Features

In a series commemorating the uprising’s third anniversary, Syrian revolutionary activist Joseph Daher answers key questions still circulating in the western digital commons. In this first part he offers us a short history of the socio-economic causes behind the protests that sprang up across Syria in March 2011.

Tributes are pouring in to honor the memory and legacy of Pete Seeger. Among so many other contributions to the movements for social justice, he was a supporter of the struggle for rank and file union power. Ken Paff, national organizer of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, recalls his support of TDU with a Detroit benefit concert in April, 1985. [Republished from Solidarity January 29, 2014.]

The so-called “Leninist” orthodoxy is history, and the campaign that Stalin and his ideologists launched for decades against “Luxemburgism”, which they identified since 1931 with their most hated nightmare, “Trotskyism”, has fallen into oblivion. So we are free to examine the Marxist theories on the structure of the Russian society and the prospects of a revolutionary uprising against the rule of the Czar – written a century ago –, in order to explore the capacity of these theories to present an explanation of the state of affairs – one hundred years ago – and a prognosis of its future development (in and after 1917).

This article is a slightly adapted version of a presentation in an educational session that took place in the context of the 30rth revolutionary youth camp of the Fourth International. Throughout the text, where the Transitional Program is written with capital letters, the term refers to the original text of 1938.

Few people from the 20th century can really claim to have changed history. One of them without a doubt was General Vo Nguyen Giap, who led the Vietnamese people to defeat the French and US empires.

The only time I briefly met Norman Geras was at the Marxism 2000 conference, held in Amherst, Massachusetts. Geras was one of three keynote speakers. Angela Davis spoke on the prison-industrial complex, with typical charisma; Gayatri Spivak packed the hall and gave a paper that was interminable and incomprehensible (though to be fair, her work really only suits the printed page).

Last July 2, 2013, Idalberto Ferrera Acosta, age 95, died in Havana. Idalberto devoted his entire life to the Revolution. In 1933-1934 he joined the Bolshevik-Leninist Party, the Cuban Trotskyist organization. He was a militant in the union and political movements in Guantanamo and Santiago de Cuba. The actions of Cuban Trotskyists were very important in the 1930s because they had significant influence in the unions in several regions in Cuba, particularly in the East (Guantanamo, site of the U.S. Navy base, and Santiago de Cuba) and in Havana [1]. Idalberto Ferrera made active contributions.

IMF declarations that do not please European leaders

In October 2012, the IMF provided a key explanation of why the crisis was getting worse in Europe. Its Research Department wrote that every euro cut from public spending would result in a .90 to 1.70 euro decrease in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Wolfgang Münchau, who is editorialist at the Financial Times, concludes that in this time of crisis a 3% fiscal adjustment (that is a 3% decrease in public spending) would produce a 4.5% decrease in GDP. Therefore, the current policies being pursued by European governments have been leading to a drop in economic activity making it impossible to decrease the amount of public debt.

Jean-Michel had a sense of humour, and his passion was to play the violin. From 1948, when he joined the French Communist Party (PCF), he conducted revolutionary choirs and continued to do so unceasingly, including during the summer universities of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR). Sometimes he lost some of his humour when singers suggested modernizing the repertoire; he remained very much attached to the traditions of the labour movement. He had courage, as evidenced by the periods he spent in the maquis in Vietnam and Thailand. He participated in major events such as the Russell Tribunal against war crimes in Vietnam. He did not grudge taking on the most obscure militant tasks: right to the end, he devoted his attention to correcting the articles published in the magazine Inprecor.

“Post-Marxism” has become a fashionable intellectual posture, with the triumph of neo-liberalism and the retreat of the working class. The space vacated by the reformist left [in Latin America] has in part been occupied by capitalist politicians and ideologues, technocrats and the traditional and fundamentalist churches (Pentecostals and the Vatican). In the past, this space was occupied by socialist, nationalist and populist politicians and church activists associated with the “theology of liberation”. The centre-left was very influential within the political regimes (at the top) or the less politicised popular classes (at the bottom). The vacant space of the radical left refers to the political intellectuals and politicised sectors of the trade unions and urban and rural social movements. It is among these groups that the conflict between Marxism and “post-Marxism” is most intense today.