Europe

While no money is available for spending on healthcare, education, pensions, etc., billions of dollars are spent on building up massive security systems. Each terror scare adds to the profit margins of the big security companies. It is an indication of the sickness of the society we live in.

In the recent period the Spanish School Student Union and the Frederick Engels Foundation in Vitoria (Gasteiz), in the Basque Country, have become the victims of fascist harassment. UGT activists have been physically attacked and hospitalised. Before something serious happens, these fascist thugs and their backers in the state, must be made aware that workers and youth around the world have their eyes on what is going on. Stop the fascists now!

The capitalist system that flourished in the time of Dickens is still upon us, as are all of its ills and evils. Reminiscent of the popular festive tale A Christmas Carol, in 2006, we still find that the everyday lives of working people are subject to the whims of a minority of parasitic individuals. This has found expression most recently in the Farepak fiasco.

It is 100 years since the Labour Party first emerged as a force in parliament, and 100 since the Trades Dispute Acts granted British workers some basic rights against prosecution by employers in case of strike action. Today workers have fewer rights than they did then. Since 1906 the British ruling class have attempted to break the link between Labour and the unions, but have systematically failed.

In the Russian political dictionary Kondopoga has emerged as a new negative concept. Over a short period we have already experienced a number of such events, and everywhere along the same lines. Mass disturbances under nationalist slogans, which stemmed from everyday conflicts, xenophobic pogroms, public calls “to clear off the blacks” – all this is Kondopoga.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was not the end of Marxism. On the contrary it confirmed what the Marxists had stated long ago, that the bureaucracy was a threat to the very survival of the planned economy. But there was no Marxist party on the scene that could offer the workers an alternative. Thus the whole system imploded with devastating effects on industry and with it the working class, which was thrown back decades, divided and atomised. It became a passive force, which explains the impasse facing today’s Russian left. But now we can see the first signs of the working class beginning to come together again as a class.

It will come as a great shock to all comrades to hear the tragic news of the premature death of comrade Phil Mitchinson, the deputy editor of the Marxist journal Socialist Appeal and leading member of the International Marxist Tendency. Regrettably Phil suffered a severe heart attack late last night, was rushed to hospital, but staff were unable to save him. He was 38 years of age.

The Visegrad Four are Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, ex-Stalinist countries who have joined the European Union and are also preparing the conditions for entry into the Euro. The way they are doing it is by attacking viciously all the social gains of the workers. Sooner or later this will lead to an explosion of the class struggle.