Against the Stream

On 18 June, the Cuban National Assembly approved a sweeping package of economic reforms. If implemented, they mean the end of the planned economy and the full restoration of capitalism on the island, which is currently under extreme pressure as the United States tightens a near-total blockade that has caused twenty-two-hour electricity cuts, food shortages, and the suspension of non-emergency surg...

World School of Communism 2026: https://schoolofcommunism.com/ - The United States and Iran have signed a deal to end the war. Looking through the fourteen points of the ‘Memorandum of Understanding’, it becomes clear that America has conceded everything Iran demanded, and Iran has given up nothing in return. In this week's Against the Stream, Hamid Alizadeh and Ben Curry break down the deal p...

Five hundred days of Trump in power. No more forever wars – except there is a war. The biggest paychecks in history – except hundreds of millions of Americans say the cost of living is the worst they can ever remember. And thirty-four percent of young Americans now hold a favourable view of communism. In this week's episode of Against the Stream, Victor Murray and Fred Weston take stock of Trump's...

The Iran war has set off a cascade of crises working their way through the world economy. Oil reserves are at a twenty-year low, inflation is rising, bond yields are spiking, and the IMF is warning of a worldwide slump. But is there a way out on a capitalist basis? In this week's Against the Stream, Hamid Alizadeh and Niklas Albin Svensson examine four of the proposed solutions for the crisis:...

What will be the future of Israel and the Gulf countries? What is the possible order of the Middle East and Asia? Those questions are the starting point for this week's Against the Stream – a special Q&A episode where Hamid Alizadeh and Jorge Martín work through the best and toughest questions from our comment section. Starting with the events in Iran, Hamid and Jorge explain that any end...

Six prime ministers in ten years. Labour just lost fifteen hundred council seats. Has Britain become ungovernable? In this week's Against the Stream, Hamid Alizadeh sits down with Adam Booth, editor of The Communist, the paper of the Revolutionary Communist Party in Britain, to give a Marxist answer to that question. And the answer is not what most commentators want to hear. The episode traces...

Trump is in Beijing. He thinks he has gone to negotiate from a position of strength, but in reality, he is negotiating from a position of weakness. That is the story of American imperialism in 2026. In this week's episode of Against the Stream , Hamid Alizadeh and Jorge Martín give a Marxist analysis of what the Iran War has done to American power, what it means for China, and what it reveals...

Europe was the birthplace of capitalism. Now it's in freefall. In this week’s Against the Stream, Hamid Alizadeh and Jorge Martín dive into the deepening crisis gripping the continent. Germany is launching a trillion-euro rearmament drive while simultaneously slashing 38 billion euros from pensions and healthcare. France can't pass a budget. The AfD is overtaking the CDU in the polls. And across E...

Is AI a revolutionary leap forward for humanity – or the latest crisis capitalism has engineered for itself? In this episode of Against the Stream, Hamid Alizadeh and Fred Weston cut through the hype to give a Marxist analysis of the AI bubble, its roots in capitalist crisis, and what it means for the working class. From the S&P 500's absurd tech valuations to OpenAI's pyramid-scheme economics...

After a four-week break, Against the Stream is back! Since our last episode, the world has been plunged deeper into crisis. With no end in sight for the Iran War, with energy prices and inflation rising, the global economy is teetering ever more precariously on the brink of a historic slump. With each passing day, it is becoming clearer that Donald Trump – who believed Iran could be crushed by the...

All the warning lights are flashing. With the US and Israel relentlessly bombing Iran for nearly a month and the Strait of Hormuz remaining closed, the economic consequences of the Iran war are spelling serious trouble for economies worldwide. Stagflation, factory shutdowns, falling crop yields, and rising interest rates are no longer hypotheticals – they are unfolding in real time, and growing mo...

"Head-spinning betrayal." These are the words of dissident Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene – and they are undoubtedly echoed by millions of Trump voters across America, who have watched their 'peace president' turn warmonger while they foot the bill at the gas pump and the grocery store. Three weeks into the war with Iran, the costs – both material and symbolic – are becoming a...

As the war on Iran enters its third week, US imperialism finds itself mired in a deepening crisis. What Trump envisioned as a swift decapitation strike is rapidly proving to be the gravest blunder of his presidency – and perhaps one of the most catastrophic miscalculations in the history of American foreign policy. Iran, meanwhile, is raising the stakes. Oil and gas prices are soaring, and the spe...

The United States and Israel have launched a war on Iran. Missiles and bombs are falling across Tehran and beyond, with strikes hitting schools, military installations, and government compounds throughout the country. Thousands of people are being killed and injured in yet another wave of imperialist bloodshed. On today's episode of Against The Stream, Hamid Alizadeh is joined by Niklas Albin...

Donald Trump is once again banging the war drums, threatening military action against Iran. He has now assembled the largest US naval build-up in the region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq – including two aircraft carriers and hundreds of fighter jets. The recent kidnapping of Maduro appears to have emboldened Trump and the warhawks in Washington, convincing them they can dictate terms through she...

The Cuban revolution is in grave danger! Trump's oil blockade has cut off the island's fuel supplies, plunging the country into prolonged blackouts, halting public transport, and threatening a full-scale humanitarian crisis. With Venezuelan oil cut off and Mexico bowing to US threats, Trump is tightening the noose to asphyxiate the island after 67 years of relentless pressure. The aim of t...

Over the last month, we have seen shocking images come out of Syria. ISIS flags waving over Raqqa. Jihadist militants knocking over the gravestones of Kurdish fighters. When it was set up, the Kurdish statelet of Rojava inspired people worldwide. Later, they beat back ISIS. Now ISIS have returned, and the Kurds are fighting for their lives. How has it come to this? Meanwhile, the world has been le...

IMPORTANT NOTICE: This video was pre-recorded a week in advance. We will return to normal programming on Thursday 12th February. A lot is said about Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution. The billionaire-owned media cry out indignantly that was a dictator who ruined life for ordinary Venezuelans. But over the course of his presidency, he won a total of 19 democratic elections and referendums w...

The movement against ICE in Minneapolis is not just any ordinary protest – it is a microcosm of the revolutionary events that will shake the United States in the period ahead. With their class struggle methods, culminating in the first general strike in America in 80 years, the workers of Minneapolis not only forced Trump to retreat, they have also inspired millions across the country and the worl...

Donald Trump has bulldozed his way into 2026. Now, he has put the acquisition of Greenland at the top of his new year’s wishlist, sending the Europeans into panic and jeopardising trans-Atlantic relations even further. Why does Trump want Greenland? What would such a prospect mean for Europe on the world stage? And how are Trump’s actions abroad tied to the crisis at home, where the ICE murder of...

2026 is only a few weeks old, yet world events are already unfolding at breakneck speed. From Donald Trump’s kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, to the killing of Renee Good and the protests against ICE in Minneapolis, and now the growing mass movement and the prospect of US intervention in Iran, huge events are shaking up the world situation. In the first episode of the new season of our c...

As 2025 draws to a close, workers and young people around the world will look back on a year that has starkly exposed the blind alley of world capitalism. Trump’s return to the White House has only deepened the disorder, with his administration’s foreign and economic policies causing chaos on the world stage. The recently released National Security Strategy makes one thing unmistakably clear: the...

This week, in Britain, Your Party – led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana – held its inaugural conference. Zarah Sultana spoke there about not only taxing the rich, but of nationalising the entire economy! What does this development signify? And what would it take for Your Party to pose a real threat to capitalism in Britain? Meanwhile, amid a growing dispute within the US government over strikes...

With Trump’s proposed peace plan in Ukraine, Europe is once again finding itself sidelined by its former ally and benefactor, the United States. Having staked their crisis-ridden regimes on a Russian defeat in Ukraine, the Europeans are now waking up to the stark reality – Ukraine has lost the war, and Zelensky has his back against the wall. Although the European leaders would be the first to deny...

The biggest crisis of Trump’s second term is unfolding over the Epstein files. Having initially promised to release the trove of documents detailing Epstein’s crimes and his rich and powerful customers, Trump – one of those customers – quickly changed his tune once in power. However, this opened a rift within the MAGA movement and woke many up to the fact that Trump, far from “draining the swamp”,...