Sinn Féin National Chairperson Declan Kearney (right) speaking on Question Time.
By Declan Kearney
June 9, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Anphoblacht -- On BBC’s Question Time with David Dimbleby, I asked British Secretary of State Theresa Villiers directly whether she believed a Brexit was in the interests of people in the North – she didn't answer the question.
I then asked her whether the British Government, in the event of a Brexit, would replace the European funding which would be lost to the North of Ireland as a consequence of withdrawal from the EU – she didn't answer that question either.
The fact is that a Brexit is opposite to the interests of people in the Six Counties.
June 9, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- With the referendum on whether Britain should stay or leave the EU fast approaching, the debate over what position the left should take continues. Links is reposting a vidoe debate between Marina Prentoulis (Syriza UK) and Luke Cooper (Another Europe is Possible) (for in), and Hannah Sell (deputy general secretary, Socialist Party) and Michael Calderbank (Red Pepper) (for out), in a special episode of The Wedge, produced in collaboration with and published on Red Pepper.
Below we also have an article by Terry Conway from Socialist Resistance outlining the different positions on the left, and an editorial from Morning Star on what the EU represents.
Doug Greene, author of the forthcoming "Specters of Communism: Blanqui and Marx", takes up the accusation that Leninism is "Blanquist".
By Douglas Enaa Greene[1]
June 1, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Rosa Luxemburg once said that Bolshevism is nothing more than the “mechanical transposition of the organizational principles of Blanquism into the mass movement of the socialist working class.”[2] Many leftists, both now and a century ago, share Luxemburg's position that Leninism is elitist and/or Blanquism. Yet all of these judgments are far off the mark. For Lenin, Blanquism was something that the communist movement needed to overcome if they wanted to win a successful socialist revolution. Leninism is not simply Blanquism or Jacobinism adapted to Russian conditions, but the development of a Marxist mode of politics that draws clear revolutionary lessons from the defeat of the Paris Commune. The central operator of the Leninist mode of politics is a revolutionary vanguard party devoted to the emancipation of the oppressed workers and peasants. However, there remains a grain of truth in the accusation that Leninism is Blanquist, since “Blanquism” is a label used by social democrats and revisionists to condemn the revolutionary essence of Marxism
United Left (IU) spokesperson Alberto Garzón and Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias.
By Dick Nichols
May 31, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal a much shorter version of this article was first published at Green Left Weekly — Five months after the December 20 election in Spain failed to produce a government, the country is returning to the polls in the most polarised contest since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1977.
The stakes could not be higher. The “second round” election on June 26 could open the door to the final breakdown of the two-party system and the beginning of a deep-going democratisation of the Spanish state and politics: or it could drive all parties defending the status quo into a last-ditch alliance against the forces for radical change.
On coming to power, newly elected Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte (left) originally offered cabinet posts to the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), headed by Jose Maria Sison (right). The move only intensified debate on the Left surrounding Duterte's rise and what it means for politics in the Philippines. As part of bring this debates to an international audience Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal is publishing below a May 15 CPP Central Committee resolution outlining its position - "Prospects under a Duterte presidency" -, along with some introductory comments by Reihana Mohideen from the Party of the Labouring Masses (PLM). We are also publishing an update version of article by Sarah Raymundo, vice-chairperson of the Philippine Anti-Imperialist Studies: "Duterte, a socio-political outcome".
