Comrades, a spectre is haunting Europe – and Australia, Asia, Africa and Latin America – the spectre of a US-led global economic recession. The end of year mood of the capital owning class was summed up in the headline on an article in the “Money & Business” section of the December 30 Sydney Morning Herald. It read: “After the cold snap, the big breeze”.

In early October, Italy’s Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) withdrew its support for the ruling Olive Tree coalition government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi because of the cuts contained in the government’s draft 1997-98 budget. However, after much debate the party reversed its decision and, in exchange for equality of treatment for blue- and white-collar workers in the pension system and a government commitment to introduce a 35-hour week in 2001, reversed its decision. Green Left Weekly’s JOHN PERCY spoke to PRC national executive member FRANCO TURIGLIATTO about the crisis. Turigliatto also edits Bandiera Rossa, a magazine orienting to the left of the PRC.

It is widely asserted by bourgeois economists, social scientists, management gurus, journalists and politicians of every stripe that we now live in a new historical era in which national economies, national cultures and national borders are being dissolved and superseded by a rapid and recent process of “globalisation.”

“Violence hit the streets of Cairo today after a demonstration by 1,000 industrial workers against low pay and high living costs developed into a full-scale riot... Washington Post correspondent Michael Tingay reported from Cairo January 1.

“The central security forces arrived in truckloads to quell the rioters, who tore up paving stones and smashed windows, halting traffic and disrupting Cairo’s Liberation Square and the surrounding areas near Egypt’s Parliament building and ministries.”

Angry protests erupted throughout Israel in reaction to the huge price rises and other harsh austerity measures decreed by the government in the early hours of Sunday, November 10. Among the measures were a 43 percent devaluation of the Israeli pound and big hikes in the prices of basic foods. The government also intends to impose a wage freeze for one year.