International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

The first limits of the democratic government in Poland

Jan Malewski — 2023-12-23T22:30:59Z

Although the conservative right has made progress in most recent elections, the Polish elections of 15 October 2023, with a historic turnout (78%), on the contrary put the conservative government in a minority. What's more, only 40% of voters took part in the racist migration referendums called at the same time, rendering their results invalid.

- IV587 - December 2023 / Poland

At stake in the Polish elections: preserving democracy

Jan Malewski — 2023-10-15T19:07:00Z

Two weeks before the parliamentary elections, between 600,000 and one million people opposed to the populist conservative government of the Law and Justice party (PiS) demonstrated in Warsaw on 1 October.

- IV585 - October 2023 / Poland

“Not one more!” - mass protests in Poland

Jan Malewski — 2021-11-11T03:57:31Z

“The fundamentalist right wing government has decided to act as if nothing had happened. “People die, it's biology... unfortunately women sometimes die during childbirth,” the new head of programming of the official radio dared to say.”

- IV562 - November 2021 / Poland, Women, Abortion and reproductive rights

“Health care is dying, either you finish it or you save it”

Jan Malewski — 2021-09-18T08:00:27Z

“In order to confront this situation, health care workers in Poland have joined together in the struggle.”

- IV560 - September 2021 / Poland, Trade unions/workplace organizing, Public services

Proposal for a programmatic debate

Jan Malewski — 2020-07-30T09:56:10Z

In 2019 the IC of the Fourth International discussed a “Proposal for a programmatic debate”. Following this it decided to pursue in a broad and open way the discussion on our conception of a new society. In this light it requested three of its commissions that alongside organizing ongoing activity in the existing social movements develop our thinking on the type of society that we want. These three commissions, on Ecology, LGBTIQ questions and women's oppression and feminism, each wrote a short contribution to develop the discussion. We publish these three contributions, along with the original document below, in the spirit of promoting such a discussion which is more than ever necessary today. These contributions were of course written before the Covid-19 pandemic.

- IC 2020 / Marxism, Fourth International, IC 2019, IC 2020

Building A Global Democratic Movement to Counter Authoritarianism

Jan Malewski — 2019-01-11T15:13:14Z

Bernie Sanders has so far received little attention for his internationalist positions, even though he spoke out and voted against the war in Iraq, proposed a drastic reduction in US military spending, strongly criticised the coups d'état organised in Latin America by the CIA and opposed US support for the Saudi offensive in Yemen. The US left generally considers that in foreign policy he has not deviated from the consensus between Democrats and Republicans, criticizes him for his lack of involvement in the BDS movement (boycott, disinvestment, sanctions) and recalls that during the decades he has been in the Senate he has sometimes voted in favour of military intervention or spoken of the need to preserve US power. Even if in his youth he applied to be a conscientious objector during the war in Vietnam, he went to Cuba after the revolution and organized diplomatic meetings with the Sandinist revolutionaries, since he has been in the Senate his dissent in the Democratic Party has been limited to domestic political issues, with few exceptions.

It is also true that since the end of the Vietnam war, there has not been a strong left-wing internationalist current in the United States and that many of those who, on the margins, within the radical left, identify as such, are at the same time bogged down in an alignment with so-called "socialist states" or at least with the "enemies" of American imperialism. Bernie Sanders was therefore not isolated by not promoting internationalist solidarity.

Since his campaign for the Democratic primaries two years ago - during which he also abstained taking any notable internationalist positions - and with the resurgence of a new left, however, the construction of mass internationalism in the United States seems necessary. Especially since Donald Trump is taking a caricatural chauvinism forward at a great rate. And that on a global scale the dangerous resident of the White House serves as an example for the resurgence of state authoritarianism and a kind of neo-fascism. Bolsonaro's victory in Brazil is only the most recent example of this danger.

It was precisely in the aftermath of the neo-fascist candidate's success in the first round of the Brazilian presidential election that Bernie Sanders delivered a speech in Washington calling for "building a global democratic movement against authoritarianism". He picked up and built on what he wrote on 13 September 2018 in an editorial published by the Guardian, where he stated that "It should be clear by now that Donald Trump and the rightwing movement that supports him is not a phenomenon unique to the United States," and that "All around the world, in Europe, in Russia, in the Middle East, in Asia and elsewhere we are seeing movements led by demagogues who exploit people's fears, prejudices and grievances to achieve and hold on to power."

Sanders' proposal to the global left deserves to be taken seriously. Today, internationalism is not on the rise and the fact that a world-renowned personality is calling for the reconstruction of bonds of solidarity to fight authoritarianism together can have an impact. Faced with the multiplication of authoritarian regimes and the rise of extreme right-wing movements, the resurgence of an internationalist movement is the task of the moment. As Bernie Sanders says in his speech "We need a movement that unites people all over the world who don't just seek to return to a romanticized past, a past that did not work for so many, but who strive for something better,"; that it is not enough to defend what has been achieved but that we must "reconceptualize a genuinely progressive global order based on human solidarity," and "reach out to those in every corner of the world who share these values, and who are fighting for a better world." It is a good basis for opening the discussion on how to build an international movement. Jan Malewski

- Features / United States (USA), World

On the contribution of the outstanding Hungarian Marxist philosopher István Mészáros (1930-2017) to critical thinking

Jan Malewski — 2018-01-16T13:32:36Z

István Mészáros, an outstanding Hungarian Marxist philosopher, died on October 1st 2017 in London. Born in Budapest in 1930 into a working-class family, brought up by his mother, he began working in industry at the age of twelve. He actually lied about his age, claiming to be sixteen, in order to be accepted by the factory. Thus, "as an adult", his pay was higher than that of his mother, a qualified employee of the US transnational Standard Radio Company. The considerable difference between their weekly earnings was his first and most tangible experience of the particularly severe exploitation of women by capital. This was in 1942...

- Features / Marxism, Hungary, Obituary, Features

A new political subject: self-organization

Jan Malewski — 2017-11-29T08:47:48Z

“A new actor is emerging as a promoter of mobilizations supporting independence movements, but leading more direct actions, such as the occupations of public spaces and blockades of communications. [1] So the Catalan press analysed the mobilizations of thousands of “citizens” after they mounted successful the road blockades during the “national strike” of November 8, at the initiative of the Committees for Defence of the Republic (CDR). The CDRs initially appeared to ensure that the referendum of October 1 could be held, and were then called Referendum Defence Committees.

- IV514 - November 2017 / Catalonia

An analysis of the present stage of the biggest popular movement

Adrien Guilleau, Jan Malewski — 2017-04-10T10:23:50Z

What we are proposing to do here is to analyse the ongoing movement in French Guiana. This article, written on March 31st, tries to offer an initial analysis and perspectives on what is already the largest popular movement in Guiana.

An update to the article was included in its publication in Inprecor on 3 April 2017. This is published at the end of the article, as is a statement from the GRS, Antilles section of the Fourth International, issued on 27 March 2017.

- IV507 - April 2017 / French Guiana

Class "justice": Baba Jan and his comrades sentenced to 40 years in prison!

Jan Malewski — 2016-07-31T07:14:14Z

Accused without evidence of acts that he could not have committed, since he was at the time about sixty kilometres away, Baba Jan was tortured, convicted and then acquitted on appeal. He came second in the elections in 2015 while imprisoned and was tipped to win a by-election. Now our comrade, who is vice-president of the Awami Workers Party (AWP) of Pakistan and leader of the party in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, was sentenced by the Supreme Court of Appeal in this region occupied and administered by Pakistan, on June 8, 2016, to 40 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 rupees, under a special law, called "anti-terrorist." Eight other activists - Iftikhar Hussain, Aleem, Irfan Ali, Shukurullah Baig, Sarfraz, Rasheed, Musa and Sher Khan – received the same sentence.

- IV498 - July 2016 / Pakistan