International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Marx's anti-colonialism, new sub-imperialisms and consistent internationalism in a bipolar world

Federico Fuentes, Kevin B Anderson — 2024-09-11T10:04:42Z

Kevin B Anderson is a Marxist humanist and Professor of Sociology, Political Science and Feminist studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author and editor of various works, including the forthcoming book The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism and A Political Sociology of Twenty-First Century Revolutions and Resistances: From the Arab World and Iran to Ukraine, Africa, and France (2024). In this interview with Federico Fuentes for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Anderson discusses Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin's writings on colonialism and imperialism, why the world is becoming more bipolar (rather than multipolar), and the need for a positive and consistent anti-imperialism.

- Features / Marxism, Imperialism

Notes on the Black Lives Matter Uprising in Historical and Global Context

Kevin B Anderson — 2020-06-19T08:02:30Z

This spring, as some countries began to reopen after months of COVID-19 lockdowns, youthful rebellions broke out inside the two most powerful states in the world, the USA and China. The Black youth of Minneapolis, their allies, and countless others across the USA expressed their anger on the streets over yet another police murder, which was one too many. During the same days, the youth of Hong Kong renewed their protests against new anti-democratic moves by the Chinese government. The US protests, which grew into a massive nationwide Black Lives Matter uprising, also had a major international impact. In both cases, the USA and China, the youth did not flinch in the face of brutal police repression, inspiring their elders and many others around the world. These youth face a world of mass unemployment, precipitous economic inequality, and growing racial oppression fueled by right-wing populism, all of it worsened by COVID-19 and the economic meltdown.

- IV545 - June 2020 / United States (USA), China, Hong Kong, Anti-racism and Islamophobia, Covid-19 Pandemic

The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising

Kevin B Anderson — 2014-09-08T20:50:20Z

Up to now, we cannot agree even on how to name the explosion of popular movements in the Arab world from 2011-13 and beyond: Arab Spring, Arab revolution(s), Arab uprising(s)? Indeed, these events are too close to us, are too unfinished, and are too important in terms of their regional and global impact for any such consensus to have formed. What is clear is that these were political revolutions in some cases and that they swept across an entire region, from Morocco to Iraq. Their impact was also global, as seen in the Occupy movement, the Spanish indignados, Gezi Park, and elsewhere.

- Reviews section / Arab Revolutions, Reviews

Internationalism Today – Ukraine: Democratic Aspirations ?and Inter-imperialist Rivalry

Kevin B Anderson — 2014-07-29T09:13:26Z

Ukraine constitutes a test not only for democratic movements, or the unevenly matched imperialisms of the U.S./EU and Russia, but also for the global left. As with other “difficult” moments like the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, Iran 2009, or the Libyan uprising, our support for democracy and human rights has in some quarters come into conflict with the long held stance that neoliberal capitalism, led by the United States, is the main danger confronting humanity. The Maidan uprising that toppled the oligarchical kleptocracy of Viktor Yanukovich in Ukraine was not socialist or even social democratic. Moreover, Maidan was cheered on by the United States and the EU, which clearly sought advantage from it against Russia. This has led some on the left to lean toward Putin's Russia and to shy away from supporting the Maidan uprising and Ukraine, even in the face of Russia's takeover of Ukrainian territory and threats to dismember the country. This article takes a different stance. In the tradition of the anti-Stalinist left and particularly the Marxist-Humanist stream of which I have long been a part, I maintain that we can and should support progressive democratic and popular movements, even when they undermine regimes that the U.S. government opposes, and at the same time, work to oppose U.S. war and hegemony.

- IV474 - July 2014 / Ukraine