We have received the following letter from a group of young communists in Azerbaijan, which we are delighted to republish here and have no doubt will be of great interest to our readers, as it gives a very interesting insight into the present situation in that country.

This week on Against the Stream, Hamid Alizadeh and Jorge Martin from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International sat down once again to discuss the implications of Trump's victory on the class struggle in America, the Ukraine war, and the floods in Valencia, Spain, which have led to protests of hundreds of thousands of people against the regime.

When Russian troops entered Ukraine in February 2022, a chorus of righteous fury went up from politicians and pundits in the West. A united front of ‘democratic’ countries offered up their arsenals and opened their cheque books to punish ‘Russian war crimes’ and resist the invasion of a sovereign nation. Fast forward two years and our enlightened democratic rulers are again offering their arsenals and opening their cheque books… to assist Israel’s barbaric war crimes and invasion of a sovereign nation.

On Saturday, 340 communists from all over Austria, as well as guests from neighbouring countries, came together in Vienna for the founding of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RKP). The purpose of this new party is to overthrow capitalism and build a society without exploitation, misery and oppression.

On Saturday 9 November, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Valencia to show their anger against the Government of the Generalitat Valenciana (the Valencian local government), and its president, Carlos Mazón, for their criminal actions after the ‘Dana’ flood on 29 and 30 October.

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!

On Thursday 7 November, Maccabi Tel Aviv played away from home against Ajax Amsterdam in the UEFA Europa League. The fans of Maccabi, the second most popular team in Israel, have also been found to have the second-most racist fans in the country, outdone only by those of Beitar Jerusalem in this respect.

The German government has fallen. The dispute over the draft budget for 2025 was the coup de grâce. For months, the ruling coalition of social democrats (SPD), Greens and liberals (FDP) struggled to find a solution to the economic crisis, as Germany faces its second consecutive year of recession. Despite this, the government was unable to unite and decide on an approach. Those in power are divided over the question of whether the time is right for a general attack on the working class and the poor.

"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."

Starmer has recently brushed off criticism of British imperialism’s bloody history, and its role in the transatlantic slave trade. This article, from a new RCP booklet, explains how these horrific crimes laid the basis for Britain to rule the waves.

One-hundred-and-seven years ago, on 7 November 1917, the Russian working class conquered power. 

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. 

With so much crisis and chaos in the world today, more and more people are turning to the internet for answers about what communism really is. But there’s a lot of propaganda and misinformation out there, so this week we’ve brought on leading RCI member Fred Weston for the Communism Autocomplete Interview: answering the most common questions people are typing into Google about what communists believe, what we want, and how we’re fighting for it!

Six days after the flash floods which have left 214 people dead mainly in Valencia, an official visit by the head of state, the Spanish King, his wife, Queen Leticia, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez and Valencia regional president Mazón was organised to several of the worst affected areas. As they arrived in Paiporta, outside Valencia, they were met by angry local residents who pelted them with mud and chased them away. These unprecedented scenes were an open expression of the class rage that had been building up for days.