The Godfather was released 50 years ago today. The film remains a masterpiece to this day, brilliantly depicting the ruthless logic of capitalism. But the third instalment of Coppola's trilogy reveals the suffocating effect of profit on cinema.

As we have previously reported, for the past month the regime of Ranil Wickremesinghe in Sri Lanka has unleashed repression against trade unionists and left-wing activists. Now the regime has escalated its repression, using the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) to detain activists for long periods without trial. On Sunday 28 August there will be protests outside the UN Human Rights Council office in Geneva, and at Sri Lankan embassies around the world at 2pm local time.

Over the summer of 1911, workers in Liverpool brought the city to a standstill. A strike that started in shipping rapidly spread to the docks and all transport. With the class struggle in Britain now heating up, this period contains important lessons for today.

This June, Apple retail workers in Baltimore made history by winning the vote for union representation at the first of 270 Apple stores across the US. This represents the first shots in the battle to unionize the company with the highest market cap valuation in the world, reaching an eye-watering $3 trillion at the start of this year. The battle for Apple joins the rising wave of organizing drives at Starbucks, the recent unionization developments at Activision Blizzard, and the historic union vote at Amazon.

For a century, the ruling class has produced industrial quantities of lies and distortions about Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party and of the October Revolution of 1917. This article, therefore, sheds an important light on the life of this revolutionary giant. Covering the formative years of Lenin’s life, the following article – first published in issue 36 of In defence of Marxism magazine, gives a portrait of Lenin in his youth: from his boyhood years, to his making as a revolutionary, the founding of Iskra up until the eve of the second congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, out of which the Bolshevik

Between 24-26 June, 80 comrades from across Britain took part in the Marxist Student Federation’s first ever residential Marxist summer school. The inspiring school, set in the idyllic hills of the Peak District, was themed on the life and ideas of Lenin. Now, all four talks from the school are available online.

Just over a month ago, on 9 July, the insurrectionary masses of Sri Lanka stormed the Colombo residence of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. This was the culmination of island-wide protests that had been ongoing since March. They had already brought down three government cabinets, the governor of the Central Bank, and Gota’s own brothers: the Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, and the powerful then-Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa who was forced to resign on 9 May.

On 2 August 2022, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, in an act of clear and reactionary provocation towards China. Far from furthering the cause of democracy as Pelosi claimed, her trip has the potential to destabilise the entire Indo-Pacific region. In this podcast episode produced by the Canadian section of the IMT, Fightback, Daniel Morley, writer for In Defence of Marxism, discusses the U.S. and Chinese saber rattling over Taiwan.

The Russian Revolution ushered in a flowering of creative expression in all the arts, but particularly cinema, which was advanced to new heights by the likes of Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, who regarded film as a weapon of class struggle. Despite being cut short by the Stalinist degeneration of the regime, the legacy of October in the field of filmmaking continues to be felt to this day.

Over 100,000 people died last year from drug overdoses in the US. It was the second year in a row that the death toll exceeded that figure, according to statistics from the CDC. These overdoses are disproportionately concentrated in poor regions, particularly Appalachia, which has been ravaged by an opioid addiction crisis for the past two and a half decades.

Defenders of the free market look towards libertarians such as Hayek and Mises – and their assertion of an ‘economic calculation problem’ – in order to attack socialism. But in truth, Marxists answered these reactionary arguments long ago.

A wave of wildcat strikes has swept across Britain – in the construction industry and at Amazon warehouses – as workers’ anger reaches boiling point. This is a harbinger of the huge class battles on the horizon. The unions must prepare for war.

The German government is being forced to ration hot water; street lights are being dimmed; and special heated halls are being set up for those who can’t afford central heating – in a country where winter temperatures regularly drop well below freezing. Many Germans are stocking up on wood to burn for warmth, as many predict that gas supplies will completely or nearly run out by early 2023. These are the grim prospects faced by the working class in the economic powerhouse of Europe.

Since June, the Netherlands has seen a new wave of militant, 40,000-strong farmers’ protests, aimed against government plans to reduce the emission of nitrogen compounds. These protests have reached the international media, with videos proliferating of heavy tractors blocking roads and supermarket distribution centres, and dumping manure outside the homes of politicians. What lies behind these protests, what class interests do they represent, and what is the position of the Marxists towards them?

Last month, under conditions of extreme economic turmoil, the Sri Lankan masses burst into the presidential palace in Colombo, forcing hated president Gota Rajapaksa to flee and, soon after, announce his resignation. It immediately prompted the most frantic discussion amongst representatives of the ruling class, who are terrified of similar events occurring elsewhere.