The number of people infected with the Covid-19 virus has been rising sharply in recent weeks in many parts of the world, especially in Europe, which has once more become one of the epicentres of the pandemic. The “possibility of a second wave” announced several months ago by epidemiologists is now a reality and it is highly likely that it will be much more virulent than the previous one.

The fragile cease-fire coming from the "accords" between Armenia and Azerbaijan permits no illusions about a "peaceful settlement" of the conflict. It is the product of a situation which can only sanction a precarious "order" and a relation of forces imposed by both Russia and Turkey. It settles nothing. On the contrary it represents another stage in the exacerbation of military tensions and feeds the chaos in this imperialist fault-line which risks reigniting the flames of war later on.

The Covid-19 pandemic is seriously aggravating the world economic crisis which was already resurfacing after the anaemic post-2008 "recovery". The working class all over the world will feel the impact: unemployment, increased rates of exploitation, poverty and insecurity...This report, written for the recent congress of our section in France, analyses the manner in which a product of social decomposition is rebounding onto the economic sphere.  

Even in this final phase of its historic decline, even as the ruling class increasingly demonstrates its loss of control over its own system, capitalism can turn its own rottenness against its real enemy – against the working class and the danger that it could become conscious of its true interests. The record turn-out in these elections and the noisy protests and celebrations on both sides of the political divide represent a powerful reinforcement of the democratic delusion – of the false idea that changing a president or a government can halt capitalism’s slide into the abyss, that the vote enables “the people” to take charge of their destiny.

Baku Congress, 1920: "support for colonial revolutions" really meant grave concessions to nationalism by the Comintern

While the founding Congress of the Communist International was a real step forward in the unification of the world proletariat, the evolution of the CI in the years that followed was marked essentially by regressions which disarmed the revolution in the face of the counter-revolutionary forces which were more and more gaining ground. The rampant opportunism within the ranks of the party was not eliminated as Lenin and the Bolsheviks envisaged. On the contrary, with the degeneration of the revolution, it ended up taking a preponderant place and hastened the end of the CI as a class party. This opportunist dynamic, already visible by the Second Congress, only deepened after that, both on the programmatic and organisational levels, as we will try to show in this article.

When the world is facing the trial of the Covid-19 pandemic, we in the ICC have also been through the painful experience of the passing away of our comrade Kishan on 26th March, 2020. This is a great loss for the ICC and its section in India, and we will miss him greatly. Kishan made an important contribution to the life of the ICC and was a comrade with a great fighting spirit till his last breath.

This report was written for a recent congress of our section in France and will be followed by other reports on the world situation.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit at the beginning of 2020, the tendency towards increasingly chaotic imperialist tensions and conflicts was already underway. All the indications are that the pandemic will accelerate these tendencies. 

The two articles under this heading examine different aspects of the bourgeoisie’s growing lack of control over its own political and economic system. This tendency is world-wide, but among the most ‘developed’ countries it is exemplified by the increasingly evident incoherence of the Johnson government in the face of Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the accelerating economic crisis.

The two articles under this heading examine different aspects of the bourgeoisie’s growing lack of control over its own political and economic system. This tendency is world-wide, but among the most ‘developed’ countries it is exemplified by the increasingly evident incoherence of the Johnson government in the face of Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the accelerating economic crisis.

Given its lack of preparedness to deal with a global pandemic, the bourgeoisie has had little choice but to resort to the mediaeval policy of quarantining the population, which has paid a heavy price in terms of impoverishment and social atomisation.  

The choice of which party or president takes the reins of government is a false choice that cannot turn capitalist civilisation away from the path towards catastrophe. This applies to the coming US elections as much as to any other electoral circus. 

Forty years ago, in the summer of 1980, the working class in Poland made the whole world tremble. A massive strike movement was spreading across the country: several hundred thousand workers launched wildcat strikes in the different towns; it shook the ruling class in Poland and those in other countries.

August 8th and subsequent weekends saw thousands of UK health workers protest against poor pay and the failure to protect them against Covid-19. Similar anger has been displayed by proletarians in cities around the world...

Fire ravages Moria camp, already unfit for human habitation

The humanitarian speeches of the ruling class can't hide the real inhumanity of their policy towards the growing mass of refugees.

The huge exploision in Beirut

The catastrophe in Beirut shows the criminal negligence not just of the ruling class in Lebanon, but of an entire social order.

The development of the situation in the Middle East between 1990 and 2010 has shown vividly that the imperialist confrontations, the militarism and barbarism, which are essential characteristics of the period of the decadence of capitalism, have not only intensified but, above all, in the phase of the widespread decomposition of capitalist society, their irrational and chaotic nature has become more and more evident.

Draped in the national flag

The working class has nothing to gain by taking in part in mobilisations in favour of bourgeois elections

This text does not aim to develop a history of recent conflicts in the Middle East but to show how the understanding of the decadence and decomposition of capitalism is an essential framework for understanding the explosion of contradictions which plunge this region of the world today into warlike bestiality and chaos. This barbarism has a history, and it reflects the rotting of the system.

The discussion texts we are publishing here are the product of an internal debate within the ICC regarding the significance and direction of the historical phase in the life of decadent capitalism which was definitively opened up by the collapse of the Russian imperialist bloc in 1989: the phase of decomposition, the terminal phase of capitalist decadence.