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Political Battles of European Leninism

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 1 Thirty years after the death of Arrigo Cervetto , we are publishing here the concluding passages of the introduction to his Opere Scelte (“Selected Works”) for the series Biblioteca Giovani (“Publications for young people”), soon to be published in Italian. The 1944-45 partisan war in Italy. The political battle within libertarian communism. The Korean War, and the watchword of “neither Washington nor Moscow”. The layoffs at the Ilva and Ansaldo factories, the political battle and trade union defence in the struggles of post-war restructuring. From 1953 onwards, the crisis of Stalinism, the 1956 Suez crisis, the Hungarian uprising, the 1957 Theses and the challenge of theory and strategy vis-à-vis the tendencies of unitary imperialism. The political struggle within Azione Comunista (“Communist Action”) and the Movimento della Sinistra Comunista (“Movement of the Communist Left”). From the 1950s to the early 1970s, t...
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Show Warfare?

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 16 After show politics and show diplomacy , have we sunk to the obscenity of show warfare ? On the surface, this is true. The Pentagon’s video game-style communications, where airstrikes, missile launches, and deadly explosions are set to music for social media clips, certainly suggest so. It matters little that a hundred schoolgirls were also blown to bits as artificial intelligence took centre stage on the battlefield. In reality, war propaganda has always showcased destruction and mocked the enemy; today in Washington, in the era of the high-tech groups of television and social media democracy , the only thing that has changed is the style and the means used to inflame fanaticisms and stuff people’s brains. In Tehran, dominated by a parasitic bourgeoisie that feeds on oil revenues and is intertwined with the militias and hierarchies of the ayatollahs , the messaging is old-fashioned, carried out through ...

The Four Petrochemical Giants

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 15 From the series Major industrial groups in China When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, oil extraction in the country was practically non-existent, and the country was completely dependent on imports. The exploration and development of domestic oil resources required a major effort. As Jin Zhang reports in his book Catch-up and Competitiveness in China [Routledge, 2004]: The required massive human resources were supplied by the People's Liberation Army (PLA). In 1952, Mao Zedong ordered the reorganisation of the 57 th Division of the 19 th Army of the PLA into the 1 st Division of Oil . The effort led to the discovery of several oil fields, the most significant of which was in Daqing, Heilongjiang Province, in northeastern China, in 1959. It became operational the following year, reaching a production capacity of 6 million tons (mt) per year within three years. This was f...

The New Electro-Nuclear Era

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 14 From the series The world energy battle A weather phenomenon dubbed Dunkelflaute is causing havoc in Germany and pushing energy prices to two-decade highs ( Fortune, December 12th, 2024 ). Uncertainty in renewables and nuclear energy The German term Dunkelflaute combines the words Dunkel (dark) and Flaute (lull, absence of wind) and refers to a series of days when dense clouds descend over northern Europe. During a Dunkelflaute event, solar panels produce little energy and wind turbines slow to a halt. This weather phenomenon can occur two to ten times a year, usually in autumn and winter, and lasts 24 hours or more ( The New York Times, December 30th, 2024 ). A decade ago, it was not a problem: Europe obtained electricity from stable sources, namely nuclear power plants and fossil fuels. The situation is different for renewable energies: although they are necessary to reduce, but not ...

The WTO Between Crisis and Reform

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 13 The United States has been arguing for the need to reform the WTO since well before Donald Trump unleashed his world tariff war. In 2015, Michael Froman, President Barack Obama’s trade representative, denounced the failure of the Doha Round, a major negotiation underway since 2001 but bogged down in its own ambition to reach a comprehensive agreement among all countries on every aspect of world trade. Froman’s solution was pragmatic multilateralism , capable of proceeding through sectoral agreements or between small groups of nations. Behind the arcane formulations of international law, Washington’s real accusation against the WTO, then as now, is that it has facilitated the spectacular rise of China’s industrial power. Longstanding issues Decisions on WTO reform can only come from its Ministerial Conference, held every two years. Following the lack of progress in Geneva (2022) and Abu Dhabi (2024), Dire...

Missiles, Gas, and Oil

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 12 The third US Gulf War has entered its fourth week. Fatih Birol, director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), was quick to describe it as the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market , due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. In normal times, 20 million barrels per day (Mb/d) of crude oil and refined products flow through the Strait of Hormuz. 80% of the total flow is destined for Asia, rising to 90% in the case of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Iran claims that the Strait is closed only to its enemies, but, for all practical purposes, the risk of crossing it is such that insurance premiums for oil tankers not explicitly authorised to do so are prohibitively high. With no storage capacity for the extracted crude and hoping to reduce the number of targets, the Gulf States have cut their oil production by at least 10 Mb/d. According to Daniel Yergin, by far the biggest disruption in worl...

Signs of Republican Dissent Over Trump’s War Powers

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 11 From the series Chronicles of the new American nationalism Donald Trump has plunged Atlantic relations into crisis and launched military operations in Africa, Venezuela, and the Middle East, culminating in the war against Iran. In Congress, a dozen Republicans have criticised these actions. The GOP rebellion is limited in scope and has various internal factions; but it is significant that the party leaders, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, have distanced themselves from some of Donald Trump’s positions. The Atlanticist faction Johnson and Thune have dismissed Trump’s threats against Greenland – a territory included in NATO via Denmark and the EU – as unrealistic. For Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, they are weapons-grade stupid , while Mitch McConnell, Thune’s predecessor, has described them ...

ByteDance & TikTok

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 10 From the series The telecommunications battle Imagine that a full-screen video turns your phone into a window. You can see a vast world through this window. Douyin is a projection of this colourful world . Douyin is the Chinese version of TikTok, and these words were spoken by Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, the Beijing-based parent company of both applications. Matthew Brennan notes this in his book Attention Factory: The Story of TikTok &ampersand; China's ByteDance . The front page of the ByteDance website reads: Our Mission: Inspire Creativity, Enrich Life . A colourful and fun world, built on short videos, is also capable of generating major business. It is estimated that global users have exceeded two billion in total, mostly very young people. ByteDance is not yet listed, and its revenue is estimated by analysts based on internal company documents; 75% of it is generated in Chi...

The Counterrevolution of the Noske Era

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 9 From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement Revolution is a dramatic and oscillating historical process, marked by brutal accelerations, sudden freezes, and deceptive moments of dead calm. Hence the need to develop the party in the preceding years, so that it can act consciously as a vanguard rooted in the masses — as the premise for the revolutionary process rather than the result . Arrigo Cervetto wrote in his article “The General Task” , now in Opere, vol. 2 : If the party does not want to fall into adventurism, it cannot regulate its conduct on accelerated and unexpected movements but must always continue in its systematic work of organisation and education of the proletariat. The more the party is able to work according to this plan [...] the more it will have the possibility of not being caught off guard by the turn of events . In G...