The Covid lockdowns and restrictions have produced a very unusual situation for the ICT. We’ve almost stopped face-to-face meetings, though we have managed to attend and address some demonstrations and had a small number of suitably socially-distanced meetings in various places. We’ve cut back on our physical publications, because we don’t have as many opportunities at the moment to distribute...

(The following leaflet was given out in various cities across Italy on 6 June on the occasion of demonstrations by the various rank and file (Cobas) unions against the imposed return to work whilst the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage.) · The coronavirus pandemic has thrown a spanner into the capitalist works but not completely prevented it from squeezing out profits.

It’s fashionable nowadays to say that the Communist Left “does nothing”. This misconception – whether a consequence of reducing the historical experience of our tendency only to those currents that have adopted the wait-and-see approach(1), or because of internet humour which has made the image of “leftcoms” synonymous with “armchairs” – should be addressed.

On February 29th we (comrades from the CWO and Battaglia Comunista) were at the solidarity demonstration with the warehouse workers of the Italian-Japanese company Peroni in Tor Sapienza, Rome. The workers there are carrying on a bitter struggle for better working conditions which started with a week-long strike.