Less than a quarter of an hour after opening, the Chinese stock market was closed by an automatic shutdown. This “circuit-breaker” mechanism was imposed by the government only five months ago after equally dramatic losses. This reveals how nervous the Chinese government is of the underlying economic instability.

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.