[Click HERE to follow the entire debate on Tony Cliff's Lenin. For more discussion on revolutionary organisation, click HERE. Articles on left unity can be found HERE.]

By Pham Binh

February 10, 2012 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The first response to my “Occupy and the tasks of socialists” piece to be written by a leading member of an US socialist organisation is emblematic of what is wrong with the US socialist left.

I am referring to “The mangling of Tony Cliff”, written by Paul D’Amato, International Socialist Organization (ISO) member and managing editor of the International Socialist Review. He responds to my Tasks piece in his reply to a book review I did, writing:

Pierre Bourdieu.

By Dimitris Fasfalis

February 3, 2012 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Ten years after his death, Pierre Bourdieu’s work and commitments are commemorated throughout the world by friends and foes alike. Le Monde, for instance, described him as a “classic thinker”: second-most quoted author of the academic world after Michel Foucault.

Academia thus recognises Bourdieu as a major sociologist of the 20th century whose concepts (habitus, fields, types of capital, symbolic violence) have become pillars of the social sciences. Few voices, however, have reclaimed Bourdieu’s radical legacy, while his work is of great interest for all those committed to emancipation.[1]

For a bottom-up international campaign against the commodification and financialisation of Nature

By Pablo Solon

January 28, 2012 -- The document for the Rio+20 conference of the United Nations (June 20-22, 2012) -- entitled The Future We Want -- was published in January 2012. Its main purpose is to promote a “Green Economy”. In the document's "zero draft", this concept of the Green Economy is left deliberately vague: there is no clear definition provided and no clarity on the usage of this term. In reality, however, it aims to promote the further commodification and financialisation of nature by introducing new market mechanisms like the as carbon markets that were first introduced a decade ago through the Kyoto Protocol and REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) programs which put a monetary price on carbon storage in forests.

"It was decisive action and mass defiance – ultimately forcing the use of federal troops -- that ended Jim Crow legal segregation... Fundamental and radical change, as history shows, comes by mass direct action and popular outrage. Martin Luther King marched and demanded equal rights under Republican and Democratic presidents."

By Malik Miah

February 8, 2012 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/Against the Current-- The bitter truth about US politics is that neither of the ruling-class parties speaks for the working class or poor. The Democratic Party’s President Barack Obama likes to talk about the “middle class” and how he stands up for them, but he rarely mentions that poverty disproportionately hits African Americans and Latinos. While he personally supports social programs for the working poor, his proposed budgets would reduce funding for these programs.

For more on Occupy Wall Street, click HERE.

Dan La Botz speaking about what theUS  Occupy movement has accomplished, the Democrats and the role of the left. He was addressing the Open University of the Left on January 28, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois.

[Dan La Botz is a teacher, writer and activist involved in Occupy Cincinnati. In 2010, Dan La Botz stood as the Socialist Party (USA) candidate for the US Senate in Ohio.]

By Anitra Nelson,  co-editor of Life Without Money

February 2, 2012 -- RMIT Blog Central, submitted to Links international Journal of Socialist Renewal by the author -- When Time magazine announced “The Protester” as 2011 Person of the Year, we had to ask: Is this a signal of radical worldwide change? Did something special start to stir in 2011?

Certainly 1911 was such a momentous year: cities fell like dominoes across China so that, on New Year’s Day 1912, Sun Yat-sen became the provisional president of a liberal republic; civil strife was breaking out in Mexico, by May ending Porfirio Diaz’s dictatorial reign from 1877; and, in Russia, a brief restoration of conservative order was crumbling under the onslaught of Bolshevik and anarchistic activities. Lenin observed “increasing signs that the era of so-called peaceful bourgeois parliamentarianism is drawing to an end”.

Boris Kustodiev's 1920 painting "Bolshevik".

[Click HERE to follow the debate on Tony Cliff's Lenin. For more discussion on Lenin, click HERE. For more discussion on revolutionary organisation, click HERE.]

By Paul D’Amato

February 4, 2012 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Pham Binh’s criticism of the late British Marxist Tony Cliff’s Lenin: Building the Party (“Mangling the Party”), published in the Australian journal Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, is substantially wrong on many points; but its chief defect is that it is a hatchet job.

Nicaraguans celebrate the re-election of Daniel Ortega as president.

John Riddell interviews Felipe Stuart Cournoyer

February 2, 2012 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, also available at http://johnriddell.wordpress.com/. First published in Axis of Logic -- In a fit of petulant anger, the US government lashed out on January 25 against the outcome of Nicaragua’s recent presidential election. To understand the context of the US threats, I talked to Felipe Stuart Cournoyer, a Nicaraguan citizen and member of Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).[1]

* * *

John Riddell: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed that Nicaragua’s November 6, 2011, election “marked a setback to democracy in Nicaragua and undermined the ability of Nicaraguans to hold their government accountable”, but offered no particulars. What has roused Washington’s ire?

Por John Riddell

[In English at http://links.org.au/node/2451.]

Por John Riddell

Fecha de publicación: 01/02/12 -- America XXI -- La discusión en idioma inglés de la Internacional Comunista de 1922, sobre el llamado a crear gobiernos de los trabajadores, se ha basado en un anteproyecto que fue alterado de manera significativa antes de su aprobación. Aquí, tomado de la primera traducción al inglés, está el texto enmendado que el Congreso realmente adoptó.

El llamado a crear un gobierno de los trabajadores surgió a partir de las luchas de los trabajadores alemanes en 1920, como modo de plantear la necesidad de un poder de los trabajadores, en un contexto en el que no existían estructuras alternativas, como congresos revolucionarios o soviets.

Adam Hanieh addresses a meeting in London.

Adam Hanieh interviewed by Farooq Sulehria

February 3, 2012 -- Viewpoint -- Saudi Arabia, along with other Gulf states, have been key protagonists in the counter-revolutionary wave unleashed against the Arab uprisings. Indeed, 2011 has clearly demonstrated that imperialism in the region is articulated with – and largely works through – the Gulf Arab states. "Overall, it is important for the left to support the ongoing struggles in the revolutions as the contradictions of the new regimes continue to sharpen", says Adam Hanieh.

Adam Hanieh is a lecturer in development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is author of Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (Palgrave-Macmillan 2011) and a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Historical Materialism.

Farooq Sulehria: The outcome of elections in Tunisia and Egypt went in favour of Islamist parties, even though the revolutions in these countries had a secular character. Islamists are also an integral part, if not the dominant force, in the revolutions in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain. Is the Arab Spring in fact a victory for the Islamist movements?

Will US forces return to the Subic Bay naval base?

By the Partido Lakas ng Masa (Party of the Labouring masses)  international department

No to US military presence in the Philippines!

Scrap the Visiting Forces Agreement!

China must stop the bullying!

For an independent foreign policy! For a non-aligned ASEAN!

February 1, 2012 -- The people are now being informed, through media reports, about the possibility of military agreements between the US and the Philippines that would increase the US troop presence in the country.  There has also been a flurry of diplomatic activities in the recent period: visits by a US delegation to the Philippines headed by right-wing Republican John McCain, and Philippine government delegations are currently negotiating in the US. We are being assured by the DFA [department of foreign affairs], in what is really a red herring and an attempt to distract us with a false debate, that what is being discussed is a "rotation" of troops and not "bases", and so on. The "threat" of China is being used as the justification, especially in relation to the competing claims to the seas surrounding the pieces of rock named the Spratly Islands – the West Philippine Sea, also known as the South China Sea.

The neoliberal government of Ben Ali was overthrown by popular rebellion in 2010. Can the IMF co-opt the Arab Spring?

By Patrick Bond and Khadija Sharife

February 2, 2012 – Links international Journal of Socialist Renewal -- With International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Christine Lagarde in Tunisia today, the stage is set for ideological war over the progress of democratic revolutions.

Until 27-year-old fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi committed suicide by immolation in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia was packaged as an IMF success story. In 2008, dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was embraced by Lagarde’s predecessor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn: "Economic policy adopted here is a sound policy and is the best model for many emerging countries.”

By Paul Le Blanc

"The creation of healthy, democratic and cohesive revolutionary organisations on the Leninist model is both possible and necessary, in my opinion."

February 1, 2012 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- I am sorry that Pham Binh has chosen to respond in the way that he has to my criticism of his article ("Mangling the party: Tony Cliff's Lenin"). I will make only a few comments here to help clear up misunderstandings.

1. My critical comment about Pham’s article not providing us with anything useful for those engaged in today’s struggles was not a judgment about him as a person or about all things that he may have written about the Occupy movement or anything else. A substantial review article having to do with building the revolutionary party, however, should contain (in my opinion) something of value for those of us who are committed to such things.

By Pham Binh

[Read Paul le Blanc's response HERE.]

January 31, 2012 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- When I discovered that Paul Le Blanc had responded to my review of Tony Cliff’s Building the Party I was hoping for the scholarly and thorough approach he used in writing his book Lenin and the Revolutionary Party. What I found was quite the opposite.

Le Blanc begins his response by claiming that my book review’s “obvious purpose is to persuade the reader that Tony Cliff’s book is little more than a mass of ‘egregious misrepresentations’ and ‘has so many gross factual and political errors that it is useless as a historical study of Lenin’s actions and thoughts.’ This is a demolition job. It doesn’t offer much that we can use and build on as we face the challenges of today and tomorrow.”

I drew my conclusions about Cliff’s book only after I closely studied what Lenin said and did and compared it to what Cliff claimed Lenin said and did. The more I studied, the more striking the divergences became.

By Ian Angus

January 31, 2012 -- Climate and Capitalism -- Simon Butler and I wrote Too Many People? Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis to promote discussion among environmental activists about two questions:

• Is population growth a significant cause of the global environmental crisis?
• Should the environmental movement support population reduction programs as solutions to environmental problems?

Since the book was published in September 2011, we’ve been very pleased by the eagerness of activists around the world to join in that discussion. Some readers are convinced by our arguments, some are not – in either case we look forward to continuing discussions while we work together to build a global movement against ecocide and for environmental justice. We expected such debates, and will continue to welcome them.

[For more discussion about Lenin, click HERE.]

By Paul Le Blanc

[Read Pham Binh's reply HERE.]

January 31, 2012 – Submitted to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Amid a continuing crisis of capitalism, the renaissance of Lenin studies – what I once referred to as “Lenin’s return” – continues. Aspects of this find reflection in new books, new articles, symposiums and debates as we attempt to clarify the actuality of Lenin’s thought and example, and (for some of us) their relevance for the situations we face.

Part 1: In the belly of empire

“There must be some way out of here’, said the
joker to the thief,
There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, ploughmen dig
my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is
worth.” -- Bob Dylan[1]