This article provides an overview of the political situation in India, in which the reactionary BJP-led government of Narendra Modi has turned the COVID-19 crisis into an unprecedented disaster. The ruling class is tearing up labour protections and stoking sectarian violence, while rewarding its big business cronies. Hundreds of millions face destitution, violence and oppression. A revolutionary backlash is inevitable.

In the past week, university students all over China have been openly struggling against their school administrations for effectively confining them on campus in the name of complying with the government’s coronavirus safety instructions. These protests have been spreading like wildfire, from the capital Beijing to Fujian in the south, to Inner Mongolia in the north and beyond, engulfing thousands of campuses.

An in-depth report published by Oxfam on 9 September entitled Power, Profits and the Pandemic shows how the capitalist class has lined its pockets throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Friday 18 September, the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso of the right-wing PP (Popular Party), announced a “selective confinement” of 37 zones in the southern districts and towns on the outskirts of the capital. These are home to some of the poorest neighbourhoods and also those hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. This discriminatory and ineffective measure, implemented on Monday 21 September, sparked immediate outrage amongst the residents of these working-class neighbourhoods who have come out in a series of protests.

Last week, revelations from a nurse employed at an immigrant jail regarding the forced sterilization of women in US federal custody spread like wildfire. The nurse-turned-whistleblower revealed that immigrant women were receiving hysterectomies and other gynecological procedures without the proper informed consent, while imprisoned in a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jail.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the contradictions of capitalist society for everyone to see. It has brought to surface the glaring class divide in India. While the wealthy minority enjoy conditions of comfort and privilege, the poor are struggling for their survival.

Over the weekend, the protest movement that has been shaking the Thai regime for months struck its most powerful blow so far.

Over €10,000 has been raised in the appeal to help the Trotsky Museum in Mexico, which was launched on 20 August during the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky.

In the early hours of 9 September, the lawyer and taxi driver Jorge Humberto Ordoñez, father of two, was murdered by two National Police agents after 16 taser discharges and a beatdown, as he begged for his life. This crime, which was recorded by witnesses, was the straw that broke the camel’s back and pushed the masses into the streets against police brutality and in demand of effective action against massacres, unemployment and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Modern Monetary Theory has become in vogue on the left, as a supposed answer to the austerity agenda pursued by big business politicians. But the limits of a new book by a leading MMT proponent show why we need the ideas of Marxism.

The clash between Greece and Turkey, which began last July, shows no signs of abating and indeed increases in intensity week after week. It is the most serious crisis between the two countries in decades.

The US is standing on a precipice overlooking an abyss of hitherto unimagined proportions. Since March, over 56 million workers have filed unemployment claims, and as of this writing, roughly half of them are currently receiving unemployment benefits.

Boris Johnson and the Tories are on a collision course with Brussels. A no-deal Brexit is on the cards. Alongside a plummeting economy and a second wave of the pandemic, this is a perfect storm for British capitalism.

The Brazilian section of the International Marxist Tendency has faced an online attack from an anonymous individual in an attempt to silence our revolutionary ideas. The IMT would like to send our full support and solidarity to the Brazilian comrades of Esquerda Marxista and comrade Johannes Halter, who has endured personal threats as well as threats towards his family. We ask all our readers to support the campaign by sending messages of solidarity to contato@marxismo.org.br.

It is with enormous sadness that we must inform readers of the passing away of comrade Ron Graves – a stalwart of socialism; a dedicated labour movement activist; and a lifelong supporter of the Marxist tendency in Britain. The following tribute to Ron's life and work was written by Rob Sewell, editor of the British Marxist website, socialist.net.