The Mediterranean

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 origin confined to the most thankless jobs in a regime of wage segregation. There are Ukrainian or Ecuadorian carers, Romanian and Moroccan bricklayers, African farmhands, Bengali or Senegalese manual labourers and factory workers. Then we have attendants, health workers, cleaners and drivers: migrant workers of all ethnicities and nationalities. They are an integral part of the social landscape of both the cities and the countryside. However, they are invisible in their ubiquity, with a society which pays no attention to their unequal pay, their difficulty in accessing decent housing, the ordeal of family reunification or the vexatious problems encountered in the bureaucratic process of obtaining a residence permit. Further-more, the demographic winter means that there is no other option but to resort to migrants, including for skilled jobs; ageing Western powers are already competing for imported labour. Yet their political parties are on the hunt for an easy electoral consensus, and are more than happy to stoke the flames of the most hateful xenophobic fears.

This happens in Italy, and the same fate awaits migrants in Spain, where the disgrace of barbed wire fences against migrants in Ceuta and Melilla has become an equally inhuman standard practice. It also happens in London, where even a government staffed by second-generation immigrants plans on deporting to Rwanda those who attempt to land in Britain in search of a better life. And in Paris, where over the next three years the government will double down on its securitarian migration policy, by signing an agreement with the UK, which will pay €541 million to reinforce police controls in Calais and prevent migrants from crossing the Channel. This is the reality of "civilised" Europe - and we are only scratching the surface.

We cannot accept a society that has made barbarism a banality of everyday life. Fighting for the unity and defence of our class, the struggle for a truly human society, a communist society, is the alternative between civilisation and barbarism.

Opportunities for the Euro and Yuan

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 13 Estimates by international institutions for April to June confirm the slowdown in global output and trade. The World Bank forecasts a decline in GDP growth from 2.8% in 2024, to 2.3% in 2025, and a sharp fall in trade from 3.4% to 1.8%. The main cause of the new slowdown is the tariff war declared by Donald Trump, who has so far imposed a universal minimum tariff of 10%. The uncertainty arising from his peculiar art of the deal , consisting of lunges, postponements, relaunches, U-turns, and pauses, makes the policy of the world's leading power unpredictable. It is also paying the highest price, with US growth halving, from 2.8% to 1.4%. The Eurozone has been floating at a rate of less than 1% since 2023 and, according to the World Bank, will remain below this level in 2025 and 2026, while the OECD and the ECB predict a return to 1% in 2025. Chin...

Libertarian Communism: A Different Kind of Communism

Chapter Three LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISM: A DIFFERENT KIND OF COMMUNISM An examination of the debate within the groups that were to create GAAP (Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action) gives a vivid picture of the problems that between 1948 and 1951 had to be slowly and painfully faced. Three major confrontations, progressively more serious, took place between Cervetto and Masini in the autumn of 1949 and again in the spring and autumn of 1950. As preparations were being made for the National Conference at Pontedecimo – from which GAAP would be born – debate on the nature of the organisation and on theories of the State and imperialism began to define the characteristics of the new political group, but also revealed the differences. The first step had been to look for ‘a different kind’ of communism in anarchism. Along this road Cervetto , with an ever-surer grasp, would raise the issue that had been first posed by Marx and Lenin : our militant...

Lotta Comunista: The Origins 1943-1952

Guido La Barbera Contents 9. Preface to the English Edition 13. Preface 19. Useful dates 21. Chapter One «ONE OUGHT TO KNOW WITH WHOM ONE IS DEALING» 25. The balance-of-power theory 27. Theory and the ‘strategy-party’ 29. Chapter Two THE FOUNDRY AND THE PARTISAN STRUGGLE 31. The Savona group 39. Passion disciplined by reason 40. Never again a tool in the hands of others 41. The Genoa group 46. The Sestri Ponente group 48. The groups in Rome and Tuscany 52. The strength of GAAP: ‘only a handful’ 55. Chapter Three LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISM: A DIFFERENT KIND OF COMMUNISM 58. Reckoning with Bordiga...

The Unitary Imperialism Issue

Chapter Six In 1951 Europe, and the world, was shrouded in mist. The ‘Cold War’ ideology ruled, and the war in Korea made a world conflict between the USA and the USSR seem a real possibility. In France, Great Britain, Germany and Italy, the talk was of rearmament. Europe, at that time urged by the USA, was planning the EDC (European Defence Community) to keep step with German rearmament. The concept of a ‘ unitary imperialism ’ was the strategic choice that helped the small GAAP group remain politically independent. But translating this into an ‘Internationalist Third Front’ slogan was unfortunate. It facilitated a link with French libertarian communists, but could also cause confusion with its suggestion of a ‘Third Force’ between the USA and the USSR, which in Europe was supported by important bourgeois currents. Although opposition to unitary imperialism consolidated the internationalist struggle, the theory required to be developed and per...

Capitalist Chaos and Artificial Intelligence

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 1 From the series Artificial Intelligence It may seem curious that the Franciscan friar Paolo Benanti refers to neuroscience and the theories of David Eagleman, which reflect a materialistic conception of consciousness. The explanation probably lies in Eagleman’s self-definition as a possibilian , a not particularly clever neologism that seeks to distinguish itself from atheism, but also from agnosticism: we know too little, so science must keep multiple possibilities open at once. In Engels’ view, agnosticism is shamefaced materialism . The scientist, as such, is a materialist. However, outside his own field, he translates his ignorance into Greek and calls it agnosticism . Eagleman is even more circumspect, so it is understandable that religion sees an opening for itself in the possibilities left open. In Die Zeit , Benan...

Origins of Russian Nuclear Power

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Europe’s Armed Non-Belligerence in the Gulf

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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 ...

The Foundry and the Partisan Struggle

Chapter Two What forces were there for starting again, at the end of the 1940s? At the beginning of that road, you could count the core groups on the fingers of one hand: Genoa, its Sestri Ponente district, Savona, Rome. Of course, there were also Turin, Vicenza, Bologna, Milan, Bolzano, Trieste, Livorno, and a few sympathisers down South, but that was all it amounted to. Although there were periodic attempts at ‘linking up’ along the whole length of the peninsula, apart from the three Ligurian groups and the Tuscany-Lazio one, there wasn’t much more than a network of individual sympathisers. The Savona group Arrigo Cervetto , founder of Lotta Comunista and its undisputed leader until his death in 1995, was born in Buenos Aires in 1927, to a family who had emigrated from Savona. Returning to Liguria, he started work when still a boy, and in 1943 was taken on as an apprentice at the Ilva steel-making plant in Savona. The party ar...

Bombs Over Tehran and Tel Aviv

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 10 The crisis between Israel and Iran, which began on June 13 th , took a qualitative leap with the American decision to strike three uranium enrichment sites just ten days later. The attacks were carried out with cruise missiles and strategic bombers and, at the Fordow site, which is buried under more than 100 metres of rock, four teen of the so-called MOABs (the mother of all bombs ) were used. This is the most powerful conventional weapon in the US arsenal. In 2017, Donald Trump authorized its use in Afghanistan against an Islamic State base. American military doctrine also provides for the use of tactical nuclear weapons for the same type of mission. In any case, writes the Beijing-based Global Times , Washington has set a dangerous precedent by attacking nuclear sites in a country that is a signatory to the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, with...

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