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.
The situation in Gaza is terrible, with massacres during the distribution of food aid, starvation imposed by Israel and the systematic destruction of the region. Impunity remains total, and those who speak out against this genocide are silenced.
read article...Trump’s tariffs bullied the whole world. Both Canada and China reacted strongly against them, most countries did not. This garnered a lot of international support for Beijing,. A global poll conducted by Morning Consult showed that in January last year, the U.S. in various countries scored more than 20 points while China scored negatively. However, by the end of May this year, after Trump’s “Liberation Day”, the perceptions reversed, with the U.S. at -1.5 and China at +8.8. Many see this as a reflection of people’s sympathy with China’s resistance to Trump. This comes with a heavy price, however. China’s exports have already slowed down since early 2025, and in May it plunged 34.5% year-on-year.
read article...Since Sunday night, a veritable game of cat and mouse has been played out on the streets of Belgrade between citizens and the police. The principle is simple and highly effective: erect improvised barricades, block a street or intersection, wait for the police to arrive, then disperse peacefully before starting again further on. In this ballet of non-violent resistance, each withdrawal is a new opening. While the police dismantle the roadblocks, sometimes violently, others form elsewhere. And this elusive movement is spreading throughout the country.
read article...“Everything is moving toward the eventual establishment of a new political regime in the country. Massive and sustained popular mobilisation is what can put a stop to this reactionary process, but this must not sideline the national midterm elections next October, which are also a decisive arena for struggle.”
read article...In Madagascar, parliamentary bills are kept secret until they are passed. Neither citizens nor MPs can debate texts that are sometimes crucial to the life of the country. In the face of this authoritarian closure, civil society organizations are denouncing an anti-democratic drift orchestrated by Rajoelina’s government.
read article...The fast-reviving South African left is urgently coming to grips with the most acute national crises of structure and agency the country has experienced since the historic freeing of Nelson Mandela in February 1990 and the shift of the entire body politic in favor of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). At that time, the ANC soon took control of the country’s progressive forces, winning mass social hegemony, vanquishing other liberation tendencies (Pan-Africanism and Black Consciousness), and dissolving the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front (UDF) that civil society activists founded a decade earlier. It then negotiated the first democratic election, which it won handily in April 1994 under Nelson Mandela’s leadership. Afrikaner state managers and corporate titans, as well as multilateral agencies and other forces of imperialism, demanded from the ANC an elite transition that opened both the macro- and microeconomies. Property rights were granted maximum protection, even though whites had acquired the bulk of those through what is widely termed a crime against humanity: apartheid.
When I first started writing this series of remarks in Italian (“Riflessioni degeneri”), subsequently collected into a single piece for the English version Remarks on Gender, my aim was twofold. The first was to make a complex debate – one that has unfolded over the course of several decades – accessible to a public of activists and people interested in gender, race, and class politics. The second was to contribute toward reopening this crucial debate about how we should conceptualize the structural relationship between gender oppression and capitalism.
Feminist theorists today are increasingly returning to the insight that capitalism must constitute the critical frame for understanding contemporary forms of gender oppression. Investigating the relationship between feminism and capitalism raises a host of difficult questions, however, which Cinzia Arruzza faces head on in her lucid essay Remarks on Gender. She gives an illuminative roadmap of the terrain in which this issue was debated in the 1970s and 1980s by laying out three different theses on how capitalism and gender oppression are related: dual or triple systems theory, indifferent capitalism, and the unitary thesis. She begins by assessing carefully the problems of the first two positions and concludes by defending the third, the unitary thesis: in capitalist societies, a patriarchal system that would be autonomous and distinct from capitalism no longer exists. Instead of treating gender and sexual oppression as separate forms of domination, a unitary Marxist-feminist theory must incorporate them in the total framework of capitalist accumulation.
It is not an easy task to reconstruct succinctly the main problematics that have traversed Marxist feminism in the last 40 years, without risking simplifications or serious omissions, or without producing a mere summary that avoids critically engaging with the subjects that it raises. And yet, I believe Arruzza’s text “Remarks on Gender” accomplishes the task very well: her reconstruction of the key theses on the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism proposed by different currents within socialist and Marxist feminism from the 1970s onwards is not only lucid and informative, but also extremely clear and accessible. Furthermore, her partisan critique of the different positions on the table, alongside an indication of the most promising questions for debate, give us – as feminists who locate ourselves in the Marxist tradition(s) – a great opportunity to begin and/or deepen a much needed discussion and exchange. A new generation of Marxist feminists has emerged in the last years; it begins to question, re-articulate, expand and criticise the theorizations and disputes it has inherited from previous generations.
While the skies over the Middle East are once again ablaze with smoke and flames, and the media are inundated with talk of ‘Israeli precision strikes’ and the ‘promise of token vengeance of the Islamic Republic’, what is once again left out is the fate of those who do not take decisions in command rooms or hide in underground bunkers.
- read article...The Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, a member of the International Trade Union Solidarity and Struggle Network, is transmitting this text, signed with other independent organisations in Iran:
- read article...Radical Socialist endorses the statement of the Fourth International issued on 13th June on the current Israeli war of aggression against Iran. Hence, we are reproducing the statement below. At the same time, we want our readers, especially in India, to note strongly certain concerns, some briefly mentioned in the FI statement, others specific to the Indian context.
- read article...UPDATE - Paul has been released and passport returned.
People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy among a group detained by Egyptian authorities while travelling to Rafah. Contact embassy now.
“In response to the resistance of the Latinx-American community to this ICE terrorism, the Trump government has mobilized the California National Guard against the protesters, while Peter Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, has threatened to call in the Marines.”
- read article...International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.
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