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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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Philippines: The contradictions of the Rodrigo Duterte regime
By Sonny Melencio
July 24, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Partido Lakas ng Masa with permission – The following text is based on a talk delivered at All Leaders Meeting of Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (Solidarity of Filipino Workers, BMP)-Sanlakas-Partido Lakas ng Masa (Party of the Labouring Masses, PLM) at Claret Parish Church on July 13, 2016.]
1. The Rodrigo Duterte government is right now the most popular government since the Cory Aquino administration [1986-1992]. (It cannot be compared though to the euphoria that greeted Cory Aquino’s installation to power through the Edsa 1 uprising, which occurred in a different historical context and circumstance.) According to the Pulse Asia survey, President Duterte enjoys a 91% trust rating. This means 9 out 10 Filipinos trust him; and practically no one (0.2%) rejects him, as the remaining 8% are the undecided.
Race and class in the United States: J. Sakai and the politics of revolution
By Doug Enaa Greene
July 22, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- In 1843, Karl Marx described the proletariat as a “class with radical chains ... which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society and thereby emancipating all other spheres of society.”[1] The proletariat's struggle, as envisioned by Marx, was not only against its own exploitation, but would take up the struggles of all those oppressed under capitalism, and lead the way to the communism.However, in the United States, the working class has been far more likely to be reformist and conservative than to act as revolutionary “grave-diggers of capitalism.” The question of why the US working class is not a revolutionary force has preoccupied radicals for decades. Does the existence of racism and white supremacy prevent white workers from becoming revolutionary? Or does the origin of the United States as a settler-colonial state mean that the white working class is incapable of being revolutionary force?
John Bellamy Foster: The anthropocene and Marxism today
July 24, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal via Climate & Capitalism -- John Bellamy Foster discusses the theoretical and programmatic challenges that the Anthropocene, a dangerous new epoch in planetary history, poses for socialists in the 21st century.
John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and co-author of The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth. He spoke at the Marxism 2016 conference in London on July 2.
[21세기사회주의 컨퍼런스] 마르따 하네커: 사회 변화를 위한 전략 – 민중의 힘과 정치적 수단
[Original in English here.]
Cops, class & race: How to stop police violence
July 22, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- A discussion about the origins of the police and their relationship to racism, class and capitalism featuring Dr. Khury Petersen-Smith.
France: Nice and the invisible enemy (plus New Anti-Capitalist Party statement)
By Herve Do Alto, translated by Federico Fuentes
July 21, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- And that was how the horror came to my doorstep. To tell you the truth, like many people who live in the province – a somewhat disparaging term used to refer to the rest of France that exists outside of Paris and its surrounds – I thought terrorist attacks were mainly a concern for those in the capital. On July 14, this certainty was blown apart by the sad and harsh reality: 84 people of various nationality and beliefs, among them dozens of children, died due to the actions of a lunatic in the Promenade des Anglais, the “Malecon” of the city of Nice, in the south-east of France, only a few kilometres from Italy.
(Updated) HDP leader: 'We must take a clear position against both pro-coup mindsets'; plus Kurdistan National Congress statement
July 20, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Peoples’ Democratic Party English website -- Öcalan had warned Erdogan about this matter a lot. “Tell him, he does not get it, he is acting like an idiot” Öcalan said. “By continuing the resolution process I supported him, if this process ends, the mechanics of coup would step in and he would end up just like Morsi of Egypt” he constantly warned.
Selahattin Demirtaş, co-chair of Peoples’ Democratic Party, defined the attempted coup as “the coup attempt of putchists against putchists” and added: “A clear attitude must be adopted against both pro-coup mindsets and the struggle must be stepped up because the coup mindset that tried to seize power through military forces using tanks and cannons is illegitimate and so is ruling the society through an election that takes place with war, violence, and bombing of the cities, it also is a civil coup.”
Karl Liebknecht 1916: ‘Down with the war; down with the government!’
Introductory note by John Riddell
July 20, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell’s blog with permission — One hundred years ago, on June 28, 1916, 55,000 metalworkers in Berlin went on strike to protest the sentencing of Karl Liebknecht to two and a half years in prison. It was Germany’s first mass protest strike of World War 1. Liebknecht received mass support in Germany and beyond as the first German socialist to have voted against parliamentary allocations to pay for the government war spending. He had been arrested at an illegal May Day demonstration organized by the Spartacist League, just after calling out, “Down with the war! Down with the government!” Two days after his arrest, Liebknecht explained the goals of the May Day demonstration and the Spartacist League in the following statement at his trial.
Jeremy Corbyn: A question of leadership
By Hilary Wainwright
July 19, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Red Pepper — ‘He’s a decent man, with great integrity – but he’s not a real leader’ is the constant refrain from Jeremy Corbyn’s critics, questioning his electability. At the same time, half of the voting population has railed – in the Brexit vote – against the establishment, jam packed with would-be and retired leaders of the kind that critics want to put in Corbyn’s place. Isn’t it time we put the idea of leadership as we know it under scrutiny?
The darker the night, the brighter the star: Leon Trotsky’s struggle against Stalinism
By Paul Le Blanc
July 18, 2016 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal – The title of this session – “the darker the night, the brighter the star” – is the title of the fourth and final volume of Tony Cliff’s biography of Leon Trotsky, who was a central leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution of workers and peasants, which turned the Russian Tsarist empire into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. One of the founders of modern Communism and the Soviet state, Trotsky is also the best known of those who fought against the degeneration of that revolution and movement brought on by a vicious bureaucratic dictatorship led by Joseph Stalin.[1]
The Party, The Socialist Workers Party 1960-1988, Volume II: Interregnum, Decline and Collapse, 1973-1988
Phillipines: Rodrigo Duterte's administration in search of an opposition; plus PLM statement 'Stop death squad killings!'
Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte
By Walden Bello
July 16, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Rappler — The events of the last few weeks have engendered much goodwill towards the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte at the same that it has triggered apprehensions about where it is headed.
Hopes
The naming and shaming of 5 former and current police generals for their alleged involvement in the drug trade was only the most dramatic in a series of moves by the new president that elicited popular approval.
Hopes for a new social dispensation were stirred by several fast-moving events, among them a promise that the administration would end contractualization and an announcement that an executive order would institutionalize Freedom of Information. That a new deal was at hand for the marginalized sectors appeared imminent with the appointment of people associated with the National Democratic Front (NDF) to the top posts in the Department of Agrarian Reform, Department of Social Welfare and Development, and the National Anti-Poverty Commission.
Hunger in Venezuela? A look beyond the spin
By Christina Schiavoni and William Camacaro
July 15, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Food First! with permission — You may have seen the headlines about Venezuela – headlines that allude to food scarcity, rioting, people eating stray animals to survive, and a country on the brink of starvation. These stories are not only alarming, but perplexing, too. Is this the same country that was recognized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as recently as 2015 for having nearly eradicated hunger?[1] Is this the same country that has been the focus of international delegations and extensive alternative media coverage for its ‘food sovereignty experiment’ involving agrarian reform, food distributions programs, and direct citizen participation in the food system?[2] What’s going on?
Bill Gates’ silver-bullet misfiring at the Nelson Mandela Memorial Lecture
By Patrick Bond
July 14, 2016 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal – On July 17, Bill Gates will deliver the annual Mandela Lecture in Johannesburg, justifying his philosophy of market-oriented, technology-centric philanthropy.
Kurdistan: Interview with YPG militant - “We just want to democratize the Middle East”
July 14, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from The Dawn News -- In the framework of the International Festival Utopia in Marica (Brazil), The Dawn News and Resumen Latinoamericano interviewed a People's Protection Units (YPG) militant, Serhad Ayers. He talked about the situation of Kurdish people in Syria, the relationship with Bashar Al Assad’s government, the misrepresentation of female Kurdish fighters in Western media, cooperation with Arab forces, the link between Turkey and Daesh and the Kurds’ strategy to democratize the Middle East while eliminating Daesh.
Hay vida después de Sanders: en busca del futuro político del movimiento
[Original article in English here]
Por Dan La Botz
July 13, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal traducción por Viento Sur -- El ambiente entre los 3 000 seguidores de Bernie Sanders reunidos el pasado fin de semana en el McCormick Place de Chicago rezumaba un optimismo improbable. Muchas de las personas que intervinieron proclamaron, entre vítores de la multitud, que el movimiento había triunfado, a pesar de que Hillary Clinton, la probable candidata oficial del Partido Demócrata, haya obtenido la mayoría de los votos populares y cuente con el apoyo de la mayoría de delegados y superdelegados, además del respaldo del presidente Barack Obama, del vicepresidente Joe Biden y de la senadora Elizabeth Warren. Esta paradoja –entre la creencia del movimiento de Sanders de que hemos logrado algo muy importante y la clara victoria de Clinton en las primarias– marca el contexto contradictorio de esta conferencia de gentes, yo entre ellos, progresistas, radicales y socialistas que buscan una vía hacia el futuro.
Socialist councillor Sue Bolton on building a political alternative in Australia today
July 13, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Moreland City councillor and Socialist Alliance national executive member Sue Bolton on building a political alternative in Australia today.
This talk was filmed at the May 2016 Socialism for the 21st Century conference held in Sydney, which was organised by the Socialist Alliance and co-sponsored by Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
A missed revolutionary opportunity: The Comintern Third Congress discussion on the 1920 Italian factory occupations
Introductory note by Mike Taber and John Riddell
July 12, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from International Socialist Review -- As the Communist International’s Third Congress convened in Moscow in June–July 1921, the powerful working-class upsurge that had shaken Italy months earlier was fresh in delegates’ minds and posed a backdrop to their debates.
The September 1920 occupation of the factories in Italy is a lesser-known revolutionary experience of the post–World War I years, yet its impact was no less significant. By starkly posing the question of which class should run the economy, the occupations legitimized a new form of proletarian struggle—expressed in part through the tactic of the sit-down strike that was widely utilized during the 1930s. Possessing the potential for working-class victory, the defeat of this movement instead opened the door to the rise to power of Benito Mussolini and Italian fascism.
Appeal for international solidarity: Free Baba Jan and 11 other political activists and stop the abuse of anti-terrorism
By Awami Workers Party
July 11, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- On the 8th of June 2016, the Supreme Appellate Court in Gilgit-Baltistan upheld the decision of an Anti-Terrorist Court in GB in September 2014[1] and sentenced Baba Jan (central leader of the left-wing Awami Workers Party - Gilgit Baltistan) and 11 other activists[2] to 40 year prison terms under the Anti-Terrorist Act.[3] The three-member SAC bench gave a two-to-one split verdict on the state’s appeal against the unanimous decision of the Gilgit Baltistan Chief Court two-member bench to acquit Baba Jan and others of terrorism and violence charges in April 2015.
Despite what the severity of the sentence appears to imply, Baba Jan and his companions are not militants who had taken up arms against the state – they are progressive political activists and organizers who had simply raised their voice for the plight of displaced persons of the 2010 natural disaster in Attabad, Hunza and organized them against government corruption and delay in payment of the compensation funds and their resettlement.
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