IV342 - July/August 2002

’Useless efforts produce melancholy and I am not prepared for Seville to be a summit of melancholy’. José Maria Aznar, June 3, 2002.

All the indications are that support for the general strike across the Spanish state on June 20, 2002 was greater than in any other general strike since the end of the Franco dictatorship. The strike was particularly solid in sectors like building, industry, agriculture, transport and teaching.

Following earlier conferences in Lisbon, Paris and Brussels, the Conference of the European Anti-Capitalist Left took place for the fourth time this year in Madrid on June 18-19, 2002.

Lutte Ouvrière is one of the largest organizations of the far left in Europe. For the last 15-20 years, it has been the largest of the three major organizations of the far left in France.

In less than two months, France has experienced four nationwide electoral contests that have shaken the country. Political crisis combines with social crisis. Indeed, far right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen’s qualification for the second round of the presidential elections revealed a system on the verge of implosion.

At the moment that the United States announced the conclusion of its massive bombardments in Afghanistan and the reestablishment of ’order’ in that strategic area of the planet, in Latin America the myth of the invincibility of the ’neo-liberal model’ collapsed. The opening of a revolutionary process in Argentina accelerated the crisis of bourgeois political leadership in a context of socio-economic debacle, resistance, protest and social rebellion.

Following three weeks of mobilizations against the neo-liberal politics of the faltering government of González Macchi, thousands of Paraguayan peasants arrived in the country’s capital, Asunción in early June to await the decision of the Senate on the cancellation of law 1615 on privatisation.

Asunción, June 4, 11.35 pm. A spectacular triumph was won today by the organized popular movement in Paraguay, with the indefinite postponement of the sale of the state telephone company, Copaco, announced by President González Macchi on television.

THE LONG U.S. economic expansion has ended. Whatever the outcome of the current recession, the odds are against a return to the boom conditions of the second half of 1990s. It may indeed be difficult over the medium run to avoid stagnation/slow growth, or even worse.

For thoughtful activists who are in the process of committing themselves or recommitting themselves to "the long haul" of revolutionary struggle, this is among the most valuable books that have appeared in the last several years. It is valuable for anyone who wants to develop a deeper comprehension of the history and theory of Marxism.