imperialism

For decades Latin America was the United States’ "backyard", although more recently it has also been seen as a den of "socialists". Today it is undergoing a deep crisis that spares neither the big countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela, nor the small ones such as Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.

The “synchronised stagnation” of the global economy since 2008 shows the capitalist class everywhere has no solution to economic crisis. Hence ever more strident nationalism has been adopted across the globe. It even engulfs its two greatest powers, now locked in a trade war. This nationalism is their “alternative”. For them the problem is not capitalism but one form of it – globalisation. The fact is that the continued existence of the system in any form means more misery for most.

Explanations of the cause of WW1 and its ending are always carefully avoided every year as regularly as the commemoration itself.

Rosa Luxemburg argued before World War One that in the epoch of imperialism national liberation stands opposed to working class liberation. The recent death of Zimbabwe’s national liberation hero, Robert Mugabe, the conditions of the Zimbabwe working class, and the hellish state of the country as a whole, is yet another wretched demonstration of how true this is.