International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine
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.
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Latin America
The spectre of the far right is haunting Latin America
15 August, byFar-right movements have come to power in numerous countries across the region. They are linked to Trumpism; resisting them requires the broadest possible coordination of these resistance movements at both local and regional levels.
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Spanish State
Ceuta: the boundary of the right to have rights
14 August, byLast Friday [31 July], thousands of people swam across the border to reach the autonomous city of Ceuta. This enclave of some 83,000 people received, in a matter of 24 hours, just over 50,000 more people, exhausted from a migratory journey that has caused the deaths of at least 100 in the last two days. In summer, arrivals in Ceuta and Melilla by sea increase significantly, as sea fog hinders early detection on the coast by the Civil Guard. But no one in the government seemed to foresee a humanitarian crisis of this magnitude, with significant political repercussions that extend far beyond the usual media headlines.
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Ukraine
The Wrong Lever: Europe, Ukraine, and the Refugee Question
13 August, byEU leaders are moving towards removal of asylum rights for Ukrainian men aged 23-60, to improve conscription and functioning of essential services in the fifth year of Ukraine’s fight against Russian imperialist aggression. The Zelenskiy government asked for this change. But that does not make the policy right.
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Ukraine
In Kyiv, the street makes its voice heard
12 August, by ,A report from the mobilisations in Ukraine in July.
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Italy
The battle for the beaches in Italy
11 August, byEvery year people in Italy moan about the way the ‘spiaggia libera’ (free access beach) is becoming smaller and smaller. At the same time the private lidos, where you have to pay for a sun umbrella and a couple of loungers, defend their privatised territory with all sorts of barriers and walls to prevent people from moving across their beach. The law says that 5 metres of the foreshore has to remain open to anybody – the privateers cannot put their sun loungers right up to the water. So often they make it difficult to walk from the free beach to the paying beach.
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Recently posted Features
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Obituary
Jean-Michel Krivine (1932-2013): a militant surgeon and an internationalist
23 July 2013, byread article...Jean-Michel had a sense of humour, and his passion was to play the violin. From 1948, when he joined the French Communist Party (PCF), he conducted revolutionary choirs and continued to do so unceasingly, including during the summer universities of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR). Sometimes he lost some of his humour when singers suggested modernizing the repertoire; he remained very much attached to the traditions of the labour movement. He had courage, as evidenced by the periods he spent in the maquis in Vietnam and Thailand. He participated in major events such as the Russell Tribunal against war crimes in Vietnam. He did not grudge taking on the most obscure militant tasks: right to the end, he devoted his attention to correcting the articles published in the magazine Inprecor.
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Marxism
A Marxist Critique of Post-Marxism
9 May 2013, byread article...“Post-Marxism” has become a fashionable intellectual posture, with the triumph of neo-liberalism and the retreat of the working class. The space vacated by the reformist left [in Latin America] has in part been occupied by capitalist politicians and ideologues, technocrats and the traditional and fundamentalist churches (Pentecostals and the Vatican). In the past, this space was occupied by socialist, nationalist and populist politicians and church activists associated with the “theology of liberation”. The centre-left was very influential within the political regimes (at the top) or the less politicised popular classes (at the bottom). The vacant space of the radical left refers to the political intellectuals and politicised sectors of the trade unions and urban and rural social movements. It is among these groups that the conflict between Marxism and “post-Marxism” is most intense today.
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Syria
Sectarianism and the Assad regime in Syria
29 April 2013read article...This article was first published on the English-Arabic blog ”Syria Freedom Forever” on 4 April 2013.
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US Imperialism’s pivot to Asia
16 April 2013, byread article...In his second inaugural address, President Obama announced that after he withdraws combat troops from Afghanistan, the United States will be “ending a decade of wars.” On the very same day, the United States conducted three drone strikes in Yemen. In reality, Washington is now in a permanent state of “low-intensity” drone wars all around the world and is preparing, through what has been called the Pivot to Asia, to contain China. Obama is no pacifist. In his second term, he intends not to retreat from American imperial assertion but to strengthen it.
