced since the Great Depression and the 1938 general strike. Ultimately, a bloody campaign of violence driven by US imperialism defeated the struggle for socialism in Jamaica. This momentous episode in the history of the Jamaican working class provides all workers and youth with stark lessons for the class struggle today.

On the night of November 29, 2023, the public was informed of the death of Henry A. Kissinger, former National Security Adviser to the President and a former US Secretary of State. The bourgeois media along with various statesmen and politicians are shedding tears for their late loyal servant.

Today is the centenary anniversary of the death of John Maclean, a dedicated Marxist and class fighter, famous for playing a leading role in militant workers’ movements such as Red Clydeside in Glasgow. We pay tribute to his revolutionary legacy.

Mechanics at Tesla's 10 workshops in Sweden have been on strike since 27 October: the first of its kind at the EV giant. The action was taken after the Swedish industrial union IF Metall told its members to down tools in response to the electric car giant refusing to sign a collective bargaining agreement in a move derided by CEO (and world’s richest man) Elon Musk as “insane”.

On 25 and 26 November, 188 young communists met in Berlin to discuss the German Revolution of 1918-1923, in order to arm themselves for the struggle against capitalism today.

Free speech is under attack. Israel's imperialist allies are losing the war of public opinion as they struggle to justify the brutal collective punishment of Palestinian men, women and children. In response, they are clamping down on Pro-Palestinian voices to an extent that would make Senator Joseph McCarthy proud. This outrageous censorship and repression has major implications for the class struggle in the future – the labour movement must respond.

Next month, on 9 December, Britain's Trades Union Congress will meet for a special congress to decide its response to the government’s latest draconian anti-strike legislation. The trade union movement must mobilise to defy the Tories, and to smash the bosses’ laws.

On 22 November, Dutch and European capitalism were shaken by an earthquake, as the party of the far-right demagogue Geert Wilders came first in the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, with almost a quarter of the vote. What do communists make of this development?

Many people think of the state as a huge collection of bureaucratic offices and institutions that have little to do with our daily lives. Some have illusions in the state as a neutral arbiter over society, operating on the basis of universal principles of ‘democracy’ and ‘rule of law’. But for countless workers and youths on the receiving end of police violence, legal victimisation or military oppression, the real nature of the capitalist state is clear.

In early November, one thousand attendees gathered in London for this year’s Revolution Festival – the school of communism. To commemorate this landmark event, Rob Sewell looks back at the communist history and traditions upon which we base ourselves today.

As with the war in Ukraine, different communist parties around the world have taken different and even opposite positions regarding the current Israeli bloodbath in Gaza after the 7 October Hamas attack. The stance of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) is one of principled support for the struggle of the Palestinian people, far removed from other communist parties, which have succumbed to the pressure of bourgeois public opinion. However, there are several aspects of the KKE position on Palestine/Israel we disagree with, and which we think are at odds with a genuine communist position. 

Shocking scenes have rocked Dublin. Far-right goons – showing their true, putrid colours – have used the stabbing of five people outside a school, including three children, to blame migrants and whip up mob violence. These events must be a wake up call: the left and the labour movement have been caught napping. The gloves must come off in the fight against the far right.

An Urdu translation of Alan Woods’ Marxist masterpiece, Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution, written on the history of the Bolshevik Party that led the Russian Revolution of 1917, was published by Lal Salam Publications, officially launched at a ceremony on 18 November 2023. 

We are publishing two articles documenting the principled position taken by the British Trotskyists, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), against the 1947 UN Palestine partition plan.

We are pleased to announce that the appeal to collect $10,000 to help fund the Panamerican School of the IMT has already raised over $8,750 in dozens of donations, big and small from comrades and sympathisers from around the world. 

Throughout the self-proclaimed ‘civilised’ western world, the ruling classes have banded together to denounce Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October and have rallied around Israel’s ‘right of self-defence’ as it bombs Gaza to smithereens. But this is not the first time we have been told to accept a bloody war against an oppressed people in the name of the oppressor nation’s ‘self-defence’.

In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of workers and youth across the US have joined the Palestine solidarity movement. We have attended protests and demonstrations in every major city, opposing Israel’s war of ethnic cleansing against the people of Gaza. We have marched, shouted ourselves hoarse, and demanded an end to the one-sided slaughter. In this context the demand for a ceasefire has gained a wider echo as the movement asks itself: how can we stop the killing? How can we escalate our actions and actually end the catastrophe in Gaza?

The Chinese Communist Party and its defenders claim that China is building a successful socialist society, and is at the forefront of an anti-imperialist struggle against the West. But is China communist? Does the legacy of the Chinese Revolution live on today in the CCP?