“Don’t you wonder,” asks Marx in Howard Zinn’s play, Marx In Soho, “why is it necessary to declare me dead again and again?” Twenty years ago, at the fall of the Berlin Wall, the capitalists and their spokespersons felt triumphant. Not content with proclaiming the end of Communism, the end of Socialism, they also proclaimed the end of history. “in the argument, between capitalism and Marxism,” wrote Reuben Abati, “ it is the free market intellectuals that have won the battle.”
And now in their search for a way out of the economic wreckage of their system, the capitalists and their ‘intellectual’ hangers-on are ‘resurrecting’ Marx. “… Hovering out there in the fog, unavoidably, is the towering specter of Karl Marx, the grandfather of political economists, whose damning critique of capitalism’s inadequacies played an outsized role in world history for a century after his death in 1883,” writes TIME’s Peter Gumbel. It is this article, Rethinking Marx that furnishes the platform for an ongoing debate.
As a rule, people do not like change, particularly sharp and sudden change that upsets their preconceived notions and beliefs. This persistence of belief is quite evident in the article A Crisis Marx Could Not Have Foretold by Ijeoma Nwogwugwu. After a long period of relative prosperity in which “unbridled capitalism and market forces, deregulation, liberalization and privatization” gave the writer “access to relatively fast and reliable internet service” where she was able to search for previous TIME magazine cover stories on Karl Marx, it is no wonder that the natural reaction to the current economic crisis is one of shock and disbelief.
In the mornings of February 5 2011, Comrade Yusuf Ajibola, received unusual visitors who turnout to be police officers from the notorious Panti Police Station, Yaba. This is the headquarters of the Lagos State Police Homicide unit. Their mission was to search his apartment and arrest him based on a petition from the National President of National Union of Chemical, Footwear, Rubber, Leather and Non Metallic Products Employee, NUCFRLANMPE, Isok Biniface.
We call on all our readers to support the Public Campaign in defence of over 200 workers of Dangote Pasta at Ikorodu, Lagos (Nigeria) sacked for refusing to resign their membership of the in-house workers’ union since August 2010. We underline the fact that the main trade union organisers were severely beaten in the process and the families of these workers are suffering terribly as a consequence of these actions on the part of management.
This is to raise a public campaign about the plight of over 200 workers at the Dangote Pasta plant in Ikorodu, Lagos, Nigeria, who were sacked for belonging to the in-house workers’ union in August 2010 (that is, nine months ago!).
It all started on August 11th 2010 when the National Union of Food Beverage and Tobacco Employees (NUBFTE), which Dangote Pasta workers belong to, inaugurated the company’s chapter of the Union after several years of struggle. The management of the company also signed an agreement with the union and nobody raised an eyebrow.
We recently highlighted the plight of the Dangote workers in Nigeria who were sacked last year for refusing to leave their union. [See Nigeria: Defend victimised Dangote Pasta workers!] In spite of extremely difficult conditions these workers have held out since last year in August, with no pay. They are paying a terrible price for their stand. Here a leader of these workers explains the situation they are in. The campaign has already had some positive effects, but they need the solidarity campaign to be stepped up further.
Its twelve years since the July 10 1999 killings at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, Nigeria. We reproduce an eye witness eye of the event.
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Five students were killed by a cultist gang, that is a neo-fascist type organisation, at Ife University. Our comrades were closely involved in the events and some of them are lucky to be alive, as the gang were looking for some of them. Luckily our comrades escaped.
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