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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.
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'If we stop, the world stops': Behind the millions-strong women’s strike that shook the Spanish state
By Julian Coppens and Dick Nichols
March 20, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — On an International Women’s Day (IWD) in which demonstrations took place in an unprecedented 177 countries, the Spanish state stood out as the place where the mobilisation for women’s equality was biggest — at least five million, the greatest mobilisation for women’s rights in history. Why?
There are many causes. To begin with, the #MeToo campaign of women film stars, media personalities and political figures coming out against sexual harassment by creeps in positions of power had a big impact in Spain, where machismo is all-pervasive. Yet that campaign wouldn’t by itself have produced the explosion of protest from women of all generations and all walks of life that took place in 120 cities and towns across the peninsula on March 8.
This was the biggest Spanish mobilisation of women ever, and on an oceanic scale that recalled the May 15, 2011 protests and square occupations that launched the indignado movement and made it such a potent factor in politics.
‘Inadmissible evidence’ — the truth about Sri Lanka
March 17, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — In recent years many people have fled Sri Lanka by boat and sought political asylum in Australia. Most are members of the island's Tamil minority. They are survivors of the war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who fought for an independent Tamil state but were defeated in 2009.
The Australian government has begun sending back asylum seekers to Sri Lanka, claiming that Sri Lanka is now peaceful and democratic. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has produced two “country reports” on Sri Lanka, which purport to show that it is now safe to send people back.
A group of people who disagree with this conclusion came together and produced a counter-report (see below). This document was launched on March 3 in Melbourne. Michael Cooke, one of the authors of the counter-report, gave the following speech at the launch.
Labour should grasp the Brexit nettle
By Alan Davies
March 17, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Resistance — Claims of ‘unity’ by Theresa May after her ‘keynote’ Mansion House Brexit speech on Friday March 2 had stopped by Sunday when Michael Heseltine had dismissed it as just more ‘phrases, generalisations and platitudes’.
Are new Catalan elections coming despite pro-independence majority?
By Dick Nichols
March 16, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — After the December 21 Catalan election reconfirmed a majority for independence, it seemed only a matter of time before a new administration would be sworn in. More than two months later however, the spectre of a repeat election troubles the political landscape.
Three central issues facing the Catalan independence movement
Introduction and translation by Richard Fidler
March 16, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left — Although parties supporting Catalonia’s independence from the Spanish monarchy won a majority of deputies in the autonomous community’s December 21 election, they have been unable to elect a Generalitat, or government, due in part to internal disagreements but primarily to blockages by the Spanish government and its courts.
A major obstacle is the fact that prominent leaders of the pro-independence forces are either imprisoned — four, including ANC leader Jordi Sànchez and ERC leader Oriol Junqueras, facing their 150th night in jail — or in European exile: former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and four of his former ministers, as well as former CUP leader Anna Gabriel.
La política británica en transición: la austeridad, Brexit y el desafío Corbyn
Originally published in English on Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal here
Por Phil Hearse
16 de Marzo, 2018 — Sin Permiso traducido por Enrique García — En medio del invierno más duro de más de una década, Gran Bretaña se encuentra aún atenazada por los dedos helados de la austeridad neoliberal. Tanto el servicio de salud (NHS) como los gobiernos locales van de crisis en crisis, y los recortes salvajes del gasto público del gobierno conservador de Theresa May hacen imposible la prestación de servicios adecuados, utilizados principalmente por las personas con discapacidad, los ancianos, los enfermos, los pobres y las personas sin hogar. Ocho años de austeridad y moderación salarial dura impuesta a los trabajadores del sector público han hecho caer el crecimiento económico en picado, lo que reduce drásticamente los ingresos fiscales, dando así una vuelta de tuerca más los recortes conservadores.
Rosa Luxemburg and the revolutionary party revisited
By Eric Blanc
March 10, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell's Marxist essays and commentary — This article re-examines Rosa Luxemburg’s approach to the party question by analysing the overlooked experience of her political intervention and organisation in Poland. In particular, I challenge the myth that Rosa Luxemburg advocated a ‘party of the whole class’, ‘spontaneism’ or consistent party democracy. The perspectives and practices of her party – the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) – demonstrate that there were no steady strategic differences between Luxemburg and V.I. Lenin on the role of a revolutionary party. In practice, the most consequential divergence between their parties was that the Bolsheviks, unlike the SDKPiL, became more effective in mass workers’ struggles during and following the 1905 revolution.
Spain’s ‘transition to democracy’ as a passive revolution
By Doug Enaa Greene
March 10, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — After decisively defeating the Second Spanish Republic in 1939, the triumphant dictatorship of Francisco Franco presided over a regime of unbridled state terror, concentration camps and murder. Resistance survived during the long years of repression, but Franco was never beaten. By the time of Franco's death in 1975, the bourgeoisie recognized that fundamental reform was needed to deal with a militant labor movement, the leftist opposition and a mounting economic crisis. To that end, the post-Franco government began a process of “liberalization.” However, the Spanish bourgeoisie would not have been able to make the transition from fascism to a constitutional monarchy without the willing collaboration of the left-wing parties who renounced any other alternative in the interests of “national reconciliation.”
It was always #MeToo: Korea’s fight against sexual violence
By Hwang Jeong-eun
March 3, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from International Strategy Center — In October 2017, in the U.S., the hashtag #MeToo went viral as women shared online incidents of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. The hashtag soon made news headlines with accusations of sexual misconduct by film producer Harvey Weinstein.
On January 28, 2018, Prosecutor Seo Ji-hyun’s historic televised revelation of sexual harassment in 2010 by a senior prosecutor stirred the rapidly spreading #MeToo movement in Korea’s judicial and cultural arts sectors. While Seo’s accusations were being investigated, revelations of sexual assault spread into the culture and entertainment sectors. This soon prompted the supporting hashtag #WithYou. Though the #MeToo movement marked a specific advancement in the fight against sexual violence, it is also part of a larger historical movement.
David Harvey nie l'impérialisme
par John Smith, traduit de l'anglais par Gabriel Stollsteiner
2 février 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposté depuis le site Review of African Political Economy — David Harvey, auteur de l'ouvrage The New Imperialism[1] ainsi que d'autres livres reconnus sur le capitalisme et l'économie politique marxiste, croit non seulement l'âge de l'impérialisme révolu, mais aussi qu'il marche aujourd'hui à l'envers. Dans son Commentaire sur A Theory of Imperialism[2], de Prahbat et Utsa Patnaik, il déclare :
"Ceux d'entre nous, qui pensent que les anciennes catégories de l'impérialisme ne fonctionnent pas aussi bien de nos jours, ne nient pas du tout le flux complexe de valeur qui étend l'accumulation de richesse et de pouvoir dans une partie du monde au détriment d'une autre. Nous pensons simplement que les flux sont plus complexes et changent constamment de direction. Le siphonage historique de richesse de l'Est vers l'Ouest pendant deux siècles, par exemple, a été largement inversé au cours des trente dernières années (Souligné par moi, ici et ci-après - John Smith, p.169)."
Malaysian socialists put forward 'people's' alternative to TPP, free trade agreements
By Duncan Roden
March 2, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — The movement against the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and other pro-corporate “free trade” deals seek to halt the signing of such agreements. To do this, many opponents seek not just to expose the dangers of the CPTPP, but put forward a better model for trade.
The Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) is one group that has sought to set out an alternative vision for international trade, releasing a People's Charter on International Trade Agreements in January.
Cyril Ramaphosa relaunches neo-liberalism: After Jacob Zuma’s firing, South Africa risks budget austerity
By Patrick Bond
February 28, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Cyril Ramaphosa’s soft-coup firing of Jacob Zuma from the South African presidency on February 14, after nearly nine years in power and a humiliating struggle to avoid resigning, has contradictory local and geopolitical implications. Society’s general applause at seeing Zuma’s rear end resonates loudly, but concerns immediately arise about the new president’s neo-liberal, pro-corporate tendencies, and indeed his legacy of financial corruption and class war against workers. There is still a lack of closure on the 2012 Marikana Massacre, in spite of his February 20 speech to parliament pledging atonement. New legislation Ramaphosa supports will limit the right to strike, while the new budget has cuts and tax increases that hurt the poorest.
British politics in transition: Austerity, Brexit and the Corbyn challenge
By Phil Hearse
February 28, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — In the middle of the harshest winter for more than a decade, Britain finds itself still gripped by the icy fingers of neoliberal austerity. Both the health service (NHS) and local government stagger from crisis to crisis, as savage spending cuts by Theresa May’s Conservative government make the provision of adequate services – those used mainly by the elderly, disabled people, the ill, the poor and the homeless – impossible. Eight years of austerity and harsh pay restraint among public sector workers have pushed economic growth into a nosedive, sharply reducing tax income, thus giving a further twist to the knife of Tory cutbacks.
United States: Barre’s hidden history of Italian-American radicalism
February 23, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Barre, located in central Vermont, not far from the capital, Montpelier, with a population of 8710, was for a time in the early 1900s an internationally known center of Italian-American radicalism.
The city was founded in 1788 as a farming community and was named after Issac Barre, a British politician who supported the American colonies in the period leading up to the Revolutionary War. Vermont is known for rocky soil and a cold climate, making farming difficult and many of the first generation of settlers eventually moved away.
Large granite deposits were discovered shortly after the War of 1812 and Barre’s first granite quarry opened in 1813. Vermont’s hilly terrain made transporting granite difficult though and it wasn’t until the Central Vermont Railroad ran a spur into Barre in 1875 that the granite industry took off.
United States: Settler colonialism and the second amendment
By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
February 23, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Monthly Review — The Anglo-American settlers’ violent break from Britain in the late eighteenth century paralleled their search-and-destroy annihilation of Delaware, Cherokee, Muskogee, Seneca, Mohawk, Shawnee, and Miami, during which they slaughtered families without distinction of age or gender, and expanded the boundaries of the thirteen colonies into unceded Native territories.
Pakistan: 10 left-wing parties seek to form alliance
By Dawn staff reporter
February 23, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Dawn — In their maiden meeting to form an `alliance of the left,` the leadership of 10 progressive and left-wing parties on December 29 agreed to work together in the future and formed an eight member committee to find a way for the formation of an alliance.
Change in South Africa's president: Out with the old, in with the not so new
By Shawn Hattingh
February 18, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Pambazuka — For white and international capital in South Africa, the last few weeks have been a period of rejoicing due to Cyril Ramaphosa being elected as African National Congress (ANC) president. His subsequent appointment as the country's president following Jacob Zuma's resignation on February 14 has lead the business elite to feel an even greater sense of smugness.
The bitter faction fights within the ANC, therefore, have seen Zuma defeated and his erstwhile supporters placed squarely on the back foot.
A Marxist perspective on sustainability: Brief reflections on ecological sustainability and social inequality
By Raju J Das[1]
February 18, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Karl Marx’s concept of sustainability is connected to his concepts of metabolism and reproduction. While the first connection is well recognized in recent literature (famously in the work of Paul Burkett, John Bellamy Foster and many others)[2], the second connection is not. Moreover, sustainability is potentially connected to another crucial concept in Marx’s thinking – that is, value of labour power (which is expressed as the wage that workers receive), although Marx fails to explicitly make that connection.
In this short paper, I connect sustainability to metabolism, reproduction, and value of labour power. I argue that sustainability (or a healthy environment) can be seen as an “ecological social wage” under capitalism and has to be fought for as a part of a larger fight against the various logics of capitalism, such as endless accumulation, and against the system as a whole. Therefore, ecological sustainability is fundamentally a class issue, one that concerns the working class of the world as a whole that is comprised of people with different gender, racial, and nationality backgrounds, and it is not to be narrowly seen as an ecological issue, separate from the needs and the movements of the working class.
Do seven cheap things explain the history of capitalism?
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things:
A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet
Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore
University of California Press, 2017
Reviewed by Ian Angus
February 14, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Climate & Capitalism — Every airport bookstore features books with titles like 10 Ways to Retire Rich, 150 Places You Must Visit Before You Die, or 8 Easy Steps to a Flatter Tummy, with the numbers in very large type on their covers. They are the publishing equivalent of junk food, quickie books written to match titles that were invented by the marketing department to generate impulse purchases. The authors and publisher of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things must have had such books in mind when they chose its title and designed its cover. Although it is by no means an airport quickie book, it shares their principal defect: the title promises a lot, but the book doesn’t deliver.
India: Communists debate way forward
By Dipankar Bhattacharya
February 14, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Liberation — Media reports coming from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Central Committee meeting held in Kolkata (19-21 January, 2018) indicate that the party is majorly divided on the issue of its current political assessment and tactical position. According to these reports, the draft presented by Sitaram Yechury was defeated 31 to 55 votes in the Central Committee, and the forthcoming CPI(M) Congress in Hyderabad is now expected to take up the draft attributed to former general secretary Prakash Karat for deliberation and adoption. Within the CPI(M) the division is being widely seen as a clash of the ‘Bengal line’ against ‘Kerala line’. Beyond the CPI(M), among broad progressive liberal circles it is being seen as a clash between a pragmatic mass line and a puritan isolationist position, a conflict between people who understand the nuances of popular electoral politics and those who are driven by copybook Marxist dogma.