A new International Labour Organisation reports says that as much as 50%
of youth are now unemployed in many countries. Capitalist crisis has
meant soaring unemployment especially amongst the young. The report
warns of difficult years ahead where young people may resort to violence
to vent their anger at governments worldwide.
As the Coalition intensifies its attacks on working people, it
clearly reveals itself as a government completely in the pockets of big
business. In fact it is a government of the stinking rich, for the
stinking rich, by the stinking rich.
Today
(October 19), the first day of the 48-hour general strike in Greece was
sensational. Apart from the government and public utilities workers that
participated in the strike massively, hundreds of thousands of workers
from the private sector came out on strike for the first time, and also
joining the millions of striking workers were tens of thousands of small
businesspeople and shopkeepers who closed the shutters to their shops
in solidarity.
As
Portugal’s right-wing government announced the harshest austerity cuts
in the country’s history, economic forecasts were revised down and the
main trade union confederations CGTP and UGT announced the calling of a
general strike.
On October
15, Rome saw one of the biggest demonstrations of the last few years in
Italy. Up to half a million people flooded the streets of the capital.
Not only was this a huge demonstration in terms of the numbers taking
part, but even more significantly you could hear the most radical
slogans of the last decade. The masses, inspired by Athens, Madrid and
New York, chanted “we don’t want to pay the debt”, “No to austerity”,
“No to the dictatorship of the ECB and the banks”, etc.
Whilst chatting with students at Worcester University, I was presented
with a flyer for a production of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
that night in the university, an opportunity not to miss. However my
expectation of a theatrical interpretation of this socialist classic by
just two actors was very low but this was blown away as soon as the
performance began.
The decision of the Secretary Of
State to revoke Marian Price’s release from prison has been met with
widespread opposition from the Republican movement. The justification
given was that the threat that she poses has “significantly increased”
and that she had been encouraging support for an illegal organisation
based on her involvement in an Easter comm
As the crisis of capitalism continues
to pile attack after attack on living standards, the student and labour
movements in Britain are preparing for their largest mobilisations in
decades and crucially are coalescing this Autumn into a momentous month
of activity in November. No one can deny that the national student
demonstration (9th November) and the coordinated strike action (30th
November) are really part of the same struggle.
Today ULU Marxists received a letter from a student at New York University (NYU),
Cecilia Gingerich, who was a member of the University of London Marxist
Society while studying in London in the spring of 2010. She is now a
participant in Occupy Wall Street and in her letter gives a first hand
account of her experience of the movement from the beginning, her
narrowly escaping the mass arrest of the 700 protestors on October 1st
and the impact that had on the movement in the following days. Now the
unions have joined the protestors on Wall Street, along with walk-outs
from high schools and colleges, which Cecilia has participated with
students from her own university.
Marxist ideas have never been more relevant and more needed than in this
present epoch. Students, especially those entering university for the
first time, have become radicalised and are asking profound questions
about our society. Above all they want to change society in a
revolutionary way – from Wall Street to Cairo radicalised students are
demanding a different kind of society and are experimenting with
different methods of mobilisation to effect that. Underneath this
process lies a thirst for revolutionary ideas. This enthusiasm was
certainly experienced by Militant Student supporters up and down the
country as they took part in freshers fairs.
The
financial crisis in Greece is constantly in the headlines and focusing
everyone’ attention on what it could lead to. As we have explained
before, the reason for this is not due to the objective economic weight
of the Greek economy within European and world capitalism. In absolute
terms Greece only accounts for 2% of the European Union’s GDP and even
its public debt is only 3% of the total public debt of the Eurozone. The
point is, however, that Greece is the weakest link in European
capitalism which is now at the centre of the global capitalist crisis.
Last week Wall Street was rocked by a mass demonstration of over 15,000 people
protesting against “corporate greed.” The crowd jammed the square and
stretched for blocks along Broadway. This unprecedented protest was a
manifestation of the mood of anger, bitterness and frustration that has
been accumulating for years in American society, which had already
previously erupted in the big demonstrations and walkouts in Madison,
Wisconsin, culminating in the occupation of the Capitol.