class struggle

The crisis, which has been developing since the start of 2020, opens up new and unprecedented scenarios in class confrontations. For revolutionaries it is essential to clarify some basic points about the current period which are as original in form as they are classical in substance.

In December 2018 we wrote an an article entitled Workers' Strikes in Iran: This Time it is Different about the end of the magnificent strikes and demonstrations of the Haft Tapeh sugarcane factory workers. The promises which were made to the workers then were once again broken, and when they had not been paid since March 2020 they resumed their strike on 15 June. As we write they have now been on strike for over 2 months.

In the UK, the coronavirus crisis has brutally exposed the significance of the endless cuts to the NHS as well as the incompetence of the Johnson government. From failure to organise protective equipment for medical staff to the catastrophic decision to return elderly COVID-19 patients to care-homes, the shambles of the bespoke track-and-trace scheme and shipwreck of the scheme to re-open schools in England, the government has lurched from fiasco to debacle.

Mainstream news sources, for the last decade, have been reporting on the increased frequency of the “hallway healthcare” phenomena in Ontario hospitals. Over this time the problem has grown into a norm, rather than an alarming exception.