By shageetha.balachandran

(shageetha.balachandran@gmail.com)

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La Marx US

Renee Nicole Good, 37, was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis. Renee was a peaceful neighbor, poet, and artist who studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. But Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, under Donald Trump, labeled Renee a “domestic terrorist” —a complete fabrication, a falsehood used to justify the crackdown on activism fighting the Trump Administration’s anti-immigrant policies. Following Renee’s murder, protests erupted across the country, and we must unite to demand justice for Renee and strengthen the fight for immigrants’ rights.

A national struggle in defense of immigrants’ rights

Kristi Noem’s ridiculous statements were rejected even by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. The reality is that on Tuesday, January 6, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deployed more than 2,000 agents to the twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul with the objective of arresting and prosecuting Somali immigrants residing in the city. Among the officials and officers was Gregory Bovino, a high-ranking Border Patrol official who has become the public face of the raids in Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities.

But as has been happening in cities everywhere, Americans themselves came to the defense of immigrants of other nationalities living in our country. Renee was exercising her legal right to protest against ICE activity, to confront its abuses, defending people against ICE violence, which has inspired thousands of people across the country to patrol neighborhoods and provide support to those targeted by ICE, which represses, persecutes, and separates hundreds of citizens from their families and communities through deportation. 

When ICE agents confronted Renee’s car, they brutally shot her. In a scene reminiscent of the raids in Los Angeles and Chicago, protesters shouted at the agents and blew whistles, a common sound during these types of actions. “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and “ ICE out of Minnesota!” they chanted loudly from behind the police cordon. The mobilization demanding Justice for Renee is now sweeping across the country, from California to New York, from Boston to Minnesota; in every city in the country, a mass mobilization is confronting the government of Donald Trump and his immigration policy.

To make the national movement for the defense of immigrants ever larger.

Since last year, a movement has been underway in which hundreds of activists across the country, like Renee Nicole Good, have taken to the streets to protect their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and members of our immigrant communities. We have developed creative and combative tactics for the struggle, and now it is time to expand this movement, as we have been developing it as part of the Fourth American Revolution that is shaking our country and the world. To read more about the American revolution click here

Our country has been developing movements that then become global struggles since the fall of the Pentagon and the outbreak of the global capitalist crisis between 2008 and 2009, first with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement against the bankers and capitalism; in 2013, with the Black Lives Matter (BLM ) movement in defense of the rights of African Americans; then with the “Me Too” movement in 2017 in defense of women’s rights. And then more movements like…

In 2017, the “New Unionism” movement emerged, fueled by strikes against the management of the multinational food company Kellogg’s in October 2021 and the victory of Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York’s logistics hub, which gave rise to a new wave of union activism. Subsequently, the massive movement of mobilizations and university occupations in support of Palestine arose in 2024, which also gave rise to groups such as “Within Our Lifetime ,” led by Nerdeen Kiswani, a Palestinian-American activist from Brooklyn.

In 2025, the immigrant rights movement emerged in response to immigration policy, culminating in protests in Los Angeles, California, against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids targeting immigrants. Then, in June 2025, the “No Kings” movement arose as part of a series of protests held on Saturday, June 14, 2025, the 250th anniversary of the Armed Forces, which included a military parade in Washington, D.C., coinciding with President Trump’s 79th birthday. Now we must expand and strengthen the movement to defend immigrants’ rights, defeat ICE, and overturn Donald Trump’s policies. Join La Marx US to make this goals a reality.

SOURCE:

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Picture from wikipedia

Today we commemorate the birth of Cyril Lionel Robert James, a titan of revolutionary thought and a foundational figure in the tradition of Marxist-Pan-Africanism. Born on 4 January 1901 in Tunapuna, Trinidad, James dedicated his life to articulating and advancing the inseparable cause of global working class emancipation and anti-colonial liberation. His work stands as a profound correction to Eurocentric Marxism, insisting that the struggle of the Black people and colonised peoples generally was not a secondary concern but the very vanguard of the world socialist movement.

James’s intellectual journey began within the contradictions of the British colonial education system, which provided him with the tools of Western literature and history while he lived under a regime that denied basic rights to his people. This early experience forged a critical perspective that would define his life’s work. His move to England in 1932 placed him at the centre of the period’s great political ferment amidst economic depression and the rising fascist threat. He engaged deeply with the revolutionary movements of the time, contributing significantly to the International African Service Bureau where he collaborated with other seminal figures like George Padmore. This period was crucial for developing his unique synthesis of Marxist internationalism and unyielding anti-imperialism.

His literary and theoretical output constitutes a formidable arsenal for the left. His seminal work, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938), is not merely a historical account but a pioneering materialist analysis that positioned the enslaved Africans of Haiti as the most advanced revolutionary force of their age. James masterfully demonstrated how their successful insurrection was a central event in the making of the modern world, a direct challenge to bourgeois historiography and a timeless lesson in mass revolutionary praxis. In World Revolution 1917-1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International (1937), he provided a critical analysis of the Communist International, tracing its development and its challenges in fostering a genuine global revolutionary movement. His philosophical rigour is further displayed in works like Notes on Dialectics (1948), a demanding study aimed at training the revolutionary mind in a dynamic, non-mechanistic understanding of Marxist theory, focusing on the self-mobilising potential of the working class. Even his cultural criticism, such as Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In (1953), written during his unjust detention on Ellis Island, served as a radical exegesis, reading classic literature as an allegory for the alienating forces of capitalist modernity.

James’s political activism was as innovative as his writing. In the United States, he worked within and through various Marxist organisations, consistently focusing on the autonomous power of the working class. With collaborators, he produced groundbreaking analyses like The American Worker, which documented the everyday resistance on the shop floor, from wildcat strikes to subtle acts of sabotage, seeing in these actions the inherent rebellion against capital and the seeds of a future socialist society. His commitment was always to the self activity of the people, whom he viewed as the true authors of history.

His Pan-Africanist work was the international extension of this principle. James was a key intellectual architect of the 1945 Fifth Pan African Congress in Manchester, a historic gathering that marked a decisive turn from petitioning to a doctrine of mass anti colonial struggle. He served as a mentor and influence to a generation of independence leaders, most notably Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, imparting a vision of liberation rooted in popular sovereignty and socialist development. Throughout his later years, James remained an engaged interlocutor for liberation movements across Africa, the Caribbean, and within the Black diaspora, seeing in their struggles the same spirit of self-determination he had chronicled in San Domingo.

The legacy of C.L.R. James is a living, breathing guide for contemporary struggles. He taught that the revolutionary energy of the oppressed, particularly the Black working class in the colonies and metropoles, is the primary motor force for overturning the imperialist world order. He understood socialism as the direct, democratic rule of the working people themselves, and he approached culture as a vital terrain of ideological contestation and potential liberation. On the anniversary of his birth, we honour James not as a relic of the past but as a comrade whose work remains an essential compass for navigating the ongoing battles against capitalism, racism, and imperialist domination. His life reaffirms that the collective struggle for a just and equitable world is the only history worth making.

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The Marx International

Iran has joined the revolutionary wave sweeping the world with a national uprising against the capitalist dictatorship of the Ayatollahs. The protests erupted on December 28, 2025, following the collapse of Iran’s currency, the Rial, which devalued by 69% against the dollar, trading at 1,370,000 Rials. Fed up with the soaring prices of basic goods, which rose by 42.2% in 2025, the people began an uprising that has been met with police repression for several days. The unrest began with merchants in the Grand Bazaar in Tehran, the capital, but quickly spread to Malard in Tehran province, Kara, Kerman, Zanyan, Hamadan, and Qeshm Island. University students joined the protests in Beheshti, Khajeh Nasir, Sharif, Amir Kabir, and at the Isfahan University of Technology. People chanted “Death to the dictator” in the streets, referring to Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Ayatollahs’ capitalist dictatorship.

The uprising of the Grand Bazaar merchants is a highly significant event in the class struggle because it represents a crucial sector of the middle class, which has sustained the Ayatollah regime for decades. Several Iranian unions have also joined the mobilizations, including those of teachers, truck drivers, and bus drivers, as well as the gold and iron guilds in the bazaars and in the provinces of Kurdistan and Khorasan. Security forces used tear gas to disperse protesters in Tehran, while residents of Malard, 45 kilometers east of the capital, clashed with armed security forces on motorcycles. However, the regime is failing to quell this third revolution taking place in the country. We Marxists support the struggle of the Iranian people: Long live the revolution in Iran! Down with the capitalist dictatorship of the Ayatollahs!

A revolution against the dictatorship of the Ayatollahs

The revolution in Iran is part of a global revolutionary process unfolding across five continents, a third wave sweeping through Turkey, Serbia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Morocco, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, France, the Ukrainian national revolution, Syria, Rojava, the Palestinian national liberation intifada, and more. The Iranian revolution is a slap in the face to those who claim a rise in fascism and the far right worldwide, because it strikes at one of the oldest dictatorships in the world, which is also the political center of the reactionary Islamic fundamentalist movement that has dominated the Middle East for decades.

However, the revolutionary process shaking Iran did not begin with these mobilizations of December 2025. It began in 2019 with a revolution called the “Persian Spring” and continued with the uprising of 2022. In other words, the current revolution in Iran is a February revolution, in Nahuel Moreno’s definition, a recurring February, because it constitutes the third uprising of the people against the dictatorship. We at Marx International have been arguing that a Second Arab Spring has been underway in the Middle East since 2019, because the “Persian Spring” of 2019 occurred in conjunction with the uprising in Iraq against the government supported by Islamic fundamentalism, and against the government of Lebanon supported by Hezbollah. That is to say, that revolutionary wave of 2019 began to target the fundamentalist Islamic leadership, driven essentially by the people’s weariness with the Shiite clergy, a retrograde and medieval religious current, who live in luxury just like the Vatican officials.

The mobilizations of merchants in the Grand Bazaar signify a rupture among sectors that have traditionally supported Islamic fundamentalism. At the same time, the Bazaar protests converged with actions by sectors of the working class, such as the sugar workers of Shush, who continued their demonstrations demanding unpaid wages, job security, and the reinstatement of their dismissed colleagues, and the railway workers of Dorud, who extended their strikes against privatization and job insecurity. Social workers, drivers contracted in strategic sectors like oil and gas, and miners from Takab also demonstrated, along with pensioners who mobilized in Tehran, Ahvaz, Isfahan, Rasht, and Kermanshah against the collapse of their purchasing power and access to healthcare.

Images quickly went viral showing a lone protester confronting security forces, evoking memories of the Tiananmen Square protests in China. The government, led by Pezeshkian, announced measures to appease the public, such as a “food basket” and a “bonus” for basic foodstuffs, but people fear hyperinflation that would severely impact working families, who have seen food prices rise by more than 70% and medical expenses by around 50%. Rising fuel prices, announced tax increases, and austerity measures have fueled expectations of further price hikes, leading businesses to raise prices, restrict sales, or even close down altogether.

Iran’s monetary collapse is part of the global crisis of capitalism. The bailouts and financial rescues carried out by imperialist governments have triggered inflation worldwide, which erupts unevenly across countries and regions. In Iran, the ruling classes are not affected by inflation as the working classes are, thus exacerbating social inequality under the Ayatollah regime, just as it does in all capitalist countries around the world. Imperialist sanctions against Iran have damaged the country’s economy, but the measures taken by the Ayatollah regime, which protects the profits and privileges of wealthy regime officials, have done far more damage to the people. The revolution is against the Ayatollah dictatorship, and we must support it with all our strength.

The Second Arab Spring and the Third Intifada are a single revolution

The current revolution is a continuation of the “Persian Spring,” which erupted in response to a 200% increase in fuel prices and then escalated into a protest against the current government and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on November 15, 2019. Within hours, the protests had spread to 21 cities. They began as peaceful gatherings, but the government’s repressive measures sparked a revolt against the entire government, which responded by killing approximately 450 Iranian citizens. Protesters destroyed 731 government banks, including the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, nine Islamic religious centers, and toppled propaganda of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, including statues. Fifty government military bases were also targeted by protesters.

The chants of the protesters were directed against the government and its leaders, with people shouting: “The clergy must be lost,” “Death to the dictator,” “Death to the Islamic Republic,” “The supreme leader lives like a god. We, the people, live like beggars.” Thus began the Second Arab Spring, which, unlike the First Arab Spring of 2011, was directed against the clerical leaders of Islamic fundamentalism, also demonstrating the development of the political revolution process against all the established directions of the mass movement.

The second revolution in Iran was sparked by the murder of activist Mahsa Amini on September 14, 2022. She died after being detained and beaten by the Guidance Patrols, Iran’s Islamic religious police, for refusing to wear a hijab covering her head and face, which religious authorities deemed “inappropriate.” Protests began in the Kurdistan Province cities of Saqqez, Sanandaj, Divandarreh, Baneh, and Bijar, and then spread to Tehran, Hamedan, Mashhad, Sabzevar, Amol, Isfahan, Kerman, Shiraz, Tabriz, Rasht, Sari, Karaj, Tonekabon, Arak, Ilam, and many other cities, resulting in the deaths of 66 members of the security forces, 516 protesters, and the arrest of more than 19,200 people.

The second Iranian revolution was also part of the global women’s revolution against capitalist, sexist, and patriarchal oppression. Women’s protests against the mandatory hijab began, but the “Guidance Patrols” systematically repressed them. Following Mahsa’s death, a national strike was called, stretching from the Kurdistan province to Tehran on September 18. Political parties in Iranian Kurdistan and Kurdish civil and political activists declared a general strike on Monday. Behind the movement the dictatorship emerged weakened, and Islamic fundamentalism suffered defeat after defeat, including the loss of Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards in Syria at the hands of the guerrillas who liberated the country from Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship. As part of the Second Arab Spring, the secular guerrilla movement arose in the West Bank, leading to the Third Intifada against Israeli Zionism.

In the midst of the Third Intifada, which defeated Zionist troops in October 2013, Israel bombed Iran. But Iran’s military response exacerbated Israel’s crisis because it caused enormous destruction and a mass exodus of Israeli settlers and citizens. Israel’s ” iron shield” failed; bombs rained down on Tel Aviv, and several demolished neighborhoods of the capital began to resemble Gaza. Israel’s brief “Twelve-Day War” against Iran shattered the myth of Israel’s “invincibility” and exposed the vulnerabilities, growing crisis, and weakness of the Zionist state.

However, the treacherous policies of the Iranian bourgeoisie, incapable of consistently leading the Palestinian people’s national liberation struggle, created the conditions for Iran’s new crisis. Hamas supported the Syrian revolution and welcomed the fall of Bashar al-Assad, confronting Hezbollah, which already revealed the deep fissures and crises within Islamic fundamentalism. Now, the Iranian revolution continues to fuel the Second Arab Spring, unleashing forces of new activism in the Middle East that emerge from Islamic fundamentalist currents, and which we urge to embrace Marxism. We, the Marxist International, support the revolution in Iran and stand for the overthrow of the Ayatollahs’ dictatorship as part of the struggle for global socialism.

SOURCE:

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By Alejandro Benedetti – The Marx International

A revolutionary tide is sweeping the world with uprisings in Nepal, Yemen, Morocco, Bulgaria, Turkey, Serbia, France, Paraguay, Peru, the Palestinian Intifada for national liberation, Syria, the national liberation struggle of Ukraine or Rojava, etc. These processes show that the 21st century is far from being an era without revolutions. However, for 99% of the world’s left, there are no revolutions in the 21st century. When these processes erupt, they speak of “rebellions,” “riots,” or “uprisings ,” and refuse to define them as revolutions

By defining them in this way, the left seeks to minimize and downplay the formidable revolutionary processes sweeping the world. Since 2011, three revolutionary waves have been unfolding, which you can analyze by clicking here. But for 99% of left-wing groups worldwide, these are nothing more than simple ” protests,” even though these revolutionary processes bring down governments and regimes, dismantle dictatorships, weaken armies, and even change borders or lead to the emergence of new countries.

The Subjectivists: A Step Back from Marxism to Hegel

From a Marxist perspective, revolutions are objective processes, rooted in material contradictions and class struggle, which can erupt even without the prior presence of a revolutionary party. But for 99% of left-wing groups, these revolutionary processes cannot be categorized as such because they lack the “subjective factor” —that is, they are not led by a revolutionary party. “Subjectivists” emphasize “subjective” factors or “subjects” to define the processes of class struggle.

They define processes according to “subjective” factors such as ideology, the people involved, or the political groups participating. If there isn’t a revolutionary Marxist or Trotskyist party leading the revolution, the “subjectivists” pronounce their verdict: “That’s not a revolution .” It doesn’t matter if a government or regime has fallen, if there are insurrections or armed confrontations; none of that matters to the leaders of 99% of the global left.

Marxism, as a science, is materialist. It studies concrete reality: economic crises, national oppression, labor exploitation, class struggle, institutions, and regimes. Class struggle is an objective , material event that occurs independently of the will of parties and organizations, or the intervening “subjects .” Governments and authoritarian regimes constantly push the masses into direct action, and these outbursts may be chaotic and contradictory, but they are concrete and objective expressions of the class struggle that Marxism must study and define.

That is why Marxist science is called historical materialism. Because it studies objective, material, concrete phenomena. When Marx and Engels broke with the “idealism” of Hegel, the political-philosophical school to which they belonged, they went on to criticize the Hegelians because they argued that the struggle was one of ” ideas ,” and that what was fundamental in historical development was the development of the “subjective” aspects of “ideologies ,” the intellectual world of the clash of ideas.

Against the Hegelian thought that history and the world was a movement of “ideas ,” ” subjective ,” Marx and Engels argued that the basis for understanding history and political reality is not the “subjective ,” nor “ideas ,” but the objective and “material ,” the economy and the class struggle; for this reason they called the current they founded “dialectical materialism ,” in opposition to Hegel’s “idealist dialectics.”

The leaders of the 99% of the global left who refuse to define 21st-century revolutions by the “subjective” factor , by “subjects” and “ideas,” adopt a pre-Marxist position. And so, in their capacity as “subjective neo-Hegelians,” when they refuse to define 21st-century processes as revolutions, they end up in revisionism and break with Marxism. Thus, the inexorable law is fulfilled that everything that does not advance, regresses: These “subjective neo-Hegelians,” instead of progressing from secondary to university education, regress to the Hegelian kindergarten of the 19th century.

Leon Trotsky against the “Hegelian subjectivists”

Leon Trotsky vehemently confronted all those who despised mass revolutions: ” …Lawyers and journalists… have spent vast quantities of ink trying to prove that the February movement… was in reality nothing more than a women’s riot, later transformed into a military mutiny. Louis XVI, too, stubbornly insisted in his time that the storming of the Bastille was merely a riot, until events proved to him quite eloquently that it was a revolution… Those who lose out in a revolution rarely dare to call it by its name… The privileged of every age and their lackeys invariably try to label a revolution a riot, sedition, or mob revolt…” (Leon Trotsky, Who Led the February Revolution? History of the Russian Revolution, Chapter VIII)

And in the same text, *History of the Russian Revolution*, Trotsky states: ” The history of revolutions is, for us, above all, the history of the violent irruption of the masses into the governance of their own destinies.” A definition that, in itself, constitutes a formidable blow to the subjectivists. But Trotsky warned that every triumphant revolution faces new challenges and enemies who will try to defeat it. Therefore, all revolutions—democratic, national, and otherwise—only achieve definitive success if they are led by a revolutionary leadership. “Whatever the initial episodic stages of the revolution may be in the various countries, the realization of the revolutionary alliance of the proletariat with the peasant masses is only conceivable under the political leadership of the proletarian vanguard organized as a Communist Party. This means, in turn, that the democratic revolution can only triumph through the dictatorship of the proletariat, supported by the alliance with the peasantry and directed primarily towards achieving the objectives of the democratic revolution.” Leon Trotsky, ” What is Permanent Revolution? (Fundamental Theses) – 1930″

It is necessary to clarify that when Trotsky spoke of the ” Communist Party,” he was referring in 1930 to the revolutionary party. Even then, Communist Parties had not yet lost their Marxist character. This has nothing to do with the current Stalinist “Communist Parties” that defend capitalism, even leading horrific capitalist dictatorships. Trotsky had already given his verdict on the objective character of the revolution and clarified that for its ultimate triumph, it had to be led by a revolutionary party. The task then remained to elaborate more deeply on the relationship between the objective question of the revolution and the subjective question, the problem of revolutionary leadership. It was Nahuel Moreno who carried out this fundamental theoretical elaboration, which allowed for an understanding of the ongoing dynamics of revolutions and their relationship to the “subjective” problem.

Nahuel Moreno: The dialectic between the objective and subjective character of the revolution

If defining the existence of a revolution requires considering objective factors, does the so-called “subjective factor” have no importance? Nahuel Moreno resolved this question by demonstrating the dialectical relationship between objective and subjective factors. The subjective factor, or the problem of revolutionary leadership, is of fundamental importance, not for defining whether a revolution exists or not, but for defining its dynamics, where the revolution is headed.

Nahuel Moreno developed the category of “February Revolution,” a fundamental concept for explaining the events of the 20th century: There were major revolutions such as the defeat of the Nazis, the Yugoslav Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Korean Revolution, and the Vietnamese Revolution, but none of them were led by a revolutionary party. How do we define these revolutions? Trotskyists faced this dilemma: There were major revolutions that overthrew regimes, even going so far as to expropriate the bourgeoisie, but they were led by Stalinist or petty-bourgeois leaderships. How do we categorize them?

Nahuel Moreno began to argue that the Russian Revolution had already resolved this problem. In 1957, when Moreno was developing this argument, the Russian Revolution had taken place only forty years earlier and had unfolded as a process that began with the February Revolution, which overthrew the Tsar and paved the way for the workers’ revolution. This was followed by an interregnum during which subjective conditions matured, the dual power structures strengthened, and the working class gained experience with the opportunists in a process that culminated in the October Revolution, which was led by a revolutionary party.

Having observed the course of the first post-war revolutions, Nahuel Moreno had concluded that, since there was no revolutionary party with mass influence worldwide, the revolutions would develop with the same pattern as the Russian Revolution, that is, beginning with “February revolutions,” continuing with an interregnum that did not necessarily have to be the same amount of time as in the Russian Revolution, it could be months or years depending on the rate of maturation of the subjective conditions, and then giving way to October.

This is how Nahuel Moreno explains it: “The Hungarian and Polish revolutions have posed a great theoretical problem and, in my opinion, have solved it: the political revolution will have, like the classical revolutions, its February revolution and its October revolution, and an interregnum of dual power. That is to say, the political revolution is the same, in its mechanics, as the social revolution” (ibid.). This discovery and elaboration by Nahuel Moreno is probably the most brilliant and important of his entire career, an extraordinary contribution to Marxist theory without which it is impossible to understand the political events of the 20th century, not to mention those of the 21st century characterized by spectacular revolutions that are not led by revolutionary parties.

Permanent revolution means that revolutions are constantly unfolding, objectively, independently of our will. But when we go against capitalism, and without a revolutionary leadership at its head, the resulting revolution is a February revolution, an “unconsciously” socialist revolution. That is to say, the masses are making a revolution, but they don’t know it; they have opened an interregnum that could lead to October.

Nahuel Moreno thus characterizes the February Revolution, opening the door to a different revolution, the October Revolution, a “conscious” socialist revolution that the working class carries out “for itself” because it has a revolutionary party at its head. Both revolutions are deeply intertwined, both are against capitalism, both are socialist, but they differ in the “subjective” aspect . February is not led by a revolutionary party, like the revolutions we observe today in the 21st century, but it opens the door for the conditions to mature so that a revolutionary party can be built and the October Revolution can be achieved.

In turn, to the extent that the subjective factor does not mature, and the revolutionary party does not emerge, the February revolutions will be repeated with new episodes, what Nahuel Moreno called “recurrent Februaries .” This categorization of revolutions into “February revolutions” and “October revolutions,” differentiating them by the subjective factor, is the greatest and most transcendental contribution to Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution, allowing us to understand all the revolutions of the 20th century, and the current revolutions of the 21st century.

To unite revolutionaries to intervene in the revolutions of the 21st century

The crisis of revolutionary leadership is resolved by addressing the challenge of uniting revolutionaries around a firm theoretical framework: Marxism. The only current that defends the principles of Marxism is orthodox Trotskyism, which allows us to address and understand the revolutionary character of 21st-century processes: to understand their dynamics, their limitations, and their potential. In many cases, the absence of organized revolutionary leadership leads to the old elites or new bourgeois factions regaining control, diverting or momentarily defeating revolutions. However, there is no such thing as a linear revolution, or one without contradictions; all revolutions involve setbacks, advances and countermarches, triumphs and defeats.

None of this difficult path erases the objective nature of the uprisings or their historical importance. Recognizing the revolutions of the 21st century implies analyzing them critically: their demands, their social actors, their forms of organization, and their outcomes. Only from this materialist analysis is it possible to draw strategic lessons, build revolutionary organizations rooted in the working class, and prepare new waves of struggle that can go beyond mere government change toward genuine social transformation. The Marx International salutes the 21st-century revolutions from Nepal to the Palestinian Intifada, from Ecuador to Rojava, from Bulgaria to Bangladesh. And it calls upon you to regroup with us on the path of intervening in them, supporting them, and extending them along the road to the struggle for Global Socialism.

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HK Anti-war Mobilization consists of no more than a half dozen members. Amid a social climate where political action has become muted in the city, the activists have made a personal choice to oppose wars and align with oppressed people in Ukraine and Gaza.

by James Lee08:30, 23 November 2025 Why you can trust Hong Kong Free Press

Tourists and shoppers in Tsim Sha Tsui were greeted by an unusual sight on October 7, the second anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Five protesters walked through the bustling shopping district, waving Palestinian flags and shouting slogans. The four men and one woman carried placards saying “Free Palestine” and “Abolish the Zionist state,” while chanting: “Stop the genocide,” “Free, free Palestine,” and “From Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime.”

Anti-war protesters (from second left to right) YY, Yu Wai-pan, and Lam Chi-leung protest outside the Kowloon Mosque on October 7, 2025. Photo: James Lee/HKFP.

The protesters began in front of the Kowloon Mosque in Tsim Sha Tsui and marched along Nathan Road, eventually arriving at the waterfront. The procession lasted no more than half an hour. They were allowed to go after being briefly questioned by about a dozen police officers who followed them back to the MTR station.

The protesters were part of HK Anti-war Mobilization, which consists of no more than a half dozen members.

The group’s first march was small yet significant in part because it could proceed – a rarity in the city where street rallies had been cancelled in recent years, sometimes with little explanation.

It was not the first time the anti-war collective had staged an action in solidarity with Palestinians, and it was not the last.

The following month, on November 8, three activists crashed the opening night of the Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival at a theatre in Causeway Bay. The flash mob-style protest called for a boycott of the Israeli consulate-backed festival that the group said promoted state-sponsored propaganda.

HK Anti-war Mobilization was formed in 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February that year. Its “anti-imperialist” ethos also led the group to oppose Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of people.

The group also held a silent protest calling for ceasefires in the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars in Causeway Bay; demonstrated in front of the US consulate, demanding that Washington release Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil; held seminars and a poster exhibit.

Amid a social climate where political action has become muted in the city, the activists have made a personal choice to oppose wars and align with oppressed people in Ukraine and Gaza.

HKFP grants anonymity to known sources under tightly controlled, limited circumstances defined in our Ethics Code. Among the reasons senior editors may approve the use of anonymity for sources are threats to safety, job security or fears of reprisals.

“With so much happening globally, Hong Kong is indeed a very privileged place. Materially, you are allowed to remain untouched by the world’s conflicts,” said a member of HK Anti-war Mobilization, who prefers to be identified only with his nickname, YY, for privacy reasons.

“But if no one in Hong Kong takes action or spreads awareness, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.”

‘No justice, no peace’

YY, now in his 20s, first became involved in the anti-war movement in 2018, during his final year as a university student overseas.

That year, student activists at King’s College London uncovered the UK school’s investments in Elbit Systems, an Israeli military technology company and defence contractor, allegedly using students’ tuition fees.

YY was among those who protested against university management, calling on the institution to divest.

“Your school talks this big game about freedom, but you’re actually making missiles… that’s how I was implicated within that system,” he said.

Since joining HK Anti-war Mobilization in 2022, merely months after the group was established, YY has taken part in several protests against the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, including the ones in October and November.

See also: After 3 tours in Gaza, Hong Kong nurse wishes for end to Israel’s war in Palestinian territory

YY believes that Hong Kong is not exempt from complicity in Israel’s war. He pointed out local universities’ exchange programmes with Israel and satellite campuses, as well as the city’s ties to entities targeted by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

YY, as well as other activists in the group, believes that to be truly “anti-war,” one must reject the imperialist agendas behind those conflicts.

“Our statements accompanying each action consistently emphasise one principle: no justice, no peace,” he said.

The group’s decision to call itself an “anti-war” collective could be seen as a strategic choice, said YY. The concept of being anti-war, at face value, casts a wide enough net that could engage like-minded people who might oppose wars on humanitarian grounds.

However, they are not merely pacifists seeking an end to fighting by any means, said Lam Chi-leung, a member of the anti-war collective in his 50s. “The question is, how can reconciliations and treaties be truly founded upon justice?”

Lam was a member of Left 21, a pro-democracy leftist group that was active in the 2010s, taking part in Occupy Central in 2011 and the dock strike in 2013.

However, his activism predated Left 21. He was involved in global solidarity movements dating as far back as the 1990s, and notably in 2003, when the US-led Iraq War broke out.

The protests against the US invasion of Iraq more than two decades ago were mostly led by the pro-Beijing camp, Lam said, though he recalled taking part in a march to the American consulate with hundreds of other non-establishment protesters.

He also recalled similar protests on local university campuses.

A recognisable face in the recent protests is Yu Wai-pan, previously affiliated with the League of Social Democrats (LSD), a leftist pro-democracy party, which was dissolved in June this year.

Dismantling narratives

HK Anti-war Mobilization’s anti-imperialist principle means that it rejects campist stances, which tend, for example, to side with the West and support the US and EU-backed Ukraine and Israel, but not Palestine, said Lam.

Over the years, he has come to understand the Hong Kong public’s indifference towards Palestine as stemming from the city’s status as a nexus for global capital and its colonial history.

His fellow activist concurs. “Anti-war groups in different countries will always be informed by other political elements,” said Yu, in his 30s.

“What we really need to do is remove ourselves from the Hong Kong perspective and look at the imperialist logics of these wars through an independent lens.”

Earlier this month, on the day HK Anti-war Mobilization protested at the film festival, the death toll in Gaza topped 69,000. The vast majority of those killed were civilians.

The latest flare-up in the decades-long Middle East conflict was sparked when militant group Hamas crossed the border into Israel on October 7, 2023, taking around 250 hostages and killing over 1,200 people.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, as of Thursday, Israeli forces have killed more than 300 Palestinians since a US-brokered ceasefire came into effect on October 10 this year.

An independent United Nations inquiry concluded for the first time in September that “Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” Israel denies the charge.

Palestinians are dehumanised to such an extreme extent that the “normalisation” of narratives justifying Israel’s war must be resisted, YY told HKFP.

“I cannot block those airstrikes, but I can at least try, when an airstrike hits, to make the world see it for the atrocity that it is, and not punishment for people who deserve to be blown to smithereens. That is our objective.”

I cannot block those airstrikes, but I can at least try, when an airstrike hits, to make the world see it for the atrocity that it isYY, member of hK anti-war mobilization

Narratives justifying the killings of Palestinians sometimes appear in comments on the anti-war group’s Instagram posts and in response to news coverage of their protests, ranging from Islamophobic remarks to accusations of antisemitism. Some netizens told the activists to “go to Gaza” or said that Hong Kong had nothing to do with Palestine.

“If I can help dismantle the narratives that allow them to wage war with impunity, then I would be doing my part,” he said.

“Like basking in a spring breeze!” YY quoted another member of the group as saying, referring to his fellow activist’s sarcastic use of a Chinese proverb, which means being educated by a great teacher, as they encountered the Islamophobes and Zionists online.

“But I think it’s also our responsibility to find ways to move people to think that they should care about these things, that they morally have to do something. The fact that they haven’t done anything isn’t just their fault,” he said.

Hong Kong and beyond

The group has also been looking outwards.

HK Anti-war Mobilization helped organise an exhibition titled “Visit Palestine Project” in May, borrowing dozens of vintage posters from a Japanese collector, who was introduced by an Indonesian activist and migrant worker based in Tokyo.

“The way these links and networks behind the project came together was so amazing,” said YY. “The fact that they worked so hard to host the exhibitions in different countries, whether to fundraise or to raise awareness, really earned my respect.”

“These real-life interactions carry so much more weight than the people calling us ‘leftards’ on Instagram,” he added, referring to a pejorative term for someone who holds left-wing beliefs.

In the years before the enactment of the national security law in 2020, pro-Palestinian protests in Hong Kong attracted between tens and hundreds of people, far smaller than pro-democracy rallies that easily drew thousands to the streets.

In mid-May 2018, a dozen people marched from the US consulate in Central to the Israeli consulate in Admiralty. They condemned the Israeli killings of at least 60 Palestinians on Gaza’s border during mass protests against the official opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem.

More protesters joined at the final destination. Around 50 people – comprising members of pro-democracy groups like the LSD, the Labour Party, and Socialist Action, as well as migrant workers’ organisations – eventually gathered on the ground floor of the Admiralty Centre, which houses the Israeli consulate.

Among those protesting that day were “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, the LSD co-founder; Lee Cheuk-yan, then chairperson of the now-inactive Labour Party; and Kwok Ka-ki, member of the Civic Party, which was dissolved last year.

Both Leung and Kwok were convicted of subversion under the Beijing-enacted national security law. Lee, meanwhile, is facing a subversion charge in a separate national security case involving a Tiananmen crackdown vigil organiser.

Kwok was released from prison earlier this year, but Leung and Lee are still behind bars.

Former convenor of the Civil Rights Human Front and LSD member Figo Chan was also at the 2018 rally. He was released from jail in October 2022 after serving two sentences for unauthorised assemblies.

Testing the waters

Some seven years later, on the second anniversary of the war in Gaza, the five members of the anti-war collective held their first march, calling for an end to what they called Israel’s “genocide.” It was also one of the few marches seen in the city after the 2019 anti-extradition protests and unrest.

The group has been testing the waters over the past three years, learning how to operate within a social climate under which much of civil society has been silenced.

“If we’re still able to say these things, we cannot waste this opportunity,” said Lam.

The group has concluded that it can, and should, push the envelope, not least because of Beijing’s official position: supporting the two-state solution and an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders.

“When considering the global Palestinian solidarity movement, it’s clear that Hong Kong has an advantage, compared to places in Europe and America with deep-rooted ties to Israel, where suppression is far more prevalent,” said YY. “Hong Kong should not be absent, but should actually do more.”

He recalled that after the October march, “one of our comrades said half-jokingly: ‘Wow, marches are still allowed in Hong Kong.’ But of course, we know that it was allowed because Palestine isn’t a local political topic.”

Said the young activist: “After having held so many silent protests… the only logical conclusion is that silent protest is permissible, so we tried marching. This overarching trend of oppression won’t cover everything.”

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The post ‘No justice, no peace’: Meet the anti-war collective protesting for Palestinians – from faraway Hong Kong appeared first on Asia Commune.

The Marx United States

The election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City is one of the most significant events in American history. Given that Mamdani identifies as a “socialist,” his victory in the “capital of capitalism ,” home to Wall Street and the corporations that dominate the global economy, is, on the one hand, what The New York Times described as a “wave of discontent against the system .” On the other hand, Mamdani’s victory underscores what we at the Marx International have been asserting: that there is a leftward shift among mass sectors of the world, and that this leftward shift has its epicenter in the United States.

This leftward shift of the world’s masses is denied by 99% of the global left. Even the political movement to which Mamdani belongs, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), denies this phenomenon, speaking instead of a “global rise of the far right.” But Mamdani’s own electoral victory is a slap in the face to those who promote the “global rise of the right” narrative ; it’s a slap in the face to what the leadership of the movement to which Mamdani belongs proclaims. The reality is that if there were no radicalization and leftward shift of mass sectors worldwide and in the United States, it would be impossible for a candidate who identifies as “socialist” to win mayoral elections in the world’s capital in a bourgeois democracy .

Mamdani rises in defense of capitalism

We know that Mamdani’s victory has raised hopes among working-class New Yorkers. Many have been drawn to his promises of free, universal childcare and a rent freeze for Brooklyn tenants. They hope he will fight ICE raids and defend New York as a sanctuary city. But we at The Marx US want to be clear: Mamdani is not our government. He may take some measures that could be considered “progressive,” but he will not govern for the working class and the people.

Mamdani is a member of the imperialist Democratic Party of the United States, and it is within this imperialist party, defender of the 1% millionaires, Wall Street and Corporations, that Mamdani positions himself as part of a current called DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) headed by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ocasio-Cortez, who at the global level lead the Progressive International along with Yanis Varoufakis of Syriza in Greece, Gustavo Petro of the capitalist government of Colombia, MORENA of Mexico, Jeremy Corbyn of England, etc.,  Progressive International seek to contain and divert revolutions towards reformism and the trap of bourgeois democratic elections.

Although Donald Trump and the members of the CPAC, the mainstream media, and bourgeois pundits label Mamdani a “communist ,” the reality is that Mamdani rose to power in defense of capitalism. He didn’t become mayor of New York to oppose capitalism; he rose to power to defend it. Global capitalism is under threat from a revolutionary process that has been underway in the United States since the imperialist army was defeated in Iraq around 2007/08. From then on, due to the global mobilization that made NATO’s defeat in the Middle East possible, and due to the dominance of US global corporations over the global economy, the revolution in the United States became global and has been unfolding worldwide through three revolutionary waves that have given rise to diverse movements.

Those movements has already accustomed us to the emergence of huge currents that later become global struggles. Now, with the emergence of the “No Kings” movement , with mass mobilizations across the United States, it has provoked a crisis for Donald Trump’s administration, expressed in Trump’s break with Elon Musk. In 2008, with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement against bankers and capitalism; in 2013, with the Black Lives Matter (BLM ) movement in defense of African-American rights; and then with the “Mee Too” movement in 2017 in defense of women’s rights.

In 2017, the “New Unionism” movement emerged with the strikes against the management of the multinational food company Kellogg’s in October 2021, and the triumph of Amazon workers in Staten Island, the New York logistics center, which gave rise to new union activism. Then the massive movement of mobilizations and occupation of universities in support of Palestine in 2024, which also gave rise to groups such as “Within Our Lifetime ” led by Nerdeen Kiswani, a Palestinian-American activist from Brooklyn, New York. In 2025, the immigrant advocacy movement emerged against immigration policy, culminating in Los Angeles, California, in the face of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids on immigrants. And now, the “No Kings” movement emerged in June 2025, part of a series of protests held on Saturday, June 14, 2025, the day the 250th anniversary of the Armed Forces was celebrated, with a military parade in Washington, DC, coinciding with President Trump’s 79th birthday.

No support for Mamdani, his government, or his policies

These very mobilizations have driven Donald Trump to his lowest approval ratings. Discontent is growing among the people as a result of the increasing inequality in our country and the terrible living conditions of workers and the general population, shaken by inflation, the rising cost of living and housing, and severe unemployment. These factors are causing enormous shifts in collective consciousness, pointing to capitalism as responsible for the disaster faced by millions of families. The Mamdani government will attempt to contain this discontent within the capitalist system and corporations to prevent a social explosion that would challenge the power of the ruling classes in the United States.

Meanwhile, the Mamdani government is trying to pull the Democratic Party out of its crisis, after it lost over 13 million votes in the last election. The old imperialist party is sinking, repudiated by the people for its support of Israel and NATO’s genocidal policies toward Palestine, and for starving the people to the point of benefiting the wealthy and the 1% on Wall Street. The revolutions and the leftward shift from Nepal to Ecuador, from France to Bangladesh, are causing the collapse of all the old reformist, Stalinist, social-democratic, bourgeois nationalist, Islamic fundamentalist, Maoist, Castroist, ex-guerrilla, and other leaderships that have governed the world’s peoples for decades. We call the collapse of these old reformist leaderships a “political revolution” because the collapse of these organizations impacts bourgeois democratic political regimes and dictatorships globally, leading to historical changes in every country in the world.

Zohran Mamdani capitalized on the phenomenon of the “political revolution” taking place in the country, but insofar as his government will act in defense of capitalism, that same political revolution will turn against him and the DSA. Mamdani’s campaign secured a solid base of 104,000 volunteer members, enabling him to defeat the formidable and wealthy electoral machine of the New York Democratic Party, which fielded the veteran Democratic strongman Andrew Cuomo, a member of Mamdani’s own party. After losing the primaries to Mamdani, Cuomo ran as an independent candidate, supported by none other than Donald Trump. The Cuomo-Trump coalition was defeated by the leftward shift and the people’s political revolution that swept them away.

The 99% of left forces capitulates to Mamdani

Mamdani is a project just like Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the NPA in France, Die Linke in Germany, Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party in England, MORENA in Mexico, the Historic Pact in Colombia, PSOL in Brazil, etc., to name a few. These reformist coalition experiences experienced a great boom and were initially met with high expectations by activists, but then inevitably ended in failure. 99% of the global left now praises Mamdani’s victory and proposes no struggle against his government. Moreover, all left-wing currents advocate for the formation of a “united front” to pressure the government to fulfill its promises: a treacherous and collaborationist policy that seeks to give activists expectations in Mamdani.

To say that a “great united front” is necessary to “press for our demands” in the streets is to call for trust in capitalism, the bourgeois state, and the Democratic Party. Calling for a united front to fight for our demands is to deceive activists by telling them that Mamdani can grant concessions if there is a lot of fighting in the streets. That’s like suggesting that cows can fly; it’s not going to happen. Capitalism can no longer grant any concessions, any gains to the working class; it won’t because it’s a senile system that has nothing left to give. To call for a “united front” to fight for our demands without denouncing Mamdani is to capitulate and betray the people, something that doesn’t surprise us at all because the global left has been capitulating to Syriza, MORENA, Podemos, Corbyn, and any other “progressive” movement that comes along, abandoning the struggle for class independence.

The point is to seize the immense opportunities that the revolutionary mobilization of our people offers to build a revolutionary party. It’s about taking advantage of the leftward shift and the political revolution that have propelled Mamdani to power, to oppose his government, the sinister Democratic Party, the Republicans, and the Trump administration, to finally end the 1% oligarchy that millions of Americans despise, and to liberate the entire world from capitalism. From The Marx US, we call upon activists to advance the regrouping of revolutionaries in order to move forward in the struggle for global socialism.

The post MAMDANI IS NOT OUR GOVERNMENT !! appeared first on Asia Commune.

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