The struggle against coronavirus

Collaboration and Nationalism in Ukraine and Belarus

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 8 In her essay Economia di guerra e inquadramento della società in URSS ( The War Economy and Social Control in the USSR ), Rebecca Manley writes that initially the German advance in Russia was welcomed by the local population and threatened the legitimacy of the reigning power , while party leaders, officials, and factory managers often jumped ship , with the abandoned populace openly cursing them [A. Aglan and R. Frank, La guerra-mondo 1937-1947 ( The World War 1937-1947 ), Einaudi, 2015-16]. Her account goes on to describe the government's gradual reassertion of control: The cost in human lives was increasing and shortages were continuing to worsen [...] it was only with the victory of Stalingrad that Stalin and the Soviet system recovered a central role in war propaganda . Overall, according to this author, the war years saw a surge of popular patr...

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 Hurdles of the Energy Transition

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 15 From the series The world energy battle The war against Iran has highlighted the dependence on fossil fuels and the need for world economies to reduce dependence on the Middle East and on these energy sources. The European Union's “Green Deal” aims to achieve these goals, but the structure of the economy and the economic and social costs pose significant obstacles for the energy transition. Problems of renewables versus fossil fuels According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), during the period 2015-2024 global cumulative investments in renewable energy production amounted to $12.5 trillion, surpassing the $11.8 trillion invested in fossil fuels; despite this, the share of total energy supply accounted for by fossil fuels fell only from 85% in 1990 to 81% in 2023 [United Nations, Energy Statistics Pocketbook 2...

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...

Multiple Games in the Third Gulf War

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 6 The conflict in the Gulf has entered its third month, marked by a precarious truce that reflects a strategic stalemate, with Tehran’s “selective blockade” of Hormuz and the US Navy’s “counter-blockade” of Iranian ports. According to the Pakistani daily Dawn , bilateral negotiations — mediated by Islamabad with the explicit support of Riyadh and the “discreet and indirect” backing of Beijing — appear to centre on the price of reopening the energy artery. For Washington, writes the Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat , the negotiations should yield some kind of “tangible result” on the nuclear issue, allowing both sides to “claim victory”, given that the priority is resuming commercial traffic. To this end, granting Tehran the opportunity to collect some form of revenue has not been ruled out. Iranian “pragmatic” factions are raising the idea of maritime tr...

Strikes at Samsung

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 7 From the series Workers’ struggles in the world The struggle waged by Samsung Electronics workers over the last three years has a particular significance in the panorama of workers’ struggles around the world. A great deal of this significance undoubtedly derives from its having been the first ever strike at the South Korean company where, moreover, no trade union existed until a few years ago: until 2020, Samsung was strictly non-union. But it is also important because, according to trade-union sources, it was the world’s first strike in the crucial chip-production sector. Today these are fundamental and indispensable components for a myriad of products, for both civilian and military use, and they are becoming even more important with the increasing hardware needs of artificial intelligence. This struggle therefore concerns a prod...

Missiles, Drones, and Artificial Intelligence

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 10 From the series The arms industry put to the test in the Gulf The Pentagon has dubbed the US war against Iran Epic Fury . An assessment after about 40 days into the attacks, coordinated with Israel, indicates that the Iranian political and military leadership has been decimated, nuclear programs further compromised, the Navy hit, air defence capabilities reduced, and significant damage caused to Tehran's missile and drone factories. Yet, according to The Economist , it would have been better to call the operation Blind Fury because the war did not lead to the fall of the regime, and because it allowed the closure of the Strait of Hormuz (where the daily passage of ships collapsed from 135 to 4), thus greatly harming the European and Asian allies of the US. We will not deal here with the roles of those who sought and supp...

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 ...

Rearmament and State Policies in the Battle for Minerals

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 13 In 2025, China was the only power to respond decisively to Donald Trump's trade war, forcing him into an autumn truce through tariffs and, primarily, by blocking exports of some critical minerals. According to the White House, Beijing made a mistake in using the nuclear weapon of its near-monopoly on rare earths, as it triggered a global rush to diversify supplies. That process is indeed underway, but given its high costs and long timescales, it does not seem able to neutralise, at least in the short term, the powerful mineral deterrent established by the Chinese government. A multilateral Trump The US government's counteroffensive is underway both domestically, in an attempt to rebuild an industrial sector for the extraction and processing of these substances in the US, and internationally, through a series of agreements. Among the mo...

The KPD After January 1919

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 9 From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement The Weimar Republic took shape in the first six months of 1919, as Gustav Noske's Freikorps suppressed the revolution. The bourgeois parties of Weimar In the elections for the Constituent Assembly on January 19 th , 1919, the large corporate groups of German capital financed and steered the political forces. The four major banks alone contributed at least 30 million marks to the election funds of the various parties. At the head of the bourgeois forces were the great electricity magnates Walther Rathenau of AEG and Carl Friedrich von Siemens for the Democrats; Karl Helfferich of Deutsche Bank and Alfred Hugenberg of Krupp for the far-right nationalists; and major industrialists such as Hugo Stinnes for Gustav Stresemann's People's Party. Th...

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