On Thursday, April 7, the very successful Latin American speaking tour of Alan Woods reached its climax with a meeting held in the central office of the Chemical Workers’ Union of São Paulo (Sindicato dos Trabalhadores na Industria Quimica Farmacêutica e Plástica de São Paulo), the biggest union in this sector in Brazil.

Nearly 200 people attended the public meeting with Alan Woods in the most important university of Brazil to debate the question of the revolution in the Arab world and the crisis of capitalism

Following with the activities of Alan Woods in Brazil, there was a public meeting at the Oil Workers’ Union (SindPetro) in Rio de Janeiro. The meeting was opened with greetings from the coordinator of the Union, Cancela.

Since the beginning of the year, comrades from around the world have contributed €2,268 to help our work in the Arab world. We are still have some way to reach our target and would ask comrades to consider making a contribution.

Report from the PCB website:The National Secretariat of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) received this morning (April 4th) the visit of British Marxist intelectual Alan Woods, who is in Brazil to participate in a number of public meetings and political activities. Woods was accompanied by his comrade Luiz Bicalho, from the International Marxist Tendency, organized in Brazil in the Marxist Left.

On a sweltering night with 33 degrees and humidity you could cut with a knife, the most successful meeting of Alan Woods Brazilian tour so far was held in Pernambuco in the north east of Brazil. It was also the biggest meeting ever held by the Marxist Tendency (Esquerda Marxista) in Pernambuco.

During his stay in Rio de Janeiro, Alan visited the national headquarters of the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party) for a three hour long discussion with the leadership of this party. In this discussion the Secretary General of the PCB, Ivan Pinheiro explained the struggle that his faction waged within the party since the end of the dictatorship to correct previous mistakes and build a truly communist party.

At four o clock on Saturday, April 2, over 200 people attended a public meeting in Joinville in the South of Brazil (in the state of Santa Catarina), the location of the famous CIPLA plant, which was occupied and run under workers’ control for five years. The local paper Primeira Pautahad published a full-page interview with Alan the same day and there was a lot of interest among left-wing activists, which was reflected in the excellent turnout.

About 55 comrades came together on Tuesday, March 29, at the Cooperation Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, to attend the meeting with Alan Woods. He was speaking on the current world situation and the prospects for the struggle for socialism internationally.

Following his recent visits to Bolivia and Argentina, Alan Woods began the third and final stage of his speaking tour of three Latin American countries with a highly successful meeting in the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Florianopolis, Brazil.

More than 60 people attended a meeting on Monday (March 28) with comrade Alan Woods in Rosario which was held in the office of the CTA trade union in the La Toma Cultural Centre – a building that used to be a supermarket but was then occupied by its workers and remains under workers’ control.

The conferences recently held by Alan Woods and organized by the Sociology Student Centres ay the USFXCh University in Sucre and the UAGRM University in Santa Cruz, in collaboration with the International Marxist Tendency, have been a resounding success, which we could even describe (without fear of exaggeration) as unprecedented, with around 800 taking part.

From 15 to 19 March the second Pan American School of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) was held in Florianópolis, Brazil. Amid the greatest economic, social and political instability of the world capitalist system in decades, the American Marxists have come together to participate in a series of discussions on topical issues on the class struggle and the socialist revolution internationally.

“There are so few moments of happiness in life. But I have felt happiness in this marvellous congress.” Comment on the congress of The Struggle from Karamat Ali, a veteran from the 1968 revolution.

This year’s congress of The Struggle, the IMT in Pakistan, was the most successful of all the congresses held so far, with the biggest turn out ever. The conference was a special event as it marked the 30^th anniversary of the founding of The Struggle. In that period, The Struggle has gone from a tiny handful of comrades to a sizable organisation with deep roots covering the whole of Pakistan.

We now close the financial appeal for In Defence of Marxism. We have reached the target we set ourselves of raising €3,000. Since the last update an additional £440 and $295 have come in, bringing the total raised to €2,970.

We had a wonderful response to the financial appeal for In Defence of Marxism. We have already collected €2446, only €550 short of the target. We are now extending the appeal for a few more days to give readers a last chance to help us reach the target.

The last weekend of January 40 Marxists from Sweden, Britain and Denmark gathered in Copenhagen for the Northern European Marxist Winter School. Even though it was freezing cold outside, the mood at the school was excellent as news from the revolutionary development in the Arab world kept coming in.

One month into the financial appeal we launched for In Defence of Marxism, we have raised €1,600, which is more than half of the money we were aiming for. Many contributions have come in over the last few weeks. We are very grateful for those contributions and would like to ask the rest of our readers to help us raise the remaining target.

Since we launched the appeal last Friday, we have already received €660. We still have €2,300 to go. We would like to thank all that have contributed and urge all readers that have not done so yet, to give a serious thought about giving something.