The 2008 crash and resulting politicisation saw the rise of broad left parties in many countries. However in most cases, this wave has crashed, and the tide has turned, posing new challenges for these projects and for revolutionaries operating within them. In this opinion piece, Cian Prendiville reflects on these questions and attempts to plot a way forward.
Why I am rejoining Solidarity and some thoughts on the future
3 March 2025, byA longtime friend, with whom I share a mutual respect, recently sent me an email regarding my decision to rejoin Solidarity.* What follows are the texts (slightly edited) of a two-part answer to him, and then my replies to a couple of emails he sent in response.
To save the environment, we must end the profit system
3 March 2025, byA Portuguese translation of my book, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System, was published in Brazil in 2023. I was subsequently interviewed by Claudia Antunes for the multilingual magazine SUMAÚMA, a radical environmental journal that takes its name from one of the largest trees in the Amazon rainforest. SUMAÚMA published the interview in September 2024. This lightly edited version was published in Monthly Review in January 2025.—Ian Angus
In Sri Lanka, the new government’s policy: a lost historic opportunity
19 February 2025, byÉric Toussaint looks back at the situation in Sri Lanka since 2022. From popular revolts to the new centre-left government elected at the end of 2024, including negotiations with creditors, this overview provides a better understanding of the situation, rich in lessons, in a country whose social, economic and political situation is largely unknown. Éric Toussaint compares what is happening in Sri Lanka with what happened in Greece in 2015 and in Argentina between 2019 and 2023, putting into perspective the risk of a hard right-wing government in the future.
Three things people think they know about Ukraine in wartime
19 February 2025, byEveryday life in wartime - how to organise a mass army, signing up, deserting, training....
Hanna Perekhoda: ‘The fight for freedom in Ukraine is intimately linked to the global struggle against fascist forces’
19 February 2025, byIn this interview, Ukrainian historian and activist Hanna Perekhoda looks back at some of the preconceptions and simplifications that, in Western Europe, shape discussion of the war in Ukraine.
After the Fire: Reconstructing Los Angeles Towards Abolition
29 January 2025, byWhen the Eaton Fire first began its retreat from Altadena, I was in one of many self-organized mutual aid teams scattered across the area, cleaning up debris. Around this time, I connected with some Black community members who had just lost their homes. They had returned from evacuation almost immediately to help coordinate mutual aid for their neighbors. But they were harassed by the police as they tried to return to their homes. Hundreds of armed California National Guard, summoned by Los Angeles police and sheriffs, had effectively begun occupying parts of Altadena. The fires already disproportionately affected Western Altadena, the historically Black area of the city where most of the deaths have been located so far and where residents were given notices to evacuate hours after those in majority-white areas of Altadena were informed. [1]
In memory of Patrice Lumumba, assassinated on 17 January 1961
27 January 2025, byOn 17 January 2025, we commemorate the 64th anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961).
Ukraine’s Debt: an instrument of pressure and spoliation in the hands of creditors
26 January 2025, byIn the present article the author focuses on Ukraine’s debt since the 1990s and more particularly in the years after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022. It provides answers to several questions. Who are Ukraine’s creditors? How much are they owed? What do they demand in exchange for their loans? What part does the European Union play? Why does Ukraine’s integration into the EU go against the Ukrainian people’s interests? What is done with frozen Russian assets? Why should Ukraine’s debt be cancelled? Why does Zelensky oppose any cancellation? What are the alternatives to current indebtedness? Some questions are not addressed for want of space such as the stage the conflict has reached, the provision of weapons, the debates within the Left.
Environmental and climate debt: Who is responsible?
18 January 2025, by ,The concepts of climate debt and ecological debt are central to successfully achieving the ecological bifurcation. The ecological debt owed by States – and in particular the wealthiest States and major corporations – of the North to the populations of the Global South must be recognized. That recognition must take the form of cancellation of the debt of the countries of the Global South and paying of reparations by the States of the North. The latter must compel the wealthiest interests to contribute and assume responsibility for climate disruption and for taking the actions that are urgently needed to limit its consequences and its aggravation to the maximum extent possible.
Footnotes
[1] Terry Castleman and Ian James, “Western Altadena got evacuation order many hours after Eaton fire exploded. 17 people died there,” Los Angeles Times, January 20, 2025, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-20/in-much-of-altadena-evacuation-orders-came-hours-after-the-fire-arrived; Adam Mahoney, “Why were Black Altadena Residents Not Warned to Evacuate in Time?” Capital B, January 24, 2025, https://capitalbnews.org/eaton-fire-los-angeles-lawsuits/.
