Helen Yaffe - As Minister of Industries in Cuba between 1961 and 1965, Che Guevara addressed the challenge of increasing production and labour productivity in conditions of underdevelopment and in transition to socialism, without relying on capitalist mechanisms that undermine the formation of new consciousness and social relations integral to socialism. Under capitalism, Guevara noted, competition for private profit drives the application of science and technology to industrial development, revolutionising the productive forces. Socialist governments must find alternative methods.

Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Social Freedom Party (TÖP), Labour Movement Party (EHP), Federation of Socialist Assemblies (SMF), Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) and Labour Party (EMEP) will officially announce its establishment as a political alliance on September 24 in a meeting in Istanbul. HDP Vice Co-Chair Tuncer Bakırhan answers Gazete Duvar questions.

Anti*Capitalist Resistance - It was with great sadness that Anti*Capitalist Resistance heard of the death of our comrade Sarah Parker, at the age of 67. For two years Sarah had been suffering from breast cancer. She will be remembered as a tireless fighter for socialist feminism, anti-racism and solidarity with the struggle of the Kurdish people for national self-determination.

Rojava — or, as the region is officially called, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) — has become a positive point of reference for social change for many on the Left. AANES is a multi-ethnic society that has had its own autonomous government since the Rojava Revolution in July 2012.

Imagine you are a Russian-speaker in some bombed-out Eastern Ukrainian city, waiting to be liberated. Some of the “liberators” will be first checking your closets for young men to mobilize and use as a Z-branded canon fodder. The other liberators make it clear that they see you аs nothing more than a “vatnik,” a Homo Sovieticus. All that remains for you to choose is which knife you would like to be liberated with: the good knife of the victim or the evil knife of the aggressor?

With almost all votes counted from Sunday’s election, it looks like Sweden’s right-wing parties are set to take power with a razor-thin majority, ending eight years of social democratic government. For the first time, this conservative coalition also includes the far-right Sweden Democrats, who have emerged as the country’s second largest party, despite their roots in Sweden’s neo-Nazi movement.

What are the main issues at stake for the Finnish left? How did people in Finland react to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Why is ecology a top priority on the agenda? Mia Haglund, a deputy of the Left Alliance and a secretary general of the NGLA, discusses left politics in the party and beyond.

In this lecture from the series on imperialism today, Ilya Matveev discusses the particular character of Russian imperialism and the evolution of the Putin regime. Matveev is a political scientist formerly based in St Petersburg, Russia, and cooperator with the media-project posle.media

Most of the left in France - we'll leave aside the sectors that openly support Putin - condemns this war of aggression by Russian imperialism, and demands the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. At the same time, however, it remains paralysed and voiceless, abandoning the field of Ukraine defence to Macron, to the bourgeoisie.

Recent data shows that between 2019 and 2021, life expectancy (LE) in the US plunged almost three years while for Cuba it edged up 0.2 years. Yet, in 1960, the year after its revolution, Cuba had a LE of 64.2 years, lower by 5.6 years than that in the US (69.8 years).

Cantagallo is a well-known service station on the main north-south motorway on the outskirts of Bologna. We have stopped there many times. A journalist from the leading Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, went there on the 15 August Farragosto bank holiday. He hung around, listened and talked to people who were there. A father was there with his bored son telling him how he had one of his first meals out there when it had just opened. The son kept playing on his phone.