In July 1936, General Franco’s coup d’état was defeated through a revolutionary uprising of the working class, and the anarchists emerged as the leading force. However, their programme and perspectives proved impotent in the face of events. They betrayed the revolution several times and, partly due to their mistakes, the Spanish proletariat was crushed. Fascism went on to establish a four-decade dictatorship. It is the duty of all thinking anarchists to analyse events in Spain critically and draw all the necessary conclusions.

Experienced trade unionist John McInally introduces Wellred Books’ latest publication: a fascinating biography examining Lenin’s life and ideas by Rob Sewell and Alan Woods. With support for communism on the rise today, we say: Lenin lives!

The Cuban Revolution is rightly considered an inspiration by communists worldwide. This tremendous movement threw off the chains of capitalism and US imperialism, opening the way for incredible social, economic and technological advances in what had previously been a brutally oppressed society. Today, however, the Cuban Revolution faces a number of perils.

Last Saturday, police officers in Britain arrested an IMT member for raising the slogan of 'Intifada 'til victory!'. But the communists won't back down. We need your help to fight back against state repression, and to see an end to this brutal capitalist system.

Tata’s decision to close its Port Talbot steelworks will devastate the town. With no lead coming from the trade union tops, the Communists have launched a campaign for workers to get organised, occupy the plant, and demand its full nationalisation.

We are proud to announce that the world’s foremost magazine for original Marxist theoretical content, In Defence of Marxism - América Socialista, is now available in French! It joins regular English, Spanish, Indonesian, Portuguese, Swedish and Chinese translations, and will soon be joined by an Italian translation. The enlarged audience of communist workers and youth that will thus have access to these ideas will find in this magazine a powerful weapon.

The following is the preface to the 2023 Indonesian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party. The last Indonesian translation of the Manifesto was made in 1948, but unfortunately the quality of that edition is far from what this important document deserves. Furthermore, the 1948 edition was written in an Old Indonesian style. Meanwhile, the Indonesian language itself has developed a lot in the past 75 years. Therefore, there is a pressing need for a new translation that can explain more clearly the ideas contained in this brilliant work for the new generation of Communists. The new edition can be accessed at the Marxist Internet Archive.

The oppression of women and the origins of the family as we know it remain key issues facing anyone who wishes to fight for a better world today. Huge numbers of women still suffer sexual abuse and harassment. In some parts of the world they live in slave-like conditions. Millions of girls and women alive today have been forced to undergo female genital mutilation, one of the most barbaric methods used to control women’s sexuality, while millions of young women are trafficked for sexual exploitation. Violence against women is still an everyday occurrence, with femicide a continuing phenomenon.

It is hard to find a more slandered figure in human history than Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Dictatorial, murderous, cynical, immoral. You name it, Lenin has been accused of it. This is done by just about every political current, from the conservative right wing to the liberals, the reformists, and the anarchists. Unfortunately, decades of Stalinist dictatorship in the U.S.S.R. contributed to this caricature.

The last four years have been the most turbulent in the history of Swiss capitalism. It is only a matter of time before major social movements emerge. There are already thousands of mostly young people who are waiting to take up the fight against capitalism. Communists must draw the necessary conclusions from this: it is time to found the Revolutionary Communist Party!

What is the role of China today? While some on the left have celebrated China’s ambitions as a counterweight to the United States, Jorge Martín explains that capitalism has long been restored in China, and today it has all the features of a rising imperialist power. ‘Multipolarity’ will not benefit the workers of the world, who must trust solely in their own strength to throw off the chains of imperialism and capitalism internationally.

Whilst the Israeli state continues its genocide of Palestinians, western powers have suspended funding to UNRWA – a vital source of food, shelter, and medicine in Gaza. The imperialists’ hypocrisy knows no bounds. They have blood on their hands.

A textbook argument against communism is that, although it may sound nice, it is fundamentally “against human nature”. Many communists will be sick and tired of hearing this accusation, but what actually is ‘human nature’? How should communists respond to this claim?

Written in 1916, in the middle of the First World War, Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism is an essential work for understanding the phenomena of war and imperialism today.

The new paper from the Marxists in Britain is out now! The Communist is a revolutionary weapon, wielded by a red army of comrades that is on the march. Join us today, and help build The Communist and the Revolutionary Communist Party!

Following the article on James Joyce’s Ulysses, published in issue 39 of In Defence of Marxism magazine, Hamid Alizadeh of the IDOM editorial board writes on Joyce’s Dubliners: a masterful critique of the paralysis, hypocrisy and alienation of Irish bourgeois society in the 20th century, which epitomised the ferment brewing in Ireland in the years prior to the Easter Rising of 1916.

With general elections planned on 8 February, the crisis and splits of Pakistan’s ruling class and state are intensifying, while attacks on workers, under the dictates of the IMF, are continuing and unemployment and inflation are rising at an unprecedented level. No political party participating in the coming general elections has solutions to any of the problems in this country, and all of the political parties represent merely different factions of the ruling class. 

1.5 million people marched in Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario, Santiago del Estero, Mendoza, Neuquen, and all the big cities of Argentina to reject the new president Javier Milei’s Necessity and Urgency Decree (DNU) and Omnibus Bill, which represent an all-out ultraliberal assault on workers’ rights and conditions. This is the second massive mobilisation against Milei’s government, which has been in power for fewer than 50 days, and the first general strike called in five years by Argentina’s largest trade union confederations. It provided an outlet for the enormous rage that has built up against this government, and demonstrated yet again the working class’ willingness to fight.

There is much talk in the media about diplomatic pressure being put on the Israeli government by their allies in Washington to avert an escalation of the war in Gaza into a regional conflict. And yet, the whole situation has been moving precisely in the direction of a much wider conflagration, involving several fronts: from the West Bank; to the northern border with Lebanon; to the Houthis in Yemen; and bombings in Syria, Iraq and Pakistan, also involving Iran. The latest US/UK bombing of the Houthis highlights this risk.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Germany this week to demonstrate against the reactionary Alternative for Germany (AfD). This was provoked by a recent revelation by the liberal media outlet CORRECTIV, that AfD politicians, right-wing extremists and leading businessmen had met in secret in a hotel near Potsdam to discuss the mass deportation of migrants from Germany.