Tutti i dati economici riguardo l’impatto economico della pandemia di Covid-19 sono sufficientemente chiari da costringere la borghesia a parlare ormai di “depressione economica”. Le previsioni dei più prestigiosi istituti finanziari, pur variando di settimana in settimana, rendono impossibile mascherare la verità attraverso i classici sotterfugi con cui i ben pagati economisti sono soliti ingannare la gente sulla situazione reale dell’economia.
Il distanziamento sociale necessario a contrastare la diffusione del contagio da coronavirus a cui siamo sottoposti da diverse settimane è stato promosso con campagne mediatiche che esaltano la bellezza dello stare in casa: “finalmente ci possiamo dedicare a tutto quello che non riusciamo a fare nel normale tran tran quotidiano”, leggere, fare yoga, vedersi un bel film e chi più hobby ha più ne metta…
On Sunday 11 April, the first round of the presidential elections in Peru produced a major surprise: the victory, against all the odds, of Pedro Castillo, the leader of the 2017 teachers' strike. In the second round, he will face the reactionary, right-wing candidate of Fuerza Popular, Keiko Fujimori, in a clear expression of enormous political polarisation in a country ravaged by the economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last Saturday, hundreds of activists from across the world met online for the philosophy day school – hosted by Socialist Appeal, the Marxist tendency in Britain – to discuss the revolutionary ideas of Marxism: the only ideas that can help us to understand the world – in order to change it.
There is a debate in the US left about building a mass workers' party. Some argue for the so-called dirty break, in which left-wingers within the Democrats split off at some point in the future. Others argue that socialist candidates should remain with the Democrats and establish a surrogate "party within a party". Our US comrades argue that the party of Wall Street is a dead end. Only a mass, independent political party of labour presents any road forward for the working class.
The ongoing elections in five Indian states, with a total population of close to 250 million, provide a snapshot of the situation facing the working class across India. A common feature is the weakness of the left and its insistence on forming alliances with various bourgeois parties. The Indian working class is thus denied an independent voice. The various Communist parties should break with their ideas of class collaboration and build a united front of the Indian workers.
The electoral campaign for the second round of the presidential elections in Ecuador on Sunday, 11 April has come to an end. The second round pits the banker Guillermo Lasso, the candidate of the capitalist oligarchy, against the candidate of the left-wing UNES, Andrés Arauz, who represents correísmo and who came first in the first round on 7 February. So far, the polls do not suggest a clear winner.
