In July-September 2011 the stock markets were again shaken at international level. The crisis has become deeper in the EU, particularly with respect to debts. The Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM) interviewed Eric Toussaint about various facets of this new stage in the crisis in a seven-part interview published initially on their website.
Che Guevara in Search of a New Socialism
24 September 2011, byIN AN ARTICLE published in 1928, José Carlos Mariátegui, the true founder of Latin American Marxism, wrote: “Of course, we do not want socialism in Latin America to be an imitation or a copy. It must be a heroic creation. We must inspire Indo-American socialism with our own reality, our own language. That is a mission worthy of a new generation.” His warning went unheard. In that same year the Latin American communist movement fell under the influence of the Stalinist paradigm, which for close to a half century imposed on it an imitation of the ideology of the Soviet bureaucracy and its so-called “actually existing socialism.”
The spark ignites in the action - the philosophy of praxis in the thought of Rosa Luxemburg
20 May 2011, byIn his presentation of Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach (1845), which he published posthumously in 1888, Engels described them as “the first document in which is deposited the brilliant germ of the new world outlook”. Indeed, in this little text Marx surpasses dialectically – the celebrated Aufhebung: negation/conservation/elevation – the preceding materialism and idealism, and formulates a new theory, which we could describe as the philosophy of praxis. While the French materialists of the eighteenth century insisted on the need to change material circumstances so that human beings could change, the German idealists affirmed that, thanks to the formation of a new consciousness of individuals, society would be changed.
Islam, sexuality, and the politics of belonging in the Netherlands
8 June 2009, bySex seems to play a key role in the Dutch politics of belonging. Sex – especially homosexuality – is instrumentalized by the nationalist right who uses it to represent immigrants as ‘strangers’ who threaten tolerant, modern, Dutch society. Tolerance, power, and xenophobia come to be increasingly entwined in the Netherlands. A plea against ‘tolerance’ as the foundation for political and social struggle.
Seventy years since the formation of the Fourth International
29 September 2008, by“Workers – men and women – of the world, unite under the banner of the Fourth International. It is the banner of your approaching victory!”
Elements of revolutionary strategy
2 July 2007, byWith the development of the revolutionary process in Bolivia and Venezuela, and the sharp left debates and divisions on overall strategy in countries like Brazil, France and Italy, the issue of revolutionary strategy is coming back on the agenda.
The Challenge of Revolutionary Democracy in the Life and Thought of Rosa Luxemburg
23 September 2006, byTalk presented March 21 at an International Conference - organized under the name “Rosa Luxemburg’s Thought and Its Contemporary Value” - at Wuhan University by the School of Philosophy and The Institute of Marxist Philosophy in the People’s Republic of China March 20-22, 2006.
Uneven and Combined Development and the Sweep of History: Focus on Europe
21 September 2006, byAn important conceptual tool for responding to such dynamics is the theory of uneven and combined development formulated by Leon Trotsky as a contribution to the rich body of Marxist analysis.
Dialectics and Revolution
11 September 2006, byThere seems to exist an intimate link between the dialectical method and revolutionary theory: not by chance, the high period of revolutionary thinking in the XXth century, the years 1905-1925, are also those of some of the most interesting attemps to use the hegelo-marxist dialectics as an instrument of knowledge and action. Let me try to illustrate the connexion between dialectics and revolution in the thought of three distinct Marxist figures : Leon D. Trotsky, Vladimir I. Lenin and György Lukacs.
The Marxism of Trotsky’s "Results and Prospects"
9 September 2006, byTrotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, as sketched for the first time in his essay Results and Prospects (1906), was one of the most astonishing political breakthroughs in Marxist thinking at the begining of the XXth century.
