The following is the Resolution of Lucha de Clases – CMI Venezuela on the political and electoral situation, approved by its Central Committee. Future analyses will be published that add further detail to the position the resolution puts forward. We invite the most conscious layers of the workers’ and wider mass movement to read, analyse, circulate and discuss the content of the text. It is a contribution to the debate on what position consistent revolutionaries should take in the coming presidential elections and the kind of organisation we need to put the forces of the Venezuelan working people back on their feet.

Advances in artificial intelligence continue to make headlines, as AI has begun to play a role in everything from art and journalism to conspiracy theories and unemployment. While AI is clearly here to stay, it is equally clear that the capitalist class has no interest in using it to its fullest. Once again, capitalism’s brutal inefficiency and systematic misuse of such technology is profound evidence of the need for communism and economic planning.

The face of the capitalist political establishment in Ireland for the past seven years, Leo Varadkar, has resigned as leader of Fine Gael and from the Taoiseach position. Varadkar has been, without doubt, one of the most reliable servants of the Irish ruling class in the last decade. He was once the man they needed, but the times have now changed.

The global crisis of capitalism is pushing workers and young people in one country after another towards revolutionary communism! As a result, we’ve been receiving dozens of messages and requests to participate in the founding conference of our new International, with some of the most inspiring examples shared below. This new generation of communists burns with rage at the horrors and injustices of the capitalist system, and instinctively understands that to overthrow it we need to get organised!

When divisions among Russian Marxists between ‘Bolsheviks’ and ‘Mensheviks’ first emerged at the second congress of the RSDLP in 1903, they remained confined to secondary differences over organisational questions. Only with the 1905 Revolution did real political differences emerge, as Lenin explained in his brilliant pamphlet of that year, Two Tactics of the Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. More than anything else, war and revolution bring out political differences with crystal clarity.

On 2 March 1921, sailors in Kronstadt took up arms against the young Soviet government. The rebellion was short-lived and crushed by 18 March. But its tale has survived much longer and has been told and retold with very little concern for facts and serious analysis. The present work will not rehash chronological details of the rebellion in depth, which readers can find in great detail in many other works. Instead, it will outline the underlying processes that gave rise to the rebellion, looking beyond mere appearances to its real character, and explain the actions taken by the Bolsheviks against it.

This May, the British section of the International Marxist Tendency is launching the Revolutionary Communist Party. We publish here a draft document that will form the basis for the central discussion at the founding congress, outlining the perspectives and tasks facing communists in Britain.

The following is an open letter from our Portuguese comrades (Colectivo Marxista) to members of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), following the snap elections on 10 March, which saw the ruling left/centre-left alliance defeated. The PCP went from 332,000 votes in 2019 to a historic low of 202,000. The comrades draw some conclusions from these poor results, and offer a dialogue to members of the PCP about how to build the forces of Portuguese communism going forward.

The term “to shed crocodile tears” derives from the fact that crocodiles have been noted to shed tears as they consume their victims. According to the Collins Dictionary, the meaning of the saying is “to pretend to be sad or to sympathise with someone without really caring about them.” Crocodiles do indeed produce tears, but they serve to keep the eyes clean and lubricated and are in no way connected to emotions. Today, we have many crocodiles in human form – they are called Presidents, Prime Ministers, Foreign Secretaries, newspaper editors, and so on. But Biden stands out clearly as the Chief Crocodile.

Communism is often presented by its enemies as being at best uninterested in art and culture, and at worst openly hostile to anything but the crudest propaganda. This is completely at odds with the approach of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and genuine communists today. The Russian Revolution ushered in an explosion of artistic creativity, which for the first time was unshackled from the constraints of class society. This is the legacy that communists must defend.

Last Friday, the world was shocked and horrified by reports of an appalling massacre at a packed concert venue in Moscow. According to the latest reports at the time of writing, at least 137 people were killed in this barbaric attack. Men, women and children were slaughtered indiscriminately by a group of gunmen who showed no mercy.

On the weekend 15-17 March, the founding congress of the Revolutionary Communist Organisation (RCO) was held in Madrid. This was a historic milestone for several reasons: we had the largest presence and participation of any previous congress; we launched a new organisation; and the comrades came out more determined than ever to build the forces of communism in the Spanish state and around the world.

The 10 March deadline for the attack on Rafah has come and gone, and there is no attack yet. Could it be that Netanyahu is having second thoughts? The answer to that is clearly, no. The Israeli government is manoeuvring under pressure from outside, in particular from the US administration, while at the same time being internally divided. Is the US pressure due to humanitarian concerns on the part of Biden? The answer, again, is no. The US continues to support Israel in its genocidal onslaught on the Palestinian people, as testified by its increased military aid. So why the delay in the attack?

This June, revolutionary communists from around the globe will be meeting in Italy to found a new Revolutionary Communist International (RCI), as the banner for organising communists for world socialist revolution. You too can participate by signing up online. But in order to participate fully, we are asking for something from you: politically prepare for the event. We have prepared reading lists for all 15 sessions. But first we want to answer a question: we intend this International to become a worldwide party of revolutionary action. Why then do we need a reading list?

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (The Crisis in Our Party) sees Lenin analysing the fallout of the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). The 1903 Congress saw the famous split emerge in the Russian workers’ movement between Bolshevism and Menshevism. However, the split didn’t initially concern differences in politics and perspectives, erupting over seemingly secondary organisational questions. Only in subsequent years, particularly around the 1905 Revolution, would those differences become sharply apparent, culminating in a formal and final split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in 1912.