Our British comrades' online Revolution Festival 2020 begins today! With a packed programme of exciting talks and discussions, this year's festival promises to be the best ever. Don't miss out – get your ticket now and join the revolution!

We have received the following report of events taking place on Chinese internet fora and social media. It shows that, despite the CCP’s totalitarian regime, the crisis of capitalism is still radicalising Chinese youth, who express their discontent online in creative ways. We believe it is valuable to publish this for our international readers, showing a process which is not readily visible through official statistics and reporting.

This statement by our French comrades condemns the brutal assassination of a teacher in the Conflans-Sainte-Honorine suburb of Paris by an Islamic fundamentalist. We reject hypocritical attempts by the right wing in France to exploit this tragedy as part of a propaganda war against Muslims. Imperialism is responsible for creating the poisoned soil in which fundamentalism flourishes. 

The MAS (Movement for Socialism) has returned to power in Bolivia following a crushing victory in the recent elections. Rather than a programme of compromise and national unity, bold socialist measures are necessary to overcome this period of tremendous crisis, and carry society forward.

The Chilean masses must use the upcoming national plebiscite on constitutional reform to deal a hard blow against the hated Piñera regime and Pinochetist conservatism, and must not retreat from the streets but press even harder to win their dignity.  

Both the US and British governments have recently launched a barrage of criticism against China’s treatment of the Uyghurs. The US has gone as far as imposing sanctions on top Chinese state officials responsible for Xinjiang, and the oppression of the Uyghurs by the Chinese state is now regularly featured in the news in the West. According to reports by the capitalist press, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs are being detained in prison camps, whilst others face extremely repressive conditions. But why only now have western imperialists hypocritically taken up the plight of the Uyghurs?

A political earthquake struck New Zealand on general election night, with the Labour Party securing a second term in office with an absolute majority. This is the first time since the MMP voting system was introduced in 1996 that a political party has won such a majority.

To mark the release of Chartist Revolution by Rob Sewell (a Marxist analysis of the inspiring Chartist movement in 19th century Britain), the author and Socialist Appeal writer Josh Holroyd discuss the book, and the important lessons from these historical events for the struggles of the working class today. 

We are excited to announce the publication of a new book by Rob Sewell, editor of Socialist Appeal, on Chartism: a titanic struggle by British workers in the 1800s that involved arming, general strikes and insurrection, a fact buried by official 'histories'. Until the end of October, Chartist Revolution is available for pre-order at Wellred books for a special discounted price!

Fred Weston, editor for marxist.com, explains how the Italian left wrecked itself on the rocks of 'lesser-evilism', starting in the 1970s. With early voting for the US elections underway, and huge pressure on the left to vote for Joe Biden in order to kick out Donald Trump, there are valuable lessons to be learned from the Italian experience.

The following article explains the situation in Haiti, where President Jovenel Moïse is hurtling towards naked dictatorship. With parliament dissolved in January, he is ruling by decree (with the support of Haiti’s capitalist mafioso and foreign imperialism), murdering and terrorising all opponents to his authority. The workers, youth and poor must organise on a class basis to overthrow this rotten system! Please read, share and add your organisation’s name to this solidarity statement.

We ask worker and student activists and organisations around the world to show their solidarity with the struggle in Haiti by sharing this statement, taking pictures and making statements of their own on social media using the hashtags #SolidaritéAvecLaLutteEnHaïti and #ABasLeRégimeMoïse. To add the name of your organisation to the statement please contact webmaster@marxist.com.

For days, protests have rocked cities across Nigeria. It is organised around #EndSARS, a movement that is calling for a complete ban of the so-called “anti-robbery” wing of the Nigerian Police, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS – no relation to the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2). Set up in the mid-90s to combat incidences of armed robbery, which had become rampant as a result of deepening poverty under the corrupt military regimes, SARS has since then metamorphosed into a dreaded force associated with all sorts of evils.

The world’s poorest countries are going through a vicious cycle of spiralling debt. The coronavirus epidemic has added a further heavy burden to their state coffers. These mainly raw material producing countries were already struggling to deal with the collapse in raw material prices, and this latest crisis makes the situation completely untenable, which has major implications for the advanced capitalist countries as well.

Mass protests and strikes exploded across Indonesia on 6-8 October following the passing of the controversial Omnibus Law: a major series of counter-reforms also known as the “Big Bang” Law. Tens of thousands of workers went on strike, and in dozens of cities, school students took to the streets and engaged in running battles with the police.