"As in the entire third world, women, especially poor women workers of Pakistan, are suffering. Sometimes I feel that they need a socialist revolution more than anyone. It is the only way to freedom! "(Anam Patafi)

“It is, therefore, from the history of nature and human society that the laws of dialectics are abstracted. For they are nothing but the most general laws of these two aspects of historical development, as well as of thought itself.” (Engels)

The recent local government election results represent a decisive shift in the South African political landscape. It comes in the wake of years of ferocious class struggle in which all the contradictions of South African society have come to the surface in an explosive way. The result of these elections provides us with a snapshot into this process in which the collective mood of anger, frustration and disillusionment among the masses are the dominant features.

The grisly images on television and social media are unrelenting: car bombings, nightclub massacres, killer cops, and cop killers. It is what Lenin called capitalist “horror without end”—without end. Not only in “far away” Iraq, Afghanistan, and Mexico, but in some of the most prosperous cities in the richest country on earth. This is the gruesome face of the capitalist crisis, the crisis of a system that threatens to take the entire human species down with it.

Over the last few days the Southern African country of Zimbabwe have experienced escalating protests which shook the Mugabe regime to its core. Sporadic protests have broken out over the last few weeks because of a severe shortage of cash. But over the last few days these protests have increased in intensity.  Dramatic scenes have played themselves out as  workers, civil servants and small traders took to the streets to protest against the latest crisis. This culminated in a national stay away on 6 July by public sector workers who have not received their wages for June.

In this meeting of Socialist Appeal supporters in London, Alan Woods - editor of In Defence of Marxism - discusses the political earthquake of the Brexit vote, which has sent shockwaves across Britain, Europe, and the whole world.