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.
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UN Office calls for probe into human rights in Kashmir
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20180730192211im_/https://johnriddell.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/kashmir-map-alt.jpg?w=235&h=193)
By John Riddell
July 30, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell's Marxist essays and commentary — A conference in Mississauga July 7, convened by the Kashmir Welfare Society, marked the first organized response in Canada to a United Nations report calling for an investigation of human rights violations in this divided South Asian territory.
More than 200 participants adopted a resolution calling on the government of India to withdraw troops from Kashmir (full name: Jammu and Kashmir) in order to permit an “enabling environment” for implementation of the UN’s resolutions calling for a plebiscite to determine the territory’s future.
Pakistan’s most rigged general elections ever
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By Farooq Tariq
July 29, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — On 26th July 2018, in his election victory speech, Imran Khan gave a sober talk contrary to his very violent language used throughout the election campaign. He has “won” 116 seat of the 342 seats National Assembly of which 278 seats are contested directly on First Past The Post (FPTP) system. He is short of the 137 seats needed for the majority in the parliament. However, there are plenty of parliamentarians elected as “independents” who would either join his party or would vote for him.
Elections in Pakistan: Ali Wazeer, a Marxist in the parliament dominated by feudal lords and capitalists
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By Farooq Tariq
July 28, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Ali Wazeer, a central committee member of The Struggle group, has won a seat in the national parliament with 23530 votes and his closest rival from religious alliance MMA got 7515. Thus winning the seat with a majority of 16015.
Ali Wazeer was one the main leader of Pashtun Tahafaz Movement and during this year, mass meetings were organised in major cities to raise voices for the fair compensation to the victims of the war on terror” and to demand the release of all “missing” persons or to bring them to the courts if they are guilty.
Venezuela’s ‘21st Century Socialism’ and Marx, Lenin and Luxemburg on the role of cooperatives — A response to Marta Harnecker
By Stansfield Smith
July 23, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Marta Harnecker, author of numerous books and articles advocating her vision of “21st Century Socialism” in Latin America recently published an article that was translated into English and appeared on Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal as “Venezuela After the Elections: What is to be done?”
We should note first of all that the most important issue facing Venezuela after its May 20 presidential election is coping with the continually increasing US-Canada-European Union economic sanctions and their goal of overturning Chavismo in Venezuela. Of this Harnecker says little.
José Mariá Sison: 'The perfect storm for Philippine armed struggle'
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By Denis Rogatyuk
July 13, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Jacobin — This year marked the 49th anniversary of the beginning of the armed rebellion by the New People’s Army (NPA) of the Philippines, alongside its political affiliates of National Democratic Front (NDF) and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The armed rebellion, initially concentrated on the island of Samar during the 1970s, grew to encompass practically of the Philippines, with the provinces of Mindanao, Isabella and Tarlac having been the most prominent throughout the time of the rebellion. Most of the modern-day estimates place their strength at anywhere between ten thousand and four thousand fully armed fighters, with additional tens of thousands of communist party members and other supporters.
'Trust me, I am the one who will drain the swamp': An interview with Walden Bello on fascism in the Global South
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By Wolfram Schaffar
July 18, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies — Since the election of Narendra Modi in India in 2014 and Donald Trump in the USA in 2016, political analysts and commentators around the globe have increasingly used the concept of fascism to capture the rise of new right-wing authoritarianism in various countries.
United States: Other revolving doors
By Don Fitz
July 16, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — It’s more than doors between the US government and the businesses that they supposedly regulate that go round and round. One of the other swinging doors is between the Democratic and Republican Parties.
The League Against Imperialism (1927-37): An early attempt at global anti-colonial unity
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20180730192211im_/http://ciml.250x.com/gallery/comintern/lai_meeting_congress_presidium.jpg)
By John Riddell
July 13, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell's Marxist essays and commentary — The League Against Imperialism was launched in Brussels in 1927 with the goal of forging unity between colonized peoples and workers in the colonizing countries. Initiated by a wing of the Communist International, it was the first attempt to structure international anti-colonial unity. This brief presentation will focus on its origins and the causes of its decline.
Manbij Democratic Civil Administration Legislative Assembly councillor: 'We have organized our own life with great hope'
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By Bêrîtan Sarya & Axin Tolhildan
July 12, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from ANF News — Emel Dede is a representative of the Turkmen people in the Manbij Democratic Civil Administration Legislative Assembly Council.
She said that the whole society has the right to work for, take part and to be represented in the autonomous administration.
Turkish elections, looming fascism and left politics
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20180730192211im_/https://socialistproject.ca/content/uploads/2018/07/erdogan-clouds.jpg)
By Baris Karaagac
July 12, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Project — The elections on 24 June in Turkey for a new president and parliament, which took place under a state of emergency, constitute an historic moment in Turkish republican history with important consequences.
Lenin and the Bolshevik Party: A revolutionary collective
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By Paul Le Blanc
July 10, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — The Russian Revolution of 1917 clearly reveals the complexities of Bolshevism – Lenin’s party – as a revolutionary collective. In fact, there is a convergence of complexities related to several different factors I would like to touch on in these remarks. These include party structures, personalities, and outlooks.
After months of unrest, Nicaragua is at a fateful crossroads
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By John Perry
July 6, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from The Nation — In a video clip, a young boy stands at a makeshift barricade across a road. He holds a toy gun to the head of his friend. Off camera, an adult asks, “What are you going to do?” “We’ll kill him and leave him naked,” replies the boy. The adults laugh. This scene from Nicaragua, filmed at one of the hundreds of towns paralyzed by street protests, epitomizes the violence that has taken hold since April 18. Before that date, local media proudly quoted figures showing that Nicaragua had become the safest country in Central America. But the two months since then have seen more than 170 violent deaths, thousands injured, and scores of public buildings burned down or ransacked.
When feminism sets the political agenda
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By Nazaret Castro
July 6, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Equal Times — On 14 June, the women of Argentina made history: in a very narrow vote (129 in favour, 125 against), and a denouement that left the public on tenterhooks until the very end, the Congress of Deputies approved a bill to decriminalise abortion, processed, to everyone’s surprise, by the country’s conservative president, Mauricio Macri. It is now up to the Senate to decide whether the bill will become law, but the women’s movement nonetheless felt they had secured a victory: they had shown that pressure from below is able to sway a vote that for many years seemed to be a lost cause.
Revisiting the theory of super-exploitation
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Introduction and translation by Richard Fidler
July 5, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left — As part of his critical assessment and updating of the Latin American dependency theory pioneered by Brazilian Ruy Mauro Marini,[1] Argentine economist Claudio Katz analyzes a major component of that theory, the concept that waged workers in the peripheral nations of global capitalism are “super-exploited.” He suggests some necessary modifications of the theory in light of developments since Marini’s day.
Marini’s thesis has been given new currency by some recent analyses of imperialism in the twenty-first century such as John Smith’s book of the same title.[2] Smith holds that Marini’s theory of super-exploitation is of continuing relevance, and embraces the view that waged workers in the global South are systematically paid below the value of their labour power, owing to their greater oppression and exploitation. He argues that this constitutes a third mechanism by which capital increases its surplus value, in addition to the absolute and relative forms of surplus value analyzed by Marx.
Russia World Cup 2018: Lukaku, Mbappé and the colonial ghosts within Belgium and France
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20180730192211im_/https://newsclick.in/sites/default/files/2018-07/Football_3.jpg)
By Leslie Xavier
July 5, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from News Click — When Kylian Mbappé ran like the wind through the heart of the Argentine defence in their pre-quarterfinal match at the FIFA World Cup, it was difficult not to be reminded of the concept of time dilation which Albert Einstein postulated in his Special Theory of Relativity. Mbappé bent time, it seemed, making it move at a pace he dictated, leaving the players around him, fans, as well as many footballing connoisseurs, in a daze.
The France striker is not the first “time bender” in football, and certainly won’t be the last to possess this rare ability to take the ball, time and space onto a personal dimension. In fact, Mbappé, the phenomenon, has got some company in Russia itself -- in the form of Romelu Lukaku, who helped Belgium into the quarters with a phenomenal display of his own against Japan.
AMLO and Mexico’s watershed election
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20180730192211im_/https://socialistproject.ca/content/uploads/2018/06/AMLO.jpg)
By Richard Roman and Edur Velasco Arregui
July 1, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Project — The July 1 national election in Mexico is likely to be a watershed in Mexican history. The splintering of the three old parties, their unprincipled tactical electoral alliances across party boundaries, the rapid movement of key party figures from one party to another, have made understanding the labyrinth of Mexican elections even more complex and confusing than ever.
Venezuela — After the elections: What is to be done?
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By Marta Harnecker[1], Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
Recalling the context in which it emerged
1. By the time Hugo Chávez won the 1998 presidential elections, the neoliberal capitalist model was already in deep trouble. The dilemma he faced was basically whether to refound the neoliberal capitalist model — obviously with some changes, among them a greater concern for social issues, but motived by the same profit-seeking logic — or to seek to build another model.[2]
2. Chávez chose the latter option. In naming it, he decided to resuscitate the word socialism, despite the negative connotations it had due to the past. But he specified that this was a 21st century socialism to differentiate it from the Soviet socialism of the 20th century. He warned that we must not “fall into the errors of the past”; into “Stalinist deviations” that bureaucratized the party and ended up eliminating popular protagonism; into state capitalism that focused on state ownership and not on the participation of workers in the running of companies.
Pakistan - Awami Workers Party 2018 election manifesto: 'An alternative is possible'
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By Awami Workers Party
June 30, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Vote for AWP — There is a common perception in Pakistan that politics is only for the powerful, and that money, clout and deceit reflect “success” in politics. The Awami Workers Party, on the other hand, believes that a politics based on a progressive vision of society is not only possible but utterly necessary. In the upcoming elections we are taking our message to all parts of Pakistani society to convince the electorate that he existing political-economic system can be transformed through the power of the people.
Pakistan: Support the Awami Workers Party’s campaign for the 2018 General Election
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20180730192211im_/https://i.dawn.com/primary/2017/05/5907a2e449b04.jpg)
By Awami Workers Party
June 30, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Awami Workers Party — As Pakistan heads toward a general election in July, cynicism about the mainstream political sphere is rife. Attempts by unelected institutions to subvert the democratic process are playing out in full public view, censorship and attacks on press freedom have escalated and personal attacks among political elites have replaced any pretense of reasoned debate about Pakistan’s many economic, social and political crises – from rising inequality, to crippling national debt, to the 22 million children out of school, to the affordable housing crisis, to widespread malnutrition, to the imminent countrywide water shortage.
Alarmingly, the forces that seem best placed to exploit this situation are the political movements of the fascist right. Under state patronage, the forces of organized religious fundamentalism have risen at a frightening pace as they exploit popular resentments to target minorities, women and other oppressed groups in their attempts to capture state power. Even as they prop up the organizations of the fascist right, both military and civilian institutions continue to engage in widespread repression of nationalist and progressive forces across the country, be it enforced disappearances of political workers in Balochistan, FATA and Sindh or trumped-up terrorism charges against peasant activists in Okara.
Amid such overwhelming obstacles, it is imperative that progressives come together to challenge the onslaught of authoritarian and fundamentalist forces and bring their politics into the mainstream. This year, in order to provide a genuine progressive alternative to the Pakistani people after decades, the Awami Workers Party (AWP) will contest the General Election in different parts of the country.
Abandoned by the state: How the police fail survivors of sexual assault
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By Marienna Pope-Weidemann
June 29, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Red Pepper — A study released today revealed that one in five festival goers have been subject to sexual harassment there, with the figure rising to 43% of women under 40. Campaigners say the report should be a wake-up call for the industry to “start treating sexual violence as seriously as other crimes.” The sinister extent of rape culture in this country remains widely unseen – especially where it extends to the state itself.
Much of the rhetoric around tackling sexual violence focuses on encouraging women to come forward and report their assaulters to the police – to treat it as a crime, and use the formal mechanisms of police and state to deliver justice. But those mechanisms have perennially failed survivors of sexual assault.