The homeland must be defended: Cuban unions call for mass mobilization on May Day 2026 In the face of growing threats from the U.S. government—reinforced by the executive order of January 29, which has added an energy siege to the already intensified economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed on our country for more than 65 years, simply because we chose to build a dignified, sovereign, and independent nation—there is nothing more urgent or decisive today than to act together and strengthen ourselves as a country. In this context, the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC), its national unions, and the National Association of Innovators and Rationalizers (ANIR) call for the celebration of May 1st, International Workers’ Day, under a clear and mobilizing principle: The homeland must be defended. To mark May Day is to reaffirm the unity and patriotism of the Cuban people. It is to once again “break the corojo,” as Antonio Maceo did at Baraguá when he rejected a peace without independence; to recall José Martí’s message in Los Pinos Nuevos, a historic call for unity across generations in the struggle for sovereignty; and, in the year marking the centenary of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, to uphold the vision he expressed on May 1, 2000.
https://www.idcommunism.com/2026/04/the-homeland-must-be-defended-cuban-unions-call-for-mass-mobilization-on-may-day-2026.htmlViktor Orbán’s Hungarian Model Has CollapsedReacting to news of Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Sunday’s Hungarian election, many of his admirers insisted that he had, after all, done a good job. Jordan Bardella, president of France’s Rassemblement National, wrote that Orbán had “led Hungary’s economic recovery, promoted family policies that helped maintain the birth rate, and defended his country and Europe’s borders against migration.” Dutch nationalist leader Geert Wilders insisted Orbán was “the only leader with balls in the EU”; for others, the fact that he had admitted defeat proved his democratic spirit. Many accounts focus on Orbán’s authoritarian hold on power, whether rewriting the state’s Fundamental Law or packing the Constitutional Court. His Fidesz party’s influence on public media and the education system was also an important tool for shaping opinion. Yet the fact that Orbán has now been ousted at the ballot box tells us that he had relied on a more organic kind of support that has been exhausted. While voter turnout soared on Sunday, his Fidesz party’s base shrank from 3.1 to 2.3 million. In a preelection article, I wrote of Orbán’s promise of a “work-based society” and an economy based on job creation. Putting Hungarians in work, he argued after the 2008 economic crisis, would make them more self-reliant than if they counted on credit or on welfare benefits. In rallies ahead of Sunday’s vote, Orbán spoke of increasing job numbers by more than one million since returning to office in 2010 (the rise, per official data, was more like 750,000). Yet if there was rapid progress by this indicator leading up to the 2022 election, it then stalled badly. The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine undermined the social compact on which Orbánomics was built. As Dávid Karas points out, while Orbán’s post-2008-crisis rhetoric focused on regaining “sovereignty,” Hungary’s jobs plan remained dependent on foreign direct investment, from German automakers to Chinese electric battery firms. Government policy worked not to strengthen labor rights but to create a low-wage workforce attractive to private, multinational investors. This model remained vulnerable to global shocks, ranging from EU (but also Trumpian) pressure to decouple from Russian gas to more recent US-Israeli warmongering.
https://jacobin.com/2026/04/hungary-election-orban-defeat-magyar The German Peasants' War: a revolution to bring Heaven to Earth 2025 marked the 500th anniversary of the peak of the German Peasants' War of 1524-26. In the course of the war, the oppressed masses in both the towns and the countryside rose up against the decaying feudal order. The defeat of the rebels in May-June 1525 would leave an indelible mark on the history of Germany, and of Europe as a whole. The Peasants’ War was a pivotal event in the Protestant Reformation, which Friedrich Engels counted as one of the most important stages in the struggle of the European bourgeoisie against feudalism, alongside the English Civil War (1642-51) and the French Revolution (1789-94). Indeed, he described the Reformation as the first bourgeois revolution in history. What began as a conflict between Martin Luther – the German monk and professor of theology – and the Roman Catholic Church, sparked a revolutionary conflagration in early modern Europe. In the Netherlands, the Reformation actually brought the bourgeoisie to power, when the Protestant Calvinists won independence from their Catholic Spanish rulers and founded the Republic of the Seven United Provinces in 1581. However, almost six decades before this were the mass revolts in southern and central Germany, as well as Austria, Alsace and Switzerland.
https://marxist.com/the-german-peasants-war-a-revolution-to-bring-heaven-to-earth.htm