Issue 17

Asia Pacific People's Solidarity Conference

Leaders of the struggle against neo-liberal globalisation in Indonesia are preparing a major gathering of activists to discuss strategies to stop the imperialist onslaught on the Indonesian economy and people.

"The gathering", Kelik Ismunanto, a conference organiser, said, "is not just for Indonesian activists. We are inviting activists from the region, the world even, to join the discussions."

• Once again on the purpose of my pamphlet
• 'Two Tactics' and the bourgeois revolution
• The 'democratic dictatorship' and the bourgeois republic
• Lenin's and Trotsky's 'conceptions' of the revolution and 1905
• The October Revolution and 'permanent revolution'
• Once again: what is the socialist revolution?
• National oppression, national-democratic revolution and socialism
• Conclusion: what's wrong with 'permanent revolution'?

By Phil Hearse

• The DSP's position on revolutions in the dominated countries
• The socialist revolution, Russia and Spain
• Russia: how the revolution opened the way for capitalism and bourgeois rule (according to Lorimer)
• Spain
• Conclusion: agreement and differences between the DSP and permanent revolution

"The International of Crime and Treason [i.e., the counter-revolutionary coordination of imperialism—PH] has in fact been organised. On the other hand, the indigenous bourgeoisies have lost all their capacity to oppose imperialism—if they ever had it—and they have become the last card in the pack. There are no other alternatives: either a socialist revolution or a make-believe revolution."—Ernesto Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental 1967 (emphasis added).

"You must struggle for the socialist revolution, struggle to the end, until the complete victory of the proletariat. Long live the socialist revolution!"—V.I. Lenin, "Speech at the Finland Station" on arrival back in Russia, April 1917

[This is the text of a draft motion adopted by the conference of the Scottish Socialist Party in February 2000.]

We actively promote international solidarity of working and oppressed people to resist the injustices and barbarism of global capitalism and imperialism. We are part of an international struggle for a peaceful, cooperative and democratic socialist system.

Global capitalism has wreaked poverty, famine and environmental devastation across the world. The gap between rich and poor has never been so wide.

• Vietnam's Pol-Mil
• The Philippine pol-mil
• Terrorism and terror as tactics
• When terror is admissible
• Pol-Mil versus mass struggle strategy

A number of party formations in the Philippines, such as the PMP (Workers Party of the Philippines), RPM (Revolutionary Workers Party), PMLP (Party of Marxists-Leninists in the Philippines), adopt the politico-military ("pol-mil") strategy as a reaction to the protracted people's war strategy of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). It is defined as a combination of political and military struggles, with the military struggle playing a secondary or subordinate role to the political struggle.

• Expanding WTO?
  
• APEC dealt another blow

• From rhetoric to program
• Hypocrisy about violence
• Role of the media

The events of Septembe

• O20 actions
• Background
• 'Critical engagement'
• Role of the KCTU
• Partners in global neo-liberalism

On October 20 (O20) and the days before, a series of lively demonstrations against the third Asia-Europe Parliamentary Meeting (ASEM) signalled Seoul's entry into the growing worldwide movement against the global generalisation of neo-liberalism.

By Barry Sheppard

By Peter Boyle

• Founded on solidarity
  
• Is the movement economic nationalist?
  
• A changing of the guard
  
• Leadership and democracy
  
• Popular democracy
  
• Old left, new left

The previous issue of Links noted the spread of opposition to capitalist globalisation and focused on alternatives to neo-liberalism. In this issue, we examine the new international movement that has been developing since the protests in Seattle in late 1999.

In "The politics of the new movement for global solidarity", Peter Boyle notes "a smell of panic in the ruling class" in the wake of the major demonstrations