Internationalism No. 50, April 2023 Page 12 Since the year 2000, at least 45,000 migrants have drowned along Mediterranean routes, more than 2,000 a year. This is the very same sea in which tens of millions of tourists bathe every summer, and these are the same routes followed by multi-storeyed cruise ships. Small boats and parasols, castaways and cruise passengers: it cannot be repeated often enough, this capitalist society has made barbarism a run-of-the-mill occurrence. There is more, beyond the boorish inadequacy of their politics, beyond the ferocious face of the Italian government which is hesitating about these shipwreck deaths, beyond the hypocritical scolding of the opposition parties, which behaved in exactly the same way when they were in government, sending back tens of thousands of poor wretches to their captors in Libya. In the face of utter indifference, year after year a de facto apartheid has been created, with millions of workers of foreign o

Internationalism No. 50, April 2023 Page 10 From the series Giats of Asia : the dillemas of Chinese single-party pluralism Only the materialist analysis of the intraction between structure and superstructure can explain the variety of the political forms. Why did the entrenchment of the capitalist mode of production in China occur in populist and Maoist forms? Why does Chinese imperialism express itself in CP single-party pluralism and not, for example, in the classical multi-party system of imperialist democracy? This specific political analysis does not regard the study of the economic causes which determine China’s political struggles, a scientific investigation which is its premise, “but the way” in which these struggles present themselves in the superstructure. “By analysing basic economic facts, Marxism can identify at first the interests which find expression in the political struggle. The form in which these interests appear politically, however, is a qu

Internationalism No. 50, April 2023 Pages 1-2 The postwar vicissitudes of European imperialism - from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951 to the Treaty of Rome leading the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957, and then to the Maastricht Treaty and the European Union in 1992, the euro federation in 1998 and the institutional Treaty of Lisbon in 2007 - provide an exemplary charting of the dialectic of unity and scission of unitary imperialism. The big concentrations of capital, and the powers in their grip, demonstrate the aspect of the unity of the global imperialistic system in its common interest to guarantee the production of surplus value and the conditions for exchange and circulation connected with it, together with the class rule on which it is premised. At the same time, the shares of the world’s social capital and the powers are permanently divided by the scission of the struggle to share out surplus value, markets and sources of

From the series The war industry and European defence Next Spring SpaceX will be 20 years old. The company founded by Elon Musk has rapidly achieved a key role in international space activity. The first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket has recently been recovered, reconditioned and reused for the tenth time. SpaceX has already repeated this type of reflight 70 times or so; it allows for substantial savings when compared to the losses incurred in the first stages of a traditional rocket launch. It is for this reason that it is being considered as the standard for the future. According to NASA’s calculations, the average cost of launching a satellite into orbit has fluctuated around the level of $18,500 per kilogram for the whole period between 1970 and 2000. SpaceX has reduced this figure by seven times. Internet constellations In recent missions Falcon 9 rockets have put a total of 60 Starlink satellites into orbit. The aim is to create a vast constellation designed to gua

Lenin often used the metaphor of a chain that binds the world to describe imperialism. The October Revolution of 1917 broke a first link in that chain and hoped to pull the whole thing loose. The metaphor was adopted in those years by all the Bolshevik leaders and the leaders of the newly formed Third International. Within a decade, Stalin's well-known formula of socialism in one country signified the overturning of that strategic cornerstone and the defeat of the revolution in Russia, in Europe, and in the world. Dates that have come to symbolise historical change act as the synthesis of previously accumulated contradictions, and, while such a sudden change does not exhaust the possibility of future contradictions, the concentration of events in 1926 nonetheless marked a watershed that revealed the true extent that the counter-revolution had reached. The great general strike in the United Kingdom that year, which was betrayed and failed — and which we will discuss when we concl

The signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership ( RCEP ), a major Asian trade agreement, in November 2020, was remarkable because India decided not to take part in it while Japan was determined to strike a deal with China, despite the difficult political transition underway in Washington. Some questions arose at that time. Would the EU show as much autonomy from the United States on the Euro-Chinese economic negotiation front? Would India eventually join the RCEP ? Would the United States return to the competing transpacific project? Would China also seek to join also the Trans-Pacific Partnership ( TPP )? TPP ’s variable geometry In December 2020 came the first reaction from the European Union, which signed the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investments ( CAI ), ignoring a request from Joe Biden’s new presidency to stall the proceedings. On September 16 th , 2021 the question regarding China was also answered when it officially requested to join the TPP . The