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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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Climate change in the Anthropocene: An unstoppable drive to Hothouse Earth?

 

 

By Ian Angus

 

August 19, 2018 
— Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Climate & Capitalism — Scientific papers do not often make front-page news, but a recent one certainly has.

 

On August 6, the British Guardian declared that a “Domino-effect of climate events could move Earth into a ‘hothouse’ state.” The New York Times warned of a “World at risk of heading towards irreversible ‘hothouse’ state.” Sky News said that “Earth is 1°C away from hothouse state that threatens the future of humanity.”

 

The basis for those excited headlines was an article with the distinctly unexciting title “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.[1] Normally, PNAS articles can only be read by those who pay high subscription fees, but interest in this one ran so high that after one day the publisher removed the paywall, making it accessible to all.

 

Samir Amin (1931-2018): Africa’s pioneering Marxist political economist

 

 

By Patrick Bond

 

August 19, 2018 
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Samir Amin’s celebrated life was amongst the most trying, but also rewarding, of his generation’s left intelligentsia. Following Amin’s death in Paris on Sunday, his political courage and professional fearlessness are two traits now recognised as exceedingly rare. Alongside extraordinary contributions to applied political-economic theory beginning 60 years ago, Amin’s unabashed Third Worldist advocacy was channelled through unparalleled scholarly entrepreneurship when establishing surprisingly durable research institutions.

 

18 theses on Marxism and animal liberation

 

 

By Bündnis Marxismus und Tierbefreiung/Alliance for Marxism and Animal Liberation

 

August 19, 2018 
— Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Marxismus und Tierbefreiung — Marxism and the liberation of animals are two things which, at first glance, do not seem to have much in common. Neither did the former make waves for being particularly animal-loving, nor are animal lovers known for taking up the cause of liberating the working class and the construction of a socialist society.

 

US militarism marches on

 

 

By Marty Hart-Landsberg

 

August 11, 2018
Links International Journal of Socialist RenewalRepublicans and Democrats like to claim that they are on opposite sides of important issues. Of course, depending on which way the wind blows, they sometimes change sides, like over support for free trade and federal deficits. Tragically, however, there is no division when it comes to militarism.

 

More than universal healthcare: the meaning of socialism

 

 

Schemes of state and municipal ownership, if unaccompanied by this co-operative principle, are but schemes for the perfectioning of the mechanism of capitalist government - schemes to make the capitalist regime respectable and efficient for the purposes of the capitalist; in the second place they represent the class-conscious instinct of the business man who feels that capitalist should not prey upon capitalist, while all may unite to prey upon the workers... To the cry of the middle class reformers, “make this or that the property of the government,” we reply, “yes, in proportion as the workers are ready to make the government their property.”

 

  James Connolly [1]

 

By Doug Enaa Greene

 

August 1 2018
— Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Left VoiceA recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times boldly stated, “Americans like socialism now.” Increasingly among younger people, the word “socialism” has lost its Cold War stigma. According to the article, the new-found interest in socialism is linked to the 2008 crash and its recovery, “which has seen nearly all newly created wealth claimed by the 1% while wages stagnate, has led to a rebirth of the American left.”[2] In other words, for most people, capitalism just wasn’t working.

 

South Korea's ugly refugee phobia

 

 

By Youngsu Won

 

August 1, 2018
Links International Journal of Socialist RenewalThe historical candlelight movement of 2016-17 finally turned South Korea from one of the most reactionary anti-communist regimes into a normal democracy. However, the recent debate over Yemenis refugees revealed the naked face of deep-seated racism of many Koreans.

 

UN Office calls for probe into human rights in Kashmir

 

 

By John Riddell

 

July 30, 2018
— Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell's Marxist essays and commentaryA 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

 

 

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

 

 

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'

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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'

 

 

By Bêrîtan Sarya & Axin Tolhildan

 

July 12, 2018
— Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from ANF NewsEmel 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

 

 

By Baris Karaagac

 

July 12, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist ProjectThe 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

 

 

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

 

 

By John Perry

 

July 6, 2018
— Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from The NationIn 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

 

 

By Nazaret Castro

 

July 6, 2018
— Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Equal TimesOn 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

 

 

Introduction and translation by Richard Fidler

 

July 5, 2018
— Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the LeftAs 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.

 

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