Amidst all the parties at the start of the New Year, there was no sign of any optimism or hope for the future on the part of the ruling class and its strategists. On the contrary, as Alan Woods discusses, the columns of the bourgeois press are filled with pessimism and foreboding.

In the past few months, a crisis has developed within the ANC, the ruling party in South Africa. All the contradictions within South Africa are coming to the fore as the crisis of capitalism impacts upon the country’s fragile economy. The conditions are being prepared for an explosive period of class struggle. Ben Morken, from the IMT in South Africa, reports.

On Sunday 20th December 2015, Spanish people went to the polls in a tightly contested general election. The results have produced an extremely fragmented parliament, reflecting the class polarisation and radicalisation that has been taking place in Spanish society in recent years.