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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.
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The proletariat and its ally: The logic of Bolshevik ‘hegemony’
By Lars Lih
June 19, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell's Marxist Essays and Commentary website — Were the Bolsheviks fundamentally prepared or fundamentally unprepared by their previous outlook to meet the challenges of 1917? To answer this question, we must first arrive at an understanding of the political strategy of Old Bolshevism. A coherent political strategy must answer two fundamental questions:
How Europe underdeveloped Africa: the legacy of Walter Rodney
By Lee Wengraf
June 16, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Review of African Political Economy — A number of African economies have experienced a massive boom in wealth and investment over the past decade Yet most ordinary Africans live in dire poverty with diminished life expectancy, high unemployment and in societies with low-levels of industry. For the roots of these conditions of “under-development,” one historical account stands alone in importance: Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972).
Trump goes for bust on the national-populist trail. What did you expect?
By Daniel Tanuro
June 16, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from International Viewpoint — The United States has denounced the Paris climate agreement, cancelled all the measures decided by the United States in application of this agreement and withdrew from the Green Fund for the Climate. These are the major decisions that Donald Trump finally announced, on Thursday, June 1, after a long period of suspense.
These decisions are in line with the promises made by the new President during his election campaign. In the past few months, some observers had wanted to believe that Trump would change his tune, but he did no such thing. On the contrary, the speech he delivered in the Rose Garden of the White House flowed from a disturbing nationalist and populist demagogy. What did you expect? - as the advertisers say...
They told us ‘elections are won from the centre’. We’ll never believe them again
June 15, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Red Pepper — Jeremy Corbyn has just gained the most support for the Labour Party since the 1945 election of Clement Attlee. A post-election poll from Survation, one of the pollsters that called the election the most accurately, now puts Labour ahead of the Conservatives by 6 percentage points, stating that Corbyn would win 45 per cent of the public vote (against the Conservatives’ 39 per cent) – 5 points up since the election only a few days ago.
Richard Seymour on British elections: Where we go from here
By Richard Seymour
June 15, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Novara Media
I.
What a difference election day makes. “Make June the end of May,” they said; and so they did.
Theresa May has gone from being the adored “mummy” of Tory activists, whose secret strength according to A N Wilson and Matthew D’Ancona was her matriarchal “sex appeal”, to being the woman who shot the Tory party “in the head” according to Tory MP Nigel Evans. If only Tory activists had read a little of what Winnicott said about mothers, they might have seen it coming.
General election in Britain: A stunning result for Corbyn and Labour
By Alan Davies
June 14, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Resistance — The election result is a triumph for Labour. Although the party has fallen marginally short of enough seats to form a government, Jeremy Corbyn has pulled off the biggest swing from one major party to another during the span of an election campaign since 1945. The polls were predicting a Labour share of the vote of 26% or 27% but ended up on the night at 40%—which is 12.8 million votes. This is more than Tony Blair got in 2001 or in 2005.
Earning optimism after pessimism: Salvage editorial on the British general election
‘Obedience to the force of gravity. The greatest sin.’
— Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace‘Things can only get better. Can only get better, if we see it through.’
— D:ream
June 14, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Salvage — An uncharacteristically subdued President Trump described the result of Britain’s snap general election of 8 June as ‘surprising’. The Guardian went further, calling it a ‘shock result’. The redoubtable Jon Snow for Channel 4 News was closer to the mark, that this was ‘one of the most remarkable election results in modern British History’. This was astonishing, staggering, extraordinary.
The need for a new US foreign policy towards North Korea
By Marty Hart-Landsberg
June 13, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Reports from the Economic Front — US-North Korean relations remain very tense, although the threat of a new Korean War has thankfully receded. Still the US government remains determined to tighten economic sanctions on North Korea and continues to plan for a military strike aimed at destroying the country’s nuclear infrastructure. And the North for its part has made it clear that it would respond to any attack with its own strikes against US bases in the region and even the US itself.
This is not good, but it is important to realize that what is happening is not new. The US began conducting war games with South Korean forces in 1976 and it was not long before those included simulated nuclear attacks against the North, and that was before North Korea had nuclear weapons. In 1994, President Bill Clinton was close to launching a military attack on North Korea with the aim of destroying its nuclear facilities. In 2002, President Bush talked about seizing North Korean ships as part of a blockade of the country, which is an act of war. In 2013, the US conducted war games which involved planning for preemptive attacks on North Korean military targets and “decapitation” of the North Korean leadership and even a first strike nuclear attack.
‘No racism here’: Modern Turkey and the question of race and national identity
By Bulent Gokay[1] and Darrell Whitman[2]
ABSTRACT: Many in Turkey, including its political leaders, don’t accept there is racism in Turkey. They will say they are proud of their traditional hospitality and generosity towards foreigners. Similarly, academic accounts also generally assume Turkish nationalism is neither ethnic nor cultural nationalism, but rather an inclusive civic nationalism. We directly challenge this conviction by arguing there is a dark side of Turkish nationalism, based on clear evidence there is an ethnic and racial discourse that shaped Turkish nationalism from the early years of the republic, and that this discourse plays a significant role in defining modern 21st Century Turkish nationalism. Thus, this modern Turkish nationalism includes, rather than excludes, an ethnic and racially defined narrative, which is a central tenet in defining modern Turkish identity.
Stalin Pérez Borges, LUCHAS: La salida a la crisis del proceso venezolano tiene que ser democrática, revolucionaria y socialista
11 de junio de 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Entrevista con Stalin Perez Borges, militante de LUCHAS (Liga Unitaria Chavista Socialista) y del Consejo Consultivo de la Central Bolivariana Socialista de los Trabajadores y Trabajadoras (CBST)
Combatants of a Greater War: A Historiography of Europe's Second Thirty Years War: 1914-1945
By Doug Enaa Greene
I. Totalitarianism and Marxist Historiography of the European Civil War
June 11, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — It is an article of common sense in our “democratic” societies to view the tumultuous era of 1914-1945 as an age of totalitarianism – the emergence of all-powerful single party states, total control of everyday life, political repression and terror, state control over the economy, and cults of personality. The totalitarianism tale is a simple one – after the massive bloodletting of World War I, the rival movements of fascism and communism battled for supremacy across Europe. The culmination of this clash between rival totalitarianisms was World War II with its bloody battlefields on the Eastern Front. Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe and the beginning of the Cold War, the enemy is said to have shifted from totalitarian fascism to totalitarian communism, and defeated in 1989-1991 by the forces of liberal democracy and the free market.
For a democratic, revolutionary and socialist solution to the Venezuelan crisis
This joint statement by revolutionary and socialist organizations in Latin America and elsewhere is motivated by the loss of referential principles that certain intellectuals and left parties have suffered with regards to the current crisis in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. An example of this type of one-sided analysis that ultimately ends up aiding the Venezuelan right-wing opposition and US imperialism is the statement by self-proclaimed “left” academics and intellectuals, “An urgent international appeal to halt the escalation of violence in Venezuela” (Aporrea 28/5/17).
We, the organizations and activists who have signed onto this statement maintain that:
“Zuma Must Fall” and the Left: Lessons from Zimbabwe
By Munyaradzi Gwisai
June 8, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Review of African Political Economy — South Africa is at crossroads, facing its biggest upheavals since independence in 1994. Globally, since the 2008 Great Recession there are growing explosive class and social conflicts due to the deepening crisis of capitalism.
Socialist Resistance: For a Labour victory on June 8
By Socialist Resistance
June 7, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Resistance — Labour’s election manifesto launch has boosted Corbyn’s campaign, which has been drawing thousands to rallies across the country. Debate has shifted to a new level, replacing endless ridicule of the Labour leader with a serious discussion on an alternative policy; not to only to end austerity but seeking to reverse it – for the many, not the few.
Quebec sovereigntists debate fallout from Québec solidaire’s decisions on alliances
By Richard Fidler
June 7, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left — As I explained in my previous report on the Québec solidaire congress, it was disclosed after the congress that the QS central leadership had disavowed the signatures by its representatives on a proposed “road map” to independence drafted in April by the coalition OUI Québec, which includes all the pro-independence parties including QS.
That decision, not reported to the QS congress delegates in late May, has since given rise so far to several articles, all of them published in the Montréal nationalist daily Le Devoir. I have translated them below.
Finland’s forgotten revolution
By Eric Blanc
June 4, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Jacobin with the author's permission — In the past century, histories of the 1917 revolution have usually focused on Petrograd and Russian socialists. But the Russian empire was predominantly made up of non-Russians — and the upheavals in the imperial periphery were often just as explosive as in the center.
Tsarism’s overthrow in February 1917 unleashed a revolutionary wave that immediately engulfed all of Russia. Perhaps the most exceptional of these insurgencies was the Finnish Revolution, which one scholar has called “Europe’s most clear-cut class war in the twentieth century.”
Statement in defense of Venezuela by the Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity
[To sign on email: endefensadelpuebloenlucha@
In response to the request of intellectuals against the Bolivarian process in Venezuela .
Under the implicit "I accuse" formula and a few hours before the Organization of American States, OAS, meeting in which the intervention Venezuela would be once again discussed, more than a hundred Latin American, European and American intellectuals and academics recently signed a petition entitled "Urgent international effort to stop the escalation of violence in Venezuela.”
This request constitutes a declaration of principles of its position regarding the Bolivarian situation, developing diagnoses, attributing responsibilities and prescribing an exit to the crisis that takes place in the South American country.
We will not offend the intelligence or morale of the subscribers (some true "sacred cows" of the critical academic world) by questioning their political commitment or their interpretive powers. We will assume each statement of the requested as what it is, as an erroneous thesis on the the Bolivarian process of Venezuela. And as such, we will submit it to analysis, realizing that also the prosecutors can and should be accused.
Socialist Alliance (Australia) statement on Venezuela: Solidarity needed to defeat counter-revolution
The Socialist Alliance released the following statement on June 3.
***
In the face of ongoing attempts to violently depose the elected government of President Nicolas Maduro, the Socialist Alliance reaffirms its support and solidarity with the Venezuelan people, their government and the Bolivarian revolution.
Venezuela: LUCHAS activists on the call for a Constituent Assembly
June 2, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from International Viewpoint — Activists from the Liga Unitaria Chavista Socialista (LUCHAS, Unitary Socialist Chavista League) gave their opinion on the call for a National Constituent Assembly made by President Nicolás Maduro on May 1, 2017 in his speech at the celebration of International Workers’ Day.
The aim of the statement is that hopefully comrades from other revolutionary organizations and political personalities, with whom they have been sharing some orientations and positions about what has been happening in Venezuela and in our continent for some months now, decide to adhere to the present declaration. They consider this a document that they make available for discussion, to the various revolutionary political organizations that exist and to the vanguard that has made it possible to move through this Bolivarian and Chavista process.
Canada’s New Democratic Party and the “Leap Manifesto”
By Ernie Tate
June 1, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Left Unity — The campaign has begun in Canada’s New Democratic Party to replace Tom Mulcair as leader, after the party’s disastrous performance in the 2015 Federal election, the results of which induced a major crisis in the party, from which it has yet to recover. In 2011 under its previous leader, Jack Layton, the NDP had achieved the status of Official Opposition,the closest it had ever come to forming a government in Ottawa. Layton, who had campaigned in that election while suffering from prostate cancer, died not long after that. Mulcair replaced him as party leader.