International Viewpoint, the monthly English-language magazine of the Fourth International, is a window to radical alternatives world-wide, carrying reports, analysis and debates from all corners of the globe. Correspondents in over 50 countries report on popular struggles, and the debates that are shaping the left of tomorrow.
“If a solid leftist electoral front can be built while maintaining the pressure of street mobilization on a much weakened colonial capitalist regime, a true sea change is not just possible but within reach.”
read article...“Wherever one stands on Evo Morales, and despite the challenges ahead, it is clear that at least for the moment, Bolivians continue to challenge capitalism and its orthodoxies.”
read article...“Yet if the story of the defeat of fascism and of the central role played by socialism in its demise teaches us any lesson, it is that we surely have to keep trying.”
read article...Failed beer hall putsch re-enactments aside, Donald Trump will be leaving the White House on January 20 if not sooner—at least for the next four years. The focus now shifts to the post-Trump world: what can we expect from the incoming Biden administration?
read article...“Taking control of the AN from the right was vital for the Bolivarian revolution, with elections in the midst of a serious economic crisis, mainly the consequence of the blockade imposed by imperialism. ”
read article...For the second time since the turn of the century, governments in North America and Europe are intervening massively with public funds and in conjunction with central banks to bail out entire sectors of the economy and prevent a general economic collapse. The ongoing rescue operations necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic has already reached a much higher scale than the one deployed against the 2007–08 financial crisis. These operations clash with the basic tenets of neoliberalism in that they constitute a massive regulatory intervention by the state in reining back the market, whereas deregulation and market “survival of the fittest” are central to neoliberal ideology.
The semiannual French review Les Possibles, a publication of Attac France, in its most recent issue (No 23) features a number of articles on planning for the ecological and social transition. Most are addressed to the issue of socialist planning vs. capitalist markets that was prominent in the debates of 20th century socialism. The contribution by Michael Löwy puts this debate in the ecosocialist framework that has emerged in this century. My translation of it is published below.
– Richard Fidler
The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content. There the phrase went beyond the content – here the content goes beyond the phrase.”
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
In a welcome sign, the recent revitalization of the socialist left, particularly the spectacular growth of Democratic Socialists of America, has revived debate about the road to socialism. Also, fortunately, the discussion, which has partially played out in the pages of Jacobin, has gone beyond a simple revisiting of the old “reform versus revolution” argument of early twentieth-century social democracy. Vivek Chibber “Our Road to Power,” Jacobin, 5 December 2017) and Eric Blanc (most recently in his debate with Charlie Post, “Which Way to Socialism,” Jacobin, 21 July 2019) have raised important problems with applying a revolutionary model from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to modern industrial countries with parliamentary systems. Blanc’s observation that “a government elected by universal suffrage has vastly more popular legitimacy than the tsarist autocracy” is particularly valid and important.
Argentina’s Congress has legalised abortions up to the 14th week of pregnancy, a ground-breaking move for a region that has some of the world’s most restrictive termination laws.
- read article...The December issue of the South African journal Amandla! is now out.
- read article...“Today’s mobilization was incredible, like a huge awakening after months of political confinement.”
- read article...The NPA protests against the Macron government’s intention to dissolve the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF).
- read article...The current situation in Western Sahara is extremely serious and represents a qualitative leap and a historical event before which we cannot remain impassive.
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