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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 Communist International: Its present-day relevance
By John Riddell
May 7, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell's Marxist Essays and Commentary — Thirty-five years ago I undertook to translate and publish the record of the Communist International in Lenin’s lifetime, covering the preparatory years from 1907 to its foundation in 1919 and through 1923. Ten books totalling 7,000 pages are published or in preparation. This has been a team effort of more than 100 collaborators in several continents backed up with a broad community of readers, critics, and supporters.
ETA dissolution lifts last chains from Basque national liberation struggle
By Dick Nichols
May 6, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — The military-terrorist organisation Basque Homeland and Freedom (ETA) made public its “Statement to the Basque Country: declaration on harm caused” on April 20, an apology for the suffering arising from more than 40 years of violent operations that ended in a permanent ceasefire announced on October 20, 2011.
On May 3, ETA’s definitive dissolution was announced in a public declaration to the people of the Basque Country (Euskal Herria).
On May 4, at a ceremony held in the Iparralde (French Basque Country) region of Lapurdi, international mediators who have overseen ETA’s disarmament and dissolution took part in an event certifying the end of the organisation. The event consisted in the reading of the Arnaga Declaration, named after the villa in Kanbo (Canbo-les-Bains) where it took place.
1968 seen from Britain
By Phil Hearse
May 4, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from International Viewpoint — None of the key events of 1968 happened in Britain, but they impacted dramatically on the configuration of the Left. One socialist journal said it was “the year the ice cracked”. [1] But more realistically it was the culmination of a process of left political renewal started in 1956 when the near-simultaneous Hungarian revolution and the British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt shook the British Left to its core, resulting in the emergence of the “first” New Left. [2]
The Kurdish movement for radical change in Syria and the broader Middle East
By Chris Slee
A Road Unforeseen: Women Fight the Islamic State
By Meredith Tax
Bellevue Literary Press
New York 2016
April 3, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — When Meredith Tax saw pictures of gun-toting Kurdish women defending the northern Syrian town of Kobane against Daesh (so-called "Islamic State") in 2014, she was inspired to find out more. This book is the eventual outcome of her research.
The female fighters of the YPJ (Women's Protection Units) are part of a movement aimed at radical change in Syria and the broader Middle East. Tax explores the history of this movement in the context of the history of the Kurdish people.
Armenia: 'A mass movement the country never has seen before'
May 2, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from LeftEast — A mass movement in Armenia pushed out the Prime Minister and former president Serj Sargsyan. Even if liberal currents are trying to channel the movement and gain electoral support, this event could also be a positive move for the oppressed youth and the working class in the country. We interviewed Hovhannes Gevorkian, an Armenian student of Law in Berlin and member of the Revolutionären Internationalistischen Organisation (RIO) of Germany. The interview was conducted by Philippe Alcoy (PA).
May Day: Workers’ struggles, international solidarity, political aspirations
May 1, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Project — For more than 100 years, May Day has symbolized the common struggles of workers around the globe. Why is it largely ignored? The answer lies in part in labour’s long repression of its own radical past, out of which international May Day was actually born a century ago. It is more important than ever, in the face of relentless capitalist austerity and emerging authoritarian forces on the right, that the labour movement reconnect with this history and forge linkages with the international labour movement in the remaking of a socialism for our times.
Download May Day: Workers’ Struggles, International Solidarity, Political Aspirations Socialist Interventions Pamphlet No. 15.
Project Life: Cuba’s action plan prepares for climate change
“An important biological species is facing the risk of extinction given the rapid
and progressive elimination of its natural conditions for life: humanity”
—Fidel Castro Ruz (Earth Summit, Río de Janeiro, June 12, 1992)
By Yisell Rodríguez Milán and Danae González Del Toro
April 30, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Climate & Capitalism, an earlier translation first appeared at Granma — What is to be done about high temperatures, rising sea levels, and increasingly powerful hurricanes? What can we do to be less vulnerable to climate change? Preliminary observations by groups of specialists in the country indicate that sea level has increased on the island an average of 6.77 centimeters since 1966, a process that has accelerated during the last five years. Since the middle of the last century, the average annual temperature has risen 0.9 degrees Celsius, and the coastline is today more fragile than ever. This reality calls for action, and Cuba is acting on the premise of preparing, to avoid lamenting later.
Marx, naturalism, anachronism and the disenchantment of nature
By Blair Vidakovich
April 30, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — A key debate that is occurring in analytic philosophy at the moment is whether to agree to the popularly-accepted conception of naturalism. Naturalism, in its orthodox and popular version, forces us to accept an austere and disenchanted picture of the universe and the place of humans in it. Normativity, on this conception, is not a part of the universe at all. There are versions of austere naturalism (‘bald’ naturalism, as John McDowell puts it)[1] that admit of epistemic normativity—the position that if some epistemic fact is true, then we ought to believe it—but these are really no different in kind.
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
Originally published in English on Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal here
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
The following speech was given by Carmel Shute at the Melbourne launch of the new Resistance Books edition of Diane Menghetti’s The Red North: The Popular Front in North Queensland on April 4, 2018.
‘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
Two articles looking at the rise of Laban ng Masa (Struggle of the Masses),
a coalition of socialist groups that has emerged in opposition to
Filipino President Rodrigo 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).
