We publish here the first of a two
part article written by the Editorial Board of Marxistiki Foni) The
results of Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Greece – a political
earthquake –are a clear indication of the growing radicalisation of
society on the basis of the historic deadlock of capitalism and the
movement towards an openly revolutionary situation.
The defeat of Nicolas Sarkozy in the
presidential elections opens a new phase of the class struggle in
France. The socialist candidate, François Hollande, won 51.62 % of the
vote. However, this overall score tends to conceal the social basis of
the election result. Practically all the major towns and cities voted
massively for Hollande – or, to be closer to the truth, to get rid of
Sarkozy.
Last week’s local elections saw a disastrous showing for the Coalition
government as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrats respectively
lost 403 and 329 council seats. At the same time the Labour Party saw a
huge net gain of 824 councillors meaning they were able to gain control
of 32 councils across the country.
This year’s local election results have delivered a huge no-confidence
vote to the Coalition parties. On Thursday night, the Tories were
accused of ‘ramping up’ election predictions for Labour in the hope that
they would not win that figure and the government could then claim that
things were not that bad after all. In fact, the Tory prediction was
wrong – Labour did far better!
Three facts stand out from the 2012 local election results in Coventry:
the Labour Party made huge gains; the last remaining Socialist Party
councillor, Dave Nellist, lost his seat to Labour and the voting turnout
was very low at 26.43%.
The publication of this year’s Sunday Times Rich List 2012
has revealed a trend which has been going on for many years now – the rich are
just getting richer.
ULU Marxists, Socialist Appeal and www.marxist.com are proud to announce the 2nd Marxist Summer School: Prospects for the World Revolution,
this June 15-17. Join us for a packed weekend of discussion and debate
on what relevance the theory and programme of the Marxists has in this
epoch of world revolution.
The Argentinian government of Cristina Kirchner decided to renationalise the oil company YPF from Spanish multinational REPSOL. The Financial Times described it as “economic piracy” and thundered that her actions should not go unpunished. The Venezuelan government has supported the re-nationalisation and offered support on the basis of “sovereign control over natural resources”. To discuss the issues involved we are screening “Memoria del Saqueo” (Social Genocide http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400647/), a documentary film by Argentinian director Pino Solanas (http://www.pinosolanas.com/memoria.htm), describing the process by which the country’s wealth was looted by the multinationals and Argentinian capitalists during the 1990s, including the privatisation of YPF to Repsol. The film, 114 minutes long, is in Spanish with English […]
The results of the first round of the presidential elections in France
mean that the second round will be fought out between Nicolas Sarkozy
and the Socialist Party candidate, François Hollande.
All the talk about the European crisis finally “turning the corner” has gone up in smoke as crisis ruturns big time to Europe.
Crisis has returned with a vengeance. Britain is now officially back in
recession following two quarters of economic contraction, something
which will come as no surprise to many workers on the breadline. The
Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the British economy contracted
by 0.2% in the first quarter of 2012, which follows a 0.3% decline in
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the final three months of 2011.
The weekend of April 14th and 15th saw
the biggest gathering of the supporters of Socialist Appeal and the
Marxist Tendency in 20 years. This year’s conference discussed the World
situation and the ongoing global capitalist crisis, which is developing
into the deepest in the history of capitalism. The perspectives for
Britain were discussed, with special reference to the question of a
referendum on Scottish independence.