Nowhere is the chasm between leadership and rank and file more seemingly unbridgeable than in
the student movement. In 2009, students in the UK have spontaneously occupied
universities to protest at Israel’s
war on Gaza, to
fight against deportations of university cleaning staff, and against massive
cuts in teaching staff. At the same time, they face the worst attacks on their conditions
in living memory in the form of increasing fees, the end of grants, and the
vanishing jobs market. This is clearly an explosive combination.

The London School Students Union have dropped us a line to say that as
of yesterday (Thursday), the UCU strike at Tower Hamlets is over – the
management have capitulated and the lecturers’ demands have been met!
After a month of solid striking, which has seen strong daily pickets,
widespread and heartfelt support and large community demonstrations,
they won the dispute.

Following a widescale and carefully orchestrated police operation
aimed at disrupting ‘dissident republican’ activity and two nights of
rioting in Lurgan, it would appear that the north of Ireland’s social
peace has not been in such a fragile state since the signing of the
Good Friday Agreement eleven years ago.

The present world crisis of capitalism means we have entered a new
period in which the workers will face a situation of permanent
austerity, with cuts in welfare and attacks on working conditions. This
is already having a radicalising affect on millions of workers and
youth, particularly in Latin America and other underdeveloped parts of
the world and it is spreading to the advanced countries also. Alan Woods continues his review (given at a meeting in Europe last month) of the unfolding crisis of world capitalism, (Click here to read part one)

We are migrating servers on Monday 21st Sept. This may mean some
disruption to both this site and the bookshop site whilst the move is
taking place.

For the capitalists, this Great
Recession could be more or less over, but the level of spare capacity
in industry and construction together with the level of debt still owed
by businesses, government and households alike mean that this recovery
may be stunted. Every major capitalist economy now finds that it has
more than 30% more capacity than it needs to meet demand. That is a
record high of overcapacity in industry.

Here are some pictures from the refuse workers’ picket line in Leeds.

This summer, Alan Woods delivered a speech on the nature of
the present crisis of capitalism, in which he deals with the
relationship between the economic cycle and the class struggle, and
also looks into what kind of recovery we can expect, considering the
enormous contradictions that have accumulated within the system.