The 'old guard' of the left have celebrated the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution by distancing themselves from it. Perhaps to justify the defeat of their generation. But their it-can-never-be-achieved attitude should not discourage the youth of today from rebellion.

The first ever public meeting held by the IMT in Kathmandu Nepal was a great success. Despite being in the middle of the election campaign, the meeting on the lessons of the October Revolution attracted 100 communist activists, including leading members of the Maoist party and the Young Communists. The meeting was also attended by comrade Gopal Kriti, who is a working-class veteran activist and member of the Executive Committee of the Maoist party: a mass party in Nepal. The meeting was held in the meeting hall of the Law College in Kathmandu and was addressed by comrade Yug Pathak, a communist journalist; and author and comrade Rob Sewell from the IMT.

The news of heavy fraud and corruption in two of South Africa’s biggest monopolies has thrown the big capitalists into turmoil. The scandals, which broke out almost simultaneously, involve two global behemoths, Naspers and Steinhof, and implicate some of the very biggest tycoons in the country, such as Christo Wiese, Markus Jooste and Koos Bekker.

Events in Catalonia in the last two months represent the biggest challenge ever faced by the Spanish regime since its establishment in 1978. The explosion of the masses on to the scene has acquired at points insurrectionary features. Where does this movement come from? What is its character and how can it move forward in the face of Spanish state repression?

Investment banking giant Morgan Stanley recently published a report that warned its clients about the possibility of a general election in 2018 and - in turn - of a Corbyn-led Labour victory. Such an outcome, the bankers described, would be a “worse threat to business than Brexit”.

The comrades from Izquierda Marxista, supporters of the IMT in Honduras, are participating in the mass insurrectionary movement against electoral fraud and repression. They need all the solidarity we can raise in the international workers' movement but also financial help to produce political material and to deal with security issues. Please donate generously.

As Lenin wrote: "without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement." Theory is not a matter of merely academic interest: a mastery of Marxist ideas is necessary to understand the world in which we live and fight. Without understanding capitalism, we cannot hope to defeat it. To help develop this work of political education, the French-speaking sections of the IMT organized the first international Marxist school in French.

On 26 November, national elections were held in Honduras. The election was divided into two camps: those who supported current President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), who is seeking re-election, and those who supported the candidate of the Alliance Against the Coup, Salvador Nasralla. The first block consists of the most reactionary forces that seek to maintain their privileges, starting with the National Party, the main political force of the oligarchy. The latter comprises the masses of workers, peasants, unemployed, students, housewives...who can no longer stand their exploitation, poverty, violence and lack of democracy and aspire to a profound change in society.

The past two years have seen huge shifts in political consciousness in the United States. A recent poll circulated by rabidly anti-communist organizations shows that 51 percent of American millennials want socialism and an additional 7 percent say that they want to live under communism – that makes 33.2 million socialists and a further 5.3 million “communists”! The mainstream bourgeois media is confused and asks: “Why is socialism suddenly so popular?” and “Why are there suddenly millions of socialists in America?”

 The fact that the main Venezuelan opposition parties have decided to boycott the December 10 municipal elections has opened the space for candidates representing the revolutionary wing of the Bolivarian movement to stand against official hand picked candidates from the ruling PSUV party. The bureaucracy and the state have responded by using all sorts of tricks to prevent them from running. The campaigns of Eduardo Samán in Caracas and Angel Prado in Simón Planas (Lara) have brought out the simmering contradictions within chavismo.

We republish a pamphlet (first released in 1987, during the twilight of the Soviet regime), which serves as an invaluable introduction to the events from the October Revolution to the rise of Stalinism in Russia ‒ from which innumerable lessons can be drawn for the class struggle today. It was written by George Collins, then a member of the South African section of the Committee for a Workers’ International.

At the recent 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, held on 18-24 October in Beijing, Xi Jinping took the opportunity to let the world know that China is a “mighty force” soon to reclaim its rightful position as the “Middle Kingdom”, i.e. the centre of humanity. Behind all the bluster, however, one could detect unease at the prospect of growing internal instability that flows from the impending crisis of capitalism.

On November 29, a meeting was held in Vitoria-Gasteiz to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution and to launch the Spanish edition of Stalin, by Leon Trotsky, which has been published by Lucha de Clases. The meeting was addressed by Alan Woods from the International Marxist Tendency.

On Monday, 27 November, the first meeting to launch the new edition of Trotsky's masterpiece, Stalin, took place in Madrid. The event was held at the headquarters of the Friends of Unesco Club of Madrid (CAUM) in the historic Atocha street of the capital. The room was filled with about 70 people.

British capitalism is clearly in a parlous state. The miserable spurt of growth of a few years ago has completely run out of steam, leaving the UK in a disastrous position. All the economic forecasts from the top institutions for the coming period have been downgraded from those of a year ago.