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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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Don’t blame the socialists, Malaysia’s liberals split the opposition
By Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj
April 28, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from MalaysiaKini — With the 14th general election fast approaching, there are many Malaysians, especially urbanites, who feel that a change of government is at hand.
Several among them have urged Parti Sosialis Malaysia not to “create three-cornered contests,” but to take stock of the big picture and go along with the opposition Pakatan Harapan coalition.
This would mean standing down all PSM candidates except for myself – I alone will be allowed by Harapan to contest Sungai Siput under the logo of the PKR.[1]
To our friends and supporters who urge this course of action, I would like to point out three facts.
Pakistan: Intimidations, threats and arrests before the historic Lahore public meeting in solidarity with Pashtuns
By Farooq Tariq
April 28, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — On 22nd April, over 10,000 packed the historic Mochi Darwaza (Cobbler’s Gate) ground in Lahore to listen to leaders of Pashtun Tahafuz (Protection) Movement and Lahore Left Front. The meeting took place despite all efforts of the district management to stop it. They rejected two application of PTM and LLF for permission to hold the rally on “security” grounds.
A night before the public meeting, 10 leaders of PTM and Awami Workers Party were arrested from a hotel where they were staying. After massive spontaneous demonstrations and mass social media campaign in various part of the country, the leaders were released in few hours.
Those arrested included Ali Wazir, a main leader of PTM and a member of Pakistani Marxist’s, The Struggle group, Nisar Shah chairmen Jammu Kashmir Awami Workers Party, Fanoos Gujjar, president of Awami Workers Party and Ismat Shah Jahan, the president of Women Democratic Front.
Catalan Spring: Which way forward for the independence movement?
Introduction and translation by Richard Fidler
April 27, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left — The Spanish state’s prosecution of Catalan independence leaders suffered a serious setback April 5 when a German court rejected Spain’s request that former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont be extradited to face a charge of “rebellion,” subject to a jail term of up to 30 years.
The Schleswig-Holstein regional court freed Puigdemont, saying it could find no evidence that he was guilty of “high treason,” the equivalent for rebellion in German law. And the judges asked Spanish Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena to provide more information on his further charge against Puigdemont of embezzlement for using public funds to finance the October 1 referendum on independence.
South Korea: When workers become owners
April 27, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from International Strategy Center — It is important to identify factors behind workers’ self-management (WSM) companies’ success that can be applied to other cases: empowerment of workers through shared responsibilities, decision-making, and ownership; education to recover workers’ autonomy; and the reinforcement of workers’ control through first-hand experience of improved working conditions. These changes taken together are part of the solution to solving the problems confronting labor today. It is our hope that our examination of workers’ self-management provides some insight into how workers have succeeded in taking control back over their work and lives.
Download ISC’s Research Report Workers Become Owners: Woojin Traffic, a Korean Case Study of Workers’ Self-Management
Challenging capitalism through workers’ control – interview with Dario Azzellini
April 26, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Investig’Action — A common feature in every crisis situation, from the upheavals of the early 20th century to the neo-liberal re-structurings of the late 20th century, is the emergence of workers’ control – workers organising to take over their workplaces in order to defend their jobs and their communities. We interviewed Dario Azzellini* to talk about this issue in depth: the emergence of new values and social relations not just in the recuperated workplaces but also in the communities, the need to re-orient production, the overcoming of the separation between political, economic and social spheres, and the role of workers’ control in the larger struggle against capitalism.
Menshevism: The Girondins of 1917
By Doug Enaa Greene
April 25, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Left Voice with the author's permission — Whatever their differences, Lenin, Plekhanov, Martov, and Trotsky all saw the Russian Revolution as following in the experience of the French Revolution of 1789. The Russian revolutionaries also modeled themselves on the different parties of the French Revolution, whether consciously or unconsciously, as guides for action. Lenin and the Bolsheviks believed they were modern-day Jacobins – stalwart revolutionaries who would organize the working class and take power. By contrast, the Mensheviks were moderate Girondins. Menshevism was committed to gradualism and opposed to the “historical impatience” of a socialist revolution. Like the Girondins, the Mensheviks were honorable, but like their predecessors, they lacked faith in the revolutionary abilities of the people. That was the root of their failure in 1917.
México: La izquierda debata las elecciones presidenciales
Por Nevin Siders
14 de octubre, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Indubitablemente la coyuntura nacional nos impone grandes retos de organización y creatividad política que pone a prueba la lucha consecuente y con principios ecosocialistas y a favor de los derechos humanos.
The Red North: How the Communist Party of Australia was ‘naturalised’ in north Queensland
‘New imperialism’ debate suffers from the omission of subimperialism
By Patrick Bond
April 23, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Review of African Political Economy —Two leading critics of imperialism – John Smith and David Harvey – have recently fought bitterly on roape.net on over how to interpret geographically-shifting processes of super-exploitation. The risk is that they obscure crucial features of their joint wrath: the unjust accumulation processes and geopolitics that enrich the wealthy and despoil the world environment.
Imperialism today: a critical assessment of Latin American dependency theory
Introduction and translation by Richard Fidler
March 31, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left — Brazilian economist and sociologist Ruy Mauro Marini (1932-1997) was a prime exponent of what became known as dependency theory, an attempt to explain the systemic unequal relations of the Latin American countries in particular with the developed economies of the imperialist “North.” He was a close collaborator of, among others, Vânia Bambirra and the recently-deceased Theotónio Dos Santos. Marini’s best-known work, first published in Spanish in 1972, is Dialectics of Dependency.[1]
Marini was a founder of the Brazilian Marxist organization Política Operária and later, during his Chilean exile, a member of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR). Forced into exile again after the Pinochet coup, he taught at the UNAM in Mexico for many years, returning to Brazil shortly before his death from cancer in 1997.
In the following essay, Argentine Marxist Claudio Katz analyzes Marini’s work in light of contemporary developments in global capitalism. He assesses Marini’s attempt to understand and explain the initial developments in neoliberal globalization and suggests some ways in which dependency theory might now be renewed and updated. And he comments critically on the work of some current proponents of versions of dependency theory.
Philippines: The emergence of a united left opposition to Duterte
a coalition of socialist groups that has emerged in opposition to
Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte.
Pakistan: Revival of the left
By Rashed Rahman
March 30, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Rashed Rahman blog — The task of reviving the Left to once again become an effective player in the polity has been exercising minds in the surviving Left parties and groups for long but the achievement of this goal has proved difficult. It is therefore heartening to note the follow-up of the meeting of 10 Left parties and groups in Lahore on December 29, 2017 by the formation of a 17-parties/groups’ platform dubbed Lahore Left Front (LLF).
Democratic production and the Workers' Opposition of revolutionary Russia
By Don Fitz
March 29, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — In a post-capitalist society, who should control production? How should decisions about work life be made? Who should decide what is produced, where it is produced and how it is exchanged within a country and between countries? For the first time in history, the great Russian Revolution of 1917 had to confront these issues in more than a theoretical way. The issues became painfully pragmatic during intense conflict between the party majority and the Workers' Opposition (WO) of 1919-1921.
Too many discussions of the Bolsheviks focus on political battles and treat economic debates as barely secondary. In fact, struggles at the point of production were core; political conflicts reflected many of these differences; and, today, perspectives on top-down control version self-management permeate every vision of a new society.
Russia’s elections: views from the left
By Volodya Vagner
March 29, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Virtually all the candidates running in Russia’s recent presidential election openly admitted that what they were participating in was a circus. And as expected, the circus director won. After gracefully skipping the televised debates that saw profanity-laden shouting matches and physical confrontations between his opponents, Russian president Vladimir Putin was re-elected by a landslide on March 18. The real question in the run-up to the vote was never who would win, but how legitimate Putin’s victory would be.
Lenin for today
Lenin for Today
By John Molyneux
Bookmarks, 2017
289 pages
£12.99; $44.01
Paperback
Reviewed by Paul Le Blanc
March 27, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — The first chapter of John Molyneux’s newest book, Lenin for Today, is one of the best discussions one can find of the relevance of Lenin. It is also the best part of the book. Far from being an organic whole, Lenin for Today offers seven distinct essays, each of which can more or less stand alone. Some offer analysis and explication of Lenin’s own ideas and perspectives, with indications of their continuing relevance. Others – increasingly as the book goes along – present discussions of current issues and recent events from the standpoint of the author and his organization (the Socialist Workers Party in Britain and its sister organization of the same name in Ireland, where he currently resides.)
Trump’s new militarism
During the 2016 US election campaign Donald Trump promised an end to pointless foreign wars and attacked “useless” and massively expensive new military equipment, like the $1.5 trillion Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter. But the Trump presidency has ushered in a new era of militarism, as the United States prepares for high tech, massively violent wars against Russia and China, argues Phil Hearse.
France: 'If Macron starts to wobble, the whole show collapses' — Unions, left confront Macron’s attacks on rail services and job
By Dick Nichols
March 26, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — France is once again on the brink of an all-out industrial war — and its outcome could transform the country’s political landscape. The showdown is over the plans that President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Edouard Philippe have for the state-owned National Railway Company (SNCF), which have been described by Le Monde as “the biggest change for the SNCF since its founding in 1937”.
The stakes in the fight are huge: France’s 150,000 rail workers could suffer a defeat like that of Britain’s miners under Margaret Thatcher. On the other hand, Philippe could suffer the same fate as former PM Alain Juppe, whose 1995 economic “reform” was trashed by a vast wave of industrial action and popular revolt.
Elections in Russia, 2018: Managed Democracy?
By David Mandel
March 25, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Project — This article examines the bases of popular support for recently re-elected Russian president Vladimir Putin. Although this support is strenuously “cultivated” by the regime by various illicit means, it nevertheless has a genuine basis that needs to be understood by people on the left who are trying to develop an enlightened position in the escalating confrontation between the “West” and Russia.
Mexico: Left debates upcoming presidential elections
By Nevin Siders
October 14, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Indubitably Mexico’s present conjuncture imposes great challenges on political organization and creativity which test consistency for strugglers with ecosocialist and human rights principles.
'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.
