The Guardian You can't help admiring their nerve. Last week, the pharmaceutical companies sought to persuade us that, far from climbing down, they had simply reached an agreement with the South African government. If this is success, I can't wait to see what failure looks like. It's true, however, that their humiliating victory doesn't seem to have done the drugs firms much harm.
Corporate power shows little sign of retreating.
The people's movements now deployed against it are perhaps the biggest and most widespread popular risings the world has ever seen. Unless we start demanding solutions, our efforts will be wasted. No one pretends that this is easy. But the absence of a clearly visible collective agenda has encouraged some people to fill this vacuum with wishful thinking and homeopathic magic. The belief that the Zapatista revolution, which owes much of its success to regional identity, class loyalty and geographical isolation, can be reproduced among the deracinated people of post-industrial cities is as desperate as the hope that planting cannabis in Parliament Square will persuade global capitalism to come out with its hands in the air.