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For much of the twentieth century, it was easier to talk of an overarching socialist framework, a "grand vision" within which more specific debates were conducted.  Of course there were many strands of socialism, however defined, and there were also fierce and occasionally violent struggles between them.  Even so, they shared more than a common historical lineage -- they also shared a fundamental perception or basic vision.  At the risk of crude simplification, this vision can be summarised in terms of perceiving the working class to be the most fundamental agent of positive change, capable (once organised) of transforming not only existing property and material relations but also wider society and culture through its own actions.

But in recent times the very idea of a grand vision has been in retreat, battered not just by the complexities and limitations of "actually existing Socialism" in its various incarnations, but more recently and thoroughly by the ferocious triumphalism of its opposite.  Indeed, it may be fair to say that, insofar as any grand vision has existed at all in recent times, the one that increasingly came to dominate public life almost everywhere in the world by the late 20th century was that of the market as a self-regulating and inherently efficient mechanism for organising economic life.  This idea had already fallen by the wayside a century previously, before it was resurrected and dusted off for use in a slightly more "post-modern" format that became the theoretical underpinning for the vast explosion of global economic integration under the aegis of finance capital that has marked the period of globalisation.

The association of the ideology of supposedly free markets with strong tendencies towards greater concentration of capital and the use of the state to further accentuate these tendencies and aggrandise capital has been laid bare for all to see.  That the material processes unleashed by such a trajectory of unevenly shared burdens of crisis are no longer seen as socially acceptable is also becoming evident, in many parts of the developing world that have experienced quiet or not-so-quiet revolutions, as well as currently in the European continent.

"It goes without saying that we deeply regret the further loss of life in what is clearly a public order rather than labour relations associated matter."

The protests began last week when workers demanded a pay increase to 12,500 rand (£976) a month. The action turned deadly when the AMCU clashed with South Africa's dominant National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The NUM rejected the charge of collusion with mine bosses. Spokesman Lesiba Seshoka said: "We are not surprised by his allegation … It is not true. Everyone can see through these lies."

His voice shaking with anger, the union leader Joseph Mathunjwa accused the Lonmin management of colluding with a rival union to orchestrate what he described as a massacre. Mathunjwa, president of the militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), told the eNews channel: "We have to send condolences to those families whose members were brutally murdered by a lack of co-operation from management. We have done our bit. If the management had changed their commitment, surely lives could have been saved."

Then Nigeria’s thoroughly compromised labour movement hijacked the revolt, lulled the people into a false sense of solidarity and finally extinguished the revolutionary fire that was burning down the foundations of Nigeria’s ruling elite....The Nigerian Labor Congress and the Trade Union Congress didn’t join the mass protests until at least three days after the fact. They were obviously drafted by President Jonathan

Government buildings are being trashed, ransacked. It is happening in Kiev and Bangkok, and in both cities, the governments appear to be toothless, too scared to intervene.

The rhetoric varies, but in essence, the ‘protesters’ are demanding the dismemberment of the fragile Thai democracy. Most of them are paid by the upper-middle and upper classes.

the government does not dare to send in tanks or the police to clear the streets. It should. But it is too scared of the army and the monarchy – two pillars of this outrageous hybrid of savage capitalism and feudalism – comparable only to even worse regional nightmares, such as Indonesia and the Philippines.

Yanukovych sparked massive protests late last year when he turned down a financial deal from the European Union and chose a $15 billion aid package from Russia instead.

But in any case, the idea of supporting an unconstitutional overthrow of a freely elected Ukrainian government in an uprising based squarely on the volatile linguistic and cultural fault-lines that divide the country seems an obvious recipe for chaos and strife. It was also certain to provoke a severe response from Russia. It was, in other words, a monumentally stupid line of policy (as Mike Whitney outlines here).

Yet one of the first acts of the Western-backed revolutionaries was to pass a law declaring Ukrainian as the sole state language, although most of the country speaks Russian or Surzhyk, “a motley mix of Ukrainian and Russian (sometimes with bits of Hungarian, Romanian and Polish),” as the LRB’s Peter Pomerantsev details in an excellent piece on Ukraine’s rich cultural and linguistic complexity. 

In a cycle that repeatedly sends us back to a repressive past – one they don’t want to close down – we are witness to a perverse return to obscurantism and forced unanimity, to dissident thinking being considered subversive, to social protest having to be silenced at whatever cost, and where opposition guarantees are only a chimera.  These are practices far removed from the duty of a state, especially one proclaiming itself as the continent’s oldest, most solid “democracy.”

The worst of it is that there is no calm after prison. The trailing, the threats, the stigmatization continue until many of those who are released – if they are lucky – have to leave the country.

Many years ago, and in tune with the U. S. obsession for transforming the idea of security into state policy, one outcome being anti-terrorism, the government of Álvaro Uribe Vélez during his first term (2002-2006) instituted in Colombia the politics of “Democratic Security.” That gave rise to a series of actions damaging to the right to liberty, to guarantees like equality, legality, and judicial norms, and, generally, to an international framework for human rights.

Human rights groups around the world must innovate or risk being rendered irrelevant by the new surge of street activism.

The African region is no exception, despite its diversity. Consider Senegal, where in 2011 the Y’en a Marre (“Enough-is-Enough”) youth movement and Mouvement 23 (“June 23 Movement”) seized the limelight during a turbulent political moment, and played a critical role in preventing former President Abdoulaye Wade’s attempt to amend the constitutional provision on term limits and hang on to power. In the process, long-established and extremely important Senegalese human rights organizations, such as Rencontre Africaine pour la Défense des Droits de l'Homme  (RADDHO), appeared virtually irrelevant. They were not always present on the streets, and were not consistently able to use the moment to give their causes new visibility.

How can professional human rights organizations become more nimble, while also maximizing impact and sustaining their work over the long term? Doing all these things is crucial to remaining relevant in an age of increased grass roots activism.

Leading up to the World Cup there were more evictions and pending court cases in different parts of the country. Poor street traders had their belongings confiscated as they had no permits to sell in restricted zones and the taxi industry suffered the impoundment of their taxis.

We also know that the South African government still wants to look good in the eyes of the international communities and that they fear disgrace and shame. They want to show the world Soccer City but hide eTwatwa, Blikkiesdorp, Westville Prison, the red ants and the shack fires all around the country. We wish to thank all the international activists and organisations who have raised their concern against the repression that we have faced, including those that have organised protests against the South African diplomats in their respective countries.

Colombia is one of the world's biggest per capita polluters with mercury, in the artisanal mining sector, with an average of between 50 and 100 tons a year lost during the gold extraction process, according to a report by UNIDO, which points out that artisanal mining has expanded fast as gold prices have risen.

The broad social movement in Santander has added its voice to the long-time struggle by environmentalists in Cajamarca, in the central province of Tolima, against the South African company AngloGold Ashanti.

Protests have also been held to the south of Bogotá against polluting activities in quarries run by the army on the grounds of the Artillery School, and by the Catholic diocese of Bogotá's Fundación San Antonio, Mexico's Cemex company and the Swiss firm Holcim.

Similar popular protests have failed in sub-Saharan Africa (and may very well be failing in Egypt) precisely because the army invariably concludes that its corporate interests and privileges are best protected by the status quo rather than a new political order.

During the 1991 ghost town campaign, military concluded after its cost-benefit analysis that its privileges were better protected under the Biya regime than in a nouveau regime that might strip it of these privileges.

while a viable civil society is critical and even indispensable in harnessing, organizing and channeling popular discontent towards regime change, the success of this venture is largely dependent on what the army decides to do or not do based on its corporate interests.

In Africa there have historically been two types of civil society, those that have collaborated with the colonial power and those which have opposed it.

Are the big NGOs (non-governmental organisations) harmful towards Africa? FIROZE MANJI: Let’s not talk about their motivations, which are often good. The question is not about evaluating their intentions, but rather the actual consequences of their actions. In a political context where people are oppressed, a humanitarian organisation does nothing but soften the situation, rather than addressing the problem.

I have become anti-development. This wasn’t the case before. Let’s have an analogy: did those enslaved need to develop themselves, or to be free? I think that we need emancipation, not development.

The Guatemalan government granted permits for the El Tambor mine to KCA, a mining firm based in Reno, Nevada, over a decade ago. Yet the communities near the mine were never informed about the construction. According to Kelsey Alford-Jones of the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission, it wasn’t until 2010 that the community learned about the sale and construction of a mine that would affect all of their lives.

Further, there was no consultation with the community, and to make matters worse, it appears that the environmental impact assessment was fraudulent. An outside independent assessment found that the original had not investigated the impacts of the mine on social, cultural, and environmental factors.

Activists throughout Guatemala risk a lot to maintain their resistance. The heavy-handed response of the Guatemalan government marks a criminalization of protest in Guatemala. “The government has brought back the idea of the internal enemy,” said Alford-Jones. “This idea is what justified torture and genocide during the internal armed conflict.”

There is an uncanny choreographic affinity between recent urban revolts in the Middle East and eruptions of discontent and urban protest in Athens, Madrid, Lyon, Lisbon, Rome, London, Berlin, or Paris, among many other cities. However, although the Middle Eastern uprisings are celebrated by Western media pundits and politicians, their European counterparts are often disavowed as illegitimate outbursts of irrational anger and anarchic violence.

Politics inaugurate the re-partitioning of the Police logic, the re-ordering of what is visible and audible, registering as voice what was only registered as noise, and re-framing what is regarded as political. It occurs in places not allocated to the exercise of power or the instituted negotiation of recognized differences and interests. As Badiou insists, politics emerge as an event: the singular act of choreographing egalitarian appearance of being-in-common at a distance from the State. Whereas any logic of the Police is a logic of hierarchy, of inequality, politics is marked by the presumption of equality within an aristocratic order that invariable ‘wronged’ this presumption.

It is within this aporia between la politique (the Police) and le politique (the political) that urban insurrections can be framed.

The movement's strategy is based on assembling ad hoc citizen coalitions to help push back and challenge specific government actions; trying to figure out how to affect policy by exerting force on specific choke points in a system that badly needs reform. Politicians worried about inter-party politics, re-election or special interests can't see the importance of this. It's about using the power of the network to shake things up and find ways to make the political process more responsive to the needs of everyday citizens.

Typical of the all-encompassing approach of the 15-M movement are the myriad cooperatives set up around the country by a range of professionals looking to barter their services with other groups, as well as to sell them to the wider community. As the Spanish welfare state crumbles, 15-M offers practical solutions based on collaboration and cooperation

"I was brought up to be competitive; but what really matters is sharing.

But their action took on real strength from its territorial outreach. They managed to mobilize local communities, parents and teachers, neighbours and local organizations, into supporting the movement in the face of increasing pressure from the government and the police. Civil society responded, in short, to the embattled students.

Feeling the pressure, in December 2015, state governor Geraldo Alckmin finally announced the dismissal of his government’s education secretary, and the shelving of the school reorganization. His proposal, which was received with caution by students, consists in undertaking an extensive dialogue with students, parents, teachers and principals to understand the specific situation in each school and decide its future accordingly

We have witnessed numerous demonstrations where citizens have organized themselves to challenge government decisions, have used technology to liaise and social networks and independent media to convey their story. And they have occupied public spaces as a means to convey the message to politicians that politics is about people’s concerns, and that democracy must prevail not only in the formal access to power, but also in the way it is exercised. The political and democratic crises are not exclusively Latin American, but today there is an opportunity for Latin America to rethink its own democracy model, originally developed in the region. The political action in the making, shown by the student mobilization in Sao Paulo, is one of the ways to seize this opportunity.