The argument that France is waging war on Islamic dress codes to prevent the enslavement of women is just one more example of disgusting hypocrisy in the service of imperialist interests. Instead of representing liberation of women from all the ways they are already enslaved, it amounts to screaming about the domination of Muslim women by Muslim men just so that these women can be forced to accept forms of oppression that patriarchal, imperialist French society considers proper.

Brexit appears to reveal a growing dissatisfaction with globalization. But, on the basis of debates leading to and in the aftermath of the referendum, it seems that Britain’s decision to quit the EU is a mere hiccup in regional integration processes. Regionalism as a product of globalization is unstoppable, including in Africa.

The defence of national sovereignty, like its critique, leads to serious misunderstandings once one detaches it from the social class content of the strategy in which it is embedded. The leading social bloc in capitalist societies always conceives sovereignty as a necessary instrument for the promotion of its own interests based on both capitalist exploitation of labour and the consolidation of its international positions.