No aspect of daily life is out of bounds for communists, including art and culture. But we don’t approach art as bourgeois critics do. Nor as Marxist school teachers, grading works of art according to how well they expound a revolutionary line. What’s really politically interesting about art is that successful works reflect something about the society they were created in. After all, to gain popularity art has to speak to the masses. 

The season finale of Spectre of Communism podcast welcomes Fred Weston, a leading comrade of the International Marxist Tendency, to explain the historic revolutionary importance of the Communist International. In doing so, Fred demonstrates the palpable need for a similar organisation in the world today. 

What is the role of China today? While some on the left have celebrated China’s ambitions as a counterweight to the United States, Jorge Martín explains that capitalism has long been restored in China, and today it has all the features of a rising imperialist power. “Multipolarity” will not benefit the workers of the world, who must trust solely in their own strength to throw off the chains of imperialism and capitalism internationally.

Written in 1916, in the middle of the First World War, Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism is an essential work for understanding the phenomena of war and imperialism today.

“The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.” These lines, which date back to 1938 with Trotsky’s Transitional Program, could have been written yesterday. The present epoch is marked by a glaring contradiction: the immense revolutionary energy, yet the total absence of a political leadership capable or even willing to channel it into the struggle against the capitalists and their bankrupt system.

Keith Haring’s commitment to “art for everybody” ran deep, permeating not only the style but the political content of his work. Some of Haring’s most iconic works are those which make bold calls for change, engaging with social crises like South African apartheid, Reaganism, the oppression of LGBTQ people, and the AIDS epidemic which would eventually take Haring’s own life. But today, the appropriation of Haring’s legacy by elite art auctions and ritzy brands poses an important question: under capitalism, can art really be for everyone?

Today marks 100 years since Lenin’s death, and a knowledge of the genuine ideas of Lenin is still essential for anyone wishing to see a victorious communist revolution today.

One of the most common misconceptions about the Russian Revolution is that the ideas and methods of Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Party led inevitably to the Stalinist regime and all the crimes that went with it.

A new United Nations report, released before the COP28 climate summit, says Canada is not on track to meet its commitments on climate change. Canada is among a group of top fossil-fuel-producing countries on pace to extract more oil and gas than would be consistent with its emissions targets. Far from decreasing oil and gas extraction, Canada is on track to actually increase production of oil and gas! In the same week, Canada’s commissioner of the environment and sustainable development revealed that Canada is the only G7 country that has not achieved any emissions reductions since 1990. These reports show once again the total inability of capitalism to meaningfully address the climate crisis.

There are many earnest people in the west who look to the BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions) campaign as a ‘practical’ way to show solidarity with Palestine. BDS calls for Israel’s economic and cultural isolation in order to hit the Zionists in their wallets. Its activists often point to the example of the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa, which, they say, was brought down in large part through sanctions and pressure from the ‘international community’. But is this really the case?