IV440 - September 2011

PDF Magazine version of IV 440

On Saturday and Sunday May 27-28, 2011, about thirty trade-union and political activists from the car industry, coming from the Spanish State, the United States, France, Italy, Poland, Russia and Sweden, met on the initiative of the “August 80” Free Trade Union of Poland at the International Institute for Research and Education (IIRE) in Amsterdam, to compare their analyses and experiences in the industry.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for the radical left today is to articulate a politics that decisively breaks with the disastrous experiences of many 20th century socialisms. This is a difficult task that requires self-reflection, active questioning, and openness to new expressions of struggle by the always complex and fluid global working-classes. Making this task even the more difficult is that neoliberalism has destroyed or co-opted traditional forms of working-class organization over the last thirty years. This has resulted in the expansion of the logic of capital to every corner of the world. As the “great recession” that began in 2008 demonstrates, capitalism is more global than ever.

This interview about the social movement in Israel with journalist and author Michel Warschawski was conducted on August 11.

A solidarity campaign is underway in defence of Baba Jan, a leader of the LPP - the Labour Party Pakistan - and other people imprisoned in the region of Gilgit-Baltistan, in the north of Pakistan. Baba Jan, according to information from the LPP, was tortured for two days by the secret service.

We have reproduced here substantial extracts from the translation of an article, " Post Zionist Israel : The Rules Have Changed ", from No 106 of the review Challenge, November-December 2007. The article itself was adapted from a paper discussed at the annual seminar of the Organization for Democratic Action, October 2007. This review, Challenge, together with Al Sabar (in Arabic) and Etgar (in Hebrew), is part of a Jewish-Arab network in response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

What is the situation in Tunisia? What is at stake? What are the obsrtacles to the continuation of the revolutionary process? Ahlem Belhadj dealt with some of these questions in her contribution at the NPA summer University in Port Leucate (28-30 August 2011).

The protesters outside the White House have furled their banners and headed home. Now the Obama administration will decide whether to issue a presidential permit for the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline extension – a $7 billion project to bring heavy, “sour” crude oil extracted from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, down through Montana and the Plains states to refineries on the Gulf Coast, notably in Port Arthur, Texas.

The 2011 floods were the worst in Pakistan’s history. Twenty million people were affected and about 2000 lost their lives. Now there is record flooding for the second year in a row. “This is not a natural disaster”, Farooq Tariq , the national spokesperson for the Labour Party Pakistan, told Green Left Weekly. He was referring to widespread and unprecedented monsoonal flooding that has hit Pakistan over the last few days, already killing hundreds of people and making nearly a million homeless.

In the Moroccan political context, the February 20th Movement was a form of resonance of the revolutionary wave that has swept across the Arab and Maghrebian region. Because of the specific recent political history of Morocco – a history marked, remember, by (1) the defeat of the traditional historic opposition which was first brought under control by the monarchy before being integrated in the absolute regime during one if its serious crises to serve as “fireman”, (2) the involvement of the trade unions in the management of the social crisis, (3) the marginalisation of the revolutionary left, something which hinders the development of a radical consciousness among the working class and more generally the oppressed – such a context helps us understand that in Morocco the current militant wave has not led immediately to a revolutionary dynamic seeking directly the overthrow of the existing regime, but rather a movement of opposition based around essentially social demands.