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.
As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran goes into its third week, the people of the United States are still figuring out what they think about the conflict. Since the war began, most polls show a majority of Americans disapprove of the war, something unseen in modern American history. A majority of Americans approved of World War II, the Korean War, and initially of the Vietnam War. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2000—the American government, anxious for revenge—was backed by huge majorities when it made war on Afghanistan in 2001. When in 2003 the George W. Bush administration wanted to make war on Iraq, it fabricated false evidence that Saddam Hussein had nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction, and, bamboozled by Bush, nearly three-quarters of the American people supported the war.
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The first round of the French local elections will take place on Sunday 15 March, the second on 22 March. There is a real possibility that the “traditional” right, which is increasingly radicalizing in a far right direction, will win in Paris, under Socialist Party government since 1995, and that the Rassemblement National could win in France’s second, and very multi-racial, city, Marseilles.
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“This landmark ruling highlights the links between institutional politics, militias and economic interests in Rio de Janeiro.”
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The upcoming mass No Kings! demonstrations planned for March 28 and ambitious plans for May Day mobilizations point to the growing convergence of anti-Trump forces. This convergence takes place against the backdrop of Trumps’ destructive assault on democratic rights in the US and the sovereignty of nations abroad, most recently his reckless aerial attack on Iran, and plummeting approval ratings in the polls.
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“"Either their profits or our lives": the slogan is everywhere.”
read article...In 1968, Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime obliterated the Indonesian Communist Party’s efforts to rebuild after the 1965 massacre.
How can we make the decade 1965-1975 come alive again, how can we highlight what was at stake in the world and in France, its scope, our commitment, our activist universe? Through analysis certainly, but reinforced by lived experience, which is necessarily more personal. This is a delicate exercise, with a constant coming and going between general considerations, the transmission of a political history that is sometimes specific (that of my political current) and its individual, daily implications. To this end, I am mobilizing my own memories - and I am wary of memory and especially of mine, which I know is incomplete. I am therefore appealling for a confrontation of recollections (or archives) that could lead me to correct or qualify some of my remarks.
In 2008, in an interview with Francis Sitel for the journal Critique communiste (No. 188) Daniel Bensaïd looked back over the strategic debates which took place in May 1968, and especially in its immediate aftermath, among the militants of what became in 1969 the Communist League. Between enthusiasm for the rise of struggles and fear of being swept away by the ebb tide of the mobilizations, between predictions about the coming revolution and reformist dead ends, it was the question of organization, of the political party, that was posed at that time in new terms for a far left that was overwhelmingly composed of students. Contretemps
The dramatic events in Russia and Ukraine over the past two years have begun a new phase in the struggle over the legacy of communism in the post-Soviet space. As the concrete features of “real socialism” become blurred and vanish, those necessary for the production of ideology become ever more sharply defined. It’s often argued that communism, buried a quarter of a century ago as living practice, has since acquired an afterlife in the form of a restless corpse, a remnant, a regurgitated survivor from the past, blighting the lives of new generations.
The first round of the local elections took place against a backdrop of widespread creeping fascism in France and comes after a brutal offensive by the far right, during which the traditional ‘Republican’ right has decisively broken from much of its historical framework and values.
- read article...The majority of the party votes to maintain its autonomy and a commitment to social change.
- read article...After 59 days of unjust imprisonment, Lyes Touati has finally been acquitted - 59 days of waiting, mobilization, solidarity and determination.
- 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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