International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

• Hong Kong

  Two Narratives on the Hong Kong Fire

  24 December, by Au Loong-Yu

  The 26 November 2025 Wang Fu Court fire has a lot of similarity with London’s 2017 Grenfell fire. In terms of scale, the former was much bigger – instead of just one building there were seven on fire, and instead of 72 deaths there have been 160 deaths as of now. However, the combustible materials used in renovating the outer walls were the direct cause of both.

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• Japan

  Takaichi Administration’s Two Months

  23 December, by Toshizo Omori

  While LDP-JIP coalition government has been trying to promote right-wing policies, how should the left forces fight against them?

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• Indonesia

  When past and present collide: Indonesia 1965-2025

  22 December, by Adam Novak, Pierre Rousset

  “At the time of the US escalation in Vietnam, Indonesia was the scene of one of the worst bloodbaths in modern history, committed under the auspices of Washington and London. Sixty years later, the archipelago is at the heart of youth revolts against the privileges of the oligarchy and corruption, in defence of a democracy dearly won back since 1998.”

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• USA-Venezuela

  Trump reveals the real reasons behind the war on Venezuela

  21 December, by Luís Bonilla-Molina

  Venezuela and its people are the first direct victims of the "Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine." This war, which has already been declared, is not against drug trafficking or the Maduro regime, but rather for oil and rare earth minerals, military bases, information, and misgovernment. All democratic, progressive, popular, and leftist forces must denounce and confront the US offensive against Venezuela, which in no way means defending the Maduro government.

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• Chile

  Kast: Chile’s “democratic route” back to Pinochetism

  20 December, by Karina Nohales, Pablo Abufom

  With José Antonio Kast’s victory, Pinochetism returns to power through electoral means, articulating neoliberal restoration, moral authoritarianism, and anti-communism as a response to Chile’s crisis.

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...and the rest of the current issue

• Mexico

  “Generation Z” and the advance of the far right in Mexico

• Portugal

  The general strike demonstrates that struggle can open up paths for the left

• Belgium

  After three days of strike, a vast social movement with no political alternative

• USA

  The US strategy, a threat to the peoples of the world

• USA

  Starbucks Workers Continue Strike for Union Contract

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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