On Saturday 7 October, Hamas forces in Gaza launched an unexpected attack on Israel, triggering an immediate response from the Israeli Defence Force. Fundamentally, this is a conflict between unequal forces, as the Palestinian masses have for decades been the victims of a regime of terror promoted by the likes of Netanyahu and Israel’s imperialist backers in the west. In this special episode, International Marxist Radio returns before the launch of the International Marxist Tendency’s...

Today marks 50 years since the coup that overthrew the government of Salvador Allende in Chile. To remember the revolutionary struggles of this period and to emphasise the invaluable lessons contained therein, International Marxist Radio is back for a special episode. Allende’s Popular Unity government, which carried out a series of major reforms for workers and the poor (but which maintained a naive belief in the loyalty of the state’s armed forces), was brutally crushed by a...

PODCAST FINALE! Watch a video of the discussion on YouTube, premiering 2 August 15:00 British time: https://youtu.be/ew7oKxdvm5I  More and more workers and youth all over the world are being drawn to the ideas and banner of communism, much to the anger and anxiety of the bosses, bankers and bourgeois politicians.  With capitalism at a total impasse, and no end in sight to wars, economic hardship, state violence and oppression, the growing enthusiasm for a revolutionary...

A quick special announcement to inform our listeners that next week's episode of International Marxist Radio (released 2 August) Wednesday will be our last. As a send-off, the discussion, 'Why We Are Communists', has also been filmed. In addition to posting the audio here as usual, we will upload the video to In Defence of Marxism's YouTube channel! Keep an eye out! We would like to thank everyone who has tuned into the podcast for their support. Please catch up on any episodes...

The Roman Republic was a society characterised by great social and political upheaval. This is a period of well-documented and important class struggle, which has many parallels with the situation today. If we are to avoid making the mistakes of history, a close study of the past is absolutely crucial for all Marxists. This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio welcomes Alan Woods, writer, theoretician and leading member of the International Marxist Tendency, to discuss his...

The Spanish Revolution and Civil War (which began this week in 1936) represent a profoundly heroic period of struggle by the Spanish working class and peasantry. The masses gave their all in the fight against Franco, only to be failed by their leadership. Both the anarchists and the Stalinists at the head of the fight against fascism failed to lead the workers and peasants to victory. Especially the latter consciously sold out the revolution, ushering in a period of reaction and dictatorship...

David Graeber and David Wengrow’s anthropological opus, The Dawn of Everything, claims to offer an entirely new, radical view of the development of human society (implicitly: one that knocks down Marx and Engels’ historical materialism). This is no small task, but is the book as earth-shattering as the immodest title suggests? Despite making waves in certain left-wing circles, the book offers a thin gruel. By fetishising the ‘creative’ potential of human ‘free will’, Graeber and...

Last week, a French policeman shot an unarmed French-Algerian teenager (Nahel M.) in the chest after a traffic stop. Before pulling the trigger, Nahel was told “I will lodge a bullet in your head”. A video of the brutal slaying was uploaded to social media, resulting in a massive outpouring of rage that swept the country. Police violence in France is the worst in Western Europe, and this latest outrage occurs at a time when President Macron’s government is already weak and despised,...

Last weekend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the infamous Russian mercenary company Wagner, led an apparent mutiny. After withdrawing his troops from the front line of the Ukraine War, Prigozhin took control of the military bases at Rostov-on-Don and began what he called “march for justice” (albeit a heavily armed one), heading towards Moscow. Within a day, it was all over, but what are we to make of these dramatic events? A significant degree of uncertainty still surrounds Prigozhin’s...

175 years ago, a wave of revolutions swept across the European continent, in which the working class played a key role in challenging the might of the feudal order. From France to Germany to Italy, the masses led a struggle for democratic and economic demands, winning significant concessions from the decrepit ruling classes of Europe. Marx and Engels were not just passive witnesses to these events, but active participants. As well as being an immensely important chapter in the history...

The relative decline of US imperialism is leaving a void that is starting to be filled by other powers. In recent years, this has led to a rise of rival imperialist nations such as China and Russia, which are increasingly trying to challenge the domination of the US. What are the implications of this for the class struggle? What are the tasks of communists in a so-called multipolar world? This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio welcomes Hamid Alizadeh from the editorial...

The recent period in the USA has been highly eventful. From the Trump presidency, to the Sanders movement, to BLM and the George Floyd protests, to the storming of Capitol Hill, the ‘Land of the Free’ is more polarised than it has been for decades. Poverty, racism and inequality are rampant; and seemingly not a month passes without another terrible mass shooting. The American Dream has turned into an American Nightmare for millions. What we need is a Third – Socialist – American...

Is human population growth to blame for poverty and climate change? Plenty of pundits and politicians on the right and left alike seem to think so. Knowingly or not, they repeat the reactionary ideas of the Reverend Thomas Malthus, whose economic and social theories Marx and Engels demolished nearly 200 years ago. Yet today, the spectre of Malthusianism still endures. This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio welcomes back Adam Booth from the British Marxist organisation...

This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio concludes our two-part series looking at the class struggle in Sub-Saharan Africa. This week, Ben Morken, a leading comrade of the International Marxist Tendency based in South Africa, discusses the broader context that has led to the current state of affairs across the continent. Historically ravaged by colonialism, Africa today continues to be cynically exploited by imperialism. In addition, many African nations find themselves...

This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio is the first of a special two-part series looking at the class struggle in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ben Morken, a leading comrade of the International Marxist Tendency based in South Africa, discusses the current political situation in a number of African countries, which constitute a bubbling cauldron of class struggle. From the revival of radical traditions in post-Apartheid South Africa, to explosive political developments in Nigeria, to...

This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio welcomes Daniel Morley, a leading comrade of Socialist Appeal, the British section of the International Marxist Tendency, to discuss so-called identity politics, and why Marxists oppose its influence on the class struggle. In many countries today, identity politics (i.e. the idea that one’s racial, sexual, gender identity etc., rather than social class, determines one’s fundamental interests and worldview) is exploited by right-wing...

In this week’s episode of International Marxist Radio, Josh Holroyd, a leading comrade of the International Marxist Tendency and editor of In Defence of Marxism magazine (issue 41 available now), discusses the early life, works and revolutionary career of Karl Marx, whose 205th birthday we mark on Friday! Born on 5 May 1818 in Trier, Marx’s formative years were shaped by the explosive events of the society in which he lived, one that existed in the shadow of the Great French Revolution...

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! After a long period of relative inactivity, the US working class is beginning to move. As the ongoing crisis of capitalism continues to worsen living conditions for the vast majority, workers in the US, as elsewhere, are looking to the mass...

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. While we are often told that the oppression of women is innate to human relations, this could not be further from the truth. In reality, in pre-class societies, hunter-gatherer men and women generally existed in an egalitarian relationship. These were arguments raised by Lewis Henry Morgan, a materialist...

This week’s episode welcomes Adam Pal, leading comrade of Lal Salaam, the Pakistani section of the International Marxist Tendency, to discuss the ongoing turmoil in Pakistan.  In the midst of a deep political crisis, the Pakistani ruling class is split, with different factions leaning on sections of the military high command to maintain their position. This has led to the immense social instability that has characterised the country in the recent period. On top of this, the...

This week’s episode welcomes back Niklas Albin Svensson, a leading member of the International Marxist Tendency, to discuss the ongoing turmoil in the global banking system. A few weeks ago, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed, but the failure of SVB was not the end of the story. Rather, what we have seen is a sudden flurry of bank collapses, which has so far culminated in the forced merger of Credit Suisse into UBS and the dramatic fall in Deutsche Bank’s share price. While a...

This week’s episode discusses the perspectives for class struggle in Germany, with Alex Kalabekow, a leading comrade of Der Funke, the German section of the International Marxist Tendency.  Note: this podcast was recorded before the 27 March ‘Mega-Strike’ which brought hundreds of thousands of transport workers onto the streets in the largest strike in Germany since 1992. While this turning point in the class struggle is not discussed directly, Alex points towards the growth of the...

This week’s episode welcomes Jules Legendre, a leading comrade of Révolution, the French section of the International Marxist Tendency, to discuss the developing situation in France concerning Macron’s hated pension reforms. Having bypassed the National Assembly and forced through a rise in the retirement age from 62 to 64, this week Macron narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in the French parliament. While Macron still barely clings on to power in the National Assembly, the masses...

This week’s episode welcomes Niklas Albin Svensson, a leading comrade of the International Marxist Tendency, to discuss the legacy of Stalinism, 70 years after the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953. While many associate Stalin and his crimes with socialism or communism, this could not be further from the truth. As Niklas explains, Stalinism is nothing else but a bloody caricature of the genuine traditions of Marxism, which are done an infinite disservice by their association with...

This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio welcomes Ylva Vinberg, leading comrade of Revolution, the Swedish section of the International Marxist Tendency, and Fred Weston, co-author of Wellred Books’ latest publication, Women, Family and the Russian Revolution – available to pre-order now: https://wellred-books.com/women-family-and-the-russian-revolution/ To mark International Working Women’s Day, this episode focuses on the Marxist position on the struggle for women’s...