For 16 days, the world waited with bated breath as the US government was shut down and teetered on the brink of default. At the eleventh hour, a deal was rammed through both the Senate and the House and signed by Obama, thus averting the immediate crisis. What is the meaning of all this? What are the ramifications for American politics and the capitalist system itself? John Peterson of Socialist Appeal USA reports.

“The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.” So reads the The Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels, who described a process that we see today: the erosion of conditions for those who once considered themselves as middle class, as capitalism pushes this layer of society down into the working class.

Last week, October 9th, marked one year since the serene valley of Swat was suddenly overcome with pain and anguish at the bestial attack on Malala Yousafzai and other schoolgirls in the van taking them home as it rounded at an army checkpoint in the midst of a fundamentalist insurgency. Lal Khan of the Pakistani MarxistsThe Struggle discusses the wider politics behind these event and the hypocrisy of the subsequent media coverage.