A new ‚Digest‘ is out!

This issue features two new article series and a contribution apropos of the rarely discussed topic of “euthanasia and assisted suicide”.

• The first part of the article series 250 years of capitalism aims at reconstructing the economic dynamic of the capitalist mode of production since the beginning of its industrial phase at the hand of an examination of carefully selected data and statistics. From a classical Marxist point of view, the first part demonstrates the evolution of the rate of surplus value, profit rates, real wages and annual working time, the share of wages, profit and land rent in the national income, for industrial capitalism’s historical hotbed, Great Britain (the United Kingdom).

• In the section Documents of the historical communist Left we present part 1 of a work from 1961 by Willy Huhn on the question of the communist party, in which the Leninist conception is contrasted by what Marx and Engels had advanced on this issue, through a close examination of their texts. Albeit advocated ad nauseam by the Stalinist counter-revolution, the ‘Leninist’ vision and methods are still influential in today’s political milieu of the communist Left, not in the last place with many who pretend to be in the vanguard of the “struggle for the party”.

• Apropos of a statement by ‘Nuevo Curso’ on a suicide case in the Netherlands, which has echoed a brief but intense media campaign that falsely presented it as a case of ‘state-sponsored euthanasia’, we have embarked upon an examination of this country’s mortality statistics in order to provide material for a discussion of rarely treated questions. Of course we have included this statement and our first reply as well.

The ongoing escalation of imperialist tensions and maneuvers over the Persian Gulf region, exacerbating the conflict between the USA and Iran and their respective allies, have inspired the Gulf Coast Communist Fraction (Florida, USA) and Internationalist Voice to issue a joint statement. We salute this effort by internationalists to jointly take a position on central issues like the question of war, while respecting eventual divergence. In an article on the ICT’s website, D.Saadati has advanced an elaborate analysis of this situation. Both have been included in this issue and are recommend for reading and reacting upon.

Read more in issue 2019-3.