Keith Haring’s commitment to “art for everybody” ran deep, permeating not only the style but the political content of his work. Some of Haring’s most iconic works are those which make bold calls for change, engaging with social crises like South African apartheid, Reaganism, the oppression of LGBTQ people, and the AIDS epidemic which would eventually take Haring’s own life. But today, the appropriation of Haring’s legacy by elite art auctions and ritzy brands poses an important question: under capitalism, can art really be for everyone?

Today marks 100 years since Lenin’s death, and a knowledge of the genuine ideas of Lenin is still essential for anyone wishing to see a victorious communist revolution today.

One of the most common misconceptions about the Russian Revolution is that the ideas and methods of Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Party led inevitably to the Stalinist regime and all the crimes that went with it.

A new United Nations report, released before the COP28 climate summit, says Canada is not on track to meet its commitments on climate change. Canada is among a group of top fossil-fuel-producing countries on pace to extract more oil and gas than would be consistent with its emissions targets. Far from decreasing oil and gas extraction, Canada is on track to actually increase production of oil and gas! In the same week, Canada’s commissioner of the environment and sustainable development revealed that Canada is the only G7 country that has not achieved any emissions reductions since 1990. These reports show once again the total inability of capitalism to meaningfully address the climate crisis.

There are many earnest people in the west who look to the BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions) campaign as a ‘practical’ way to show solidarity with Palestine. BDS calls for Israel’s economic and cultural isolation in order to hit the Zionists in their wallets. Its activists often point to the example of the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa, which, they say, was brought down in large part through sanctions and pressure from the ‘international community’. But is this really the case?

Throughout the self-proclaimed ‘civilised’ western world, the ruling classes have banded together to denounce Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October and have rallied around Israel’s ‘right of self-defence’ as it bombs Gaza to smithereens. But this is not the first time we have been told to accept a bloody war against an oppressed people in the name of the oppressor nation’s ‘self-defence’.

To justify its genocidal bombardment of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli state, with the complicity of Western imperialists, tries to present itself as the guardian of superior moral values in the face of Palestinian “barbarism”. There could be no better example of the complete moral bankruptcy of the ruling class.

The following short article by Karl Marx, published in the New York Daily Tribune in 1857, comments on the Indian Rebellion that broke out against the British East India Company the same year. In a few short lines, Marx skewers the hypocrisy of respectable English society reeling in horror at the violence of the rebels; the product of decades of oppression. His words bear great relevance today given events in Israel-Palestine.

On 14 October, Australians will vote on establishing a government advisory body for matters relating to the country’s Indigenous population, which would be enshrined in the constitution. At the time of writing, support for this ‘Indigenous Voice’ to parliament is languishing in the polls, much to the distress of the liberals. In reality, however, neither the government’s feeble, reformist Voice, nor the unvarnished racism of the opposition, offers anything to Australian workers, Indigenous or otherwise.

The history of Chile, where the 50th anniversary of Pinochet’s brutal coup d’état is being commemorated this month, is an example of the danger that awaits those who fail to distinguish between the two. As was the case with socialist leader Salvador Allende, reform sometimes takes on a revolutionary garb. It’s crucial for communists to understand what separates the two phenomena.