The enthusiasm was palpable at this year's autumn school organised by Der Funke, the Swiss section of the International Marxist Tendency. After nine interesting workshops, the school was closed by a standing ovation lasting several minutes and a huge fighting fund collection. The tremendous success of the school has shown how the revolutionary philosophy of Marxism and the conclusions that flow from it are more relevant and necessary than ever.

After a year-long battle, India’s farmers have at last defeated the right-wing Modi government and its capitalist masters, forcing a repeal of their three reactionary farm laws. This is a big victory for the farmers that has been achieved through a courageous struggle, which has been tenaciously maintained since September 2020.

With over 150 enthusiastic revolutionaries in attendance, the Marxism 2021 school that took place last weekend in Gothenburg was a resounding success. Organised by Revolution, the IMT in Sweden, it was centred on Marxist theory, to arm those in attendance for the class struggles to come. “This is a preparation for intensified class struggle, for socialist revolution in our lifetime”, explained comrade Thea Wilhelmsson in her address to the first session.

Last August, the brutal police shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, reignited the flames of the Black Lives Matter movement in the small town of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Thousands came out against racism and police terror as protests again spread, first to Milwaukee, Chicago, and then to major cities from coast to coast.

Along with bankers and capitalists, the landlord class is especially despised. They are regarded very much as greedy speculators, rack-renting owners, who force up rents at the earliest opportunity and cream off a section of the surplus-value created by the working class. It is clear why disdain for them is rising. In Britain alone, rents and housing costs account for up to a half – sometimes more – of the disposable income of working people, which has become an intolerable burden, especially for those who live in the capital.

This week saw the conclusion of a month-long strike involving over 10,000 United Auto Workers (UAW) workers at John Deere, the world’s largest farming equipment manufacturer. Workers at 14 facilities in five US states returned to work on Wednesday having approved a contract that guarantees them an immediate 10 percent wage rise, improved retirement benefits and an $8,500 signing bonus.

In the end, the much anticipated opposition demonstration of 15N in Cuba did not materialise. The organisers’ ties with Washington and with counterrevolutionary and terrorist elements removed any legitimacy from their call to mobilise.

Yesterday was the bloodiest day of the Sudan coup so far. A nationwide march was met with the deadliest clampdown yet by the security forces. This massacre must be a final warning to the masses: only armed self defence by any means necessary can guarantee a victory for the Sudanese Revolution.

The American ruling class is sitting on a societal volcano of Biblical proportions. Given the organic crisis of their system, the capitalists can no longer maintain any semblance of economic, political, or social equilibrium. After nearly two years of unprecedented economic dislocation, a plurality of Americans believe the economy is the most pressing issue facing the country.

The crisis at the Poland-Belarusian border continues to escalate. On 8 November, around 4,000 refugees arrived in the vicinity of Kuźnica, where they tried to cross the border fence. Polish border guards fired teargas canisters at them. The number of refugees at the border is increasing every day. The Polish state has already sent many border guard units, soldiers, policemen, and even anti-terrorist units. Some extreme nationalist groups have also begun to voluntarily undertake border patrols. At least five people have died of exposure in the freezing ‘no-man’s-land’ between the two nations.

The economic and political situation in Haiti continues to deteriorate, with seemingly no end in sight to the suffering of the masses. The problem of the gangs, which has been growing for some time, is now reaching crisis levels with gangs blocking ports and preventing the delivery of fuel around the country in an effort to force the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Following the assassination of president Jovenel Moïse in early July, which is still shrouded in mystery, what little remains of the disintegrating Haitian state has been unable to deal

In the last month there have been over 150 strikes and protests across Iran. This is only the latest strike wave since 2018. The ongoing struggles include oil workers in Khuzestan, the Haft Tappeh sugar plantation workers, miners in Azerbaijan, Khorasan and Kerman, national protests of teachers, and ongoing farmers’ protests among others. All the while, the social crisis in Iran is continuing to plummet to new depths.

The strategists of the bourgeoisie had imagined that the Covid-19 shutdowns had merely put an already fragile world economy on pause. Once the economy reopened, it would merely be ‘unpaused’ and would proceed to stagger on as before. This is far from how things have turned out in reality. The world economy is now in the grip of chaos.

The heroic masses of Sudan are still taking to the streets to resist the military coup, in defiance of bullets, beatings and arrests at the hands of the security forces.

On Saturday 13 November, huge numbers of protestors mobilised for a second nationwide demonstration, after weeks of intense organisation efforts by the neighbourhood resistance committees – despite a total telecoms blackout and a campaign of terror by the counterrevolution.

Frederik Willem de Klerk, the last president of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, died on Thursday in Cape Town. He was president from 1989 to 1994. De Klerk presided over a monstrous counter-revolutionary regime that did everything possible to secure the interests of the ruling class against the revolutionary flood tide washing over the country in the 1990s. He was an unrepentant and committed Apartheid ideologue who defended the regime even after it was overthrown.