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.
Cesar Chavez, who in the 1960s led the struggles of Mexican Americans for civil rights and of farmworkers for labor unions, was accused in a carefully researched New York Times article of having raped women and sexually abused girls as young as 13. Among those women was Dolores Huerta, herself a founder and leader of the union, who confirmed that he forced himself on her and fathered two of her children, secretly raised by others. Debra Rojas reported that Chavez had had intercourse with her when she was 15, which is rape under state law because she was too young to give legal consent.
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Uniting left-wing forces to counter the rise of the far right. That is the aim of the First International Anti-Fascist Conference, to be held in late March in Porto Alegre, Brazil
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In Italy, prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s government is continuing its authoritarian offensive with a reform of the judiciary that threatens the independence of the judiciary. The referendum on 22 and 23 March is a central political issue. After the “security” decree, the reform of the judiciary is another important link in the authoritarian project promoted by Meloni’s government. By changing the methods of electing members of the Supreme Council of the Judiciary (CSM), the latter threatens the independence of this body and limits its ability to act as a counter-power to the political and economic systems. The victory of the “No” vote in the referendum on 22 and 23 March is an important opportunity to destabilise Meloni’s coalition and to solidify the political and social opposition camp.
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Journalist and activist Avi Lewis is campaigning for the leadership of the NDP in the Canadian state, attracting much attention, dedication, and debate. Voting concludes on 28 March.
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The already unbearable horrors engulfing the peoples of the Middle East exploded into U.S. domestic news on March 12 with the attack in suburban Detroit at Temple Israel, the country’s largest Reform Jewish congregation.
read article...Lucien Goldmann (1913-1970) is one of the most important representatives of the humanistic and historicist current of Marxism in the twentieth century. His works of philosophy and sociology of culture – including “The Hidden God” (1955), an innovative study of the tragic world vision in Pascal and Racine – are strongly marked by the influence of the Lukacs of “History and Class Consciousness” and are radically opposed to positivist or structuralist readings of Marxism. A Romanian Jew who had lived in France since the 1930s, Goldmann identified with a self-managed socialism, critical of both social-democracy and Stalinism. Whereas in the United States and in Latin America his thought and work continue to generate a very keen interest, a strange forgetfulness seems to have affected him in France. [1] It is true that this is a sociology in total rupture with the dominant tradition of French social science, stretching from Auguste Comte to Claude Lévi-Strauss and Louis Althusser, via Emile Durkheim. But, on the other hand, through his reinterpretation of Pascal, he is nonetheless the heir of a dissenting current of French modern culture.
Yolanda (Haiyan by its international name), the strongest typhoon touching land ever registered, devastated the center of the Philippine archipelago in November 2013 [2]. In July 2016, two years and eight months after, when I landed on Tacloban airport, life had returned to normal. The churches, all new, were dominating — they were rebuilt in priority, before the hospitals, even if it were possible to receive communion under a canopy, while an operating room could prove very useful to a surgeon. Carcasses of buildings that have not yet been rebuilt still stand and there is what one does not see: these “internal refugees”, these “displaced persons”, still without homes, pushed away in the peripheral areas or recently driven to the mountainside.
The starting point of this study is a paradox: among social, institutional and political actors, peasant and family farming are gradually becoming established as legitimate and credible alternatives to an agro-productivist model that has ’run out of steam’. [3] They address both environmental and food-related challenges, are sustainable and successful in agro-economic terms, contribute to social change and operate on a human scale. This is one side of the coin.
Behind the humanitarian disaster of the Syrian civil war is a political crisis the Left urgently needs to understand.
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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