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Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal seeks to promote the exchange of information, experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for open and constructive dialogue between active socialists from different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social policies, and reject the bureaucratic model of "socialism" that arose in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China.
Inspired by the unfolding socialist revolution in Venezuela, as well as the continuing example of socialist Cuba, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal is a journal for "Socialism of the 21st century", and the discussions and debates flowing from that powerful example of socialist renewal.
Links is also proud to be the sister publication of Green Left Weekly, the world's leading red-green newspaper, and we urge readers to visit that site regularly.
Please explore Links and subscribe (click on "Subscribe to Links" or "Follow Links on Twitter" in the left menu). Links welcomes readers' constructive comments (but please read the "Comments policy" above).
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Peru: An initial analysis of the election results
By Bárbara Ester and María Florencia Pagliarone, translation by Sean Seymour-Jones
April 23 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal translated from Strategic Latin American Centre of Geopolitics, CELAG -- General elections were held in Peru [on April 10]. Along with the position of president and vice-president, 30 congresspeople were elected for the 2016 – 2021 period, and another five representatives to the Andean Parliament.
The Kiental Manifesto: Socialists against war, 1916
By John Riddell
April 27, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell’s blog with permission -- One hundred years ago this week, socialist opponents of the First World War gathered in Kiental, Switzerland, issued an appeal calling on working people to “use every means possible to bring a rapid end to the human slaughter.” The appeal, known as the “Kiental Manifesto,” appears below.
Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood: ‘Listen To People, Hear Their Problems And Listen To Their Solutions’
How Bernie Sanders can harness the kind of momentum transforming British politics
By Kate Aronoff
April 23, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Waging Nonviolence — After his double-digits win in Wisconsin on April 5, Bernie Sanders’s insurgent campaign has a fair amount of momentum behind it. Still, many are asking what comes next, and how to carry the political revolution forward — whether he wins the Democratic nomination or not.
Lessons for Sanders might come from the movement that formed around another white-haired progressive challenger to the political establishment: British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Naomi Klein-inspired 'Leap Manifesto' shakes up Canadian left
Canada: Leap Manifesto unites broad forces, builds climate justice campaigns
“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has acknowledged shocking details about the violence of Canada’s near past. Deepening poverty and inequality are a scar on the country’s present. And Canada’s record on climate change is a crime against humanity’s future.” —The Leap Manifesto
by John Riddell
April 3, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Climate and Capitalism -- Five hundred Toronto-area supporters crowded into a west-end school auditorium March 29 to support the Leap Manifesto, launched early this year in support of a rapid, “justice-based” energy transition to a renewable economy.
The movement was launched in January 2016 to popularize the ideas of Naomi Klein’s influential book on climate change, This Changes Everything. Klein pointed to the need for a mass social movement addressing both the urgent need for climate action and an agenda for social justice.
What is to be done with the banks? Radical proposals for radical changes
By John Weeks, Eric Toussaint, Stavros Tombazos, Pritam Singh, Benjamin Selwyn, Alfredo Saad Filho, Patrick Saurin, Sabri Öncü, Susan Pashkoff, Ozlem Onaran, Thomas Marois, Philippe Marlière, Francisco Louça, Stathis Kouvelakis, Andy Kilmister, Michel Husson, Michael Hudson, David Harvey, Pete Green, Giorgos Galanis, Alan Freeman, Gilbert Achar, Costas Lapavitsas
The heroic deed: myth and revolution
By Doug Enaa Greene
April 21, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Red Wedge with the author's permission -- According to legend, the last words of Che Guevara before his execution were “I know you've come to kill me. Shoot coward, you are only going to kill a man.” What Che meant here was that the cause of revolution would live on despite his death. Whether or not the myth is true, the meaning behind it has inspired revolutionaries throughout the world. In certain ways, the myth surrounding Che Guevara has been just as important as the truth. In fact, myths provide a crucial underpinning to how ideology and society is able to function. Myths play a major role not only in society, but in radical political movements, as was recognized by the French syndicalist Georges Sorel and the Peruvian communist Jose Carlos Mariategui. And despite the scientific pretensions of much of the left, myths also supply inspiration, passion and faith to militants in the course of struggle.
UPDATED: France: Nuit Debout’s call to action; Reflections on 'Nuit Debout'
On the “Philosophy” of “Dialectical Materialism”
By Jason Devine
April 20, 2016 -- Submitted by the author to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- It has and continues to be argued that Marxism has a philosophy and that such philosophy is termed dialectical materialism. It is further argued that historical materialism is the result of the application of dialectical materialism “to the study of human society.” To put it into very simple terms, these formulations take the form of a basic math equation:
Dialectical Materialism + Social Reality = Historical Materialism
However, no matter how it is stated, it is not so. To be more precise, while we can make a theoretical distinction between what we call dialectical materialism and historical materialism, they are in fact two sides of the same coin; or rather one and the same thing.
Brazil's social movements: We will not accept a coup against democracy and our rights! We will defeat the coup in the streets!
Statement by the Popular Brazil Front and the People Without Fear Front, translated by Federico Fuentes
April 19, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- In response to the recent vote in the lower house of Brazil’s parliament in favor of impeaching president Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s two main coalitions of social movements issued the below statement on April 17. Both the Popular Brazil Front and People Without Fear Front were formed as a response to the recent right-wing mobilizations against Dilma, while at the same time remaining critical of the government’s austerity measures. Between them they unite many of Brazil’s largest social movements including Unified Workers' Central (CUT), the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST), the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST), and the National Student Union (UNE), among others.
Party of Socialism and Freedom (Brazil) - Why we voted against the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff
By Party of Socialism and Freedom, translation by Sean Seymour-Jones
April 19, 2016 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, originally posted in Portuguese on the PSOL website - Brazil’s lower house voted on April 17 to impeach Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff in a move that many see as an attempt by the right-wing opposition to carry out a “institutional coup”. The vote came after a series of massive protests - both for and against Dilma - that have rocked the largest country in Latin America.
In October 2014, Rousseff was elected to a second term, and a fourth consecutive term for the Workers Party (PT) after Lula da Silva’s two terms in office. It will now be up to a vote in the upper house, scheduled for May, as to whether she is impeached.
Among those to vote against the impeachment process was the Party of Socialism and Freedom (PSOL), the largest party to the left of the PT, and which has maintained a strong oppositional stance towards the current government. Below is a translation of a PSOL statement released just prior to the vote explaining why they would be voting against the impeachment process.
The Left Hook: The Marxism of Sidney Hook
By Doug Enaa Greene, published on Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
To my friend Amy.
I. Introduction
When the politics of Sidney Hook, a public intellectual and philosopher, are remembered today, they are generally associated with a right-wing variant of social democracy which was compatible with both neoconservatism and McCarthyism. For example, in 1953, Hook infamously wrote Heresy, Yes-- Conspiracy, No which justified the witch-hunts of the Red Scare and the purging of communists from academia reasoning that Leninist doctrine was the basis of an international communist conspiracy of subversion – with all orders emanating from Moscow.[1] Hook would end his life receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan, whose policies in support of death squads in El Salvador he had “applauded.” However, there was a very different Hook, who during the Great Depression was not only a committed communist revolutionary, but the leading Marxist theorist of his generation.
John Bellamy Foster answers three questions on Marxism and ecology
April 18, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Climate & Capitalism -- John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review. His most recent book, written with Paul Burkett, is Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique (Brill, 2016). The French magazine La Revue du Projet asked him to reply to three questions on ecology and Marxism.
UPDATED: Controversy sparked by Cuban Communist Party leadership's approach to 7th Party Congress, Raul Castro's Congress report
Introductory notes and translations by Marce Cameron[1]
April 17, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Cuba's Socialist Renewal blog — The Seventh Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) began on April 16. The cluster of translations published below relate to the controversy surrounding the preparations for this congress.
Cuba’s Medical Mission
John M. Kirk, Health Care without Borders: Understanding Cuban Medical Internationalism (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2015), 376 pages, $79.95, hardback.
April 17, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Monthly Review with the author's permission -- When the Ebola virus began to spread through western Africa in fall 2014, much of the world panicked. Soon, over 20,000 people were infected, more than 8,000 had died, and worries mounted that the death toll could reach into hundreds of thousands. The United States provided military support; other countries promised money. Cuba was the first nation to respond with what was most needed: it sent 103 nurses and 62 doctors as volunteers to Sierra Leone. With 4,000 medical staff (including 2,400 doctors) already in Africa, Cuba was prepared for the crisis before it began: there had already been nearly two dozen Cuban medical personnel in Sierra Leone. After an initial assessment, Cuba dispatched another 296 to Guinea and Liberia. Since many governments did not know how to respond to Ebola, Cuba trained volunteers from other nations at Havana’s Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine. In total, Cuba taught 13,000 Africans, 66,000 Latin Americans, and 620 Caribbeans how to treat Ebola without being infected. It was the first time that many had heard of Cuba’s emergency response teams.
A left-wing refugee policy for the European Union
Resistance, citizens assemblies and the rise of a French indignes movement
April 17, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Throughout the month of March 2016, French students and workers met on the streets to protest a proposed labor law reform and the prolonging of the state of siege, neither of which President Francois Hollande was able to get through parliament as a set of Constitutional revisions.
Here in this video the main points in the progress of their resistance are documented.
Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (MST) on the political crisis engulfing the Dilma government
April 16, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Over 700,000 Brazilians took to the streets on March 31 across dozens of cities in Brazil in defence of democracy. The demonstrations were called by the Popular Front of Brazil, of which the Landless Workers Movement (MST) is a key part. The demonstrations demanded an end to the impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff, which protestors say is equivalent to a coup.
Below, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal is republishing two articles reflecting the views of the MST on the current political crisis in Brazil which have been translated by Friends of MST. The first is the MST's analysis of the origin of the political crisis and the role of the social movements and working class in this struggle. The second was written by MST leader João Pedro Stedile, and looks at how the crisis has been accompanied by rising rural violence, including the killing of two farm workers on Thursday April 7.
Amadeo Bordiga and the development of a revolutionary core
By Doug Enaa Greene
"We do not wish to evangelize, but to ignite, and when the moment arrives the flame will burst forth."[1] These passionate words were uttered by the Italian socialist Amadeo Bordiga in 1912 and summed up his life's revolutionary mission: to organize for international communist revolution.
Austerity Gathers Pace in Volatile South Africa
By Patrick Bond
April 6, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Project -- A wedge is being quickly driven through Pretoria's political elite, splitting even those who worked closely in the murky 1980s Durban spy scene during the fight against apartheid. Amongst the victims are vast numbers of poor people beginning to bear the brunt of the diverse shakeouts in the ongoing confrontation now underway between the country's two most powerful 21st century politicians: President Jacob Zuma and his predecessor Thabo Mbeki. That battle began in 2005, when Mbeki fired then-Deputy President Zuma following a corruption conviction against a long-time Zuma associate.
The revival of their duel comes at a very tense time in South Africa. Student, worker and community protests intensified last month after the December-January summer break. Repeated currency crashes left a 30 per cent decline in value over the past year, prompting the country's financiers and upper-middle class commentariat to universally applaud Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan for maintaining low-grade austerity. A ‘junk’ label by international credit rating agencies, one which appears imminent and will lead to faster capital flight, remains an economic threat to this faction.
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