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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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Struggle and defiance at Colombia’s Feast of Pestilence
By James Jordan
June 9, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — There is a scene in Arturo Alape’s novel, El Cadaver Insepulto (The Unburied Corpse) that sums up Colombia’s current reality. A small group of authorities have been called to enter the apartment of an elderly woman who has not been seen in the community for days. Her apartment is at the top of Bogotá’s historic hillside Candelaria community, facing onto the narrow street that descends directly into the Plaza Bolívar, the park at the city’s heart. Plaza Bolívar is surrounded by federal government buildings and the National Cathedral and is the site of many public gatherings. The woman’s neighbors have been alerted not so much by her absence as the overwhelming stench seeping out from beneath her apartment door. Upon entering, the authorities are met by howling cats gathered around her bed, where she had died. When they pull back the covers, they are shocked to see her decomposed body being consumed by a host of vermin. The surprised vermin take off en masse, a river of cockroaches, rats, and pursuing cats exiting the woman’s home and descending at breakneck speed into the Plaza Bolívar, taking possession of the heart of Old Colombia.
New Zealand: A strategic vision for unions under Ardern's Labour-led government
By Mike Treen
June 9, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Converge — The union movement needs to have a strategic approach to the newly-elected Labour-led government that can maximise the immediate gains to be made whilst not accepting the absurd fiscal limits they have imposed on themselves. The Government has declared their acceptance of a narrowly-defined "fiscal responsibility" that accepts the unfair taxation regime of the previous Government and refuses to introduce any new taxes on the wealthy individuals and corporates who treat taxation as a voluntary activity.
They have also accepted a commitment to run surplus budgets in most circumstances to repay the accumulated debt when these debt levels are actually very low by any international measure. Budget surpluses require a Government to collect more tax than it spends – which inevitably depresses economic activity rather than stimulates it. That does not mean that I think governments in a capitalist economy can spend what they like or can prevent economic crises – but that is another story.
Spanish state: How and why the Rajoy government fell
By Dick Nichols
June 5, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — On June 1, the Spanish government of the ruling People’s Party (PP) of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy fell to a no-confidence motion brought against it in the 350-seat Spanish congress by the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), led by its federal secretary Pedro Sánchez.
The vote was 180 to 169 with one abstention. This result installed Sánchez as the new prime minister of Spain. It was the first time since a multiparty-system replaced the Francisco Franco dictatorship 40 years ago that a no-confidence motion has succeeded.
Key to the final result was the decision of the conservative Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), governing the Basque Autonomous Community (Euskadi), to support the PSOE motion. Without its five votes the motion would have been lost because an absolute majority of 176 was needed for its adoption. Previously, the two Catalan nationalist parties with a presence in the Congress — the centre-left Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and the conservative nationalist Catalan European Democratic Party (PDECat) — had flagged their support.
Nancy Fraser: Feminism and Marxism
June 4, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal via Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - New York Office — Noted scholar Nancy Fraser provides a wide-ranging interview covering Marx' and Engels' view of social reproduction, the tension between class, gender, and race, and the need for a "Feminism for the 99%". Nancy Fraser was interviewed by Albert Scharenberg of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, New York.
1968 in Asia: Malaysia’s “Second Emergency” (1968–89) and the Malayan Communist Party
By Gregor Benton
June 4, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Verso — The impact of revolutionary developments in Vietnam and China on the May events of 1968 in France and other Western countries has long been acknowledged. Less notice has been paid outside Asia to their repercussions on other Southeast Asian countries, which also experienced a revolutionary high tide in 1968. The upsurge of armed struggle in Malaysia in 1968 is rarely mentioned in general studies on the period, and is not often talked about even in Malaysia.
Lo que viene después del 20 de mayo: ¿algo nuevo en la política venezolana?
[Read in English here.]
Por Steve Ellner
2 de junio de 2018 — Traducido con la ayuda de José Gregorio Tovar y Carmen Sánchez Ellner para Rebelion — El desconocimiento de la legitimidad del proceso electoral del 20 de mayo por parte de Henri Falcón y el otro candidato presidencial importante de la oposición, el evangélico Javier Bertucci, no presagia bien para el nuevo periodo del presidente Maduro. La consolidación de un bloque moderado dentro de la oposición representado por Falcón que reconoce la legitimidad del gobierno, hubiera restado influencia a los partidos radicales de la derecha y significado un mayor grado de estabilidad en el país al disminuir la polarización.
La Rivoluzione Bolivariana vince la battaglia, ma sta perdendo la guerra?
[Original in English here.]
Di Federico Fuentes
28 maggio 2018 — Traduzione di Maria Chiara Starace, Znet Italy — Anche prima che avessero avuto luogo le elezioni presidenziali del Venezuela del 20 maggio, gli Stati Uniti –guidati da un presidente che ha perduto il voto popolare in un sistema elettorale che sistematicamente priva del diritto di voto milioni di elettori poveri e non bianchi – hanno rifiutato l’elezione perché non era “né libera né corretta”.
Venezuela's May 20 elections: Where do things stand?
By Steve Ellner
May 27, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from NACLA— Defeated Venezuelan presidential candidate Henri Falcón announced on May 20 that he would not recognize the legitimacy of that day’s elections. Nicolás Maduro’s reelection was generally expected, though his 68 percent of the vote was higher than what most polls predicted. Similarly, the 54 percent abstention among registered voters came due to the opposition’s Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) call for an electoral boycott.
The refusal by Falcón and the other main presidential candidate, evangelist Javier Bertucci, to recognize the electoral results bodes poorly for Maduro’s new term as president. The consolidation of a moderate bloc within the opposition that Falcón represented which recognizes the government’s legitimacy would have significantly cut into the strength of the more intransigent or radical parties on the Right and provided Venezuelan politics with much needed stability.
‘Racist’ Catalan president vows to build republic as Spain vetos ministers
By Dick Nichols
May 24, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — On May 14, 199 days after the Catalan pro-independence bloc re-won a majority at the December 21 elections imposed by the Spanish government, the parliament of Catalonia finally voted in a new president. Quim Torra, MP for Together For Catalonia (JxCat)—headed by exiled outgoing president Carles Puigdemont—was invested as head of government by 66 votes to 65 with four abstentions. On the first round of the investiture, held on May 12, the same vote was inadequate because an absolute majority of 68 was required.
The conservative Catalan nationalism of Quim Torra
By Dick Nichols
May 24, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Is new Catalan president Quim Torra just another right-wing xenophobe, as claimed by Pedro Sanchez, leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), the equivalent in the Spanish state of Marine Le Pen in France, Gert Wilders in the Netherlands, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Hungary’s Victor Orban and their counterparts in Denmark, Sweden and Finland?
As the battle over Catalonia’s right to self-determination increasingly gets fought out on the European stage it is vital for any democrat to answer this question correctly.
Is fascism inevitable?
Can Democracy Survive Globalised Capitalism?
By Charles Kuttner
Norton Publishers, May 2018
By Phil Hearse
May 22, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from International Viewpoint — Since the global financial crisis in 2007-8, and the consequent anti-capitalist mobilisations like the Occupy! movement and the struggle against austerity in Greece, there have been a series of books arguing for major reforms to capitalism. [1].
Charles Kuttner’s important new book is perhaps the most radical of these, making a trenchant critique of globalised capitalism and proposing sweeping reforms to rebuild a mixed economy which works in the interests of everyone (especially workers) and pumps life back into liberal demonocracy. Basing himself on the work of his hero Karl Polanyi [2] Kuttner’s basic message is that unless major reforms are made within capitalism, then fascism or right-wing authoritarianism is virtually inevitable.
1968: A crushing defeat for the Indonesian Left
By Vannessa Hearman
May 19, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Verso — In Indonesia, 1968 was a year of defeat for the Left. A military operation, called the Trident (Trisula) Operation obliterated attempts by remnants of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) to organise resistance against Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime from bases in southern rural East Java. The strongest base, in remote South Blitar, was also a place of refuge, because leftists were being sought and detained or killed in the rest of Indonesia. The party had been, in 1965, the world’s third largest communist party. It was pro-China and was critical of the Soviet Union’s peaceful coexistence strategy in the Cold War. It had enjoyed a close relationship with Indonesia’s President Sukarno who was sympathetic to leftist ideas. From early October 1965, however, following its implication in the abduction and murder of seven army officers, the PKI has been subjected to violent army-led pogroms. In 1968 then, inspired by the rise of guerrilla movements in other parts of the world, the PKI leadership tried to salvage what was left of the party after vicious and murderous terror against its members and sympathisers.
Nuclear disaster at Chernobyl: reality and unreality
By Don Fitz
May 19, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — With the escalating doom of climate change hovering over us, it is tempting to push nuclear horror to the back of our minds. To those of us who grew up in the 1950s, it was omnipresent. Nuclear war could not exist without nuclear power and on April 26, 1986 the world experienced a form of nuclear horror it will never forget.
Why did Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explode on that day? Did operator error cause it? Was design flaw the reason? Should we look deeper into the Soviet system for the cause? Or should we look deeper still into the very existence of nuclear power?
Oppression of Pakistan’s caricatured feudalism
By Farooq Tariq
May 14, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Large swathes of Pakistan are in the stranglehold of caricatured feudalism. These feudal relations are increasingly penetrated by finance capital as it imposes itself on social relations, politics and the economy itself. It has made the lives of millions miserable, deepening and brutalizing class exploitation. Rampant inequality and poverty remain chronic issues as millions can still be considered bonded labour. Such a harrowing situation is revealed by the fact that only five per cent of agricultural households in Pakistan own nearly two thirds of the farmland.
Socialist Party of Malaysia will survive
By S Arutchelvan
May 13, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Malaysiakini — My bitter defeat in Semenyih and that of my other Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) comrades is not something unexpected, but the number of votes we got is quite depressing. Nevertheless, the victory of the people of all races in finally putting an end to Umno’s 61-year rule is overwhelming, and is a great antidote to our own defeat.
Denmark: Red-Green Alliance arms itself for vital 2019 election fights
By Dick Nichols
May 12, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — The annual conference of Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance (RGA) — known inside the country as the Unity List: the Red-Greens — took place on April 27-29 during a moment of class struggle unusual in these times of weakened trade union organisation.
Rojava & the legacy of May '68
By Marcel Cartier
May 11, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from The Region — May 1 was the day that the working people of the world took to the streets in millions. It was yet another global festival of the oppressed and downtrodden, as well as a day to struggle for the vision of the world we deserve. It was the day that serves as an annual reminder of our collective power, it gives us the chance to imagine an alternative form of organizing society as well. Every May 1st, our liberatory potential is on full display.
The Relevance of Marx at 200
By Doug Enaa Greene
May 10, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Left Voice — May 5 is the 200th birthday of Karl Marx. However, what is there to celebrate? Surely, Marx is out of date now with the fall of the Soviet Union and the triumph of capitalism.
Turkey: After Afrîn, the Ottoman dreaming of Sultan Erdoğan
By John Tully
May 9, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Tasmanian Times — On March 18, Turkish troops supported by a 10,000-strong horde of Islamist militiamen stormed into the city of Afrîn in northern Syria. After an unequal eight-week struggle against the Middle East’s most powerful military force, the city’s lightly armed Kurdish defenders had little choice but to melt away and fight another day.
The city’s fall was inevitable. Afrîn is isolated from Kobanê and Jazira, the other predominantly Kurdish cantons to the east, and the Kurds had gambled unsuccessfully on international support against the illegal invasion. This was not unreasonable. The invasion was patently illegal, and the world also owes the Syrian Kurds a debt of gratitude for their sacrifices in ridding it of the cancer of ISIS.
Sadly, almost all of the world’s governments turned a blind eye to the aggression. Some of them directly or indirectly aided the Turkish aggressor.
Canada: A paragon of democratic national self-determination?
By Richard Fidler
May 8, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left — Madrid’s stubborn refusal to allow Catalans to vote on their independence prompted some commentators, paradoxically, to praise Canada’s support for Quebec self-determination.
“Quebec got off light,” wrote Louis Bernard,[1] a former top official in Parti québécois governments, referring to the Supreme Court of Canada judgment in the Reference re Secession of Quebec. After the almost-victory for the OUI in the 1995 referendum, he recalled, the federal government asked the Court to declare that Quebec had no right in Canadian or international law to choose unilaterally to “become a sovereign country, separated from Canada.”
