International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

• USA
  

  Progressives Strategic Failure: A Warning

  12 July, by Dan La Botz

  Democratic Party candidates are perceived by many voters as part of the system, part of the establishment, which indeed most are. The most common profession of Democratic congressional representatives and senators is law. Most don’t seem to share the common experiences of working class and lower middle-class people, because in fact they don’t. Lawyers’ average incomes range between $150,000 and $250,000, while the median income for American workers is $45,000 to $64,000,

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• Germany
  

  Forcing Refugees To Return to Syria is a Bad Idea

  11 July, by Joseph Daher

  “Not only are the conditions for a safe and dignified return to Syria not given. Without economic recovery and the reconstruction of critical state infrastructure a mass return of refugees to Syria would only worsen socio-economic conditions within the country and threaten large sectors of society dependent on remittances to survive.”

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• Palestine
  

  Israel targets and kills children

  10 July, by Édouard Soulier

  Two damning reports show that, in both Gaza and the West Bank, Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinian children.

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• G7 summit
  

  The G7: the imperialist order under Trump’s leadership

  9 July, by William Donaura

  Held in the shadow of Donald Trump, the G7 summit served above all to confirm the alignment of Western powers with US strategic and energy interests. Behind the declarations of principle, this summit points to strengthened imperialist cooperation, still built on the backs of the people.

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• Kenya
  

  Resisting “green capitalism” in Kenya

  8 July, by Paul Martial

  “Carbon credits enable multinationals to offset their carbon dioxide emissions by funding environmental projects. In Kenya, the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) specialises in this type of activity. It manages ‘conservancies’, i.e. areas set aside for this purpose.”

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...and the rest of the current issue

• Ecosocialism

  Many Fronts, One Struggle: A Report on the 7th International Ecosocialist Encounters

• USA

  Trump Campaigns on Anti-Communism as Left Opponents Are Indicted

• Venezuela

  215 years after Venezuela’s Declaration of Independence: Long live the republic

• Middle East

  The framework agreement Lebanon-Israel, a capitulation to multiple threats

• Colombia

  Colombia: in the eye of the storm

Recently posted Features

• Series : Bretton Woods, the World Bank and the IMF: 70th anniversary (Part 13)

  South Korea : the miracle unmasked

  4 December 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  The supposed South Korean success story has been achieved thanks to policies that run contrary to the economic model advanced by the World Bank. Far from being a virtuous accumulation of wealth through the advantages of free-market forces, the economic development of South Korea came about by "a brutal primitive accumulation achieved by the most coercive methods, in order to produce virtue by force" (J-P Peemans). Korea has obtained its economic results under the yoke of a very repressive regime that had the support of the United States in the framework of its containment of the so called "socialist" regimes. South Korea has adopted a production-driven economic system that has little respect for the environment. The South Korean example is not to be recommended, nor is it repeatable, but it deserves to be analysed.

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• Sexuality and capitalism: The Italian Renaissance

  3 December 2014, by Colin Wilson

  Revolutionary struggles against capitalism have raised, time and again, the issue of sexual liberation. Right at the start of capitalism, the English revolution of the 1640s and 1650s involved what historian Christopher Hill has called a “sexual revolution” against the old order. The more radical forces included “ranters” such as Lawrence Clarkson, who argued that “What act soever is done by thee in light and love is light and lovely, though it be that act called adultery.” [1]1 The “utopian socialists” of the early nineteenth century also challenged accepted ideas about sexuality.

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• Bensaïd on Lenin

  “Leaps Leaps Leaps”: Lenin and politics

  24 November 2014, by Daniel Bensaïd

  Hannah Arendt was worried that politics might disappear completely from the world. The century had seen such disasters that the question of whether ’politics still has any meaning at all’ had become unavoidable”. The issues at stake in these fears were eminently practical: ’The lack of meaning in which the whole of politics has ended up is confirmed by the dead end into which specific political questions are flocking.’

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• Series : Bretton Woods, the World Bank and the IMF: 70th anniversary (Part 12)

  Theoretical lies of the World Bank

  24 November 2014, by Éric Toussaint

  The World Bank claims that, in order to progress, the Developing Countries [2] should rely on external borrowing and attract foreign investments. The main aim of thus running up debt is to buy basic equipment and consumer goods from the highly industrialised countries. The facts show that day after day, for decades now, the idea has been failing to bring about progress. The models which have influenced the Bank’s vision can only result in making the developing countries heavily dependent on an influx of external capital, particularly in the form of loans, which create the illusion of a certain level of self-sustained development. The lenders of public money (the governments of the industrialised countries and especially the World Bank) see loans as a powerful means of control over indebted countries. Thus the Bank’s actions should not be seen as a succession of errors or bad management. On the contrary, they are a deliberate part of a coherent, carefully thought-out, theoretical plan, taught with great application in most universities. It is distilled in hundreds of books on development economics. The World Bank has produced its own ideology of development. When facts undermine the theory, the Bank does not question the theory. Rather, it seeks to twist the facts in order to protect the dogma.

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