Download the full pamphlet HERE or read on screen below.

By Colin Fox, Scottish Socialist Party national co-spokesperson and Yes Scotland advisory board member

September 14, 2014 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- On September 18, 2014, Scotland will go to the polls to decide whether to remain part of the 300-year-old political union that is the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" or become the world’s newest independent country. The decision will have far reaching consequences either way.

For the British state, Scottish independence represents a huge threat, a profound loss of economic and political power and influence at home and abroad. Consequently, it is dead-set against it and it will do its utmost to stop that from happening.

For the independence movement, the stakes are equally high. The referendum offers a once in a lifetime opportunity to secure self-determination for Scotland, to establish a left-of-centre social-democratic state and free 5 million Scots from the yoke of British imperialism.

[In English at http://links.org.au/node/3873. Haga clic aquí para más artículos en español.]

Por Eric Blanc

Sinpermiso.info -- La perspectiva desde las regiones periféricas del Imperio Zarista nos obliga a repensar muchas presunciones largamente sostenidas sobre las revoluciones de 1905 y 1917, así como la evolución de muchos análisis marxistas sobre la liberación nacional, la lucha campesina, la revolución permanente, y la emancipación de las mujeres.

Este artículo analiza los debates socialistas sobre la cuestión nacional hasta 1914. Sostengo en él que la estrategia del marxismo anti-colonial que se acabó imponiendo fue elaborada por primera vez por los socialistas de las nacionalidades periféricas del Imperio Zarista, no por los bolcheviques. Lenin y sus camaradas fueron por detrás de los marxistas no rusos en este tema crucial incluso hasta después de haber comenzado la Guerra Civil. Esta debilidad política ayuda a explicar el fracaso bolchevique a la hora de establecer raíces en los pueblos dominados del Imperio Zarista.

April 20, 2014 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Leaflet distributed by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) at the 2014 Labor Notes convention, April 4-6, in Chicago.

For more on NUMSA, click HERE.

Leaflet distributed at 2014 Labor Notes conference: NUMSA 2014: BUILDING A UNITED FRONT AGAINST NEO-LIBERAL...

El gobierno revolucionario de Chavez invertió 300 millones de dolares en la construcción del metrocable. El metrocable elimina horas de la subida y bajada que normalmente la gente hacia a pie para llegar al trabajo, la escuela, centros de saludo, y otros sitios importantes. Beneficia a miles de habitantes de San Agustín, la mayoría de ellos siendo afro-descendientes.

[English at "Venezuela: Racism and the counter-revolution". Haga clic aquí para más artículos en español.]

Por Arlene Eisen

6 abril 2014 -- Sinpermiso.info -- Los grandes medios de comunicación, aquí y en Venezuela, han triunfado ampliamente dando un rostro democrático al movimiento racista, esencialmente fascista, de las calles en Venezuela. Coaliciones tradicionalmente antirracistas han ignorado Venezuela. Es hora de ser solidarios con la mayoría del pueblo venezolano.

For more on Venezuela, click HERE.

By Federico Fuentes

April 12, 2014 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Attempts to analyse Venezuela's experiments in cogestión (generally translated as "co-management") during the first Hugo Chávez administration (1999-2006) have tended to centre on form rather than content. Almost all have concluded that the government ultimately abandoned cogestión, and with its support for workers' participation.

However, rather than focusing on pre-established models or comparisons with historical experiences, the development of cogestión can be better understood as the product of a complex interaction between competing visions within the government and workers' movement in the broader context of attempting to create a uniquely Venezuelan model of socialism.

At the heart of these debates were the issues of ownership, production and distribution. The end result of all this was that by early 2007, cogestión came to resemble something quite different to its initial conception, that is: a mechanism for co-governance in the economic sphere and a necessary means by which to ensure integral human development.

By Venezuela's Ministry of People’s Power

March 2014 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The passing away of Venezuela's President Comandante Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, the top leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, on March 5, 2013, was perceived by Venezuelan people as an irreparable loss, one of historical dimensions.

During 14 years, President Chávez led Venezuela along a victorious political process that pursued the recovery of the nation’s dignity and the construction of social justice. The affectionate warrior who with his accurate words guided Venezuelans through the transition between two centuries, and despite big obstacles, was able to take society to an upper level regarding satisfaction of people’s needs...

In the middle of the grief ...,Venezuela's people decided to keep on walking the revolutionary way and elected Nicolás Maduro as their president on April 14, 2013.

But one day after the presidential elections, opposition supporters of the candidate Henrique Capriles took to the streets complying with his call to drain their repressed anger, and spread death and destruction in opposition bastions governed by right wing’s mayors.

The AVSN brigadistas at the state-owned Diana Industries.

January 28, 2014 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Attached below is a report, plus photos, on the activities undertaken during the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network's (AVSN) brigade to Venezuela last month (December 2013).

A 2014 solidarity brigade will run from December 2-14, 2014. Further information and registration forms will be available on the AVSN website soon, at www.venezuelasolidarity.org.

For more information about the 2014 brigade, please contact info@venezuelasolidarity.org

In solidarity,
Lisa Macdonald
Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network

Download the report HERE, or read on screen below.

Escaños obtenidos: SV – Partido de Izquierda Socialista; A – Partido Laborista; MDG – Partido
de los Verdes; FRP – Partido del Progreso; H – Partido Conservador; V – Partido Liberal; KRF
– Demócratas Cristianos; SP – Partido del Centro. Fuente: http://www.valgresultat.no/bs7g.html.

[In English at http://links.org.au/node/3527. Haga clic aquí para más artículos en español.]

Por Asbjørn Wahl and Roy Pedersen

September 20, 2013 -- Transform!, translated by http://www.sinpermiso.info/ -- El gobierno de coalición Roji-Verde de Noruega, cuya plataforma política fue calificada, cuando asumió el poder en el 2005, como la más progresista de Europa, ha sufrido una amarga derrota en las elecciones parlamentarias del 9 de septiembre. Una coalición de partidos de centro- derecha y derecha, en la que se incluye un partido populista, ha obtenido una sólida mayoría y está actualmente gestionando la plataforma política del nuevo gobierno.

September 8, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- This is the PDF version of Marta Harnecker's Instruments for doing politics. You can download the file HERE, or read on screen below. The HTML version is available at http://links.org.au/node/3510 (which is includes a 12-part video in Spanish of Marta Harnecker speaking of the topic).

Alexis Tsipras.

[English at http://links.org.au/node/3446 and http://links.org.au/node/3448.]

Un Congreso que ha transformado a la izquierda griega Durante el fin de semana del 10-14 de julio, en el primer congreso de Syriza (Coalición de la Izquierda Radical), era obvio que la historia se estaba escribiendo continta indeleble. Este ha sido el congreso que cambió a la izquierda griega.

Ante el reto de sus perspectivas de crecimiento, que le abren la puerta de un futuro gobierno, la coalición de izquierda tomó la decisión de convertirse en un partido. Y ello explica la dinámica de este primer congreso, en el que todo se ha puesto sobre la mesa: desde los principios fundacionales hasta la orientación política y los estatutos. Y, por su puesto, en el que todo se ha discutido y clarificado las diferentes posiciones, siempre con una pasión típicamente griega.

The following is an excerpt from Alan Wieder's new book, Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the war against apartheid, published by Monthly Review Press. It is posted with the kind permission of Monthly Review Press. Readers of Links international Journal of Socialist Renewal are urged to order a copy HERE.

You can download the excerpt HERE (PDF), or read it on screen below. Nadine Gordimer's foreword is available at HERE.

July 14, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Ruth First and Joe Slovo, husband and wife, were leaders of the war to end apartheid in South Africa. Communists, scholars, parents, and uncompromising militants, they were the perfect enemies for the white police state. Together they were swept up in the growing resistance to apartheid, and together they experienced repression and exile.

Former ACTU heads Bill Kelty (left) and Simon Crean (right), and former Labor PM Bob Hawke attend the Prices and Income Accord 30-year anniversary. Photo by Renee Nowytarger. Source: The Australian.

June 1, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal --The 30th anniversary of the Prices and Incomes Accord, signed by the Australian Labor Party federal government and the Australian Council of Trade Unions, has just been celebrated by the former employers, union officials and ALP politicians of the period. At the time, and again today, this class-collaborationist "social contract" was lauded as a tremendous step forward for workers and "the economy". The reality for Australian workers was the opposite and the lessons should never be forgotten.

Below is a talk presented to the political school of the South African Municipal Workers Union -- in Durban in 2001 -- by Norm Dixon, at the time editor of Green Left Weekly and a national executive member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective (since merged into the Socialist Alliance). It is excerpted from the SAMWU Political Education Book, 2002-03.

Election broadsheet of the Socialist Alliance, Australia

May 1, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Bring the mining industry, the big banks and the energy companies under public/community ownership and control, so that they can be run in a way that respects Aboriginal rights, the environment and social justice. The urgent need to address climate change alone demands that these industries be immediately taken out of the hands of the billionaires and their global corporations and operated as not-for-profit public services under the democratic control of the majority.

From Greece to Australia, the whole world has witnessed the moral bankruptcy of capitalism as it has destroyed the lives of billions of people through the wholesale privatisation of our collective wealth and socialisation of their losses.

We cannot afford to leave our future to the likes of Australian mining billionaires Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer, and the faceless bankers. If we do so, we won’t have a future worth leaving to future generations.

April 9, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Malaysians soon go to the polls in state and federal elections, expected to be held on April 27. The ruling Front National, or Barisan Nasional (BN), coalition is dominated by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), and has traditionally attracted votes from the 50% of the population of Malay descent. The coalition has controlled  Malaysia's parliament since the country's independence from Britain in 1957.

However, many predict that in this election BN dominance will be shaken by gains by the Pakatan Rakyat, the opposition coalition led by Anwar Ibrahim.

The Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM, Socialist Party of Malaysia) is also standing in a number of state and federal seats, seeking to retain its two sitting MPs and increase its representation of the country's working classes and poor. The party's election manifesto is below. It can also be downloaded HERE.

For more on the PSM, click HERE.

European migrants to Australia aboard the ship SS Derna on their arrival in Melbourne in November 1948.

February 22, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Below are two chapters from Australian socialist Douglas Jordon's thesis on the Communist Party of Australia. They deal with the CPA's sometimes inconsistent attitude to migration and racism within the Australian working class. As such issues continue to feature heavily in Australian politics and trade union activity, something the left must always deal with, these chapters provide useful lessons and experiences for socialists today. The chapters are availabe for download as PDF files or can be read on screen below the introduction.

Douglas Jordan was politicised in England in the late 1960s. After arriving in Australia he joined the Socialist Youth Alliance/Socialist Workers League/Socialist Workers Party, in which where he remained a member for 14 years. Today he is a community activist and co-presenter of the City Limits radio program on Melbourne's 3CR.