socialism

November 2, 2010 -- New Left Project -- Derek Wall is an economics lecturer and writer. He has been a member of the Green Party since 1980 and was Green Party principal speaker from 2006 to 2007. He is a founder of the Ecosocialist International and Green Left [an organised ecosocialist group within the Green Party] and has written widely on green politics. His latest books are The Rise of the Green Left and The No-Nonsense Guide to Green Politics. In this interview, he and Edward Lewis examine the nature and politics of the Green Party from a left perspective.

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What are the origins of the Green Party? What are the circumstances that brought it about?

ELAM students.

By Don Fitz, Havana

[For more analysis and discussion on the economic changes in Cuba, click HERE.]

By Leticia Martínez Hernández

September 24, 2010 -- Granma International -- On August 1 Cuba's President Raúl Castro Ruz announced to the National Assembly the decision to extend the self-employment sector and use it as an another option for workers seeking alternative jobs after the necessary reduction of the country’s inflated employment registers in the public sector. Various restrictions will be eliminated to allow the authorisation of new licences and the marketing of certain products, and greater flexibility to hire a workforce for certain activities.

Many people have been waiting a solution that, far from being improvised or ephemeral, makes it possible to increase the availability of goods and services, while assuring an income to those who decide to do this work. It will contribute to the state being relieved of the burden of excessive subsidies, while placing in non-state hands the production of goods and services which it has provided for years in spite of the difficult economic context.

Cuba's president, Raul Castro.

[For more analysis and discussion on the economic changes in Cuba, click HERE.]

By Helen Yaffe

Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it -- Karl Marx, 1875

Wages today are clearly insufficient to satisfy all needs and have thus ceased to play a role in ensuring the socialist principle that each should contribute according to their capacity and receive according to their work…the Party and government have been studying these and other complex and difficult problems in depth, problems which must be addressed comprehensibly and through a differentiated approach in each concrete case. -- Raul Castro, 2007

[We have] the dream of everyone being able to live on their salary or on their adequate pension… -- Fidel Castro, 2005

September 16, 2010 – via

"I asked him [Fidel Castro] if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting". -- Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic blog, September 8, 2010

"In their ravings they pretend that Cuba is an exporter of revolutions. In their sleepless business and usurers' minds they believe that revolutions can be sold and bought, rent or lent, export or import as one more merchandise". -- Fidel Castro, February 4, 1962

By Billy Wharton

August 31, 2010 -- A recent study featured in the Los Angeles Times suggests that daydreaming or other such unstructured mental activities might play a key role in mental well being. Unknowingly, this study promotes a prime potential of a democratic socialist society – the right to free time. While capitalism, especially in its current neoliberal incarnation, stresses never-ending productivity, a human-centred socialist system would allow for more free time.

Studies have apparently demonstrated that unstructured thought allows the human brain to develop its default mode network. Daydreaming, for instance, is not an escape from brain activity, but a productive working out of society’s complex social rules that allows the brain to function more efficiently in normal mode. Conversely, tasks that require strict attention tend to use one part of the brain at the expense of the default mode.

By Ian Angus

August 30, 2010 -- Canadian Dimension via Climate & Capitalism -- Not long ago, most socialists had little to say about environmental issues, and the environmental movement was focused on individual (change your light bulbs) and capitalist (create a market for emissions) solutions to the ecological crisis.

In 2007, immediately after the founding of the Ecosocialist International Network, I wrote a Canadian Dimension article on the challenges facing ecosocialists. In it, I discussed two parallel trends that, though in their infancy, seemed to portend a new wave of anti-capitalist and pro-ecology action.

• Some socialists were moving away from the left’s abstention from the environmental movement, and attempting to develop a distinctly socialist approach to the global environmental crisis.

August 30, 2010 -- Michael Lebowitz is a Canadian Marxist economist. He is the director of the “Transformative practice and human development” program at the Venezuela-based left-wing think tank, the Centro Internacional Miranda. He is professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University and author of Build it Now: 21st Century Socialism and the 2004 Isaac Deutscher-prize winning Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class. His latest book is The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development.

By Ben Courtice

August 29, 2010 -- Blind Carbon Copy [BCC] -- Socialism was conceived as a creative and idealistic movement, but lost its way for most of the 20th century. Recapturing this imaginative energy can help find solutions to such huge threats as climate change. This article started as a short impromptu speech I gave to launch the third edition of the Australian Socialist Alliance's Climate Charter.

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Socialism used to be a rallying point for idealists, utopians, dreamers and those who were simply hopeful. It carried an almost millenarian promise of redemption and salvation. More importantly, it allowed its advocates to exercise their imagination. If socialism was to democratically realise the wishes of the common working people, why should they be restrained in their wishes?

By Dave Holmes

[This is the text of a talk given as part of Melbourne Socialist Alliance’s Socialist Ideas Seminar series on July 28, 2010.]

By Lance Carter