Principles of Marxism

The EU Commission Plans for Rearmament and a Clean Industrial Deal

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Page 2 From the series European news Following the European elections which took place on June 6th - 9th, the leaders of the Member States met on June 27th at the European Council. Ursula von der Leyen was nominated as president of the next European Commission, after she was chosen as the European People’s Party’s (EPP) Spitzenkandidat (“leading candidate”). The agreement also included the election of former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa as president of the European Council, and the appointment of former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Subsequently, on July 18th, Parliament elected von der Leyen as president of the Commission by an absolute majority, with 401 votes out of 719 MEPs. On September 17th, von der Leyen presented her team of commissioners to the European Parliament and, two days later, the Council adopted this list of...

The Fourth Plenum of China's War Preparations

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026 Page 2 According to Nicolas Baverez of Le Figaro , China’s proposed Five-Year Plan for 2026-2030, accepted by the Fourth Plenum of the CCP Central Committee, marks China’s transition to a war economy . At the national level, the focus would not be on rebalancing demand, but on reducing dependencies in order to resist external pressures and international sanctions. War preparations, writes the French economist, are now fully integrated into China’s economic development strategy. In our view, it would be more accurate to speak of a rearmament economy , since no major power has yet moved towards the proportions of a full-scale war effort, i.e., military spending historically measured in tens of percentage points of GDP. Instead, the variations have so far been a few percentage points and fractions of a point. This does not mean that there is no rearmament process affecting the economy and society as a whol...

India’s Weaknesses in the Global Spotlight

Farmers’ protests around New Delhi have been going on for four months now. A controversial intervention by the Supreme Court has suspended the implementation of the new agticultural laws, but has raised questions about the dynamics between the judiciary and the executive, and has failed to unblock the negotiations between government and peasant organisations. The assault by Sikh farmers on the Red Fort during the Republic Day parade as India was displaying its military might to the outside world — the Chinese Global Times maliciously noted — paradoxically widened the protest in the huge state of Uttar Pradesh. The Modi government has been trying to revive India’s image with the 2021 Union Budget: it announced one hundred privatisations and approved the increase to 75% of the limit on direct foreign investment in insurance companies. For The Indian Express ( IEX ) this is a sign of the commitment to push ahead with reforms despite the backlash from rural India. Also for The Economi...

“Polish Moment” at Risk

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 3 From the series European news In July, the strategic triangle of London-Paris-Berlin was strengthened with the Northwood Declaration, in which the United Kingdom and France signalled the possibility of coordinating the use of their nuclear weapons through the creation of a “Nuclear Steering Group”, and with the Kensington Treaty, an Anglo-German defence pact. These agreements complement the Franco-British agreements of Lancaster House and the Franco-German Treaty of Aachen. Although Poland signed the Treaty of Nancy with France in May 2025, it was excluded from the recent “E3” consultations, in which only the United Kingdom, France, and Germany participated. Nevertheless, the establishment of the new government led by Donald Tusk, the Civic Platform (PO) leader, in the October 2023 elections, after eight years of antagonism with Brussels under the Law and Justice Party (PiS)-dominated government, ha...

The Defeat in Afghanistan — a Watershed in the Cycle of Atlantic Decline

In crises and wars there are events which leave their mark on history because of how they make a decisive impact on the power contention, or because of how, almost like a chemical precipitate, they suddenly make deep trends that have been at work for some time coalesce. This is the case of the defeat of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan, which is taking the shape of a real watershed in the cycle of Atlantic decline. For the moment, through various comments in the international press, it is possible to consider its consequences on three levels: America’s position as a power and the connection with its internal crisis; the repercussions on Atlantic relations and Europe’s dilemmas regarding its strategic autonomy; and the relationship between the Afghan crisis and power relations in Asia, especially as regards India’s role in the Indo-Pacific strategy. Repercussions in the United States Richard Haass is the president of the CFR, the Council on Foreign Relations; despite having ...

The Unstoppable Force: Capital’s Demand for Migrant Labour

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 16 “Before Giorgia Meloni became Italy’s prime minister, she pledged to cut immigration. Since she has been in government the number of non-EU work visas issued by Italy has increased”. This is how The Economist of April 26th summarises the schizophrenia of their politics; and this is not only true in Italy: “Net migration also surged in post-Brexit Britain”. The needs of the economic system do not coincide with the rhetoric of parliamentarism. And vice versa. Schizophrenia and imbalances in their politics Returning to Italy, the Bank of Italy has pointed out that by 2040, in just fifteen years, there will be a shortage of five million people of working age, which could lead to an estimated 11% contraction in GDP. This is why even Italy’s “sovereignist” government is preparing to widen the net of its Immigration Flow Decree. The latest update, approved on June 30th, provides for the entry of almost ...

The National Gamble of Poland

Internationalism No. 33, November 2021 Page 3 From the series European News In a lawsuit brought by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the Constitutional Tribunal, which is composed of judges chosen by the government, ruled that fundamental parts of the EU Treaty are incompatible with the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. This ruling thus denies the primacy of European law over national law, undermining both the political assumption of continental integration and the supranational character of the EU . Vectors of Polish history We can shed light on this event if we consider the four field vectors that cross Poland: its traditional ethnic-religious nationalism, its marked Atlantic tropism, the objective attraction exerted by the European force field, and the looming threat of Russia. The general picture is global collisions: China’s irruption and the crisis in the world order have put pressure on Warsaw to define its st...

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...

India’s Lift-Off

Internationalism No. 84, February 2026 Page 13 From the series The world steel battle Just over fifteen years ago, in the article “La rincorsa siderurgica dell’India” [ India’s Steel Catch-Up , April 2010], we focused on the rise of the Indian steel industry. Today, it ranks among the world’s giants and second only to China, having overtaken the United States, Japan, and finally the EU-27 plus the United Kingdom. In the early months of 2025, the annual growth rate of Indian steel production was still above 10%, compared with stable figures not only for global production but also for Chinese output. Alongside the advance of the national steel industry, Indian families at the head of major steel groups are increasingly active internationally. In addition to the Mittal and Tata dynasties, Gupta’s Liberty Steel and the two branches of the Jindal family are now present on the global market. ...

The Comprehensive Agreement on Investment Strengthens the ‘European Party’ in China

From the series News from the Silk Road “Chinese people treat [US democracy] as a variety show which is much more interesting than House of Cards’ [...]”. Beijing does not feel the same embarrassment as the old democracies of the West faced with the grotesque scenes of demonstration against the Capitol organised by the president of the United States. Zhao Minghao from the Chongyang Institute spelled out the obvious in his analysis some time earlier: “the political farce by the incumbent president and some Republican lawmakers is reflecting the profound crisis on US domestic politics.” The Global Times is serving a hefty bill to the ideologies of liberal interventionism: “the ‘beacon of democracy’, and the beautiful rhetoric of ‘City upon a Hill’ [...]” are undergoing a serious debacle or in other words, a “Waterloo of US international image”. It will be a while before the US can “interfere in other countries’ domestic affairs with the excuse of ‘democracy’[...]”. Attention is also...

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