IV449 - June 2012

This is an edited version of a lecture given at the 21st Century Marxism seminar organised by Socialist Resistance at the IIRE Amsterdam in June.

Salafist violence has gone through a qualitative metamorphosis during the recent events in terms of degree of organisation and synchronisation of actions in several places and regions, and in terms of the breadth of the terror and violence, which targeted the regional offices of the UGTT trade union federation, the Democratic Patriots’ Movement and the Republican Party in Jendouba after the popular success of the general strike in this combative wilaya. The violence did not spare the public institutions and enterprises, striking courts, police stations and officers and civil protection equipment for which the bill will be paid by the poorest.

This article on the Nigerian movement against the rise in fuel prices, originally published in the South African magazine Amandla, was written in January 2012.

The Charest government has turned to repression to try to break the largest and longest student strike in Quebec history. Students had already endured heavy-handed policing, including hundreds of arrests and brutal attacks by riot cops on campuses and in the streets. The new strikebreaking legislation, Bill 78, is a brutal clampdown on the right to organize collectively and on freedom of expression. The protest plans for any demonstrations of more than 50 people must be cleared with the police in advance of any gathering, or the action will be considered illegal. Individual students, staff or faculty members who advocate the ongoing strike action risk harsh penalties, and student unions or university employees unions who organize or support ongoing strike activity will face heavy fines.

The ANC celebrated its hundredth anniversary on the 8 January 2012. This is indeed a major achievement for the oldest liberation movement in Africa. In its history it has had to negotiate many difficult challenges, perhaps none more so than retaining a broad unity while maintaining the ability to act and implement strategy. This is a remarkable part of the history of the ANC and bears testimony to generations of extraordinary leaders who shaped and guided the ANC.

The Syrian revolutionary process has since the beginning been met by circumspection by some on the left and even led some to separate it from the other uprising in the region, accusing it of being a conspiracy of Western imperialist and reactionary regional countries such as Saudi Arabia. This trend has unfortunately continued, despite the criminal actions of the regime. Others have limited their position to the refusal of any foreign military intervention, on which we agree, but refused to bring full support to the revolution, on which we disagree. Opposition to foreign military intervention in Syria is not enough. Such a position is meaningless if not accompanied by clear and strong support for the Syrian people’s movement.

The troika sighs with relief. There will be a new pro-Memorandum government in Greece. The weakest link in the Euro zone has not snapped. The financial oligarchy has lived through a worrying few days, as if a ghost had returned to haunt them, but yesterday bought some time, giving a precarious underpinning to a collapsing scaffold. But the ghost has come back to stay.

Despina Papageorgiou interviewed Eric Toussaint for the Greek magazine Crash in May. The comments of the magazine appear in italics.

All eyes are turned toward Spain and its banking sector. After Greece, Portugal and Ireland, we may ask ourselves if the bailout plans are behind us or whether we are simply in the eye of the cyclone? We must remain lucid and recognize that the financial and banking crisis is far from over, both in Europe and the United States. It will have long-lasting repercussions on the rest of the world economy, and on living conditions everywhere. Yet, in Europe, in the first quarter of 2012, the major media outlets backed the declarations made by European leaders, and representatives of the ECB and private banks to convince public opinion that the policies implemented had enabled the banking system to be stabilized.

The Greek general election campaign which has kept the Troika and the financial powers in suspense has ended. The masters of the world, the 1%, as Occupy Wall Street symbolically refers to the dominant financial hierarchy, are concerned with the possibility of an electoral victory for Syriza on the basis of an anti-Memorandum agenda. We know that elections are an annoyance for the élites when there is the rare possibility that the masses do not vote as they desire.