A rally was held by Red Workers Front RWF in Lahore on 21 January from Edgerton Road to the Press Club. The demonstrators condemned the privatization policy of the government and demanded that it should be stopped immediately. They said that government is privatizing hospitals, schools, colleges, railways, Airlines, Electricity and other public sector departments made by the money from taxes of poor people. This policy is bringing more unemployment, misery and poverty while majority of population will be denied these basic necessities due to manifold increase in their price.

Recent independence movements, most notably those in Scotland and Catalonia, have caused many people to draw parallels between them and Quebec. This, combined with the identitarian turn that the mainstream Québécois nationalist parties have taken recently, forces us to return to the basics and re-evaluate the Marxist approach to this question.

The Taiwanese working class has begun to move with mass demonstrations and the rise of new trade union organisations. Recent anti-worker legislation passed by the government has proven to be the whip that has driven them to action.

The following talk was delivered in January 2018 by Hamid Alizadeh at UCL in London, UK. He discusses the protests that rocked Iran between December 2017 and January 2018, explains why they came about, and provides background information on the history of the class struggle in the country. Hamid points out that these protests reveal deep fissures in Iranian society: whose working class is the second largest in the region, has an impressive legacy of militant class struggle, and is being spurred to action under the pressure of events.

100 years ago, in January 1918, a mass strike shook Austria. After years of hunger and with war-weariness setting in, the revolution in Russia gave the workers hope that another world was possible, inspiring them to take action.

The student loan industry's parasitism is matched by the Democratic Party's unwillingness to take them on. Martin Scorsese’s classic 1991 film Goodfellas lays bare the basic operations of the mafia. In a classic scene, narrator and mobster Henry Hill describes the fate that befalls those who partner with the mob.

Cyril Ramaphosa’s election as ANC president in December has coincided with the meltdown of the main bourgeois opposition party: the Democratic Alliance. But while the DA’s fortunes are declining, paradoxically, Ramaphosa’s victory at the Nasrec conferencewas widely welcomed by large sections of the ruling class, including big business, which now feels more secure with one of its own at the helm of the ANC.

A recent poll finds that young people in the UK today see capitalism as more dangerous than communism. But what has really sent the establishment into a frenzy is Marxist student Fiona Lali's defence of communism on BBC Radio 4.

Comrade Adam Pal opened the morning session of the second day of the congress with a highly informative and engaging lead-off on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Adam explained that, contrary to the promises of milk and honey from the Pakistani ruling class, CPEC in reality means increased misery and exploitation for the masses.

The 2nd Congress of Lal Salaam, the Pakistan section of the International Marxist Tendency, commenced its session on Saturday the 20th of January at the Aiwan-E-Iqbal Center in Lahore.

On Sunday, 14 January 2018, tens-of-thousands of activists from different labour and left-wing organisations came to the Berlin Socialist Memorial Cemetery in the Eastern suburb of Friedrichsfelde to commemorate the murder of the outstanding German revolutionaries and Marxists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht on 15 January 1919.

The economic situation facing the masses in Venezuela has suffered a sharp turn for the worse over the Christmas period. The problems that already existed have worsened, with prices spiralling out of control, a further collapse of the transport system and an aggravation of scarcity (of food, fuel and cash). This has led to scattered protests and incidents of looting.

I had only just arrived in Lahore, Pakistan when I was informed this morning of the death of my old friend Munnu Bhai. The news produced in me a profound sense of sadness and loss. I had known Munnu Bhai for a period of more than 20 years, during which we established a close and rewarding friendship. I knew him as a highly talented and respected journalist, a fine poet and a man of great culture and personal charm. He also had a wicked sense of humor and would frequently burst into bouts of uncontrollable and infectious laughter in the course of our conversations about politics, literature and philosophy.

 Neither taxation nor privatization will keep our water clean, bridges safe, or roads intact. Taking control over these essentials means a fight against those who hold them–and us–hostage under a failing system.

Last Saturday, tens-of-thousands demonstrated against the new Austrian government of the conservative ÖVP and the right-wing nationalist FPÖ in what was called a “new year reception for the new government”.