Willi Münzenberg.
December 29, 2012 -- The following talk on work by the Communist International to gather material aid for the Soviet Republic was given by Suzanne Weiss at the fourth Toronto study session on Toward the United Front, a 1300-page edition the fourth Communist International Congress (1922).
The study session, entitled “The Comintern’s Struggle for Social Hegemony”, surveyed the Comintern's work in unions, cooperatives, education, youth organisations and on material assistance to Soviet Russia. The presentation, taking up a speech by Willi Münzenberg, is followed by a brief biography and a description of the study session. More information on Toward the United Front is available HERE. – John Riddell
This article first appeared at Johnriddell.wordpress.com and is posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission.
Africa’s ‘rising’ or overdue uprising?
By Patrick Bond
January 1, 2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
Either:
1) Africa owes its takeoff to a variety of accelerators, nearly all of them external and occurring in the past 10 years:
- billions of dollars in aid, especially to fight HIV/AIDS and malaria;
- tens of billions of dollars in foreign-debt cancellations;
- a concurrent interest in Africa’s natural resources, led by China; and
- the rapid spread of mobile phones, from a few million in 2000 to more than 750 million today.
Business increasingly dominates foreign interest in Africa. Investment first outpaced aid in 2006 and now doubles it.
Or:
US economy: A major attack on labour rights
President Barack Obama bragged how he had saved the US auto industry by handing out billions in taxpayers’ money to the auto bosses, and even establishing what amounted to temporary federal ownership of the old General Motors plants when GM went bankrupt during the “Great Recession”.
By Sam Williams
December 23, 2012 -- A Critique of Crisis Theory, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Journal with permission -- December 11, 2012, brought news of a major new attack on basic labour rights in the United States. The following day, the Federal Reserve [the US central bank] announced new inflationary measures designed to end the economic stagnation the US economy has been mired in since the “Great Recession” bottomed out in July 2009.
By the Radical Socialist organisation
Pablo Solon: Strike four for climate change negotiations -- rethinking our strategies
Super Typhoon Bopha taken on December 2 from the International Space Station, as the storm bore down on the Philippines with winds of 135 miles per hour. Photo by NASA.
By Pablo Solon
December 18, 2012 -- Hoy es Todavia -- In baseball, when you have three strikes, you are out. In the climate change negotiations we already have had four strikes. The climate talks in Copenhagen, Cancun, Durban and now Doha. Four attempts and each of the results were bigger failures than the last. The emission reductions should have been at least 40 to 50% until 2020 based on 1990 levels. Four COPs later, the current numbers are down to a measly 13 to 18%. We are now well on our way to a global temperature increase of 4º to 8ºC.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good” is what some UN negotiators say. To which we can reply: “When our house is burning down, the worst thing you can do is lie to us.”
It’s time to rethink what is happening and try to find new strategies to avoid a global catastrophe.
No lack of evidence
India: Power of protest in the ‘rape capital’
Protesters from the All India Progressive Women's Association in Delhi, December 22-23.
India: 'Defend women’s right to freedom without fear! Ensure swift and sure punishment for rape!'
Demonstration in Jammu, December 20, 2012, in protest at the rape and brutalisation of a young woman in the Delhi.
Rising profits, sinking planet: socialist solutions to the climate crisis
"We have to put limits on the [capitalist] system's operation ... which means building a mass movement that has to build into itself not just the question of ecological justice, but also the question of social justice ... a movement with the radicalism of the 1960s' social movements with the social power of the union movements of the 1930s" -- Chris Williams.
Click HERE for more on Marxism and ecology.
Filmed by Doug Enaa Greene
Michael Lebowitz: What makes the working class a revolutionary subject?
Part of a mural by Crystal Howie.
Australia: Socialist Alliance 9th national conference, Geelong, January 18-20, 2013
The ninth national conference of the Socialist Alliance will be held in Geelong (Victoria), from January 18-20, 2013. It is open to all Socialist Alliance members and invited guests.
The national conference is our highest decision-making body, and delegates are elected from each branch to participate and vote at the conference on a number of resolutions on international and Australian politics and campaigns, party building and the plans of the Socialist Alliance for the coming year. The conference also considers any proposed changes to the Constitution and elects the incoming national executive and national office bearers.
Special international guest from Pakistan
Alia Amirali, the general secretary of Pakistan's National Student Federation (Punjab) and a member of the newly formed Awami Workers' Party (the product of the biggest left regroupment in that country), will be the special international guest speaker at the conference. She has some very important experiences to share, as this interview shows.
