International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Call for donations to ESSF's Asia 2026 Solidarity Fund - A time of youth revolts, people's power, and ecosocialist alternatives

ESSF, Mark Johnson , Pierre Rousset — 2025-12-17T16:36:19Z

“We face a deadly spiral of combined crises (the 'polycrisis'), to which the established political and economic powers are offering no response. Poverty and widespread insecurity continue to spread. However, in recent months, in the face of humanitarian disasters, protest movements have taken on a new dimension, with impressive demonstrations and uprisings. Asia is at the heart of these developments, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines, where our partners are based.”

- News from around the world / Asia

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

Mark Johnson — 2025-11-02T09:47:01Z

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.

- IVP610 - November 2025 / Indonesia, Trade unions/workplace organizing

In this hour of great danger, in solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance, let's rebuild the international anti-war movement

Mark Johnson , Pierre Rousset — 2022-03-25T12:04:59Z

We present below our understanding of the tasks facing the Western left in particular. We hope to contribute to the debate and the construction of the peace movement, solidarity with the Ukrainian left and social movements, refugee support and anti-racism, and the strengthening of alternatives to imperialism in the west and the east of the European subcontinent.

- 2022 - Ukraine / Ukraine, War drive/Anti-war movements, Ukraine debate

Slovakia: panic and discipline at the edge of the EU

Mark Johnson — 2020-04-18T17:05:32Z

With only 11 deaths for 5.45 million inhabitants, and only 10 Covid-19 victims in intensive care, Slovakia has been much more successful than West European countries in containing the pandemic. Citizens ask themselves how long a landlocked country can resist the pandemic. Economically, the country is vulnerable. The export-oriented economy is heading into deep recession, including the auto industry that dominates industrial production. Shops are closed except for food and pharmacies. Schools won't reopen until September. Slovaks working in Western Europe are flocking home jobless.

- IV543 - April 2020 / Slovakia, Covid-19 Pandemic

Update: ESSF/MiHANDs emergency appeal: earthquakes in Mindanao (Philippines)

Mark Johnson — 2019-11-06T11:10:05Z

Schools, clinics and homes in the provinces of North Cotabato, Sarangani and Davao have been destroyed or damaged by a series of earthquakes, aftershocks and flooding. People on highways are begging for help and food from passers-by. Heavy rain is complicating movement of people and relief supplies.

- IV538 - November 2019 / Philippines, Solidarity after disasters

Wave of solidarity forces regime to retreat on cyclone aid

Mark Johnson — 2008-05-22T15:02:58Z

Media reports have neglected the most important source of aid to victims
of cyclone Nargis - spontaneous donations from their fellow citizens.

- IV400 - May 2008 / Ecology and the Environment, Solidarity after disasters , Burma

Aid and Hypocrisy

Mark Johnson — 2008-05-09T17:31:26Z

Response to the tropical cyclone Nargis, which hit Myanmar on 3 May 2008
has been hijacked by vested interests on all sides, leaving millions of
Asia's poorest people without any effective aid.

- IV400 - May 2008 / Solidarity after disasters , Burma

The Czech communists' road to Europe

Mark Johnson — 2004-10-01T00:00:00Z

The Czech Communist Party will bring to the European parliament its peculiar mix of progressive social and economic policies and an unattractive attachment to authoritarian and nationalist sentiments. But the decline of anti-Communism at home, and exposure to the libertarian currents of the Western left are likely to transform the party into a modern anti-capitalist force.

- IV360/1 - Autumn 2004 / Czech Republic

Apathy and confusion

Mark Johnson — 2004-10-01T00:00:00Z

Less than one in five Slovaks participated in the European Parliament elections in June. A succession of demagogic and dishonest governments have created a culture of apathy and lack of interest, where neither social democratic nor anti-capitalist currents seem able to take root.

- IV360/1 - Autumn 2004 / Slovakia