International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

A life for the revolution - Winfried Wolf (1949-2023)

Angela Klein — 2023-06-02T22:32:25Z

“Winnie was one of the outstanding figures produced by the 68 movement. He had and continues to have an impact far beyond with completely new themes. The German left owes him much.”

- In Memoriam - Obituaries and appreciations / Germany, Obituary, Fourth International

The bill... ...at the end of the year

Angela Klein — 2023-01-15T08:25:32Z

“So far, the German government has successfully conveyed the image: Putin is to blame for inflation, but the government is helping out.”

- IV576 - January 2023 / Germany, Economy

The coalition government agreement

Angela Klein — 2022-01-02T07:14:57Z

”Trouble lurks behind every bush”: ecological transformation in the service of unlimited growth.

- IV564 - January 2022 / Germany

Beethoven: The first rocker

Angela Klein — 2020-11-30T09:22:25Z

Two hundred and fifty years after Beethoven's birth in December 1770 what is the relevance of this great composer?

- Features / Germany, Historical events and figures

No accident- On the ‘coup' in Thuringia

Angela Klein — 2020-02-12T11:49:19Z

Thomas Kemmerich knew what he did when he accepted his election as prime minister of Thuringia in the Landtag of Erfurt. He was not surprised by the result, it was rather part of his political calculation: to become prime minister with the aid of the AfD and then to form a minority government of the so-called political centre. This insane strategy could only have been successful in case of a toleration by the AfD. Such a government would have been pushed ahead by the AfD permanently tightening up its demands. A minority government formed by the bourgeois parties CDU and FDP would have been the ideal constellation for such a scenario. [This article will be updated in the light of more recent events.]

- IV541 - February 2020 / Germany

The fight for the Hambach forest: impressions of the weekend of victory

Angela Klein — 2018-10-30T08:28:40Z

"Hambi bleibt!" ("Hambi rest!" The rallying cry of the movement. Hambi is an affectively charged abbreviation.) The long, mass citizens' struggle to protect the Hambach woods near Cologne, threatened by the extension of a lignite mine, has won a major, albeit partial, victory.

- IV525 - October 2018 / Germany, Ecology and the Environment

The crisis of the German government and the EU: an explosive farce

Angela Klein — 2018-08-22T13:12:45Z

The crisis of the German government and the EU: an explosive farce
The day after the “agreement” between the two parties of the CDU-CSU union, the media speculated on the question: “Who has won?” Of course, the answer was given according to the preferences of the media but the general tenor was: neither of them. An opinion poll of the Forsa institute claimed: "29 per cent of the interviewees think that Merkel's concept has prevailed; 25 per cent think that Seehofer has succeeded; 40 per cent cannot say who is victorious.

- IV523 - August 2018 / Germany, Migration, European Union, Racism and Islamophobia

After the German election

Angela Klein — 2017-10-04T13:09:49Z

The federal election of 2017 marks a break in the political history of the Federal Republic of Germany. It means the end of the relatively stable political conditions in the dominant and economically strongest country of the European Union.

- IV513 - October 2017 / Germany

The Crisis of the European Union and the Left

Angela Klein — 2016-08-21T10:50:28Z

Within a year two populations of Europe – one in the south, the other in the north – have voted against the EU and its policy. They did this out of entirely different motives and with different aims. Whereas on 5 July 2015 the Greek OXI was directed against the austerity dictates of the Troika and the degradation of Greece to the state of a semi-colonial country, the British Brexit above all was characterized by the fear of “foreigners” and the desire to escape from the freedom of movement in the EU. But at the same time the Brexit expressed the desire to settle accounts with the ruling political elites. Whereas the left was the driving force of the Greek NO, the British NO was captured by the right.

- European Union / Britain, Greece, Debate section, European Union

New Year's Eve in Cologne – some reflections

Angela Klein — 2016-02-04T05:53:38Z

On New Year's Eve the city of Cologne witnessed massive attacks against women. These attacks had a qualitatively new dimension – a combination of mainly migrant offenders and sexual assaults on a mass scale with theft, the equivocal attitude of the authorities and a strained social atmosphere eagerly waiting to be able to obstruct the liberal asylum policy of Chancellor Merkel.

- IV493 - February 2016 / Germany, Women