The pandemic has sharpened and deepened what was an already existing crisis of capitalism. We are now facing the deepest social, economic and political crisis in decades. Despite a certain recovery, the measures the capitalists were forced to take in the last period (i.e. massive amounts of state spending) are now being felt in rising inflation, resulting in a growing cost of living crisis that is provoking resentment and instability all over the world.

On 3 February 1962, US president Kennedy signed proclamation 3447, decreeing an embargo on all trade with Cuba, which was to enter into effect on 7 February. This marked the official beginning of a 60-year blockade (though the imperialist assault had started earlier), which has progressively been strengthened and tightened.

A recent report by UNICEF found that 160 million children — a staggering one-in-ten worldwide — are involved in labour considered to be mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful.

On 23 January, soldiers led by lieutenant-colonel Paul-Henri Damiba seized control of a military base in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. Shortly afterwards, gunfire erupted in front of the presidential residence and several military barracks. Several hours later, President Roch Kaboré was reported to have been detained by the soldiers.

Postmodernism is an amorphous philosophical school of thought that rose to prominence in the postwar period. Beginning as a fringe trend, it has since grown to become one of the dominant schools of bourgeois philosophy, permeating large parts, if not the majority, of academia today. It embodies the utter dead-end and pessimism of bourgeois philosophy given the senile decay of capitalist society.

We are starting this perspective document with an excerpt from Leon Trotsky’s The “Third Period” of the Comintern’s Errors, written in January 1930. In this work, Trotsky explains the importance of perspectives for a revolutionary Marxist organisation to correctly orient itself towards the working class.