An old curse goes: “may you live through interesting times.” Just as the world took its first, tentative steps towards ‘normality’ after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2022 opened on an explosive note, with a major cost of living crisis, an insurrectionary movement in Kazakhstan, and now the biggest war on European soil in decades following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Millions are waking up to the fact that this level of chaos is not an aberration. World capitalism is in a profound state of crisis and dislocation – we are living through the new normal. 

History teaches us that war and hunger are often the handmaidens of revolution. The dramatic events unfolding before our eyes are the convulsions of an old world dying, and a new one fighting to be born. Our opening plenary will discuss the perspectives for the global class struggle, and outline the main tasks for revolutionaries all over the world.