(Part I ( – Part II ( – Part III ( – Part IV ( – Part V ( · On re-reading this piece, what is striking about the picture of the working class in capitalism's self-styled service economy in 2006 is how much it resembles the situation today. After decades of capitalist restructuring in the face of problems stemming from the declining rate of profit (problems by no means confined to the economy...

On Thursday 30 May construction workers at the Tees Renewable Energy Plant, owned by MGT Power, walked out in a wildcat action over safety conditions at the site. When workers act on their own class terrain they begin to challenge the capitalist structure as a whole. · A safety incident seems to have initially sparked the protest.

Political and economic crises led to the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc. The downturn in the post-war accumulation cycle, the Cold War, the USSR’s disastrous intervention in Afghanistan, as well as the popular revolts in Central and Eastern Europe all played a role. But it is the class struggles of 1980s Poland to which we turn our eye here.

With the latest revelations about the horrendous working conditions in JD Sports and ASOS warehouses, comparing them to “dark satanic mills” (1), we have decided to publish the following letter from an ICT sympathiser about his own experience during the Christmas period of one of these very same warehouses currently in the news.