This week on International Marxist Radio, Tom Trottier, a leading comrade of Socialist Revolution, the US section of the International Marxist Tendency, speaks about exciting developments in the labour movement in the United States of America!

Today, 25 April, is a day of celebration in Italy. It is the anniversary of the final fall of the hated Fascist regime in 1945. The official history books tell us that the anti-fascist movement, the hundreds of thousands of armed partisans who fought in the resistance, were fighting for a democratic republic, which is what was finally established. This ignores the fact that what was taking place was a social revolution – not just for democracy, but for workers’ power. In this brilliant text written in 1930 – 15 years before these events – Leon Trotsky predicted that a “democratic republic”, i.e. a bourgeois-democratic regime, would only emerge from a defeat of the revolutionary

“Those of you who haven’t joined yet – now is the time to do it. Join the struggle to finish capitalism once and for all, to finish the history of class struggle, to finish our prehistory so that we can enter the era of communism.” With these powerful words, Ylva Vinberg ended the congress of Revolution (IMT in Sweden), gathering over 100 enthusiastic Marxists from all over the country. 

A new study by the London-based charity War On Want finds that, even though the global food system produces more than 2.6 times the average person’s caloric needs, 2.3 billion people lack secure access to healthy and nutritious food. How is this criminal contradiction to be explained?

The most recent launch of a rocket by Elon Musk’s spacecraft manufacturing company SpaceX ended dramatically on Thursday, as the vehicle touted as the most powerful rocket ever built went up in flames just off the coast of Texas. Despite being heralded as a “successful failure”, SpaceX’s escapades show the frivolous wastefulness of the capitalist class, who grow fat on government handouts, while the standard of living for workers only continues to worsen.

In the 1960s, especially in radical student circles, there were many fanciful ideas floating about. The most pernicious and erroneous of these was the view represented by Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, that “neo-capitalism” had evolved ways of avoiding capitalist crisis, and that the working class had been integrated into the system as passive consumers in the “affluent” society. As Daniel Morley explains, these were the pseudo-Marxist ideas of the so-called Frankfurt School.

Over 155,000 federal government workers organized with the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) are leading one of the largest strikes in Canadian history, after years of real wage cuts and fruitless negotiations.

We republish here an article written by comrades of Fightback, the Canadian section of the International Marxist Tendency, written in advance of the recent public sector strike. This strike involved over 155,000 workers organised by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), making it one of the largest strikes in Canadian history. This article, originally published 18 April, provides useful background information for an international audience.

When the workers of Warrior Met Coal downed tools on April 1, 2021, they didn’t realize they were launching the longest miners’ strike in US history. But these miners had every reason to prepare for a serious fight, and they held their picket line for over 600 bitter days—until the union leadership threw in the towel. Just shy of the strike’s two-year anniversary, president Cecil Roberts of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) submitted an “unconditional offer to return to work.” He justified the surrender by arguing that the strike was at an impasse.

On this week’s episode of International Marxist Radio, Fred Weston, a leading comrade of the International Marxist Tendency, discusses the historical roots of women’s oppression.

On 17 April, British police arrested Ernest Moret, a French publisher, as he exited a train from Paris to London on a work trip. The arrest was carried out using British anti-terrorism laws, on the grounds that Moret had taken part in the recent protests against the Macron government in France. This is not only an attack on the basic democratic right to protest, but a clear sign of collusion between the French and British authorities to victimise those who dare to speak out against them.

Some feminists argue that the term and notion of ‘prostitution’ should be abandoned and replaced by that of ‘sex work’. In other words, prostitution should be treated as any other form of work and recognised as such. According to the feminist activist Morgane Merteuil (among others), prostitution would even be a tool in the fight against capitalism and for the emancipation of women. In this article, we intend to respond to these ideas from a Marxist point of view.

10 April marked the 100th day of the new Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) government in Brazil. Lula's victory at the ballot box in 2022 was a victory of the struggle of young people and workers, who mobilised to defeat the hated Bolsonaro government and its reactionary policies. But, as we explained during the campaign, this was not the end of the struggle. Bolsonaro and his supporters have gone nowhere – even if they have been weakened – and the government of Lula and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin is pursuing a policy of unity with the bourgeoisie, submitting itself to the fundamental interests of the ruling class and imperialism.

An open clash within the Sudanese counterrevolution has plunged the country into violence, which has already killed around 100 people and wounded hundreds more. This long-anticipated battle to determine which clique of murderous gangsters gets to plunder Sudan is a tragic consequence of the failure of the masses to take power after the 2018-9 revolution.

Issue 41 of In Defence of Marxism magazine is available to buy now! Alan Woods’ editorial (published here) explores the alienation of human beings under class society, a theme that connects all the articles in this edition. These include a piece on the origins of women’s oppression; the impact and implications of artificial intelligence under capitalism; the reactionary nature of Malthusianism and its modern guises, such as the notion of so-called overpopulation; and a letter, from one of our editors, commenting on the profound insights of James Joyce’s Dubliners.