In the 17th century, Swedish military might enabled its dominance over the Baltics, before they became a part of the Russian empire after Russia defeated Sweden at Poltava 1709. Today, Sweden has regained its dominance in the region – not through military power, but economic power.

The following is the new preface to the new Chinese translation of China: From Permanent Revolution to Counter-Revolution released by Wellred Books in 2016. The entirety of the Chinese edition is available for free on marxist.com, which you can access here.

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has been in power for over half a year now. This will go down in history as the most rapidly discredited government in Britain (excluding Liz Truss’ brief tenure).

Lenin once said that there are decades where weeks happen, and weeks where decades happen. We are living through the latter. A new era has begun, one characterised by capitalist crisis, imperialist war, immense turbulence in world relations and revolutionary upheavals.

Elon Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has fed the US Agency for International Development (USAID) – the federal body responsible for foreign aid provision – through a woodchipper. The Democrats and the liberal establishment are up in arms. But while we communists recognise Donald Trump’s cynical motives for dismantling USAID, what his funding freeze has exposed is the real nature of this ‘humanitarian’ CIA front for pushing US imperialism’s ‘soft power’.

At 23:30 GMT (18:30 EST), the Revolutionary Communist Party – the Canadian section of the Revolutionary Communist International – will host a public book launch for two recent Wellred publications: Lenin's Selected Writings: On Imperialist War and Colossus: The Rise and Decline of US Imperialism. The event will be streamed live on YouTube and will feature a presentation by Jorge Martín, member of the International Secretariat of the RCI and author of the introduction to Lenin's Selected Writings: On Imperialist War.

Since our previous article, events in Serbia have accelerated rapidly. The government hoped that the holidays and extended school winter break would lead to fatigue in the movement, but the students, who are occupying their universities, did not allow the movement to dissipate. A large protest was held in front of the offices of the Serbian secret services on 11 January as a response to threats. They continued their strategy of 15 minute road blockades demanding justice for the 15 people murdered by the fall of the concrete canopy of the reconstructed railway station in Novi Sad.

Thanks to the support of the Socialist Party (PS) and the National Rally (RN), François Bayrou – leader of the liberal Democratic Movement – has succeeded where previous Prime Minister Michel Barnier's government failed: they have approved a budget.

The following is the second of a three-part serialisation of a speech on world perspectives, given on Tuesday 28 January at a meeting of the International Executive Committee of the Revolutionary Communist International. The first part, which can be read here, looks at the upheaval in world relations, which has been caused by Trump’s presidency.

The following is the first part of a speech on world perspectives, given on Tuesday 28 January at a meeting of the International Executive Committee of the Revolutionary Communist International.

The struggle waged by the people of Cameroon against imperialist oppression contains many lessons for revolutionaries throughout Africa and the world. And today, the legacy of the dirty war waged by French imperialism to crush that struggle can still be felt. In this article, Jules Legendre explains how France came to rule Cameroon, and the methods it used to maintain its domination, even after the country’s formal independence in 1960.

Trump has been in power for just over two weeks and already he has started to upend the liberal world order. With tariffs, deportations, the halting of all foreign aid, and his plan to turn Gaza into a “Rivera of the Middle East”, ‘allies’ and rivals alike have been thrown into panic.

On 28 January, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) detained five Ukrainian anti-war activists, accusing them of involvement with the Workers’ Front of Ukraine (RFU). The RCI declares its solidarity with those facing repression from the Ukrainian state.

Late on 4 February, in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump proposed that the US should take over Gaza and force the whole of its population (2 million Palestinians) to relocate to other “plots of land” (in Jordan and Egypt) so that the area could be rebuilt as an international enclave, which he described would be “like the Riviera of the Middle East”.

Last Wednesday, the right-wing CDU led by Friedrich Merz tore down the symbolic ‘firewall’ that was supposed to prevent establishment parties in Germany from cooperating with the reactionary Alternative for Germany (AfD). The CDU proposed a racist asylum bill in the Bundestag, fully aware that it would receive a majority if the AfD voted in favour. This was the first time that the AfD has been able to influence a significant political decision in the parliament. Together with the votes of the liberal FDP, the bill was passed.

Recent reports into NEOM – an impossibly ambitious series of megaprojects being constructed by the Saudi Arabian monarchy in the desert – have revealed the slave-like conditions of the workers, which have already led to 20,000 deaths.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s victory, the bourgeois press has been engaged in sobering introspection about the decline of identity politics.

While the collapse of the British Empire is often portrayed as the result of benevolence, this could not be further from the truth. This article, from a new booklet published by the Revolutionary Communist Party – the British section of the Revolutionary Communist International – examines the real role of British imperialism during the 1948-60 Malayan “Emergency”.

We are very proud to announce the publication of the first ever Urdu translations of Leon Trotsky’s The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects! These invaluable texts for revolutionaries everywhere have been painstakingly translated by the comrades of the Inqalabi Communist Party – the Pakistani section of the Revolutionary Communist International – for publication as a single book.

Nearly 1,500 workers at Samsung’s massive plant in Chennai have battled the courts and the corrupt state government, both of which lined up behind their predatory multinational employer, to win recognition of their union. In addition to a 212-day legal fight, they launched a strike last September, which lasted 38 days. Overcoming vicious repression, hundreds of arrests, and all manner of underhanded manoeuvres from the bosses, they finally forced the Tamil Nadu Labour Department to register the Samsung India Workers‘ Union (SIWU) on 27 January.