Over the past few years, the world has been reminded of the power of women rising up to change society, whether it is from women leading strikes in Egypt, to the colossal anti-rape movement in India, to women sparking off the Idle No More movement in Canada. Across the planet, working women and men are fighting against increasing poverty and social inequality.

There is little doubt today that capitalism can no longer provide a solution or answer to the problems facing workers and youth.  In this video, Fightback editor Alex Grant answers the question, "Is Marxism still relevant?" to a class of 150 students at Toronto's York University. This video was recorded in the autumn of 2012.

The Idle No More movement, along with the courageous hunger strike by Attawapiskat chief Theresa Spence, has brought out thousands who are dedicated to protecting the environment and Aboriginal treaty rights against new federal legislation. Solidarity rallies have even taken place around the world — from New Zealand to Los Angles to London. In the span of a few weeks, Idle No More has become the most significant social movement in Canada since #Occupy and the Quebec student strike.

We are very happy to publish a video of In Defence of Marxism editor Alan Woods speaking on the prospects for revolution in Europe and North America. This video comes from his talk at the University of Toronto back in October, which attracted over 100 people on a Saturday evening.

Over the past year, there has been an unprecedented interest amongst students across Canada in the fight against rocketing tuition fees. In light of the Quebec student movement, impressive efforts were made by a growing layer of active students across the country to spread the movement to the rest of Canada. However, we need to be honest with ourselves; as we approach the end of the autumn semester, there is unfortunately little political activity to be seen among the students in English Canada. Why isn't a student movement being built in English Canada? Is it because the students are not interested in collective struggle? Are the youth content with the status quo?

A bleak future awaits today's youth as they are being forced to bear the brunt of the capitalist crisis despite having had nothing to do with its creation. Youth are facing challenges today that are unprecedented in history and they are living less stable and secure lives than previous generations. While record amounts of wealth is being accumulated in private hands, and billions of public dollars are being handed out for bailouts and tax cuts to the banks and corporations who are responsible for the crisis, our generation is expected to live with increasing barriers to accessing post-secondary education and with fewer opportunities for secure employment. How can youth escape this crisis?

The discovery of E. Coli in meat from XL Foods has prompted the largest beef recall in Canadian history. Like any capitalist enterprise, XL Foods has one key goal: increasing profit. While corporate consolidation grew and agriculture and meat production became more concentrated, the role of factory farming in agribusiness became more prominent. Today over 95% of animals raised and slaughtered for food in Canada are mass-produced on factory farms. As animals rights groups have pointed out, conditions for animals there tend to be overcrowded and unsanitary, allowing disease to spread easily.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the Occupy movement in many Canadian cities.  Occupy captured the imaginations of thousands of youth, and even though the occupations themselves are no longer around, the ideas and language of the Occupy movement persist today.  The key factor in making movements such as Occupy successful is to bring in the labour movement who hold the real power in society.  Today, we publish a recent editorial from our sister paper in the USA, Socialist Appeal.

The common goal of every student and their representative union at this point in time should be the complete abolishment of tuition fees. We are re-publishing an article written by Fightback activist, Jahan Niroomand, on the importance of the student movement fighting for free education and which first appeared in the YorkU Free Press, a student publication at Toronto's York University.  Jahan also helps to organize the Socialist Fightback Club at York.

For the second time in seven years, workers in Canada and the northern United States have been deprived of a much-needed respite from a long cold winter.  The owners of the 30 National Hockey League (NHL) teams have imposed a lock-out, demanding that players receive a much smaller piece of league revenues.  A battle between multi-billionaire owners and multi-millionaire players may, on the surface, seem to be a trivial issue — especially when so many workers are losing their jobs or living paycheque-to-paycheque.  But, hockey plays a vital role in the life of workers in Canada and, indeed, this particular lockout has many of the same hallmarks of the bosses’ offensive against other workers. Adopting a cavalier or dismissive view of the NHL lockout only helps to serve the interests of the greedy NHL owners, as well as ignores the way in which we can fight the corporatization of the game and reclaim it as our own.