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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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  • Debt crisis

    The Left against Debt-tatorship

    13 April 2012, by Françisco Louçã

    The debate on the left over how to respond to the debt crisis is fundamental for defining socialist policies. That is what this text is about. In the first part, I look at the crisis of the euro. I will argue, as many others have, that this crisis is structural and permanent, contrary to the claims of both social democracy and the right. In the second part, I look at the two options that have been put forward as alternatives to the strategy of left-wing europeanism : first the nationalist exit strategy and second the leap towards a European State. I aim to show that both these alternatives have three problems: they are profoundly contradictory, they depend on concealing their real economic and social effects, and they ignore the balance of forces in which choices have to be made. In the third part, I take a fresh look at left-wing europeanism and seek to show that an economic alternative demands a strategy of class struggle. For that, we need to go back to basics.

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  • Australia

    Australian imperialism and the rise of China

    6 April 2012, by Tom Bramble

    The rise of China has been of enormous significance for the Australian capitalist class. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Ross Gittins outlines three major reasons why the East Asian giant now matters for Australian capitalism. First is its sheer size. With a population of 1.35 billion, it has 20 per cent of the world’s population and is 11 times larger than Australia’s second largest trading partner, Japan. Second, the Chinese economy has grown by 10 per cent a year for three decades, roughly doubling in size every eight years.

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  • Global Justice

    Occupy America

    18 March 2012, by Cinzia Arruzza

    Movements always arrive unexpectedly. And those who have worked hardest in previous years and months to push towards an escalation of struggles and mobilizations are usually the most surprised by a movement’s arrival. In spite of the many surprises — Who would have imagined that the occupation of Tahrir Square was possible? Who would have imagined the Spanish acampadas? — Leftist activists tend to insist in thinking that movements and the specific forms the movements take can be predicted. The reality is that one can predict that there will be a struggle, for class conflict is inscribed in the capitalist relations of production. But when, where, and which form this struggle will take is impossible to predict. The impossibility of predicting the specific constellation in which those who are below decide that the situation is simply not acceptable any longer does not mean that movements explode like lightening in the sky.

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  • South Africa

    Uneven and combined Marxism’ within South Africa’s urban social movements

    2 March 2012, by Ashwin Desai, Patrick Bond, Trevor Nwagne

    The political dynamics of contemporary South Africa are rife with contradiction. On one hand, it is among the most consistently contentious places on earth, with insurgent communities capable of mounting disruptive protest on a nearly constant basis, rooted in the poor areas of the half-dozen major cities as well as neglected and multiply-oppressed black residential areas of declining towns. On the other hand, even the best-known contemporary South African social movements, for all their sound, lack a certain measure of fury.

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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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