Italy

What is Fascism and how do we fight it?

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Date: 
28 February, 2012 - 18:00 - 20:00
Location: 

The Pilgrim Pub, 34 Pilgrim Street, L1 9HB Liverpool, United Kingdom

Description: 

The history of Fascism in Europe is taught in school as if it was some kind of one-off, an aberration of mystical, unspeakable evil that will never be repeated.

Hundreds of hours of TV and in classrooms is spent pouring over details; the horrors of the Second World War, ...the concentration camps, and the Holocaust. However in terms of any real explanation for how these events came to happen in a modern, literate, industrialised society, we get little which goes beyond superficial study of the personalities; everything from the childhoods to the sex lives of the leading individuals.

Marxists seek to understand the world and the actions of people in it scientifically. Fascism grew out of a specific historical context: The aftermath of the First World War and the greatest crisis of capitalism in the 20th century.

Join Merseyside Workers’ Liberty for a discussion of how Fascism developed in war-exhausted and crisis-ridden Italy and Germany, how the powerful workers’ movements in those countries were politically disorientated and smashed, and what lessons our movement can draw from that experience in order to fight the likes of the BNP and EDL today...

Facebook event here: http://www.facebook.com/events/354771374543818/

Too sweeping on Italian union leaders

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Author: 
Toby Abse

I agree with a lot of Hugh Edwards’s article (“Italy’s corruption crisis needs workers’ solutions”, Solidarity 230, 18 January 2012), especially his scepticism about the Monti government’s crackdown on tax evasion and corruption (which is a structural problem of Italian capitalism and will not disappear just because Berlusconi has been replaced by somebody who does not engage in tax fraud, false accounting and the bribery of public officials).

All change in Italy and Spain?

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Italy’s billionaire “playboy” prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is coming under increasing pressure to step aside as his country slips ever-closer towards economic crisis.

Berlusconi’s opinion rating dropped to a record low of 22% after a rally on 6 November.

Italian left party Rifondazione called last week for immediate elections, to act as a referendum on the economic policy forced on the country by the EU and carried out by Berlusconi.

Even Berlusconi’s Northern League coalition partner leader Umberto Bossi called on him to resign before a crucial budget debate as the interest rate on Italy’s borrowing reached 6.74%.