IV510 - July 2017

IVP 510 July 2017 PDF now available

The complete electoral sequence in France comprises a principal contest (the presidential election) and a more and more subordinate one (the legislative elections, which determine the composition of the National Assembly). Now that the sequence has been completed, we can draw an overall balance sheet, always provisional.

The dominant class in France and in Europe breathed a collective sigh of relief at the outcome of the French electoral cycle. The system of political representation in France appeared completely in ruins in early spring 2017, now the country has ended up with an ultra-neoliberal president equipped with a strong state and an absolute majority in the National Assembly.

"You who walk, the path is the trace of your steps and nothing else:
You who walk, there is no path, you make the path as you go..."
Antonio Machado, Proverbios and Cantares XXIX, Campos de Castilla

Bomb! Burn! Build! This can be the briefest description one can have today in what has happened and possibly will happen to the only Islamic City of the pre-dominantly Christian country. The siege of Marawi is nearing its second month. The country’s security sector has been surprised that it is taking longer time than what they had expected to wrest the control of the City from the Abu Sayyaf and the Maute group.

On October 1, by decision of the Catalan government, the region’s voters will be asked in a referendum “Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic?”

The Argentine legislative elections in August and October 2017 will be of huge importance for the entire Latin American region, with the government of Mauricio Macri establishing itself as a bastion of the neoliberal right after 12 years of Kirchnerist government (2003-2015). The coming elections represent a central challenge for the three forces which with varying degrees of importance structure the country’s political landscape: the right and the forces around Macri, Peronism and the forces around Kirchnerism, and the Trotskyist and anti-capitalist movements. In this context, Frank Gaudichaud spoke to two well known Argentine left activists, Claudio Katz and Eduardo Lucita.

Very recently, Germany’s Cabinet approved a bill that will expunge the convictions of tens of thousands of German men for “homosexual acts” under that country’s anti-gay law known as “Paragraph 175.” That law dates back to 1871, when modern Germany’s first legal code was created.

As nativist right-wing populism surges across the Global North amidst the exhaustion of social democracy and “Third Way” liberalism, the United States finds itself at the forefront. Elsewhere, right populist parties have led in the polls, as with the Front National in France and the PVV in the Netherlands, or played key roles in seismic political events, as with UKIP and Brexit. But so far, only in the US has the right populist wave captured a major political party and ridden it to power. The improbable election of Donald Trump reflects deep crises within the US political system, but also this broader crisis of modern liberalism.

We hold the CCP government responsible for Liu Xiaobo’s premature death. No one should be thrown into prison, let alone left to rot there, simply for exercising the right to free speech. The CCP even went so far as to intervene in Liu’s family’s arrangements for his funeral, scattering Liu’s ashes into the sea without the genuine consent of Liu’s wife, Liu Xia. It is even more outrageous to see the regime continuing to hold Liu Xia under house arrest, just to make sure that Liu’s legacy cannot be visible. Anyone who still thinks that the CCP government somehow carries some degree of a “socialist legacy”, as certain “new leftists” do, should think again. What we have now in Beijing is one of the most barbaric far right regimes in the world. It is this regime which should be tried by the people.