The announcement that the Irish banking sector needs another
€24 billion, that’s €24,000,000,000 in real numbers or another €5,500
for every Irish man, woman and child, is another sign of the capitalist
crisis in the state. Standard and Poor’s one of the main international
credit agencies has now downgraded Ireland by a further point.
In this article, Daniel Morley contrasts the ideas of Marxism and anarchism. Though sharing the same goal of a classless and stateless society, these two competing philosophies have vital differences, which must be understood by revolutionaries.
In Belfast on March 26th, a twin demo to the London protest took place. Here is a report.
A new momentum has been reached by the
protest movement in Morocco. The call for a new Day of Action on March
20 was a test. Would the King’s shadowy reforms succeed in demobilising
the masses or on the contrary push the movement forward? As we predicted
the latter happened. Possibly twice as many people came out on the
streets than a month earlier.
500,000 march against the cuts, against the coalition, against big business. Here are the images of the day.
The magnificent 500,000-strong
demonstration on 26 March – the biggest trade union demonstration in the
history of the British labour movement – was a marvellous response to
the Coalition’s austerity measures. It sends out a clear message: the
workers of this country are not prepared to take the government’s
austerity measures lying down.
We have received news from students at Glasgow University of an
attempt by police to put an end to the 7-week long occupation of the
Hetherington Club by the forcible removal of the students.
It is the worst disaster for Japan
since the war, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This triple whammy of a
force-9 earthquake, a tsunami, followed by a nuclear disaster, has
shaken the country to its very foundations. And the consequences of this
multifaceted catastrophe are widening by the day.
On Saturday afternoon French warplanes
were the first to bomb Libya, in what one can only describe as open
imperialist aggression. This was followed by US and UK ships and
submarines launching 110 Tomahawk Cruise missiles. The French are
strengthening their position by sending their Charles de Gaulle aircraft
carrier into waters off the Libyan coast
Yesterday the United Nations Security
Council voted by 10 votes in favour against 5 abstentions to impose a
no-fly zone over Libya. The resolution authorises UN member states "to
take all necessary measures… to protect civilians and civilian
populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,
including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any
form on any part of Libyan territory".
To say that a revolution has begun is
not to say that it has been completed, much less that victory is
assured. It is a struggle of living forces. Revolution is not a one-act
drama. It is a complicated process with many ebbs and flows. The
overthrow of Mubarak, Ben Ali and Gannouchi marks the end of the first
stages, but the Revolution has not yet succeeded in completely
overthrowing the old regime, while the latter has not yet succeeded in
re-establishing control.
In the first instance the demands of the Revolution are democratic. Of
course! After 30 years of a brutal dictatorship the youth long for
freedom. Naturally, their desire for democracy can be abused by
bourgeois politicians who are only interested in their future careers in
a “democratic” parliament. But we are obliged to take up the democratic
demands and give them a sharply revolutionary content. This will
inevitably lead on to the demand for an even more fundamental change in
society.