The social question is back, returned to the political agenda as a question of global (in)justice by the migration movements of recent years. The dramatically unequal global distribution of wealth and imperial mode of production and way of life underlying said distribution constitute a central source of worldwide migration. Even Angela Merkel was compelled to acknowledge as much in 2015, remarking that the globalisation which many in Germany have experienced as relative beneficiaries in one of the world’s leading export countries had now returned in the form of refugees.
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2017 began with a global wave of feminist protests. Opposition to Donald Trump’s election as the 45^th President of the United States was expressed most visibly by the Women’s Marches – and not only in the US itself. In Poland, resistance to restrictions on reproductive rights by the country’s right-wing government continued, while 8 March brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets from Buenos Aires and Istanbul to New Delhi. In Germany, as well, International Women’s Day witnessed demonstrations the likes of which we had not seen in decades.
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It’s rather curious. A book in which the author, Didier Eribon (2013a), vehemently demonstrates that we always also experience class relations sexually, and that there is a class dimension inherent to every form of sexuality – indeed, that without this interrelation, one is not able to consider one thing nor the other – unexpectedly becomes a bestseller. The enthusiastic German reviews – with the exception of that by Dirck Linck (2016) in Merkur – overwhelmingly act once again as if one can be separated from the other. Often enough, they degrade the author’s homosexuality to the status of a footnote to a class analysis untouched by it. Yet the author himself asserts that shame is the mode of functioning of both sexual and class-specific stigmatization.[1] Why does that not lead to sounding out the sexual dimension of shaming in the countless professions of class-specific shaming following the publication of the book?
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New Class Politics – A Connective Antagonism

 It’s not that the class question could ever be pushed aside totally. It preserved a shadowy Marxist existence. Sometimes, however, it surfaced surprisingly in the feature pages of newspapers, only then swiftly to disappear again. At this point, hardly anyone denies it: we are living in a class society (again). Inequality is rising, social divisions are becoming more entrenched, social guarantees once taken for granted have yielded to a generalized culture of insecurity and a common fear of decline.
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The 2007 founding of Die Linke, or the Left Party, in Germany marked a crack in the social-democratic hegemony that characterizes Germany’s trade unions. This hegemony had been eroding since the 1990s, but in the wake of mass protests against the “Agenda 2010” reforms, fractions of the trade unions finally broke with the neoliberalized Social Democratic Party (SPD) to participate in the founding of Die Linke.[1] The party has thus far been able to fill the gap it created and establish itself as a strong minority wing within the trade unions. At the same time, it faces the challenge of extending its support to unionized wage earners and expanding its “use value” within the struggles for better living and working conditions.[2]
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In view of the overexploitation of natural resources, the immense generation of waste, and the ongoing destruction of the planet’s ecological foundations the critique of consumerism is in vogue. On all sides there is criticism of the madness of the growth society and mass consumerism. The dominant critique has come from the social conservative and green bourgeois camps. The economist Meinhard Miegel and the social psychologist Harald Welzer, respectively, can be taken as exam- ples. Both capture the contemporary mood. In their arguments we find the elements – cultural-pessimist, neoliberal, and critical of capitalism – that name the problems, address the distress, and capture people’s desires. But they offer a limited understanding of consumption and the satisfaction of needs, because they do not consider class relations and often argue moralistically instead of politically. Consumption, however, is a class issue.[1]
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Could you briefly tell us about your personal political background and introduce us to the gym you are currently living in Berlin?

Since the beginnig of the Syrian demonstration movement in 2011, I have worked in a network of political activists, and also did social work with displaced persons in various parts of the country. For political reasons I had to leave the country. Since January 2016, I’ve been living in the gymnasium on the Treskowallee campus of the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (HTW) in Lichtenberg. We are a total of 190 men living in one hall, mostly young people from Syria and Iraq, with smaller groups from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Eritrea.

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Introduction

Late intervention by Sierra Leone’s leadership, a lack of appropriate civic and health education, and the corrupt acquisition of millions of dollars that were intended to combat the deadly Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in Sierra Leone, have prolonged the life of the EVD in the country. These factors are probably the stimulants behind the continuing spread in Sierra Leone of a disease that started as an epidemic in the French-speaking West African state of Guinea, and has now become a pandemic in the Mano River Basin on which Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone sit and share territorial boundaries.
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Pick up any newspaper or tune into any radio broadcast and before long you are likely to hear discontent about the state of the Nation and in particular the ANC. This is expressed through the militancy of strike action, campaigning outside government buildings, booing the powerful, and community protest actions ranging from tire burning, to stone throwing and even setting fire to government buildings. These are almost an everyday occurrence. Increasingly these expressions of discontent are coming from those who once (and some still do) identify with ANC.
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The austerity measures dictated to Portugal by the Troika’s Memorandum are nearing completion and should be fully implemented by May 2014. The impact on Portuguese society is huge. As a consequence of these policies unemployment has risen, the phenomenon of emigration has returned, the social state has been dismantled, and all major public enterprises sold off.
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