Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) recently concluded its 24th National Congress and the first one since the start of the pandemic. The event was held in Klang, between 15th of July to 17th of July 2022. It was a refreshing congress with many young people participating — displaying a promising future for socialism and giving us hope that its ideology is not outdated, but without a doubt, brewing amongst the youth. The election for the party’s Central Committee was participated by 49 candidates for 10 Central Committee seats, which for the first time saw woman candidates winning 8 of them.

In this interview with Federico Fuentes, Kagarlitsky provides insight into the domestic factors behind the Russian regime’s decision to invade Ukraine, why President Vladimir Putin is seeking an “everlasting war”, the critical role being played by the left in anti-war organising, and prospects for social upheaval in Russia. A much shorter version of this interview first appeared in Green Left.

We stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, fighting a brutal invasion by Putin’s Russia. We wish their people’s resistance victory over this criminal aggression.

I’m writing from Ukraine, where I serve in the Territorial Defense Forces. A year ago, I couldn’t have expected to be in this situation. Like millions of Ukrainians my life has been upturned by the chaos of war.

The return of high inflation after the global pandemic poses a major political and analytical challenge for labour and the left. On top of cuts to real wages resulting from the wide gap between inflation and pay, high and rising inflation has led central banks, including the Bank of Canada, to hike interest rates sharply. This is raising the debt servicing costs of households, businesses and governments and making new borrowing more expensive.

“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen”, as Lenin never actually said. The estrangement between the regime-state in Sri Lanka and its core constituencies, while widening over the course of the pandemic years, became outright antagonism in a matter of weeks in the first half of 2022. This is what sets apart the first half of 2022 from the years preceding it.

Uri Weltmann, is the national field organiser for Omdim be’Yachad-Naqef Ma’an (Standing Together), and a member of its national leadership. Standing Together is a Jewish-Arab social movement active in Israel, organising against racism and occupation, and for equality and social justice. Daniel Randall is a trade unionist and socialist based in London. He is the author of Confronting Antisemitism on the Left: Arguments for Socialists. They discussed the political situation in Israel and the prospects for the left.

Why does China’s response so far to the Russian invasion of Ukraine "not add up"? On one hand, China has refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has pushed its own state-controlled media to promote only pro-Russian propaganda, and even republished false reports by the Russian state media. China abstained from a UN Security Council resolution in March 2022 that condemned the Russian invasion. Meanwhile, the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently announced that China and Russia "will always maintain strategic focus and steadily advance our comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era," especially in the energy trade (Quoted in Torigian 2022).

Early March 2022 provided a surprising reflection of the extent to which dominant Western norms of international finance could retain hegemony, even as the world’s North-South polarisation suddenly worsened. The Shanghai-based New Development Bank (NDB) was set up by five countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) – at a 2014 Brazilian conference of presidents.

“The political meaning of Abe’s death, the consequences, I no longer have the luxury of thinking about” ― Final line in a letter the killer sent to a journalist the day before the incident.

There is a debate among socialists over whether Russia is an imperialist power or not.