IV506 - March 2017

IV506 March 2017 PDF magazine available to download

This interview – republished from Jacobin magazine where it appeared just before International Women’s Day – retraces the history of an important factor in the new emerging women’s movement today.

Colombia’s peace accord serves capitalist interests, but may also open new space for the grassroots left. In November 2016 the Colombian Congress approved a peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, potentially ending a 50-year armed conflict that has killed at least 220,000 people — 82% civilians — and displaced almost seven million.

To say that France is experiencing a regime crisis is a euphemism. Every day, there emerges a new element of a political crisis which has shaken the two pillars of French political life for more than forty years: the Socialist Party (PS) and Les Républicains (LR); the party that comes from the Gaullist tradition. Now a "surprise" election of Marine Le Pen in the next presidential election cannot be ruled out. This political and institutional crisis is also the consequence of a social crisis in which political polarization is taking place; unfortunately, this is happening mainly towards the right and the far right.

Hundreds of thousands took part in demonstrations in 19 state capitals and other cities around the country. There were partial stoppages in at least 28 sectors, with workers in education and public transport, from both the private and state sectors, taking the lead. There were also occupations of ministries, social security offices and other public buildings, and some roads were blocked too. Wednesday, 15 March, was a day of struggle, demonstrations and stoppages on a scale that Brazil hasn’t seen for a long time. It showed how strong is the desire and the ability to struggle, among very diverse sectors of the working population and the oppressed, against the pension reform (and other reforms that attack workers’ rights) being pushed by President Michel Temer, his finance minister, Henrique Meirelles, and the Congress they control.

For the last several months in Turkey, the party-state’s agenda has been dominated by two interconnected operations: consolidation of power and elimination of opposition. The former will culminate in the constitutional referendum of April 16 this year, which will, if successful, transform Turkey from a parliamentary into a presidential republic, further strengthening Erdogan’s personal rule and making it nearly impossible to electorally challenge AKP hegemony in the foreseeable future.

Morocco is increasingly subject to the imperialist policies of the European Union and the USA and their world institutions such as the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). It is committed to an overall restructuring of its economy to the benefit of the multinationals and local big capital dominated by the royal holding.

“Trump’s America,” wrote a leading African-American journalist, Charles Blow, “is not America: not today’s or tomorrow’s, but yesterday’s. Trump’s America is brutal, perverse, regressive, insular and afraid. There is no hope in it; there is no light in it. It is a vast expanse of darkness and desolation.” (The New York Times, January 30, 2017)

As expected, the Dutch elections of 15 March showed a shift to the right – but in a somewhat different way than foreseen. The fear that the far-right PVV (Partij voor de Vrijheid, Party for Freedom) of Geert Wilders would become the largest party did not become reality. Wilders won 5 more seats, growing from 15 to 20 out of 150 seats. The right-wing VVD (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie, People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) of incumbent prime-minister Mark Rutte lost 8 seats but with 33 seats remained the largest party.

The International Committee of the Fourth International met in mid-February. It continued the discussion on the preparatory texts for the next World Congress. The text below is based on the introductory report to the first of these documents, dealing with the transformations of the geopolitical situation. It focused on the question: what are the implications of Donald Trump’s accession to the US presidency?