The internationalists

The tenth anniversary of September 11 gives us the opportunity to make a brief assessment of that tragic event and the ten-year history of imperialism that followed it. · First, it should be noted that the official version of events doesn’t hold up. This was enshrined in the report of the Commission on September 11, which opened and closed its enquiry with a haste that was, at the very least,...

(Leaflet for the general strike on September 6 - This is a translation of the leaflet distributed the length and breadth of Italy by our comrades of Battaglia Comunista. The strike was called by only one of the main three union federations (the General Confederation of Italian Labour) in response to a further budget cut (of €45 billion) in addition to one imposed earlier in the summer.

(Image - Soldiers parade to intimidate workers, Liverpool 1911) · As time goes by and the internet becomes the main source of information the forgotten details of working class history tend to remain buried in the archives and only selectively brought out to bolster Labourist interpretations of the past.

After the sub-prime crisis it is now the turn of sovereign debt. Bourgeois analysts have rushed to condemn the present serious situation as market madness. Actually the real madness is the entire global capitalist system which is agonisingly debating its own incurable contradictions. The so-called markets are nothing but a dozen or so international banks and financial centres.

The Arab revolt which started in Tunisia last January and swept across North Africa and the Middle East has been a political earthquake. Its aftershocks are still reverberating across the Mediterranean and being felt round the world. Countries in an arc from Morocco to Yemen have been directly affected by protests and revolts and two of the West’s most trusted satraps, Ben Ali of Tunisia and...