Britain: Snap election announced - May throws down the gauntlet
At this moment of enormous national significance there should be unity here in Westminster, but instead there is division. The country is coming together, but Westminster is not.”
At this moment of enormous national significance there should be unity here in Westminster, but instead there is division. The country is coming together, but Westminster is not.”
The last three weeks have seen a quick progression of the candidate of Rebellious France in the polls for the presidential election: from being fifth with around 11% to being third with over 18% now. This rapid rise has been accompanied with a slow but steady decrease in the voting intentions for the two candidates at the top, the far right Le Pen (from a peak of 28% down to 24) and the liberal Thatcherite Macron (from a peak of 26% down to 23).
The power-sharing deal in the North of Ireland, established with the Good Friday Agreement, has broken down. The old system of rule no longer works, an indication of the pressures that flow from the economic crisis. Gerry Ruddy looks at why and how this has come about.
From the very beginning of the crisis in the Balkans back in 1992 In Defence of Marxism has maintained a firm internationalist approach.
The different imperialist powers and the local former Stalinist bureacrats used the poison of nationalism to gain power and spheres of influence. Their manouevres had nothing to do with the rights of the people's of the Balkans but with naked self interest.
We have insisted that the poison of nationalism (be it Albanian, Serbian, Bosnia, Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Greek, Turkish, or whatever) offers nothing to the peoples of the Balkans but a future of fratricidal war, ethnic cleansing, economic ruin, poverty and despair.
The entirely artificial frontiers that divide the living body of the Balkans have long since ceased to play any progressive role, if they ever did. Reactionary nationalism divides brother from brother, and sister from sister, creating ethnic hatreds and never-ending strife.
We think that only a policy of internationalism and class solidarity between the workers in the different countries in the Balkans would provide a lasting solution to this conflict. Only a Socialist Federation of the Balkans could actually guarantee full democratic rights for all national groups.
Many will say that this is an utopian policy and demand a more "practical" solution. But since the start of the conflict back in 1992 the "practical" policies have solved nothing and in fact have increased the amount of combustible material in the area. Maybe it is time that a genuine socialist internationalist approach is adopted.
Here we offer a collection of our material relating to this question. We think that these texts should be studied by all labour movement activists in the region and worldwide and we hope they will help open a fruitful discussion.