Two resolutions were adopted on the Arab revolutions which are below. The general perspectives text will be published shortly.
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Britain
David Harvey addresses #OccupyLSX: The best system money can buy
November 12, 2011 – Professor David Harvey addresses Occupy London Stock Exchange (#OccupyLSX)
Tariq Ali on #Occupy: ‘The fog of confusion has finally lifted’
#Occupy Sydney march, November 5, 2011. Photo from Occupy Sydney.
For more reports on the Occupy movement, click HERE.
By Tariq Ali
October 25, 2011 -- Tariq Ali -- “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at”, wrote Oscar Wilde, “for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”
The spirit of that 19th century socialist is alive among the idealistic young people who have come out in protest against the turbo-charged global capitalism that has dominated the world ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Occupy Sydney, October 15, 2011. Photos by Kate Ausburn.
October 16 , 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- According to http://15october.net, protests and actions -- inspired by the Occupy Wall Street mass movement across the United States -- were to take place in more than 950 cities in more than 80 countries on October 15. Actions had already begun in some parts of the world before that.
Mike Marqusee: Riots, reason and resistance
By Mike Marqusee
Tariq Ali on riots in England: Why here and now?; Neoliberalism’s chickens coming home to roost
By Tariq Ali, London
August 9, 2011 -- Why is it that the same areas always erupt first, whatever the cause? Pure accident? Might it have something to do with race and class and institutionalised poverty and the sheer grimness of everyday life?
The ruling Conservative Party-Liberal Democrats (Con-Dem) coalition politicians (including new New Labour, who might well sign up to a national government if the recession continues apace) with their petrified ideologies can’t say that because all three parties are equally responsible for the crisis.
They made the mess.
They privilege the wealthy. They let it be known that judges and magistrates should set an example by giving punitive sentences to protesters found with peashooters.
They never seriously question why no policeman is ever prosecuted for the 1000-plus deaths in custody since 1990.
Whatever the party, whatever the skin colour of the MP, they spout the same clichés.
Yes, we know violence on the streets in London is bad. Yes, we know that looting shops is wrong.
But why is it happening now? Why didn’t it happen last year?
Murdoch's News Corporation: crime, corruption and class rule
July 14, 2011 -- Socialist Resistance -- On Sunday, July 10, 2011, that bastion of scandal-mongering populist reaction in Britain, the News of the World (NOTW), departed this earth writes Piers Mostyn.
It was Britains’s biggest selling Sunday paper and the paper that achieved the highest ever sales in the world. Two days later, after what a Guardian columnist described as “an uprising of MPs”, the Murdoch empire dropped its bid to take over BSkyB. It was a humiliating retreat for the world’s biggest media mogul.
Review: 'From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy'
By Rupen Savoulian
Scotland: Why the left should back independence
By Alan McCombes
May 19, 2011 -- Scottish Socialist Party -- More than 150 years ago, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels called on the working
class of all countries to unite and fight for a socialist world.
At a time when there were no telephones, no cars, no aeroplanes, no TV and no radio, their internationalist vision represented an extraordinary feat of historical imagination.
In today’s world of the internet, satellite TV, high-speed air
travel, global capitalism and the World Social Forum, the philosophy of
socialist internationalism no longer looks like a utopian flight of
fantasy.
But what does socialist internationalism mean in practice?
“Imagine there’s no countries, I wonder if you can; nothing to
kill or die for, a brotherhood of man”, sang John Lennon in his
celebrated radical anthem.
R. Palme Dutt's 'Fascism and social revolution'
By Graham Milner
In the present situation in the world, with the intermittent resurgence of fascist and neo-fascist movements in some countries, an avowedly Marxist treatment of the subject of fascism, such as Palme Dutt's Fascism and Social Revolution, deserves the attention of new generations of readers.
Rajani Palme Dutt (1896-1974) was born in England of an Indian father and a Swedish mother.[1] He grew up in a political household, where socialism and Indian independence were familiar subjects of discussion. A brilliant scholar at Oxford University (he took a double first), Dutt was a conscientious objector during the World War I, and was expelled from university in 1917 for disseminating Marxist propaganda.
Scotland: Political climate changes utterly; Voters bring break up of Britain closer?
Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond.
By Colin Fox, Scottish Socialist Party spokesperson
May 10, 2011 -- As landslides go the 2011 Holyrood election was huge. Scotland has been shaken to its political foundations as voters again voiced their contempt for the Conservative Party [Tories], its coalition partner the Liberal Democratic Party [Lib Dems], and also the Labour Party. The Scotsman newspaper described the result of the May 5 Scottish election as a "victory of hitherto unthinkable proportions" for the Scottish National Party (SNP). Even The Scotsman can be right some of the time!
Britain: Socialist Resistance adopts resolutions on Arab revolutions
April 5, 2011 -- Socialist Resistance -- The British socialist organisation Socialist Resistance held a successful and well-attended national conference over the previous weekend which adopted a comprehensive perspectives text to guide our work over the coming months. The conference also took important debates on the nature of the economic crisis and the debt as well as a session on the impact of the Arab revolutions and the imperialist intervention in Libya.
The European workers' movement: dangers and challenges
In Portugal, November 2010 general strike called by the Communist Party-led CGTP and the