Skip to main content

Posts

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...
Read more
Recent posts

India's Moment in the Race for Agreements

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 13 The Supreme Court has rejected Donald Trump's attempt to impose tariffs by invoking emergency powers. The ruling and the US president's counter-reaction, imposing a universal tariff of 10%, open up unpredictable scenarios. This will be discussed in the coming months, between now and the midterm elections. For the moment, this plunges all the agreements signed by the administration to date into uncertainty. Last June, we predicted a season of flourishing free-trade agreements in the winter of the crisis in the world order , in response to the tariff war declared by Trump against the whole world. Since then, the EU has announced agreements with Indonesia, the South American bloc Mercosur, and India: a historic hat-trick that will improve European access to markets with a combined population of 2 billion. The European Commission is pursuing other negotiations, especially in Asia, and is looking towards con...
Read more

The Pluralism of the Supreme Court

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 12 From the series Chronicles of the new American nationalism The Supreme Court has ruled that the emergency tariffs imposed by Donald Trump are illegal, striking down one of his key policies and affirming Congress's powers over foreign trade taxation. The group of companies and dozen States that had challenged the presidential decision have won their legal battle against the federal government. The ruling represents a severe political setback for the president, formally recognises the imbalance represented by his trade policy, and opens up a political battle to redirect it. As we write, just days after the ruling, Trump has already announced that he will resort to other legislative measures. The question remains open as to the extent to which the Supreme Court and Congress will balance the tariff weapon. Major questions doctrine The ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts and approv...
Read more

Battles of Monetary Power

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 11 The White House’s siege on the Federal Reserve reached a moment of clarity with the appointment of Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s successor, but Donald Trump’s machine has not stopped. The Justice Department’s criminal investigation into alleged wrongdoing in the renovation of the Fed’s buildings continues. The aim is to oust Powell not only from the presidency, but also from the board of the central bank in order to break his resistance to Trump’s line, which demands drastic cuts in interest rates. Trump wants a hot, hot, hot economy, according to The Wall Street Journal . The judicial persecution, denounced by Powell as an attempt to impose a monetary policy directed by political pressure or intimidation , has provoked a bipartisan reaction in the Senate. North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis has pledged to block the approval process for the designated successor to the Fed chair until the ca...
Read more

Europe Passes the Mercosur Test

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 10 On January 9 th , the European Council authorised the signing of the agreement with Mercosur, the customs union comprising Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. The decision by the 27 member States, taken by majority vote, overrode strong opposition from France, with Poland, Austria, Hungary, and Ireland also voting against and Belgium abstaining. Ratification by the European Parliament is still pending, as it has requested a legal opinion from the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, but both the Council and the Commission seem inclined to apply the agreement provisionally, as urged by the German and Italian governments. Meanwhile, on January 17 th , Presidents Antônio Costa and Ursula von der Leyen flew to South America to seal the deal, moving to close a 30-year political battle. False breakthroughs and ultimatums The EU’s strategic interest in Mercosur was already evident in the mid-199...
Read more

China’s Electromechanical Champions

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 9 From the series Major industrial groups in China Analysing the WTO data for 2023, it emerges that China exported goods worth $3,379 billion, surpassing the European Union and the United States. Industrial machinery accounted for over 7% of exports and electrical machinery 9%. In the same sectors, Chinese imports did not reach 40% of the value of exports, indicating that these are among the pillars of Beijing’s export economy. Sany Heavy Industry In this newspaper we have already examined the Chinese mechanical engineering giant Sinomach. But in the field of machine construction, Sany Heavy Industry also holds a prominent position, particularly in excavators, cranes, industrial elevators, and cement machinery. The company, based in Changsha (Hunan) since 1991, was founded by Liang Wengen, who had previously been an executive at a State-owned arms factory, and is its main shareholder. Sany had a 2023 turnover...
Read more

Nuclear Energy and the Power Grid

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 8 From the series The world energy battle Electricity is at the heart of modern economies and the demand for electricity is growing much faster than the overall consumption of energy in every scenario [ Electricity 2025 , International Energy Agency report]. Overproduction and power grid bottlenecks Electricity represents just 21% of energy consumption at a global level, but it is the main source for the sectors which represent more than 40% of the economy. A fundamental issue for the security of the electricity system is the modernisation of the power grid, which is currently lagging behind the expansion of production capacity. Although global investment in the production of electricity has increased by almost 70% since 2015, reaching $1,000 billion a year, annual spending on the grid has increased at less than half this rate, reaching $400 billion. This is also a European problem. Accordin...
Read more

The Murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 7 From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement The January 1919 uprising has gone down in history as the Spartacist uprising , but in his biography of Rosa Luxemburg, Paul Frölich contests this definition: The truth is that there was no Spartacus uprising . As he explains, the leaders of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in fact counted on a gradual revolutionary process, and certainly not on immediate armed struggle on the streets of Berlin . Actually, indicates Frölich, the truth is that the January fighting was carefully prepared and cunningly launched by the leaders of the counter-revolution . Consciousness brought from without What therefore emerges is a party unable to hold back the masses in the face of provocation or to organise a conscious action or an orderly retreat. In this way, the Spartacist leaders themselves were swept along by the party b...
Read more

A Newspaper for This Decade of Crisis in the World Order

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 6 Sixty years of Lotta Comunista In recent weeks, we have been commemorating the newspaper’s 60 th anniversary throughout Italy. We publish some excerpts from the conclusions of the event held in Genoa. In 1959, Arrigo Cervetto wrote to Lorenzo Parodi, who was working at Ansaldo and developing the Genoa group: You too must study, with perseverance and method: a few hours a day, but study. It is what ultimately remains to us as most important: study and time . They were only in their early 30s and at the time were in the minority in the movement. Cervetto and Parodi are no longer with us, but that study is the newspaper you hold in your hands, and that time is also the same newspaper you hold in your hands; distributed by activists for years and decades, it has bound the second, third, and fourth generations to the party. It is study and time that allowed Cervetto and Parodi to see th...
Read more