The national congress of the PRC, Partito della Rifondazione Comunista, is taking place this coming weekend, December 2-4. After moving left at the previous congress, the leadership have moved back to the idea of some kind of alliance involving the Democratic Party. The Marxists have opposed this and produced an opposition document for the congress, receiving a substantial amount of support within the ranks of the party. Here we provide a report on the intervention of the Marxists in the local congresses and a shortened version of their congress document in English.

More than two million public sector workers took strike action yesterday. That amounted to a virtual general strike of the public sector. In terms of numbers, the action was bigger than the “Winter of Discontent” in 1979  - bigger even than the 1926 General Strike. Even The Financial Times, the organ of Big Business, surprisingly described Wednesday’s strike as “undoubtedly historic”.

Around Britain, supporters of Socialist Appeal have been on picket lines and demonstrations. Here are the reports we har received so far. [Updated 2 December with more reports]

A powerful general strike and massive demonstrations on November 24 was the answer of Portuguese workers to the austerity budget proposed by the right-wing governmnent of Pedro Passos Coelho. The troika approved the measures taken as part of the bail out package but demanded more cuts as the economy is forecasted to fall by 3% next year.

The results of the Spanish elections on Sunday November 20 represented a massive defeat for the Socialist Party (PSOE) which had introduced austerity measures to make the workers pay for the capitalist crisis, rather than a victory for the right wing Popular Party (PP) which will now have to introduce even more savage austerity cuts in the face of the acute crisis of Spanish capitalism.

The formation of the Papadimos government is the result of the economic and political stalemate that Greek capitalism finds itself in and represents a desperate effort on the part of the ruling class to subjugate the working class which is in a rebellious mood.