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Marxist theory
Malaysia: Two-party system – and a ‘third force’?
By Jeyakumar Devaraj
February 11, 2010 -- Aliran Monthly -- Malaysia has only known one ruling coalition in the past 52 years since independence. But the result of the March 2008 election has led to rising hope among many Malaysians that an enormous change might be around the corner – a two-party system under which the people are free to choose between two coalitions, which are both capable of governing the country.
The purpose of this paper is to locate the institution of a two-coalition system against a wider historical perspective.
The concept that every person has an equal right to select the government irrespective of his or her social status, wealth, education, religious affiliation or beliefs is a revolutionary idea. And it is relatively new.
Slavoj Zizek’s failed encounter with Leninism
By Paul Kellogg
The
Slovenian cultural theorist Slavoj žižek
– most centrally in his Revolution At The
Gates – has made it his business to reintroduce the Russian Marxist
Vladimir Lenin to a new generation of activists. This in itself is a worthwhile
project. Most believe that in building a new left we have to “leave the
Leninist legacy behind” and greet any attempt to resurrect Lenin with
“sarcastic laughter ... Doesn’t Lenin stand precisely for the failure to put Marxism into practice,
for the big catastrophe which left its mark on the whole twentieth-century
world politics, for the Real Socialist experiment which culminated in an
economically inefficient dictatorship?”.[i]
Beyond `feminine’ and `masculine’
By Anna Ochkina, translated by Renfrey Clarke for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
[Rabkor.ru published this reply by Anna Ochkina to a polemical article, “Masculine and Feminine”, by Dmitry Zhvaniya. Anna Ochkina is deputy director of Institute for Globalisation Studies and Social Movements (IGSO) and deputy editor of Levaya politika (Left Politics) journal. She is a sociologist based in Penza, where she teaches at the university. Dmitry Zhvaniya is a journalist, based in St. Petersburg and a founding member of Dvizheniye soprotivleniya imeni Petra Alekseyeva (the Piotr Alekseyev Resistance Movement). Zhvaniya's article "Muzhskoe i zhenskoe" ("Masculine and Feminine") is available (in Russian) at http://www.rabkor.ru/debate/3933.html.]
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John Bellamy Foster: The crisis of capital: economy, ecology and empire
From pdxjustice Media Productions on Vimeo.
Professor of sociology and editor of Monthly Review, John Bellamy Foster, talks about the triple crises in the economy, the environment, and the imperial wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond..
The relevance of Gramsci’s theory for today
By Peter Latham
January 3, 2010 -- I
first read Gramsci in English over 40 years ago. Moreover, my thesis on Theories of the Labour Movement—a Marxist
critique of non-Marxist theories of industrial relations—used Gramsci’s concept
of the “organic” working class intellectual to explain twentieth century rank
and file movements in the British building industry.[1]
This paper is based on the Gramsci section in my forthcoming book on The State and Local Government.[2]
John Bellamy Foster: Why ecological revolution?
By John Bellamy Foster
January 2010 -- Monthly Review -- It is now universally recognised within science that humanity is confronting the prospect — if we do not soon change course — of a planetary ecological collapse. Not only is the global ecological crisis becoming more and more severe, with the time in which to address it fast running out, but the dominant environmental strategies are also forms of denial, demonstrably doomed to fail, judging by their own limited objectives. This tragic failure, I will argue, can be attributed to the refusal of the powers that be to address the roots of the ecological problem in capitalist production and the resulting necessity of ecological and social revolution.
Australia: 'It's time for the DSP to merge into the Socialist Alliance'
[This report, presented by Peter Boyle on behalf of the Australian Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) national executive was adopted, by the 24th DSP congress on January 2, 2010. See also ``Australia: New era of left unity as DSP votes to merge with the Socialist Alliance''.]
We are proposing to take an important step forward in our party building effort, an effort that has now spanned some four decades. We propose, at this 24th congress, to merge the Democratic Socialist Perspective into the Socialist Alliance, to take everything we have learned and built over these years of political struggle (organised through the DSP) into a broader political organisation, an organisation which has a majority of members who don't come from the DSP.
John Bellamy Foster: `We can't shop our way out of the ecological crisis'
John Bellamy Foster Interviewed by Max van Lingen
[This article first appeared at MRZine. A shorter version of this interview appeared in the December issue of the Dutch newspaper The Socialist. The entire interview appears in Dutch at the website of The Socialist. It has been posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission. To read more by John Bellamy Foster, click HERE.]
Max van Lingen: Consciousness about climate change has increased enormously; however, it also seems as if there is a lack of criticism of business and government actions. Instead it appears as if people are thinking: it doesn't really matter why people act, as long as they act.
Pamphlet to download: Marta Harnecker's `Ideas for the Struggle'
This 12-part series of articles by Marta Harnecker (translated by Federico Fuentes) on ideas for how to organise for socialism in the 21st century first appeared in Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. It is now available download free as a pamphlet in PDF format.
Paul Le Blanc: Theories of Stalinism
The Marxism of Leon Trotsky
By Kunal Chattopadhyay
Kolkata: Progress Publishers, 2006, 672 pages
Western Marxism and the Soviet Union
By Marcel van der Linden
Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2009, 379 pages
Reviews by Paul Le Blanc
Karl Marx and his comrades deemed their own approach “scientific”, as compared to “utopian” intellectual efforts on behalf of socialism, because they believed that practical efforts to challenge and ultimately replace capitalism with something better must be grounded in a serious study of economic, political, social, historical realities and dynamics.
More, they believed that lessons learned from practical organising and political experiences of the working class and popular social movements — sometimes glorious victories and often tragic defeats — must also guide practical efforts of the future. The combination of such study and experience has been called “Marxist theory”.
The massive crisis of capitalism has put the meaning of “socialism” back into public debate. Superficially equating state intervention in the economy with “socialism”, some are inclined to agree with Newsweek magazine that “we are all socialists now.”
Capitalism, sexism and queerphobia’s social basis
By Jess Moore
There are social expectations on everyone, men and women, to act in particular ways based on our sex. This is bad for everyone because it’s stifling, but it’s worse for women and queers.
These gender stereotypes and roles put men first and women second:
Teori Revolusi Permanen Trotsky: Suatu perdebatan panjang yang masih relevan
[Klik di sini untuk artikel-artikel Links dalam Bahasa Indonesia]
Oleh John Nebauer, anggota Partai Sosialis Demokratik Australia (DSP)
Ulasan dari buku Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution: A Leninist critique, by Doug Lorimer, Resistance Books, Sydney, 1998.
Setelah Lenin, Trotsky adalah pemimpin utama Revolusi Rusia. Kontribusinya terhadap gerakan sosialis internasional dan Marxisme sangatlah besar. Kepemimpinan Trotsky dalam Komite Revolusioner Militer pada November 1917 berperan menjamin kemenangan pemberontakan Bolshevik. Karya klasiknya History of the Russian Revolution masih merupakan pemaparan terbaik tentang rangkaian peristiwa menjelang dan sesudah kehancuran dinasti Romanov. Sebagai pendiri Tentara Merah, Trotsky memainkan peran vital dalam mempertahankan revolusi dari kekuatan reaksi. Di kemudian hari, ia memimpin oposisi terhadap degenerasi Stalinis dan memberikan analisis Marxis terhadap rejim birokratis tersebut.
Gramsci dan Hegemoni
[Klik di sini untuk artikel-artikel Links dalam Bahasa Indonesia]
oleh Trent Brown
[Pernah dimuat di http://links.org.au/node/1260, dan diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Indonesia oleh Data Brainanta, Staff Dept. Kaderisasi dan Komunikasi Massa DPP Papernas.]
John Bellamy Foster: `The roots of the world ecological crisis'
October 29, 2009 -- "We have no other word but crisis to describe it, really. It's very different than the economic crisis that we are now in, in the sense that even a very, very severe economic crisis, such as the one that has been present since late 2007 ... still is, in many ways, a cyclical event... These crises are periodic -- it's part of the nature of capitalism...
Fourth International debates `ecosocialism'
By Michael Löwy
International Viewpoint -- October 10, 2009 -- Daniel Tanuro’s report on climate change [Report on climate change at the IC of the Fourth International] is one of the most important documents produced by our movement in recent years. It is an invaluable contribution to the political arming of revolutionary Marxists and to making them capable of facing up to the challenges of the 21st century.
`Monthly Review' at 60: Six decades of campaigning for `social and ecological revolution'
On September 17, 2009, Monthly Review celebrated its 60th anniversary at the New York Society for Ethical Culture in New York City. Five-hundred enthusiastic supporters gathered to hear remarks by Robert McChesney, Grace Lee Boggs, John Bellamy Foster, Fred Magdoff, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Michael Tigar, and hear music by Toshi Reagon.
More
than six decades ago, Paul Sweezy and his good friend, the labour journalist
Leo Huberman, had long dreamed of founding a magazine offering a forum for
insightful comment and analysis of world and national events from a
specifically socialist perspective. The two already had a history of activism
in the radical cauldron spawned by the Great Depression, the rise of the labour
movement, and the World War II. By 1948, with the accelerating crises of Cold
War and domestic repression – and with seed money from Sweezy's good friend and
Harvard colleague, the literary historian and critic F.O. Matthiessen – they
pressed forward with their plan for what would become Monthly Review.
The Levellers and the 1640s English Revolution
By Graham Milner
In 1649, 360 years ago this year, an experiment in communal land holding and cultivation began on St. George's Hill in Surrey, England, as the principles of a communist society were put into practice by the Diggers -- followers of Gerrard Winstanley, a visionary and writer of radical political tracts. This experiment marked an important phase in the development of socialist tendencies in the struggle to defeat the Stuart monarchy in the 1640s. This essay attempts to analyse the dynamics of the revolutionary struggle in England during the 1640s civil war and its aftermath. It concentrates on the emergence and development of left-wing tendencies in the revolutionary movement, and attempts to provide an explanation for the defeat of the aspirations of those tendencies.
Gramsci and hegemony
Graphic from http://www.i-italy.org.
By Trent Brown
September 22, 2009 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Antonio Gramsci is an important figure in the history of Marxist theory. While Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels provided a rigorous analysis of capital at the social and economic levels – particularly showing how capital antagonises the working class and gives rise to crisis – Gramsci supplemented this with a sophisticated theory of the political realm and how it is organically/dialectically related to social and economic conditions. He provides us with a theory of how the proletariat must organise politically if it is to effectively respond to capital’s crises and failures, and bring about revolutionary change.
Incidentally, this innovation has proven to be of interest not only to Marxists, but also to those involved in other forms of progressive politics, from the civil rights movement, to gender politics, to contemporary ecological struggles. The reason why his approach has proven so popular and generally adaptable is because Gramsci was himself a man of action and his fundamental concern was with progressive strategy. Thus while in this article I plan to give a give a general outline of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and the reasons behind its formulation, it’s important that we build on this by thinking about how we can use these concepts strategically in our own struggles.
John Bellamy Foster: Financial crisis, imperialism and environment -- `Socialism is humanity's best chance'
On September 17, 2009, John Bellamy Foster appeared on Democracy Now! to discuss the financial meltdown, social change and democracy. Click HERE to read the transcript.
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A conversation with John Bellamy Foster, editor of the US-based socialist magazine Monthly Review, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and co-author (with Fred Magdoff) of The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (Monthly Review Press, 2009). He was interviewed by Farooque Chowdhury for the Bangladesh daily newspaper New Age. It was published on September 8, 2009.
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