Today, Venezuela is used as a horror story by right-wingers and reactionaries, who hold it up as an example of why “socialism never works”. In fact, the Venezuelan Revolution was an inspiring episode in recent history, which showed the immense power of the masses and the potential of workers to run their workplaces without bosses. But it also demonstrated that you cannot have half a revolution: once the process has begun, it must end with the expropriation of capitalism and socialist reconstruction – as our comrade Luis Romero from Caracas explains!

"The life of monopolistic capitalism in our time is a chain of crises. Each crisis is a catastrophe. The need for salvation from these partial catastrophes by means of tariff walls, inflation, increase of government spending and debts lays the ground for additional, deeper and more widespread crises. The struggle for markets, for raw material, for colonies makes military catastrophes unavoidable. All in all, they prepare revolutionary catastrophes."

Closely following our special episode with Alan Woods covering Trump’s victory in the US election, Against the Stream went live again this week for another discussion. This time, Hamid Alizadeh and Fred Weston from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International met to talk about the devastating floods in Spain and the resulting rage of the masses against the ruling class, the abrupt collapse of the German government, and more on the implications of Trump’s victory.

The shock result of the US presidential election provides yet another example of the kind of sudden and sharp changes that are implicit in the situation. Up to the very last minute, the media pundits were straining every nerve and muscle to prove that the polls were heading for a Harris victory, albeit with a narrow margin. 

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.

Americans are used to hearing that every election is “the most important in our lifetime.” This year, both candidates have taken it a step further, arguing that it’s the most important election in the history of the United States. “For or against Trump?!” This is the alleged existential question posed by both major parties. But what exactly is Trumpism in the first place? Confusion abounds on this question, and yet, it is impossible to understand where US society is headed without a correct diagnosis of this disease.

This week, Jorge and Hamid sat down to discuss three flashpoints in the world crisis of capitalism: the floods that are devastating Spain, the spiralling conflict in the Middle East, and the impending US election.

With both candidates neck-and-neck in the run-up to election day, you can sense the anxiety of the ruling class, who mostly oppose the maverick Trump. But why has his anti-establishment message struck a chord with a section of American society?

The American Civil War, unlike the conflicts that plague the world today, was just and historically progressive. The Union north smashed the Confederacy of southern slave states and carried out the biggest expropriation of private property in history at the time, with the emancipation of 4 million enslaved people. The Union cause was praised by Karl Marx, who said Lincoln’s battle cry should be: “death to slavery!” With elections in the US just a few weeks away, the American bourgeoisie once again has civil war on its mind…. 

University administrations, under intense pressure from their billionaire donors, are cracking down on pro-Palestine students and faculty on campuses across America. They’ve introduced draconian measures aimed at extinguishing the embers of last spring’s Palestine solidarity encampment movement, which sought to force colleges and universities to divest from Israel and the American imperialist war machine.

On 5 November, general elections will be held in Puerto Rico. As happens every four years, people will vote to elect officials to administer the government. But, unlike previous elections, these offer us a historic opportunity. 

Two weeks after being slammed by Hurricane Helene—the strongest storm to make landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region in 150 years—the Southeast is now bracing for a potentially worse “monster storm,” Hurricane Milton. It’s the latest in a series of humanitarian disasters across the region, which have wrought destruction far beyond anything seen in living memory.

Two weeks ago, the US Department of Commerce put forward a bill proposing to ban car parts and software linked to China or Russia. The White House held a press briefing and published a fact sheet justifying this, with implications that this was a measure to prevent terrorist attacks. The irony of such measures coming so soon after the US-sanctioned Israeli terror attack that was carried out using technological sabotage appears to have been lost on them.

The first annual Vancouver School of Communism was a smashing success! With ninety communists in attendance from Vancouver, Victoria, Abbotsford, Surrey and Calgary, Communism is back on the west coast! We also had over a dozen American comrades come from Seattle, Bellingham and even as far away as New York to participate. 

For the first time since 1977, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) has gone on strike. At midnight on October 1, 47,000 dockworkers walked off the job at 36 ports from Maine to Texas, including important logistical centers like Baltimore; Boston; Charleston, South Carolina; Houston; Jacksonville; Miami; Mobile, Alabama; New Orleans; New York/New Jersey; Norfolk, Virginia; Philadelphia; Savannah, Georgia; Tampa, Florida; and Wilmington, Delaware.