This article examines the bases of popular support for recently re-elected Russian president Vladimir Putin. Although this support is strenuously “cultivated” by the regime by various illicit means, it nevertheless has a genuine basis that needs to be understood by people on the left who are trying to develop an enlightened position in the escalating confrontation between the “West” and Russia.
17th Congress: Analyse, act, build
9 April 2018, byOpening the 17th Congress of the Fourth International in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of 1968, our comrade Alain Krivine recalled the convergence of international struggles and mobilizations: the Vietnamese NLF’s Tet offensive against US imperialist troops, relayed by the anti-war revolt on campuses in the USA, the Prague spring, student movements in Poland, Japan, Italy, Germany, in Brazil against the military dictatorship, the French May 68 and concluded by the mobilization of Mexican students with the massacre of the Place of the Three Cultures by DÃaz Ordaz’s army.
Bangladesh’s Incomplete Revolution
8 April 2018, byThe Left in Bangladesh has struggled for generations against Islamism and authoritarianism.
A reign of terror: Extra-judicial killings in Duterte’s Philippines
7 April 2018, bySince Rodrigo Duterte began his term as the 16th president of the Philippines in 30 June 2016, Filipinos and the international community have watched in horror at accounts of dead bodies found nightly in the country’s streets, linked to extra-judicial killings (EJKs). What is more appalling is that the police force, supposed to protect and serve people, are themselves involved in or directly doing the killings. Those familiar with the Philippine’s recent history, especially the heroic struggle by anti-dictatorship and democracy movements that toppled the brutal authoritarian rule of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 wonder what is going on in the country.
Argentinian Women Might Finally Be Winning the Fight to Decriminalise Abortion
6 April 2018, byMarch is always a month of upheaval in Argentinian politics, but this year it has been exceptionally heated. According to organisers, International Women’s Day saw as many as 700,000 women protest in the capital of Buenos Aires, with the question of free, safe and legal, abortion taking centre-stage.
Mass protests insist pension ‘a right, not a handout’
5 April 2018, byThe government’s pension rise is a mere €2 a month — well below the 3% inflation rate. In response, the National Coordinating Committee for the Defence of Public Pensions called for demonstrations across the Spanish state on February 22 with the demand “No to 0.25%”.
Against Macron, organize the convergence between struggles
4 April 2018, byThe day of March 22nd was a real success. In the 180 cities where there were demonstrations at the call of seven public service unions, everywhere the figures represented an increase compared to October 10th, 2017, the last time there was a strike of the public sector, whereas at the time the CFDT and the UNSA had also called for a strike.
Women, feminist economics and the production of life in the Latin American context
3 April 2018, byBased on the situation in Latin America, this article aims to reflect on the role of women in ensuring the structural conditions for a mode of life and production, with a particular emphasis on respect for and defence of common goods, and on a critique of the sexual and international division of labour. We hope it raises some points that can help to advance the debate on this topic among the anticapitalist left.