This week, Against the Stream podcast went live for a very special episode. Now that the results of the US election have come in, Hamid Alizadeh and Alan Woods from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI) sat down to discuss the implications of Trump's victory and what it means to communists. Alan is the editor of marxist.com, the author of numerous books on Marxist theory and the lead theoretician of the RCI.

The Middle East is sliding, inexorably it seems, towards regional war. Whose interests would such a war benefit? In a discussion we had in the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International, we asked ourselves this question.

Issue 47 of In Defence of Marxism magazine – the quarterly theoretical journal of the Revolutionary Communist International – is out now! We publish here Alan Woods’ editorial for this issue, in which he traces the lessons of the international communist movement from the times of Marx and Engels to today, and the revolutionary tradition of struggle against militarism, imperialism and war, which communists continue down to the present. Get your copy of issue 47 of In Defence of Marxism magazine now!

“‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).”  (Lewis Carol, Alice in Wonderland)

As I write these lines, the headlines of the newspapers are dominated by the shock announcement that Russia would be “at war” with the United States and its allies if they lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range western missiles for the purpose of deep strikes on Russian territory.

“When the leaders speak of peace, the common people know that war is coming.” (Bertolt Brecht)

On this day in 1940, Trotsky died of injuries inflicted by a Stalinist agent. Despite the lies of Stalin’s epigones, there is nothing in Trotsky’s ideas that cannot also be found in Lenin. The two men reached the same political conclusions and led the Russian Revolution to victory in 1917, at the head of the Bolshevik Party. Both understood the necessity of world revolution; and after Lenin died, Trotsky continued to defend his real ideas and legacy against Stalin’s bureaucratic counterrevolution. It was for this reason that he was marked for death.

We publish here the editorial of issue 46 of In Defence of Marxism magazine, which looks at the relationship of culture, and art in particular, to the struggle for socialist revolution and human emancipation. In this editorial, Alan Woods dismantles the lazy caricature of Marxism as unconcerned with the rich cultural and artistic history of humanity. Issue 46 of In Defence of Marxism magazine is available now! Get your copy here.

The Spanish student strike of 1986/87 was an epoch-making movement, lasting three months, involving three million school and university students, with hundreds of thousands in demonstrations, which ended up in a victory against the Socialist Party government. This document, written at the time by Alan Woods, is a blow-by-blow account of the movement which draws out the main political points. Alan was in Spain for most of the struggle, involved in daily discussions with the leading Spanish Marxists which led the movement.

“Can a man take fire to his bosom, And his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals, And his feet not be seared?”(Proverbs 6:27-29)

Yesterday the world’s media was rocked by the surprise news that the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, is seeking arrest warrants for war crimes, against Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, and Yoav Gallant, the Defence Minister.

We publish here a contribution by Alan Woods to the pre-congress debate of the Brazilian Communist Party – Revolutionary Refoundation. The PCB-RR gathers the comrades who were bureaucratically expelled from the PCB in July – August 2023, after they raised a whole number of political differences, including regarding the question of the character of the war in Ukraine. We would like to thank the Provisional Political Committee of the PCB-RR for the opportunity for this exchange of ideas amongst Communists and we wish them success in their congress, which is taking place at the end of the month.

In June, the International Marxist Tendency will be launching a new Revolutionary Communist International, to boldly bear the clean banner of communism on every continent. In this article, Alan Woods explains the historic importance of this step, tracing the rise and fall of previous Internationals and showing the importance of the RCI in the struggle for communism today. Register now for our founding conference!

Last week in Lenin in a Year, we delved into an important text that Lenin wrote amidst the 1905 Revolution: Two Tactics of the Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. The revolution, however, went down to defeat. In the wake of the counter-revolution, all kinds of pessimism and mysticism swept Russia. These moods even infected layers of the Bolsheviks, reflected in attempts to revise Marxist philosophy. This week we republish Alan Woods’ excellent introduction to Lenin’s 1908 work, Materialism and Empirio-criticism, in which Lenin launched a strident defence of dialectical materialism.

Last Friday, the world was shocked and horrified by reports of an appalling massacre at a packed concert venue in Moscow. According to the latest reports at the time of writing, at least 137 people were killed in this barbaric attack. Men, women and children were slaughtered indiscriminately by a group of gunmen who showed no mercy.