20th century revolutions

Here we publish part two of our article about the African revolutionary, Amílcar Cabral.

The winds of revolution are once again blowing over the African continent. From Burkina Faso to South Africa, from Burundi to Nigeria, we have seen a radicalisation of the workers and the youth and the rise of mass movements that have challenged corrupt capitalist regimes in one country after another.

Today is the 42nd anniversary of the Portuguese revolution. On this occasion we recommend our readers to read or re-read the following analysis, written by Alan Woods in 1974.

This week Wellred Books publishes its latest title, China: From Permanent Revolution to Counter-Revolution by John Peter Roberts. The book is a thorough-going analysis of the revolutionary history of China – from the early 20century to the present era of crisis – aided by a wealth of research which cuts across the many historical distortions both of bourgeois academia and of the Chinese Communist Party. Here we publish the foreword by Fred Weston.

Victor Jara, a popular singer who gave expression to the revolutionary fervour of the working people of Chile was brutally beaten the day after the Pinochet coup and his hands were smashed with rifle butts. Fellow prisoners described how his torturers mockingly asked him if he could now play the guitar. In defiance, Víctor started singing the words of Venceremos (We Will Win). In this article Marzia De Luca looks at the work of Victor Jara and how it developed in line with the rising revolutionary movement of the Chilean masses.

On April 9, 1952 Bolivia witnessed one of the deepest and most proletarian revolutions in the history of the American continent. In the space of a few hours, factory workers, the population of the cities and armed miners, defeated and humiliated the bourgeois state apparatus and physically destroyed the army of the ruling class, which would take years to be re-established.