In her latest column, Fiona Lali explains how “the job of communists today is not simply to expose the ills of capitalism, they have already been laid bare for the world to see. Our job is to overcome the cynicism and despair that holds us back.”

It’s easy to understand why many – seeing the horrors of capitalist society on our screens and on the streets – feel pessimistic, disillusioned, and demoralised. But Marxism allows us to see the revolutionary processes developing beneath the surface.

The British state is readily greasing the wheels of big tech. Lenin once remarked that the state is “bound by a thousand threads to the bourgeoisie”. Nowhere is this clearer than the inseparable ties and revolving door between the British state and US tech giants.

For over 80 years, an entire industry distorted the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky. While Trump renews the charge against communism, the republication of Alan Woods and Ted Grant’s ‘Lenin and Trotsky: What They Really Stood For’ could not have come at a better time.

War always accompanies periods of revolutionary turmoil like our own. The coming period will include inter-imperialist wars, national wars, civil wars, and class wars. Communists must be theoretically prepared to make sense of this maelstrom.

Once again, the crisis of the prison system is back in the headlines, following Burnham’s early prisoner release fiasco. With intense overcrowding, staff morale in crisis, and a probation service at breaking point, this situation is intractable under capitalism.