By Michael Karadjis
socialism
[Below, Links provides translations of the draft program and principles of the provisionally named United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which are currently being discussed at its founding congress. The documents were drafted by the provisional leadership of the PSUV.
[The following is the introduction to a new pamphlet, Comintern: Revolutionary Internationalism in Lenin's Time, produced by the Canadian Socialist Voice collective.
[A talk given at the two-day seminar “Workers Management: Theory and Practise”, held on October 26 and 27, 2007, organised by the Human Development and Transformative Praxis Program at the Caracas-based Miranda International Centre
Haiman El Troudi has occupied many positions in Venezuela’s revolutionary government. He was the director of the Office of President (2005–2006) under Hugo Chavez and secretary of the Maisanta
By Boris Kagarlitsky
Not long before the European elections, in which the social democratic vote collapsed, two of the most authoritative social democratic leaders, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder, published a letter in which they formulated the principles of the so-called "new centre" (neue Mitte). These principles could be summed up as arguing that the traditional ideas of social democracy (redistribution, a mixed economy and state regulation in the spirit of Keynes) needed to be replaced by new approaches in the spirit of neo-liberalism.
True, the authors of the letter took their distance from neo-liberalism itself, stating that they did not share its illusions that all problems could be solved through market methods. At the same time, they proposed to solve the problems of world trade by liberalising it further. Instead of solidarity, they called for increased competition, and instead of job creation, for preparing young people better for life under the conditions of a constantly changing market conjuncture.
By Lisa Macdonald
With the advent of the long economic downturn in the mid-1970s, capitalism launched the most concerted worldwide offensive against women's rights in 40 years
By Barry Sheppard
The collapse of "really existing socialism" in the USSR and Eastern Europe a decade ago came as a shock to all tendencies in the workers' movement and the political representatives of the capitalist class worldwide. No-one predicted such an outcome beforehand—no-one alive, that is. Why was this so?
To answer this question, it would be useful to review the differing views on the character of the USSR.
Stalin and his heirs claimed that the USSR had achieved socialism in the 1930s and was a classless society. The regime claimed, "We have not yet, of course, complete communism, but we have already achieved socialism—that is, the lowest stage of communism"1
By Stuart Munckton
Stuart Munckton is the national coordinator of the Australian socialist youth organisation Resistance. This the text of a talk presented to a Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) educational conference in January 2005.
Contents
From anti-imperialism to anti-capitalism
By Michael Karadjis
This article first appeared in Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, No. 27, January-April 2005.