Around 100 members of Révolution, the French section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), gathered in Paris on 16 and 17 June, for our 2023 National Congress. Attendees came from Paris, Toulouse, Marseilles, Lyon, Montpellier, Grenoble, Brest, Morlaix, Lille and Rambouillet. We also welcomed comrades from the IMT’s sections in Switzerland and Belgium, and were joined by Fred Weston from the International Secretariat of the IMT.

The events of the last weekend in Russia have given rise to all sorts of speculation. On Friday evening, the head of the Wagner mercenary army, the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, launched a “march for justice” with the stated aim of removing the head of the Armed Forces and the Minister of Defence. By Saturday, he had taken control of Rostov-on-Don and was marching with a heavily-armed column towards Moscow. Putin denounced him as a traitor and promised those involved would be dealt with accordingly. However, by the end of the day, suddenly, Prigozhin’s column turned back and a deal was announced, brokered by Belarusian President Lukashenko. The motivation behind the actions of the different actors is shrouded in mystery, but these events reveal something about the character of Russia’s war in Ukraine and of Putin’s regime itself.

Countries, businesses, and households across the world are drowning in debt. As interest rates rise, the danger of default looms. To avoid a catastrophe, calls for debt cancellation are not enough. Instead, we must fight for revolution.

We have received the following resolution by our Russian comrades, written earlier today, after Wagner PMC Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin declared a rebellion, and moved columns of troops in the direction of Moscow. The situation has now somewhat receded: Wagner troops halted their advance and it has been announced that Prigozhin will enter exile, following hasty negotiations. As the comrades write, this episode was a struggle between two sections of the Russian oligarchy. Yet again, the oligarchs have proven that they have no interests in developing Russian society or in improving the conditions of the Russian masses. Their sole concern is to maintain themselves by leeching on the labour of the workers and poor, by robbing and plundering and by repressing any real opposition from the masses. The only way out of this impasse, the only way to raise the workers from their dire conditions, the only way to fight war, corruption and general decay, is for the working class to take power into their own hands, to expropriate all of the oligarchs, and to use the country’s vast wealth for the benefit of all. That is, by way of a socialist revolution.

For the past week, the world has been treated to a macabre piece of theatre: an international, multi-million-dollar operation to save the lives of five crewmen of the Titan submersible, who – it now turns out – were almost certainly known to have died from the start. Life is sacred: who could object to any expense to save just a single soul? But if all life is indeed sacred, then some lives are clearly more sacred than others.

1848 was a year of revolution in Europe, with French workers rising up and exploding onto the streets in a struggle against the old order. Today, as Marx wrote then, a spectre is once again haunting the ruling classes – the spectre of communism.

The last few weeks in Argentina have seen an increase in the struggle of workers, particularly teachers and healthcare workers. This movement has reached the most acute proportions in the provinces of Salta and Jujuy, in the extreme northwest of the country. In both cases, the struggle for wages has been combined with the fight against anti-protest and anti-strike legislation that the regional governments want to impose.

Thursday 1 June saw the first public meeting of the Hungarian group of the IMT, Fáklya (Torch) at the Gólya Co-operative Centre in Budapest with 30 in attendance. This is an important breakthrough for the forces of Marxism in Hungary, the first of many to come.

175 years ago, a wave of revolutions swept across the European continent, in which the working class played a key role in challenging the might of the feudal order. From France to Germany to Italy, the masses led a struggle for democratic and economic demands, winning significant concessions from the decrepit ruling classes of Europe. Marx and Engels were not just passive witnesses to these events, but active participants.

Hunter Biden, son of Democratic President Joe Biden, will likely avoid prison under the terms of a plea deal unveiled on Tuesday, June 20. The younger Biden has agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay federal taxes in excess of $200,000 in a timely manner. In exchange, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) will recommend probation for the tax charges and has agreed not to prosecute a separate felony firearm offense.

Dominating news headlines around the world presently is the huge search and rescue operation underway to retrieve a handful of wealthy tourists, including a British billionaire who went missing in the Atlantic on a submarine adventure to explore the shipwreck of the Titanic. Meanwhile, there is a conspiracy of silence in the international media over the details coming out about the drowning of 700 migrants in the Mediterranean last week – the direct result of a willful, callous neglect of human life.

In the last few weeks, there has been a growing offensive on the part of the Colombian ruling class against the government of Gustavo Petro. Some have even talked of the danger of a coup, like the one that removed Pedro Castillo in Peru in December last year. On 7 June, thousands of workers, peasants and youth came out onto the streets to defend Petro’s proposed reforms. Comrade Galeano – from Colombia Marxista, the IMT group in Colombia – draws a balance-sheet of these events.

This year, on 19 June, Trinidad celebrates 50 years of Labour Day (first marked in 1973). The roots of this occasion, however, can actually be traced 36 years earlier to one of the most outstanding events in Trinidadian history – the 1937 general strike.

On 3 June 2023, the Central Committee of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) voted to expel the national leadership of its youth organisation (UJCE). The latter had been raising a whole series of criticisms of the right-wing, social-democratic drift of the party, and had agreed to convene a special congress of the youth organisation to discuss the way forward. The use of administrative measures in this way represents an unacceptable and bureaucratic response to political issues by the PCE Central Committee. We republish the following statement of the Spanish section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT).

At a quarter past midnight last night, I received a telephone call from Mexico with news that had a profound effect upon me. I was told that my old friend and comrade Esteban Volkov was no more. While I cannot say that this news was entirely unexpected, since Esteban had reached the ripe old age of 97 in March, it nevertheless filled me with a profound sense of irreversible loss, not only of a very dear friend, but of the last remaining physical link with one of the greatest revolutionaries of all times, Leon Trotsky.

The latest news shows that the economy is once again taking a turn for the worse. The Eurozone is in recession. China is slowing down sharply. The US is teetering on the brink. Another economic crisis is on the way.

In the first four months of this year, 541 anti-trans bills have been introduced across the country, including 23 at the federal level, and more than 70 have already been signed into law. This is a significant uptick in transphobic legislation from just a year ago, when 174 such bills were introduced, with 26 becoming laws.

The relative decline of US imperialism is leaving a void that is starting to be filled by other powers. In recent years, this has led to a rise of rival imperialist nations such as China and Russia, which are increasingly trying to challenge the domination of the US. What are the implications of this for the class struggle? What are the tasks of communists in a so-called multipolar world?

Both the Tories and Starmer’s Labour are enjoying the unfolding drama in Scotland, as the plot thickens in the curious case of the SNP’s finances. Workers and youth must sweep away the entire rotten establishment and fight for revolution.

A bankruptcy crisis is looming over the world. The New York Times has called it “a debt crisis unlike anything we have seen”. This isn’t the threat of a handful of banking behemoths going under, however, but rather of entire national economies. Some 54 low and middle-income countries are today teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.