Luke Cooper surveys the wreckage of globalisation and the mounting crisis of capitalism Read more...

Fifth International, vol. 2, no. 7 autumn 2008 by Luke Cooper Read more...

As the US economy moves into recession, Peter Main looks at the possible repercussions on China, a country that has become an icon of globalisation's dynamism in recent years. Rather than coming to the rescue of world capitalism, he argues that the coming year will see China face slackening export markets at a time when its domestic cycle is moving towards its peak. Read more...

Gordon Brown has ignored the democratic process for the second time since becoming prime minister (the first being his unopposed coronation). By denying the British people a referendum on the European Union Reform Treaty, despite 75 per cent wanting one, he is forcing through the 2000 “Lisbon agenda” to “Americanise” Europe with devastating effects on the working class, the youth, and the poor. This treaty is considered to be 90 per cent the same as the European Constitution voted down by the Dutch and French masses in 2005. Read more...

In March this year, Horst Köhler managing director of the IMF intoned: “Widespread poverty in the midst of global prosperity is both unsustainable and morally unacceptable. World poverty is thus the paramount challenge of the 21st century.” Read more...

At the G8 summit in Heiligendamm this June, leaders of the eight wealthiest countries will cry crocodile tears for Africa. As in 2005 at Gleneagles, George Bush and his cronies will discuss a “Marshall plan” for Africa, to “save” the Africans from themselves and their corrupt leaders, to “commit African leaders to democracy and good governance” - meaning to force open their economies even further to multinational companies seeking super exploitation and superprofits - no matter what cost to the people or the environment. Read more...

It is 100 years since Leon Trotsky first formulated the theory of permanent revolution in his book Results and Prospects, published in the aftermath of the Russian revolution of 1905. It contained a radical departure for Russian Marxists, because it explicitly linked the fight to overthrow semi-feudal Tsarist absolutism with the fight for the establishment of a working class government that would seek to preside not over a transition from Tsarist autocracy to modern democratic capitalism, but over the liquidation of Russian capitalism and the transition to socialism. Read more...