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.
This week sees the 50th anniversary of the Portuguese “Carnation” Revolution that erupted in 1974 and was finally tamed in 1976 with the election of a government led by Soares from the Socialist Party(SP). The moderate SP consolidated many reforms won in the previous two years but also restored the capitalist order.
read article...The controversy surrounding a historian’s attempt to give a minute’s monologue on the meaning of Italy’s National Liberation Day, 25 April.
read article...“They accused Switzerland, with evidence to back up their accusations, of failing to take care of their health and well-being in the face of increasingly worrying heatwaves, and of failing to take steps to achieve the target set for 2030 by the Paris Agreement in 2015.”
read article...“Until now, the South has been a bastion of bosses, of non-union open shops, where workers had no vote and no voice in their workplaces. If this victory leads to others, as it is expected to, it will change completely the balance of forces between the corporations and the working class in America.”
read article...In an interview with Jacobin, Leonidas Iza, president of Ecuador’s CONAIE (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador - Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador), the country’s main indigenous movement, discusses the government’s repressive policy, militarization, and the expansion of drug trafficking while criticizing neoliberal policies and examining political debates within the indigenous movement and the left. The interview was conducted by Martín Mosquera and Iain Bruce.
read article...The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content. There the phrase went beyond the content – here the content goes beyond the phrase.”
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
In a welcome sign, the recent revitalization of the socialist left, particularly the spectacular growth of Democratic Socialists of America, has revived debate about the road to socialism. Also, fortunately, the discussion, which has partially played out in the pages of Jacobin, has gone beyond a simple revisiting of the old “reform versus revolution” argument of early twentieth-century social democracy. Vivek Chibber “Our Road to Power,” Jacobin, 5 December 2017) and Eric Blanc (most recently in his debate with Charlie Post, “Which Way to Socialism,” Jacobin, 21 July 2019) have raised important problems with applying a revolutionary model from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to modern industrial countries with parliamentary systems. Blanc’s observation that “a government elected by universal suffrage has vastly more popular legitimacy than the tsarist autocracy” is particularly valid and important.
In 1941, at Hitler’s military apex, Bertolt Brecht wrote The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, wherein he reduces Hitler the politician and his lackeys to a vulgar band of bandits from 1930’s Chicago.
The Left Bloc was formed about twenty years ago in Portugal, by the fusion of forces from the anti-capitalist left and the social movement. Today, together with the Communist Party, it is the main formation of the combative left in the country. Based on the Bloc’s experience, Francisco Louçã gives an overview of the still problematic relationship between parliamentary opposition work and investment in social movements and mobilizations.
“This is the culmination of a campaign by the German government that has been going on for months to prevent any solidarity with the people of Palestine and criticism of the German government’s military and political support for Israel.”
- read article...Also published at https://freeboris.info/. Signatories who wish to be contacted by the campaign should sign on at this site
- read article...“This is a condemnation of all of us who organize politically in defense of democratic rights, equality, and freedom. The arrests of the Zaragoza 6 reflect the political decision to systematically criminalize protest, seeking to punish them to instill fear. It reinforces the political power of the police and judicial apparatuses, over and above the democratic rights won through centuries of struggle.”
- read article...In her election night statement, Mariana Mortágua emphasized that despite the turn to the right in the electoral results, the Bloco managed to resist, maintaining its mandates and with more votes than in 2022.
- 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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