Donate to Links
Click on Links masthead to clear previous query from search box
- Electoral fraud: The view from Sungai Siput
3 days 6 hours ago
- 'Left to rescue capitalism'?
1 week 18 hours ago
- Mao Zedong’s granddaughter among China’s super-rich
1 week 2 days ago
- US arms to Syria? an exchange
1 week 2 days ago
2 weeks 21 hours ago
2 weeks 4 days ago
2 weeks 5 days ago
- World War I will be fought again, starting next year
3 weeks 14 hours ago
- Great comrades of Malaysia
3 weeks 21 hours ago
- Australian Unity
3 weeks 1 day ago
Michael A. Lebowitz interviewed by Darko Vesić and Aleksandar Stojanović
Darko Vesić and Aleksandar Stojanović: Capitalism has been in crisis for several years now and in response to this crisis the capitalist states practice so-called austerity measures. If we look at the historical dynamics of capitalism in the last half century, we see that they responded to the crisis of the 1970s with what is now called “neoliberalism”. If the restoration of growth is what must be carried out as a response to the crisis, we can say that neoliberalism of the 1970s was successful. Yet, can we say same of present-day “austerity measures”?
Jean-Luc Mélenchon addresses the May 5, 2013, mobilisation in Paris. Part 2 below.
By Dick Nichols
May 11, 2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- On May 5, the largest left protest ever against the policies of a French Socialist Party (PS) government took place in Paris. To the stirring sounds of the protest anthem “On Lâché Rien
They were demanding an end to economic austerity and for a democratic Sixth Republic that would overturn the present Fifth Republic, which is dominated by corrupt and entrenched financial and political elites. The symbol of the march was the kitchen broom, for the “clean sweep of this insufferable political atmosphere”, called for by Front de Gauche (Left Front) leader and 2012 presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
On the day tens of thousands marched with brooms or brushes in hand.
By Michael Karadjis
May 11, 2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- In the wake of two Israeli airstrikes on targets in Syria on the May 4-5 weekend, the second causing massive explosions close to Damascus and killing at least several dozen Syrian troops, discussion rages about the aims of this aggression and the relationship it has to the ongoing mass uprising and civil war in Syria.
Israel claimed both attacks were aimed at Iranian long-range rockets, or the military depots where they were housed, that were in transit via Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. As the Zionist regime has continually indicated that its “red line” was the transfer of any significant “game-changing” weaponry to either Hezbollah in Lebanon (which is currently aligned to Syria’s besieged Assad regime) or to the Sunni Islamist rebels fighting to overthrow that regime, this explanation seems plausible.
By Richard Seymour
* * *
I think the title of this talk, "The rise of a new left", is clearly to some extent projection of a desired outcome; of course, there are elements of a new left visible. Not just the indignados and occupiers, but also the radical left challengers: Syriza, the Portugese Left Bloc, Die Linke, the Scandinavian red-green alliances, Front de gauche in France, maybe some elements of the Pirate Parties ...
By Nalini Elumalai, executive director, SUARAM
May 21, 2013 -- Malaysia's human rights organisation Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM) requests your urgent intervention in the detention of Adam Adli (pictured above), student activist from Malaysia. SUARAM is dedicated to the protection of human rights defenders and aims to offer them concrete support in their time of need.
Brief description of the situation:
SUARAM condemns the arbitrary and unlawful detention of Student Activist, Adam Adli under the Section 4 of the Sedition Act which prohibiting discourse deemed as seditious and if found guilty under the act, Adam could be jailed for up to three years, fined not more than RM5000, or both.
The Awami Workers Party's Farooq Tariq on the campaign trail.
By Farooq Tariq
May 20, 2013 -- Green Left Weekly -- A right-wing wave swept Pakistan in the May 11 general elections. At the federal level, the conservative Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) will form the government having won 35% of the vote.
Former Pakistan cricket captain Imran Khan's party, Pakistan Tehreek Insaaf, came second with 19% of the vote and surprised many. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the ruling party for the past five years, came third with only 15% ― thanks to Sindh where it was able to fetch most of its votes.
Almost 62% of total votes went to right-wing and religious parties, for the first time in the history of Pakistan. Although the religious parties were not united in a single platform, the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUIF) still won 10 seats nationally. It also won 22% of the votes in Baluchistan and 1% in Khaiber Pukhtoon Khawa province, the two provinces bordering Afghanistan.
For more on Portugal's Left Bloc, click HERE.
Francisco Louçã, Left Bloc (Portugal), interviewed by Mark Bergfeld
May 17, 2013 -- The Bullet
Mark Bergfeld: Across Europe we have witnessed three strands of resistance to the Troika (the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank) : mass strikes by workers, youth revolts like the indignad@s, and electoral revolts such as SYRIZA in Greece, Front de Gauche in France, and the CUP in Catalonia. In Portugal we have witnessed the former two but haven't seen an upsurge in support for the Left Bloc or the Communist Party for that matter. Why hasn't the Portuguese left been able to take advantage of a favourable situation?
By Murray Smith
May 10, 2013 -- Left Unity, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with Murray Smith's permission -- Having followed with sympathy the emergence of Left Unity and the possibility of a new party of the left being launched, I read with interest the two-part article by an anonymous figure, who may or may not be called Michael Ford, which may or may not be a pseudonym. I’m sure we’ll find out. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to him as Ford. In any case, whoever wrote it, the aim of the article is clearly to try and discredit the perspective of building a new party to the left of Labour and validate that of working with/within the Labour Party to drive it to the left.
[The following document is the program of Slovenia's Initiative for Democratic Socialism. It is posted for the information of readers of Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. Thanks to Michael Lebowitz for making it available. It is also posted at http://www.demokraticni-socializem.si/.]
The ideological dominance of capitalism as the only feasible mode of production is coming to an end. In the second half of the 1970s, when rapid and stable economic growth came to a halt in the "developed" world, the forces of capital intensified their attack on workers’ rights that has not ceased to this day. The foundation on which the ideological domination of capitalism was based had started to wither away, and the advocates of capitalism increasingly justified its existence by turning to the mere fact of its existence.
By Dale T. McKinley, Johannesburg
May 13, 2013 -- South African Civil Society Information Service, submitted to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal by the author -- If capital is to be believed, it is the worker who is the main source of our contemporary social and economic problems.
Every time the annual South African season of wage negotiations is about to begin, as it is now, representatives of capital unleash a tsunami of propaganda about workers’ "high and unaffordable" wage demands. Dire warnings of destructive social unrest/conflict, high inflation rates, poor competitiveness and generalised economic devastation roll off their silver-lined tongues. The underlying message is neither subtle nor sanguine: wage demands of workers are to blame for just about everything bad that is happening in our society.
The Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) is banned and its leaders were arrested and prevented from celebrating Workers' Day (May 1) this year.
May 14, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- When the new South African High Commissioner to Swaziland, His Excellency Happy Mahlangu, presented his credentials to King Mswati, the Swazi Observer on May 3 reported him as saying:
I further wish to make use of this opportunity to express South Africa's best wishes to Your Majesty and the people of Swaziland for success during the forthcoming elections. I also want to assure you of South Africa's support regarding the Swaziland elections.
To make matters worse, here is what "His Excellency" had to say in the May 13 Swazi Times:
Book excerpt: 'Latin America's Turbulent Transitions: The future of 21st century socialism' (Zed Books)
Latin America's Turbulent Transitions: The Future of Twenty-First Century Socialism
by Roger Burbach, Michael Fox & Federico Fuentes
Zed Books, 2013.
Below is the Introduction to Latin America's Turbulent Transitions. For more information about the book or to purchase a copy please visit: http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/paperback/latin-americas-turbulent-transitions. Asia-Pacific readers can order it from Resistance Books.
By David T. Rowlands
May 10, 2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Between January 31 and February 2, 1971, over a hundred ex-US service personnel who had served in Vietnam between 1963 and 1970 gathered in Detroit for a three-day media conference. Organised by the activist group Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), the Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI) was intended to educate the American public about the scale of US atrocities in Vietnam, emphasising the direct relationship between such atrocities and official military policies.
Most wore black to mourn the BN's killing of democracy. Photo by Lee Yu Kyung.
By Peter Boyle, photos by Lee Yu Kyung
May 8, 2013 -- Green Left Weekly -- Up to 120,000 people packed and overflowed a large stadium in Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur on May 8 to protest the fraudulent re-election of the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) government on May 5. The crowd defied a police threat to arrest all who attended the opposition-called rally. The police did not dare confront the huge crowd but since the rally have called in 28 rally speakers for questioning.
The crowd also had to brave BN threats to provoke ethnic clashes by branding the stronger opposition vote a "Chinese tsunami" – a slander against the multi-ethnic opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR).
The opposition plans to hold more rallies in other cities in the following days.
By Michael A. Lebowitz
May 3, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The above talk was presented in Zagreb, Croatia, at a conference organised by the Centre of Workers' Studies.(More videos are available at http://www.youtube.com/user/SkriptaTV?feature=watch.)
A spectre is haunting the working class of Europe (both east and west) and the working class of developed capitalism in general. That spectre is the spectre of communism. For the working class, that frightful hobgoblin is a society of little freedom, a society of workers without power (in the workplace or community) and a society where decisions are made at the top by a vanguard party which views itself as the sole repository of truth. Of course, this was not what communism meant for Karl Marx and Frederick Engels nor, indeed, for Lenin.
By Patrick Bond
May 9, 2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Thanks are due to an odd man, the brutally frank Zambian vice-president Guy Scott who last week pronounced, “I dislike South Africa for the same reason that Latin Americans dislike the United States”. Thanks are also due to South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma for forcing a long-overdue debate, just as the World Economic Forum Africa summit opens in Cape Town: is Pretoria a destructive sub-imperialist power?
Yet, these policies are rational from the point of view of the bourgeoisie. They are a brutal way -- a shock therapy -- for restoring the profits, for guaranteeing the financial rents and for implementing the neoliberal counter-reforms. What is going on is fundamentally the validation by the states of the financial claims on future production and GDP. That is why the crisis takes the form of a sovereign debt crisis.
Kuala Lumpur, May 8, 2013. Tens of thousands of Malaysians protest government's electoral fraud.
By S. Arutchelvan, secretary general, Parti Sosialis Malaysia
May 8, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM, Socialist Party of Malaysia) calls for a united position to fight the result of the 13th general election [held on May 13 and "won" by the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) led coalition].
The many irregularities during the election, the tainted electorol roll, the "indelible" ink [which washed off] scandal, vote buying and phamton voters calls for not only an investigation but a referundum and challenge to the result itself.
The bigger issue is not about an investigation but the legitimacy of the current government. The result of the election gave the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) a popular majority over BN [in terms of total votes cast]. We are being ruled by a government that does not have the support of more than half the voters.
Workers and protesters holding a defaced portrait of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing march on May Day, May 1, 2013. Thousands of workers, local labour rights groups, socialists and striking dockworkers joined in. The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions said a record 5000 people took part in its march from Victoria Park to government headquarters before ending near tycoon Li Ka-shing’s Cheung Kong Center.
By Ellen David Friedman
May 7, 2013 -- Labor Notes -- The 40-day strike of more than 500 dockworkers at the Port of Hong Kong ended on May 6 with a settlement that included a 9.8 per cent wage increase, non-retaliation against strikers and a written agreement, all of which had been fiercely resisted by the four contractors targeted in the strike.
Strikers accepted the offer by a 90 per cent vote.
By Roger Annis
May 8, 2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/The Bullet -- France’s National Assembly and Senate have voted to extend the country’s military intervention in Mali. A resolution passed both houses of parliament on April 22. Not a single vote was cast in opposition.
Three days later, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 2100, creating a policing mission beginning July 1, 2013. The mission is called by its French acronym MINUSMA. Its projected size is 11,200 soldiers and 1440 police.