Challenging capitalism through workers’ control – interview with Dario Azzellini
April 26, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Investig’Action — A common feature in every crisis situation, from the upheavals of the early 20th century to the neo-liberal re-structurings of the late 20th century, is the emergence of workers’ control – workers organising to take over their workplaces in order to defend their jobs and their communities. We interviewed Dario Azzellini* to talk about this issue in depth: the emergence of new values and social relations not just in the recuperated workplaces but also in the communities, the need to re-orient production, the overcoming of the separation between political, economic and social spheres, and the role of workers’ control in the larger struggle against capitalism.
Menshevism: The Girondins of 1917
By Doug Enaa Greene April 25, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Left Voice with the author's permission — Whatever their differences, Lenin, Plekhanov, Martov, and Trotsky all saw the Russian Revolution as following in the experience of the French Revolution of 1789. The Russian revolutionaries also modeled themselves on the different parties of the French Revolution, whether consciously or unconsciously, as guides for action. Lenin and the Bolsheviks believed they were modern-day Jacobins – stalwart revolutionaries who would organize the working class and take power. By contrast, the Mensheviks were moderate Girondins. Menshevism was committed to gradualism and opposed to the “historical impatience” of a socialist revolution. Like the Girondins, the Mensheviks were honorable, but like their predecessors, they lacked faith in the revolutionary abilities of the people. That was the root of their failure in 1917.
México: La izquierda debata las elecciones presidenciales
Originally published in English on Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
The Red North: How the Communist Party of Australia was ‘naturalised’ in north Queensland
The following speech was given by Carmel Shute at the Melbourne launch of the new Resistance Books edition of Diane Menghetti’s The Red North: The Popular Front in North Queensland on April 4, 2018.

‘New imperialism’ debate suffers from the omission of subimperialism
By Patrick Bond April 23, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Review of African Political Economy —Two leading critics of imperialism – John Smith and David Harvey – have recently fought bitterly on roape.net on over how to interpret geographically-shifting processes of super-exploitation. The risk is that they obscure crucial features of their joint wrath: the unjust accumulation processes and geopolitics that enrich the wealthy and despoil the world environment.
Imperialism today: a critical assessment of Latin American dependency theory

Introduction and translation by Richard Fidler March 31, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Lef

Philippines: The emergence of a united left opposition to Duterte
Two articles looking at the rise of Laban ng Masa (Struggle of the Masses),
a coalition of socialist groups that has emerged in opposition to
Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte.
Pakistan: Revival of the left
By Rashed Rahman March 30, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Rashed Rahman blog  — The task of reviving the Left to once again become an effective player in the polity has been exercising minds in the surviving Left parties and groups for long but the achievement of this goal has proved difficult. It is therefore heartening to note the follow-up of the meeting of 10 Left parties and groups in Lahore on December 29, 2017 by the formation of a 17-parties/groups’ platform dubbed Lahore Left Front (LLF).
Democratic production and the Workers' Opposition of revolutionary Russia
By Don Fitz March 29, 2018 — 
Russia’s elections: views from the left
By Volodya Vagner March 29, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Virtually all the candidates running in Russia’s recent presidential election openly admitted that what they were participating in was a circus. And as expected, the circus director won. After gracefully skipping the televised debates that saw profanity-laden shouting matches and physical confrontations between his opponents, Russian president Vladimir Putin was re-elected by a landslide on March 18. The real question in the run-up to the vote was never who would win, but how legitimate Putin’s victory would be.
Lenin for today
Lenin for Today
By John Molyneux
Bookmarks, 2017
289 pages
£12.99; $44.01
Trump’s new militarism
During the 2016 US election campaign Donald Trump promised an end to pointless foreign wars and attacked “useless” and massively expensive new military equipment, like the $1.5 trillion Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter. But the Trump presidency has ushered in a new era of militarism, as the United States prepares for high tech, massively violent wars against Russia and China, argues Phil Hearse.