Texts

We greet with enthusiasm the rebellion of the young women and the proletarians in Iran

Published: Saturday, 26 November 2022 16:59

On 13 October last in Teheran, Masha Amini, a twenty-two-year-old girl from Iranian Kurdistan was arrested by the religious police for “improper use” of the veil. Three days later the girl died of the blows she had received at the police station. As is well known, Masha’s death was the spark that ignited the explosion of the contradictions which had been brewing in Iranian society for some time, giving rise to a wave of harsh protests that is still far from being placated. The State replied with a viciously violent campaign of repression: attacks on demonstrations, arrests and imprisonment, shots fired into the crowds and cold-blooded murders (even of a child). The demonstrators are mainly young girls who were soon supported by their peers and by adults of both genders. They were also joined, with determined strikes, by the Iranian proletariat who had been in a state of unrest for some time, such as the workers from the Damavand petrochemical complex in Assalouyeh, the Abadan and Kangan refineries, the Kian Tire tyre factory in Teheran and tractor factories (it is estimated that there have been around 2000-3000 strikes yearly in the country over the past few years), as well as other plants and workplaces around the country… The anger that had long been seething over the daily oppression of young proletarian women (or those destined to join their ranks), obliged by unemployment to turn to domestic and care work due to the long economic-social world crisis – oppression totally functional to the need for control and suppression by the State, the armed wing of capitalism – this anger finally exploded, becoming the spark that lit a fire spreading to other sectors of society.

Who is Attacking “Europe”?

Published: Saturday, 19 November 2022 13:36

This is a watershed moment. The economic, social and political crisis has converged with war to make for a situation steeped in uncertainty. Any attempt to decipher the complex web of factors leading to the new scenarios and pinpoint – albeit approximately – the trajectory of events in terms of their inevitably catastrophic outcomes, is fraught with difficulty. After the Second World War, the “Italian” Communist Left made a valuable contribution to the restoration of the staples of revolutionary Marxism and, to help us find our way, we may turn to some of their keys of understanding. One of these touches upon the historical trajectory of the “aggression against Europe”, which was elaborated upon in a 1949 article of the same name, and published in what was then our theoretical organ, Prometeo. The article contained an assessment of the differing relative importance of Russian and American imperialisms.

The difficult path of a renewed class struggle faced with war

Published: Tuesday, 06 September 2022 17:29

If and when the Russians’ so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine concludes, it will become evident to those who are not content to view reality through the deforming lens of mainstream ideology, that whatever “peace” (armistice? ceasefire? what else?) may come, will merely represent a longer or shorter pause before another chapter opens up in the headlong rush towards a third, inter-imperialist bloodbath.

There’s no going back.

This is certainly not written in the stars or in the psychology of one individual or another, called onto the stage of history to play the part of the ruler of the moment, but in the material reality of the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production.

Prepare revolutionary defeatism against the imperialist war!

Published: Thursday, 29 September 2022 18:27

Since the end of the Second World War (the second imperialist massacre to be more precise), Capital has never ceased to bathe the planet in blood, as well as disrupting it with its poisons and its need for self-valorization. The list of the greater or lesser wars that have followed suit since then is striking and demonstrates, even just in the black words written and printed alone, that for a long time now its rule has become one long and destructive agony, a bloodbath that grows and spreads year after year. What is happening in Ukraine is the last “episode” in time: but an “episode” which, because of its dimensions and implications, can only serve as the antecamera to others, up until the outbreak of a third inter-imperialist massacre of worldwide dimensions.

Ukraine: core issues underlying the world crisis

Published: Friday, 15 July 2022 21:33

1949. Only four years had passed since the last act of worldwide butchery, and the furious winds of war were blowing again across Europe. The famous walls had yet to be built, but there were already discussions as to whether the security of New York and San Francisco should be shored up by risking the lives of the German proletariat on the banks of the Rhine or the Elba. Almost eighty years on, the location has changed: will democracy, peace and stars-and-stripes liberty be defended on the banks of the Dnieper or, more modestly, along the European-Atlantic axis from Gdansk to Konstanz? The world eagerly awaits the outcome of the war unleashed in Ukraine: will the endless Russian armoured columns stop in Donets, or will they plough on through to Odessa or Transnistria? Will the Baltic States be attacked? And what of Scandinavia?