The results of the Spanish elections on Sunday November 20
represented a massive defeat for the Socialist Party (PSOE) which had
introduced austerity measures to make the workers pay for the capitalist
crisis, rather than a victory for the right wing Popular Party (PP)
which will now have to introduce even more savage austerity cuts in the
face of the acute crisis of Spanish capitalism.
Events in Egypt are developing at
lightning speed. Similarly to the last days of Mubarak in February this
year, we see daily battles on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere. The
Egyptian masses are determined to see the revolution carried through to
the end. The clash between revolution and counter-revolution is
provoking a crisis inside all political forces, as the rank and file
instinctively move towards revolution and the leaderships vacillate and
try to hold the masses back.
The Eurozone is passing through the
most serious crisis in its entire history. After Greece comes the
Italian crisis. This places a big question mark over the future of the
euro. We predicted long ago that in a serious crisis all the national
contradictions come to the fore, as we now see with the fractious
relations between Greece, France, Germany and Italy. The European Union
is facing the day of reckoning.
Workers have not only been balloting for action in Britain but also in Northern Ireland, where the Tory-led Coalition’s attacks on pensions will also apply if carried out. Fightback – the voice of Marxism in Ireland – reports on the ballot results in the North.
The bourgeoisie has never,
anywhere, been able to find the key to unlock the mysteries of their own
economic system. The only way to understand capitalism is to accept and
to explain its contradictory, crisis-ridden nature. It cannot be
perfected; its riddle will never be solved from within its confines.
Precisely because the apologists of capitalism can never accept this
fact, they are forever shifting from one side of the problem to the
other.
Berlusconi has lost his majority in
the lower house of the Italian parliament. Although he won a vote on the
latest round of austerity measures included in the budget, he did so
with less than half the votes of the MPs in parliament. The result of
the vote was 308 in favour, 1 abstention, but with the majority of MPs
not voting. This means the budget was approved but now Berlusconi stands
naked having lost his parliamentary majority. His days are numbered and
the pressure is mounting for him to go – something we are told he has now promised.
As we write these lines the Papandreou government is staggering towards
collapse. In a matter of days the whole situation has been thrown into
turmoil. Only
last week, eurozone leaders were congratulating each other on agreeing a
100bn-euro loan to Athens and a 50% write-off of its mountain of debt.
Governments cheered. Stock exchanges rose on the announcement of the
deal. And politicians breathed a sigh of relief. A few days later and
everything turned into its opposite.
Last Thursday’s by election in Dublin
West came down to a three horse race between Councillor Patrick Nulty of
Labour who won and Councillor Ruth Coppinger of the Socialist Party who
came third, while Fianna Fáil (FF) squeezed into second place after a
tie for second and third place – on the basis that they had more first
preference votes.
As Europe teeters once more, staring
financial collapse and slump in the face, we provide an analysis of what
happened in Iceland, the first country to go under as a result of the
global crisis of capitalism.
October 28 is a National holiday in Greece marking ΟΧΙ (No) Day – the refusal of Greece
in 1940 to accept the Italian ultimatum advanced by Mussolini, to allow
the Italian fascist troops to enter the country. Not only did Greek
forces stop the Italian invasion, but actually forced Mussolini’s troops
back into Albania. Every year it is celebrated as a day of “national
pride”. Not so this year! The masses took over the celebrations and used
them to express their anger at the Greek ruling class. Here we publish a
report from Athens written on the day of the “celebrations”
On October 25, people on the streets
were confronted by hundreds of riot police launching anti-riot grenades.
Plumes of tear gas rose as protesters fled from the rubber bullets of
the police. The scene we have described was not in the streets of Tunis,
Cairo or Homs, but occurred in the streets of Oakland, California in
the United States. On that Tuesday, the police forcefully evicted the
occupation taking place in Oscar Grant plaza, renamed so after the
police killing of Oscar Grant on New Year’s Eve 2009 in the city of
Oakland.
USA: The mainstream media has made much ado
about the fact that #OccupyWallStreet does not have a unified, cohesive
message. In trying to belittle it, they smugly point out that the
occupy movement is an amorphous and heterogeneous mix of people. Every
shade of political opinion and ideology is present: Makhno anarchists
and Ron Paul libertarians; Trotskyist socialists and New Age
neo-hippies; Anonymous and Zeitgeist; atheists and hard core believers;
the homeless and those who have quit their jobs to become full time
protesters against unemployment.