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On Sunday, Lula of the Workers’ Party (PT) narrowly defeated the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro (50.9 percent to 49.10 percent) in the second round of the presidential elections. While workers and youth are rightly celebrating this result, we should also note that Bolsonaro exceeded expectations, and managed to increase his vote by over 6 million between the two rounds, compared to an increase of 2.6 million for Lula.

The following is a statement by our Brazilian section, Esquerda Marxista (Marxist Left) offering solidarity with worker, youth and neighbourhood activists who have resolved to break up road blockades by hardline Bolsonaro supporters, refusing to accept the result of Sunday’s elections. Our comrades will participate in these efforts, and call for the main left and trade union organisations to back them.

The 20th Congress of China’s ruling Communist Party (CCP) has further consolidated the power of the party-state over society, with President Xi Jinping at its head. Xi has formally inaugurated his third term as supreme leader of the country – a feat only matched by Mao in the history of the People’s Republic of China. The senior leadership of the CCP is now entirely staffed by Xi’s trusted lieutenants. The heavily-stressed theme of this Congress was the necessity of the party-state’s leadership as the country enters the coming period.

The editorial board of the IMT’s Arabic website, marxy.com, is very proud to announce the publication of the Arabic translation of Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution, by Alan Woods, editor of marxist.com. The book is a masterful account of the history of the Bolshevik Party, rich with lessons about how, over years of patient work, it came to lead the Russian masses to power in 1917. Read on for information about an Arabic-language launch event this Sunday, and the author’s preface (in English), which discusses the legacy of the 2011 Arab Revolution.

26 October marked 40 days since the murder of the Iranian-Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, by the regime’s morality police. Being the final day of the traditional Shia mourning period, it was met with massive protests, becoming a new highpoint of the movement, with protests in nearly every major city. In many Kurdish towns, a general strike broke out; across the country, bazaari strikes were held in support of the movement; and in Tehran Metro conductors went on strike in support of the revolutionary youth. 

A century has passed since the Italian capitalist class handed power to Benito Mussolini’s fascists. Below we present a series of articles by Sinistra Classe Rivoluzione, the Italian section of the IMT, on the events leading up to Mussolini’s infamous ‘March on Rome’, the first three of which are compiled below (and the fourth will soon be available in Italian on their website). It is important we understand the lessons of fascism’s rise to

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Since the start of the academic year, comrades of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) have been raising the red flag on campuses worldwide. We have documented much of this excellent work and the eager reception Marxist ideas have received under the hashtag #CommunismOnCampus. We include many of those reports here.

Capitalism is incapable of offering a decent and dignified existence to workers and the poor, yet provides unimaginable luxury for the elite. While billions struggle to find enough to eat, the billionaires dine like royalty. The necessities of life are increasingly unattainable, yet capitalist governments plough billions into instruments of death. To quote Marx, these are the economics of the madhouse.

Canada, the United States and the United Nations (UN) are openly discussing a new intervention in Haiti.

On October 7, Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry officially called for foreign military intervention in his country under the pretext of fighting the gangs. A few days later, Canadian and American military aircraft coordinated the arrival of Canadian-made armored vehicles to reinforce the Haitian National Police (PNH). 

To the relief of the ruling class, Rishi Sunak has been anointed Britain’s latest prime minister. The new Tory leader has promised ‘stability’, on the basis of a programme of harsh austerity. Instead, revolutionary explosions lie ahead.

The midterms used to be a banal affair that received little attention and voter turnout, in which the opposition party would typically retake control of Congress without much uproar. But the traditional dynamics of US bourgeois politics have been entirely upended in the last period, as the systematic crisis of world capitalism wreaks havoc on political stability across the globe. This year’s midterms will provide a partial snapshot of the political mood in American society at the halfway point of Biden’s presidential term.

We publish here a recording of the opening session of our British comrades’ Revolution Festival, in which Alan Woods, editor of marxist.com, discusses the chaotic state of world politics.

With both the UK economy and Conservative Party in meltdown, Liz Truss has been ousted from office – part of an establishment coup to regain control of the Tories. But further explosions lie ahead, as the crisis of British capitalism deepens.