Last weekend, the small Austrian town of Bregenz played host to a large gathering of young socialists at the annual Karl-Marx-Seminar. The event was organised by Sozialistische Jugend Vorarlberg and Der Funke, the Austrian section of the IMT.

Extraordinary events over the last few days, surrounding the fate of Jacob Zuma, have plunged the ANC – and the country – into a deep crisis. Zuma’s scandal-plagued presidency is clearly untenable for the Ramaphosa faction, which marginally controls the ANC. Moreover, Zuma’s continued presence is destabilising the whole political situation and could damage the ANC’s electoral prospects in 2019. Big business is desperate to dig itself out of a hole. The problem for them is that the balance of forces between the two fighting ANC factions is very even, as we saw at the national

Tom Trottier examines the rise and fall of the Labor Party, which was founded by an alliance of unionists in 1996 and won some support, but rapidly declined in the late-90s and early-2000s. Tom explains why the Labor Party failed and why Marxists must draw lessons from the past to start laying the foundations and framework for a future mass, working-class, socialist party in the United States.

A great victory has been won by striking workers of the Pepsi-Cola factory in Faisalabad, industrial hub of Pakistan. On 29 January 2018, almost 250 workers completely shut the factory down in solidarity with three colleagues who had been laid-off by the administration without prior notice. The three workers who were fired actively motivated their colleagues to raise the demand for an increase in their daily wages. The workers' militant action put the bosses under severe pressure and eventually forced them to buckle.

The struggle of the masses, opened after the elections in Honduras, is only comparable to the strike of 1954 and the movement against the coup d'état in 2009. It is one of the greatest instances of class struggle in the history of the country. This can only be explained by the great contradictions concentrated in society, which have placed the country on the verge of revolution. In spite of all that revolutionary impulse, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) has just been sworn in as president, although he was met with protesters demanding his resignation. This is a highly discredited and weak government that will be subjected to the pressure of the workers, who can prevent JOH from completing

When the Catalan government declared a republic, the Spanish regime answered by sacking it, dismissing the Catalan Parliament and calling fresh elections on 21 December. That election was another defeat for the Spanish regime as it delivered, again, a pro-independence majority. Unable and unwilling to respect the democratic will of the Catalan people, the Spanish regime is now using all means at its disposal to prevent Carles Puigdemont from being elected as Catalan president. In the process it is revealing the profoundly undemocratic nature of the regime that was established in 1978.

The year has barely started and we’ve already seen large popular demonstrations all over Iran. Demonstrations, that had started with economic demands, developed into a revolt against the reactionary Islamic regime. In Tunisia, the youth have taken to the streets demanding employment and an end to IMF-imposed austerity policies. These two cases bring to mind, once again, the political instability that is spreading throughout the world and revolutionary explosions that may be detonated by little sparks.

Interest in socialism has skyrocketed over the last two years. Millions of people yearn for change and want to fight back against capitalism. They are looking for ideas and an organization that can help them do just that. But there is as yet no viable point of reference, no mass socialist party, no clear and confident exit indicated out of the burning building. As a result, most people doubt whether a serious challenge to the system and its institutions can be mounted, let alone its total overturn. This explains the revival of interest in reformism.

On Thursday, 25 January a lecture was held in the Al Hamra Hall, a well known cultural center in Lahore on the topic of “Marxism and Literature”, by the British Marxist Alan Woods, organized by the Progressive Youth Alliance.

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.