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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.
Please explore Links and subscribe (click on "Subscribe to Links" or "Follow Links on Twitter" in the left menu). Links welcomes readers' constructive comments (but please read the "Comments policy" above).
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The US-Turkey standoff in context: Global capitalism and the crisis of hegemony
By Vassilis K. Fouskas and Bülent Gökay
September 3, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Turkey was thrust into a full-blown currency crisis when United States President Donald Trump hoisted tariffs on Turkey’s steel and aluminium exports to the US — the country’s most serious crisis since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power 16 years ago. The Turkish lira lost more than 40% of its value in the first two weeks of August, albeit its most recent humble recovery. The pretext for Trump’s punishing attack on Turkey, the seventeenth largest economy in the world, is the continued detention of the evangelical US Presbyterian missionary Andrew Brunson who was arrested in October 2016 on charges of espionage and accused of involvement in the attempted coup of July that same year.
At first sight, the US-Turkey standoff appears to be a uniquely Turkish problem triggered by a very public confrontation between two leading members of the “ring of autocrats” of the 21st century and worsened by the idiosyncratic and often misguided economic approach of both leaders. This is not the case. One cannot look at the Trump-Erdogan conflict in isolation from the global situation.
Is nuclear power a solution to the climate crisis?
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By Don Fitz
September 1, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Faith that environmental catastrophe can best be avoided by technological gadgetry rather than a change in social relationships received a big shot in the arm with the May 2018 publication of Energy: A Human History by prolific author Richard Rhodes. After completing 18 of his 20 chapters, Rhodes begins his exploration of nuclear power by comparing Rachel Carson, Ralph Nader, and Helen Caldicott to anti-humanists such as Thomas Malthus, Paul Ehrlich and followers of Adolf Hitler.
This bizarre connection is based on the writings of one obscure author who predated Carson with a foreboding of destruction caused by the over-reproduction of “undesirable people.”Rhodes claims that the environmental movement unknowingly brought anti-humanist ideology into its visions of a simpler world. By advocating a society less dependent on complex technology, environmentalists are supposedly condemning untold millions of impoverished humans to disease and starvation.
A self-enriching pact: Imperialism and the Global South
By Andy Higginbottom
September 1, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Review Of African Political Economy — Does the concept of imperialism explain major characteristics of the capitalist world in the 21st century?
Dissolving Empire: David Harvey, John Smith, and the Migrant
By Adam Meyer
September 1 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Review Of African Political Economy — In January and early February 2018 on roape.net, we witnessed a debate between David Harvey (Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, History and Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, father of a range of disciplines around radical geography, and perhaps the single most recognizable Marxist name globally, beside Slavoj Zizek) and John Smith (formerly Kingston University, London, winner of the first Paul A. Baran–Paul M. Sweezy Memorial Award for an original monograph, Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century, and a working class activist).
Equality with a vengence: The over-incarceration of women
By Anna Kerr and Dr Rita Shackel
September 1, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Precedent — The increased incarceration of women for violence-related offences in some Australian and overseas jurisdictions points to pervasive systemic gender bias and discrimination in the criminal justice process. Emerging anecdotal and recent research and court-related data are disturbing and suggest that women’s fundamental human rights and freedoms are under attack.
Read full article (pdf) here.
Asia-Pacific left parties' statement in solidarity with Bangladeshi student movement
Stop the repression of students in Bangladesh!
The undersigned Asia-Pacific left parties and organisations condemn the violent repression of the peaceful protests by students in Bangladesh.
These peaceful protests were sparked by the killing of two students — and critical injury of several others — by a speeding bus in Dhaka on July 29. The students began protesting the poor regulation and corruption of the transport sector but they were violently attacked by police. Gangs of armed thugs were allowed by the police to attack the students with machetes and other weapons and sexually harass female students. More than 100 students have been injured.
Bangladesh: Challenge of the students uprising
By Lal Khan
August 26, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Asian Marxist Review — The students’ movement that erupted on 29 July following the death of two students in a tragic road accident in Dhaka spread to almost all the major cities of the country. Thousands of outraged school and college students laid siege to the streets of the capital Dhaka for a week demanding road safety across the country. Within days its verve and militancy shook the despotic ‘democratic’ regime of Prime Minister Hasina Wajid’s Awami League (AL), the party of Bangladesh’s national bourgeoisie. This movement yet again demonstrates that the molecular processes in the womb of a society in crisis and the socioeconomic contradictions seething below the surface can abruptly erupt into a volcanic explosion. Any major event or issue can trigger the outburst of accumulating grievances of youth and the hitherto inert oppressed. The issues may or may not be directly linked to the class struggle.
How did socialists respond to the advent of fascism?
The following talk was given on 21 July 2018 to a two-day seminar at York University
entitled “Historical perspectives on united fronts against fascism and the far right.”
entitled “Historical perspectives on united fronts against fascism and the far right.”
By John Riddell
August 26, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell's Marxist essays and commentary — The framework for our panel this morning is “Unity against the Right: A historical approach.”
Argentina: They are afraid of us
By Verónica Gago
August 26, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Viewpoint Magazine — The contempt implied by the Argentine Senate’s rejection of the bill to legalize abortion rewrites – and makes us remember – a scene that we know well: the domestic scene, where all our effort seems to become invisible, almost as if it didn’t exist, as if it didn’t count. Thus the Parliament sought to repeat what, for centuries, the patriarchy has wanted us to get used to: an act of disdain to discredit us. Where our power does not enter into the account, where it does not count. But, this time, due to the unfolding of the feminist movement we cannot go back to that scene of submission and invisibilization ever again. Our fury comes from the certainty that there is no going back and that the power we have gained cannot be reversed. Based on that certainty, we also say that we will never return to a condition of clandestinity.
The fight for the right to abortion spreads in Latin America despite politicians
By Fabiana Frayssinet
August 25, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from IPS News — The Argentine Senate’s rejection of a bill to legalise abortion did not stop a Latin American movement, which is on the streets and is expanding in an increasingly coordinated manner among women’s organisations in the region with the most restrictive laws and policies against pregnant women’s right to choose.
Approved in Argentina by the Chamber of Deputies and later rejected by a vote of 38 to 31 on Aug. 9, the bill to legalise abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy and the historic social mobilisation on the streets offered hope for other countries in the region.
The Guttmacher Institute estimates that between 2010 and 2014, some 6.5 million abortions were practiced annually in Latin America and the Caribbean, up from 4.4 million between 1990 and 1994.
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 Renewal — Republicans 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 Voice — A 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 Renewal — The 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 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
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.
