COVID-19

Making sense of the interregnum since 2007-9

Costas Lapavitsas & Nicolás Aguila — The present condition of the capitalist order should be understood as a Gramscian interregnum, when “the old is dying and the new cannot be born.”

Shanghai Lockdown: A conversation with young leftists from China

Three young leftists from China met up with comrades from the Socialist Party of Malaysia in February. This is an excerpt from the conversation during the visit, related to COVID-19 lockdown and the protests in Shanghai last year.

Mass protests in China challenge COVID-19 lockdown restrictions

Republished from Life on the Left. Originally posted on Facebook by by Hong Kong activist Lam Chi Leung.

Life expectancy: The US and Cuba in the time of COVID-19

Recent data shows that between 2019 and 2021, life expectancy (LE) in the US plunged almost three years while for Cuba it edged up 0.2 years. Yet, in 1960, the year after its revolution, Cuba had a LE of 64.2 years, lower by 5.6 years than that in the US (69.8 years).

Strategic ambivalence or disguised conflict? China’s reactions to Russia’s war on Ukraine and to Covid

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).

One world or no world. Choose!