What if they held an election and nobody came? In some ways, the 2014 midterm elections in the USA were very much like this. Just 36.6 percent voted. The main capitalist parties—the Democrats and Republicans—do not deal with real issues related to the lives of the overwhelming majority of the population. This is true bourgeois democracy. That is, democracy for the top 1% or 2%, but not for the rest of us!

In this talk at the UCLU Marxist society, Ben Gliniecki – the youth organiser for the Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine campaign – analyses the latest developments surrounding the crisis in Ukraine, and discusses how Marxists can support the struggles against fascism in Ukraine.

The situation in Burkina Faso has been moving at lightning speed since the revolution erupted on Thursday 30th October. Not only did the revolutionary masses overthrew the hated Blaise Compaoré, but also his hand-picked successor, general Honoré Traoré, just a few hours later. The military tops and major imperialist powers have been scrambling to hatch some kind of a deal to pacify the masses and restore some sort of bourgeois normality.