Italy

New year, old music, from a well-known score sheet played out by... the Left. A "Left" that’s not ashamed to dress itself up in populist clothes, worn in the service of state capital on the understanding that this is the way to open up markets as a "progressive realisation of the patriotic ideal and the concept of nationhood". In the name, of course, of the people and the "concept of community" as understood by those who are ready to recite the hidden virtues of a renewed "capital-socialism".

The crisis in the capitalist party political system has become even more acute during May. Two sets of election results have shown that the Labour v Conservative Punch and Judy show has, at least for the time being, lost its ability to call all the shots.

An Italian comrade takes a sardonic look at the latest abasement of so-called “academic Marxists” at the feet of the new imperialist order à la chinois.

The new populist “government of change” made up of the anti-European Five Star Movement and the racist Lega (The League, formerly the Lega Nord or Northern League) has begun to adopt some of the same empty rhetoric of the past. Their target is not much different from the fascist anti-semitism of the past. Whilst their main guns are today trained at the EU they also point to the nefarious activities of “financiers like Soros”. George Soros is of course the target of the anti-semitic campaign of Orbans in Hungary. According to these “populists” the problem is not capitalism but only some aspects of it.