This is a crucial time for Turkey. The past few years, marked by tumult and repression, have led up to a constitutional referendum that will help decide the country’s future. If approved, the amendments would install a state system with a dictatorial president at the center.
Interview with Joseph Daher on Hezbollah and the Syrian Revolution
25 March 2017, byJoseph Daher is a Swiss-Syrian socialist activist, academic, and founder of the blog Syria Freedom Forever. He is the author of Hezbollah: Political Economy of the Party of God, Pluto Press, London, 2016 (distributed in the US by Univeristy of Chicago Press). Oriana P. spoke with him during the conference on Syria at Barnard College in New York on Feb. 16th 2017 for RAWP report.
Lenin and Trotsky confronting the bureaucracy
19 March 2017, byThis study was first prepared for a training course and presented in the summer of 1989. The French version was published on January 21, 2016 on the occasion of the 92nd anniversary of Lenin’s death, followed by an English translation. The last part of the text titled “The struggle of Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and the Fourth International for a Socialist Democracy” has been added in January 2017.
Constitutional gerrymandering and murderous consolidation of capitalist nepotism
18 January 2017, byFrom Angola to Chad, Central Africa, including Equatorial Guinea, is the sub-region most affected by the decline in oil prices, because it is dependent on oil revenues. An oligarchic resistance to the respect of the rules of the democratic game, in the form of a new type of authoritarian regime combining a formal multiparty regime with a repressive confiscation of power, characterized by nepotism, is closely related to this rentier character.
Thus, in a direction contrary to the wind that blew from North Africa in 2010-2011, sweeping away in 2014 the Blaise Compaoré regime in Burkina Faso, in 2016, the Congolese, Chadian and Gabonese peoples were forced to suffer, for another term of office, disgraced regimes. The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), confronted with the postponement of the elections, which extended the presidency of Kabila, have already seen dozens of people killed following the repression of popular demonstrations. So we could speak of a "spirit of sub-region". Without forgetting that in Côte d’Ivoire Ouattara has had a constitution drafted that allows the president to appoint one third of the members of the Senate.
Thoughts on the political conjuncture beyond the referendum results
23 November 2016, byOn October 2, 2016, Colombia’s referendum on the approval of the peace agreement between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP – Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – Army of the People) resulted in a rejection of the agreement by 50.23% to 49.76% of votes cast (on a turnout of 37% of the registered electorate). What were the reasons for this negative result?
“The Hammer Blow of the Revolution”
31 July 2016, byRosa Luxemburg’s defense of socialist democracy and her critique of the Bolsheviks in her pamphlet The Russian Revolution (1918) are well known. Less well known and often forgotten is her critique of bourgeois democracy, its limits, its contradictions, and its narrow and partial character. We propose to examine this critical line of thought in some of her political writings without any pretentions to completeness.
Remembering the riots of spring 1976 in China
14 June 2016, byIt’s 40 years since workers, students and school-students broke the oppressive regime that had come out of the Cultural Revolution in China and forced a change of direction on their rulers with mass protests in the spring of 1976.
Escalation of terror in Lahore – We live in the same world
7 June 2016, byA bombing in Lahore on Easter Sunday (the end of March) targeted Christians, but also children and Muslims sharing together a popular place of conviviality. The similarity in targets and modality reminds us of earlier events in Brussels and Paris.
What’s Next for Nuit Debout?
31 May 2016, byNuit Debout, France’s massive mobilizations against a proposal to dismantle the country’s labor code, has drawn comparisons to similar international movements — Occupy, Turkey’s Gezi Park, the movement of the squares in Greece. This wealth of experience helps us look at Nuit Debout and its prospects going forward.
Alternatives to Neoliberal Capitalism
21 April 2016, byNeoliberal capitalism today has become unpopular, but imagining alternatives is difficult nonetheless. During the 1980s and 1990s, the glitzy world of big money impressed not only people who were invested in it, but even many who were increasingly indebted to or sidelined by it. Even those who didn’t like it very much thought that there was no alternative to the neoliberal remaking of capitalism. [1]
Footnotes
[1] Author’s content warning: This text includes a certain amount of Keynes-bashing. Readers who find this offensive may take comfort from the Marxist self-critique offered at the end.
