The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 7 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...

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...

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...

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 5 In the columns of The Nikkei on October 21 st , foreign policy commentator Hiroyuki Akita wrote that the new Japanese prime minister’s mandate would be defined by a far more consequential challenge : forging a system of government capable of functioning under the duress of war . For Akita, emphasising the need to prepare for a ‘wartime’ regime serves to highlight that Japan is under severe stress . Tokyo has enjoyed a long period of peace and has been able to deal with peacetime crises , even largescale ones such as the pandemic of the century . The war in Ukraine has ushered in a turbulent global situation, reminiscent of the uncertainty of the 1930s. To confront this, Tokyo needs a government structure capable of rapidly shifting from peacetime routines to an emergency footing . This is a dilemma that does not concern Japan alone, but Japan finds itself in an even more perilous position than Europe [.....

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 4 In the new US National Security Strategy (NSS), Russia is placed in the European basket , third among regional priorities after the Western Hemisphere and Asia. It is no longer considered an existential threat , and indeed many Europeans who regard it as such are criticised. Alongside Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again openness to negotiations with Moscow on Ukraine, this helps to create an impression of rapprochement between the two powers. Obviously, there can be no comparison with the Yalta era, for at least two reasons: first, because the world has changed profoundly since then, starting with German and European reunification and the emergence of China as a great imperialist power; and second, because what was then part of the USSR has been the scene of a bloody war for four years, with hundreds of thousands of deaths. A setback that no public image can conceal. Russian...

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 3 From the series European news At the Davos Forum in January, US President Donald Trump withdrew his threats to take Greenland away from Denmark and impose tariffs on all countries that opposed him. However, the damage had already been done. The episode was a trauma for Europe: now we no longer know how far the Americans might go , commented Emmanuel Macron. The French president warns against an illusory sense of relief after the peak of tensions. This Greenland moment has undoubtedly made Europeans aware that they are under threat . Now, we must think of Europe as a power [ Süddeutsche Zeitung , February 11 th ]. The German chancellor also spoke out in favour of more European power in his speech to the Bundestag on January 29 th . There, Friedrich Merz issued a warning: Anyone in the world who believes [...] that it is necessary to use customs tariffs against Europe must know—and now knows—that we are...

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 2 The pace of development of the Indian Giant is one of the major variables weighing on the Asian balance of power and, consequently, the global one. The possibility of counterbalancing the Chinese Giant depends on it. If India were to maintain a sustained pace, it could narrow the window of opportunity available to the Chinese Dragon to establish itself in Asia before the regional balance becomes less favourable—or, in any case, before other powers can rely more heavily on the Indian Elephant to condition it. The old metropolises of imperialism could therefore encourage India's rise, at least until the second Asian imperialist marauder presents them with the bill. Harsh Pant, vice president of the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, reports on this from the subcontinent's point of view. The think tank was founded in 1990 by the Ambani family, owners of Ind...

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 1 In his essay on the evolutionary process that led to Homo Sapiens , we saw how Friedrich Engels also links language to the chain of causes that, over hundreds of thousands of years, determined the evolution of the brain: upright posture, the hand, and labour . "Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with labour, and widened man's horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other ". Therefore: "First labour, after it and then with...