Audio & Video

The Revolutionary Communist International hosts a number of regular podcasts and streamed events for training the new generation of communist fighters around the globe. Click on the images and links below to check them out! At the bottom of the page and on the following pages, we include all marxist.com’s audio and visual material.

The Spectre of Communism

spectre podcast page

A spectre is haunting all major podcast platforms… The Spectre of Communism podcast!

On this weekly podcast, leading comrades from the Revolutionary Communist International go into depth on topics ranging from revolutionary history and strategy to science, culture and questions of theory. This valuable tool is intended to arm our listeners with the ideas and arguments necessary to defend the principles of communism, to win others over to a revolutionary perspective, and to help our listeners master Marxist theory for themselves.

Against the Stream

Against the stream podcast page

In Against the Stream, our weekly current affairs podcast, members of the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International sit down to discuss the main events shaping global affairs. In an increasingly turbulent world situation, these discussions look behind the headlines of the mainstream press and the statements of politicians, to bring out the real processes and interests at play.

The World School of Communism

Every two years, the Revolutionary Communist International hosts a world school. Bringing together thousands of communists from all around the globe in person and online for a week of discussion on Marxist theory, these schools are crash courses for steeling revolutionaries in the ideas we need to bring down this system. All of these talks have been made available to stream online, making them a permanent and extremely valuable resource. Click on the links to catch up on the World School of Communism 2024, International Marxist University 2022, and International Marxist University 2020.

The meteoric rise and catastrophic fall of the Corbyn movement represented a major turning point in British and world politics. For all that it inspired millions of workers and youth, it was an object lesson in the betrayals inherent in reformism and the pitfalls of opportunism: i.e. when left-wing leaders make ‘pragmatic’ concessions to the class enemy – with fatal consequences. This week, the Spectre of Communism speaks to Matt Zarb-Cousin, former spokesperson for Jeremy Corbyn, who saw this process unfold from the inside…

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.

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!

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.

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!

This week, Against the Stream podcast went live for a very special episode. Now that the results of the US election have come in, Hamid Alizadeh and Alan Woods from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI) sat down to discuss the implications of Trump's victory and what it means to communists. Alan is the editor of marxist.com, the author of numerous books on Marxist theory and the lead theoretician of the RCI.

The idea of building socialism in one country alone was alien to Marx, Engels and Lenin. But after the latter’s death, Stalin and his supporters raised the possibility of constructing socialism in the USSR amidst a sea of capitalism. The Young Communist League – the youth wing of the Communist Party of Britain – recently advanced the theory of socialism in one country, as opposed to Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution. Where does the RCI stand on the matter? Was the USSR socialist? Is China today socialist? Is it possible to build socialism in a single country?

The American Civil War, unlike the conflicts that plague the world today, was just and historically progressive. The Union north smashed the Confederacy of southern slave states and carried out the biggest expropriation of private property in history at the time, with the emancipation of 4 million enslaved people. The Union cause was praised by Karl Marx, who said Lincoln’s battle cry should be: “death to slavery!” With elections in the US just a few weeks away, the American bourgeoisie once again has civil war on its mind…. 

This year marks 40 years since the release of the film Threads, one of the clearest and most harrowing depictions of the consequences of nuclear war ever produced. With wars and conflicts escalating around the globe, the stark message of this film has never been more relevant. The fight against the barbarity of militarism and imperialism is an existential struggle that communists have a duty to take up.

This Thursday, comrades Jorge Martín and Hamid Alizadeh of the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International recorded a special podcast episode on Gaza, Ukraine and world relations. Instead of our regular format, this one addresses the burning questions of the day in a slightly different format.

Around the world, the capitalist establishment is increasingly obsessed with the so-called ‘Culture War’, with conservative journalists and politicians scaremongering about the ‘woke agenda’, while liberals drape rainbow flags on war and austerity and call it ‘liberation’. How can communists cut through this reactionary nonsense and get to the heart of the issues facing us today?

The situation in the Middle East is escalating dramatically. Israel’s current invasion of Lebanon has sent shockwaves throughout the region and represents a further step towards the outbreak of a region-wide conflict, risking open war with Iran. As the Middle East grows more unstable, communists need a clear understanding of these events and what we can do to fight against militarism and imperialism wherever we are.