International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

It's Time to Socialize Big Pharma

Fran Quigley, Natalie Shure — 2020-07-31T08:35:38Z

We don't have to leave ourselves at the mercy of the most profitable sector on Earth to get the drugs we need. We must nationalize the pharmaceutical industry and turn the medicines millions rely on into public goods.

- IV546 - July 2020 / United States (USA), Britain, Public services

Far-Left Fascism: The Non-Existent Disorder …

Susan Pashkoff — 2020-07-30T09:41:59Z

As I watched the coronavirus pandemic spread globally and the resulting global economic crisis my only thoughts were that Trump would run his re-election campaign based on divide and rule and trying to create a white-backlash, writes Susan Pashkoff. It was an obvious deduction and I claim no powers of divination (think of that as a good thing as I often sit postulating what is the worst thing that can happen while praying to non-existent gods that hopefully I am wrong).

- IV546 - July 2020 / United States (USA), Far Right

Worker organising under the pandemic: reflections from China

2020-07-29T07:14:48Z

Below is our [Chuang] translation of an anonymous Chinese article from the mainland left blog Worker Study Room (工人自习室), originally published in May 2020. It is the only attempt we're aware of to provide a systematic overview of workers' lives and job conditions, labour struggles and related activism in China since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in January, although there have been accounts of individual cases, some of which are cited here. It is also written from a perspective with which we are largely sympathetic. That said, the emphasis here, as in much writing of this style, is placed on somewhat schematic and dry documentation of exact demands made within the workplace and the precise order of events, to the exclusion of any substantial inquiry into the broader psychology of proletarians confronted with a moment such as this. The piece is a good representation of what we consider to be the most fruitful left-wing current in contemporary China, which concerns itself primarily with worker inquiry and the transmission of workers' stories between factories. At times, writing from this current can produce a “workerist” form of analysis that sometimes risks missing the forest of capitalism in the trees of individual factory struggles, and which can occasionally even fail at its own allotted tasks when its descriptions of events are too banal to hold the interest of anyone aside from other similarly workerist activists.

- IV546 - July 2020 / China, Trade unions/workplace organizing, Covid-19 Pandemic

Authoritarianism & Lockdown Time in Occupied Kashmir and India

Mona Bhan, Purnima Bose — 2020-07-28T05:32:56Z

Pandemics generate their own vocabularies, and the “novel coronavirus” is no exception. In the United States the vocabulary of COVID-19 of “sheltering-in-place” and “lockdowns” resonates with Cold War era anxieties about nuclear war and more recent fears about gun violence.

- IV546 - July 2020 / India, Kashmir, Covid-19 Pandemic

The pandemic has exposed the nakedness of European neoliberalism

Éric Toussaint, Miguel Urbán Crespo — 2020-07-27T06:24:18Z

“It is essential to build a new militant solidarity-based internationalism that can construct an eco-socialist project that responds from different contexts and regional particularities to the common challenge of facing a post-capitalist scenario.”

- IV546 - July 2020 / Economy, European Union, Covid-19 Pandemic

From one Arab Spring to another

Gilbert Achcar — 2020-07-26T07:20:56Z

The crisis of the neoliberal stage of capitalism has been unfolding spectacularly under our eyes in recent months, provoking ever greater social upheavals in an ever greater number of places.

- IV546 - July 2020 / Syria, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Arab Revolutions, Sudan

Jeremy Corbyn's Opponents Burned the House Down to Stop Him — Now Keir Starmer Is King of the Ashes

Daniel Finn — 2020-07-25T08:36:46Z

By sacking Rebecca Long-Bailey on a trumped-up pretext, Keir Starmer has set the seal on a drastic shift to the right for the British Labour Party. That shift comes just as the key arguments by Jeremy Corbyn's opponents to justify a break with his left leadership have been falling apart in the face of overwhelming evidence.

- IV546 - July 2020 / Britain

An ultra-parasitical global financial system that enjoys unwavering protection

François Chesnais — 2020-07-24T11:06:31Z

During the evolution of the pandemic in Europe, the financial system has received little attention in the media. It was only at the end of February/beginning of March that a very sharp fall in the stock markets made the front page of newspapers and television broadcasts. Indeed, between February 20 and March 9 we saw a collapse in prices of between 23 per cent and 30 per cent, depending on the financial centres. We now know that it is thanks to the intervention of the Fed (Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States). Today, the support it provides to financial investors is without fail.

- IV546 - July 2020 / Economy, Covid-19 Pandemic

The Debate in the Left on the Elections in the United States

Dan La Botz — 2020-07-23T08:07:57Z

The Democratic Socialist of America (DSA), which now claims 70,000 members, will go into the November 2020 national presidential election endorsing no candidate. The last DSA Convention voted if Bernie Sanders was not the nominee, it would endorse no one. The motion, however doe not stop DSA members as individuals from working for or voting for Biden, and some will work for him while many can be expected to vote for him, despite the fact that virtually no DSA members actually support him politically.

- IV546 - July 2020 / United States (USA)

Covid-19: Africa's crisis deepens

Paul Martial — 2020-07-22T07:43:27Z

The Covid-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the economic, social and food crisis in Africa. This deterioration has hit people hard, especially the most precarious.

- IV546 - July 2020 / Africa, Covid-19 Pandemic