International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

• USA

  Trump Takes Food from the Poor Poor during Budget Crisis

  3 November, by Dan La Botz

  President Donald Trump has taken advantage of the current budget crisis, which has lasted more than a month, shutting down the federal government, to stop funding food programs that affect tens of million. Trump said the shutdown provided an opportunity to close “Democrat programs that we want to close up or we never wanted to happen.” By “Democrat programs” he means social welfare programs that provide food and education to low-income people.

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• Indonesia

  “We Are The Working Class”?: Indonesia’s Labour Party and the Limits of Reformist Politics

  2 November, by Mark Johnson

  When more than 50 Indonesian labour unions gathered in Jakarta on 5 October 2021 to establish the Partai Buruh (Labour Party), it appeared to mark a historic moment: workers organising their own political vehicle to challenge an oligarchic system that had stripped away their rights. Yet from its inception, the party embodied a contradiction. Led by union bureaucrats with histories of elite collaboration, the Labour Party promised working-class independence whilst its president courted the very politicians who had passed anti-worker legislation. It claimed to represent the marginalised whilst maintaining "deafening silence" on human rights abuses and democratic backsliding.

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• Venezuela

  Venezuela’s authoritarian turn and the repression of its Left

  1 November, by Edgardo Lander

  Since Venezuela’s disputed 2024 elections, Nicolás Maduro’s government has escalated its authoritarian turn. More than 2,000 people were detained in the days following the vote, and targeted persecution has widened to include journalists, trade unionists, academics, and human rights defenders. Human rights activist Marta Lía Grajales was disappeared for two days after denouncing the brutal beating of mothers demanding freedom for their imprisoned children. María Alejandra Díaz, a Chavista lawyer and former Constituent Assembly member, was stripped of her license and harassed after calling for transparency in the vote count. These cases illustrate a broader strategy of intimidation and criminalization.

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• Serbia

  The streets against the regime in Serbia: one year of mobilization in review

  31 October, by Gaëlle Guehennec

  For a year now, young people in Serbia have been continuing their fight for a democratic society in the face of Aleksandar Vučić’s authoritarian regime. On both sides of Serbia, student marches are criss-crossing the country in the direction of Novi Sad to commemorate the collapse of the railway station, responsible for the deaths of 16 people on 1 November 2024. This tragic event triggered a political protest on an unprecedented scale.

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• Ukraine

  Bruised but determined, the Ukrainian people fight on

  30 October, by Dominique

  While diplomatic manoeuvres take centre stage, the Ukrainian people, in an increasingly difficult context, continue to resist, including in the occupied zones.

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...and the rest of the current issue

• Madagascar

  After Rajoelina’s regime collapses - desire for a radical break

• Brazil

  Oil Speaks Loudest: Environmental backsliding and the limits of Brazil’s energy transition

• USA

  The United States Prepares for War on Venezuela

• Ireland

  Catherine Connolly wins: An historic victory for the left in Ireland

• Argentina

  Will Trump’s bail-out be enough for Milei?

Recently posted Features

• Part 9 of the Series: Centenary of the Russian Revolution and the Repudiation of Debt

  The Soviet counter-attack: the Treaty of Rapallo, 1922

  7 October 2017, by Éric Toussaint

  The London report presented in the previous chapter was such a deliberate provocation on the part of Western powers that the Soviet delegation immediately got in touch with the German delegation, which Paris and London had somehow prevented from fully attending the Genoa Conference. France and Britain were hoping that they could coax the Soviet Russians into accepting the conditions mentioned above or, at least some of them, to strengthen their position when negotiating with Germany afterwards. The Russian issue clearly was a priority.

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• Part 5 of the Series: Centenary of the Russian Revolution and the Repudiation of Debt

  The French press in the pay of the Tsar

  6 October 2017, by Éric Toussaint

  With the overthrow of Tsarism in February 1917 and the seizing of power by the Bolsheviks and their Socialist Revolutionary allies in October, numerous previously confidential documents were made public (see further on). This allowed Boris Souvarine, a Franco-Russian communist activist to consult Russian imperial archives. He discovered a vast organisation of complicity with the French press that pre-dated the First World War, aimed at promoting Tsarist bond issues to French investors. This affair, in which influential people were corrupted and became accomplices, was denounced by the communist daily L’Humanité in a series of daily articles entitled ’The abominable venality of the French press’ that appeared over a period of several months during 1923 and 1924.

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• Part 4 of the series: Centenary of the Russian Revolution and the Repudiation of Debt

  The Russian Revolution, Peoples’ Right to Self-determination, and Debt Repudiation

  6 October 2017, by Éric Toussaint

  The Versailles Treaty was eventually signed on 28 June 1919 without Soviet Russia being involved. Even so, this treaty cancelled the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Under Article 116 of the Versailles Treaty, Russia could claim compensation from Germany;yet, consistent with its demand for peace without any annexation or any claim for compensation, it did not do so. What mattered most to Soviet Russia was that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk should be cancelled and the territories that Germany had annexed in March 1918 be given back to the peoples to whom they had belonged (the Baltic, Polish, Ukrainian and Russian peoples), in accordance with the principle of peoples’ right to self-determination upheld by the new Soviet government.

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• Part 3 of the Series: Centenary of the Russian Revolution and the Repudiation of Debt

  The Russian Revolution, Debt Repudiation, War and Peace

  6 October 2017, by Éric Toussaint

  In early January 1918, the Soviet government suspended payment on foreign debt, and in early February 1918 it decreed that all Tsarist debts were repudiated as were those contracted to continue the war by the provisional government between February and November 1917. At the same time, it decided that all assets of foreign capitalists in Russia would be confiscated and returned to the national heritage. In repudiating these debts, the Soviet government was implementing a decision made in 1905 by the soviet (people’s council) of Petrograd (St Petersburg) and the various parties that supported it. This triggered a wave of unanimous protest from the capitals of the major allied powers.

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