“Why is Haiti the poorest country in the Americas?” - IV561 - October 2021 / Haiti

Éric Zemmour's rise on the French political scene may seem dazzling — but it certainly didn't fall from the sky. The likely transfer of the main far-right media heavyweight into the party-political arena is a symptom that encapsulates the deeper trends of the current period. - IV561 - October 2021 / France, Far Right

“It is the defence of this sovereignty and its development, under new conditions, that the hirak has now introduced into society, with terms and objectives less reductive than those of the government.” - IV561 - October 2021 / France, Algeria

“History is not neutral, and it can be used and diverted as a support by all governments for their own interests. It is up to all the oppressed and the victims of colonialism and imperialism on both sides of the Mediterranean to write their own history.” - IV561 - October 2021 / France, Algeria, Historical events and figures

“For now, workers are quitting because they want to be happier at work. Perhaps nothing is more radical, if that desire can be transformed into more conscious, more collective mass action.” - IV561 - October 2021 / USA, Trade unions/workplace organizing

Wang Fanxi Mao Zedong Thought Brill, Historical Materialism Book Series, Volume: 210, Leiden, 2020. 326 pp., €150.00 hb ISBN 9789004358904 - Reviews section / Marxism, Fourth International, China

Andreas Malms new book How to Blow up a Pipeline. Learning to fight in a World on Fire has got a great deal of attention. The focus has been on Malms critique of parts of the climate movement that a priori and in any given situation advocates civil disobedience. Malm highlights the role of sabotage as one of several tactical methods in the struggle against the fossil

In this rather unusual volume edited by Robert Nichols, we find his translations of Bensaïd's 2007 title essay, as well as new translations of Marx's five 1842 Die Rheinische Zeitung articles on wood theft, from which Bensaïd draws. Nichols also provides a substantial introduction in which he calls this collection an ‘experiment' representing ‘a deliberately

This homage to Trotskyist resistance fighters shot by the Nazis was distributed as a four page bulletin* by local members of the French section of the Fourth International. - In Memoriam - Obituaries and appreciations / France, Obituary, Fourth International, Historical events and figures

“Philippe Poutou has only described a sad reality, which has been widely documented elsewhere.” - IV561 - October 2021 / France

“Mobilized for several decades, the heirs of colonial and postcolonial immigration, today joined by more than a hundred signatories of the Appeal of the Unitary Collective, bringing together many political parties, trade unions and associations, demand that the state crimes of 17 October 1961 be finally recognized” - IV561 - October 2021 / France, Algeria

“The leadership called upon all the progressive and democratic forces of the country to unite and resist the activities of the reactionary fundamentalist groups.” - News from around the world / Bangladesh

“South Korean workers have thrown down the gauntlet, and we should all pay close attention. While the dynamics at play in the KCTU strike are particular to Korea, the plight of precarious workers under the weight of neoliberalism is a global struggle.South Korean workers have thrown down the gauntlet, and we should all pay close attention. While the dynamics

“Radical Socialist believes that in this sub-continent in the struggles against fascism and communalist fundamentalism all leftist and progressive forces must work unitedly, regardless of which country they are in.” - News from around the world / India, Bangladesh

“In the meantime every day lost is a day in which the profits of Big Pharma are costing countless lives especially in the Global South, as this video from the International Transport Workers Federation shows. And in that context the likelihood for more variants of concern to develop and spread reminds us that no one is safe until everyone is safe.” - IV561 - October

“If we want to have an independent, democratic and prosperous Afghanistan in which men and women have equal rights based on democracy, people need strong solidarity to be free from fundamentalists and any foreign interventions.” - IV561 - October 2021 / Women, Afghanistan

“At the same time, a strong battle must be waged against the policies of the capitalists, against the economic choices of the Draghi government and of the bosses, who are the other enemies to be fought along with the fascists.” - IV561 - October 2021 / Italy, Far Right

Joint appeal for the demonstration commemorating the repression of a peaceful protest demonstration by Algerians protesting against a curfew for them at 8.30pm. Police brutality was extreme and hundreds were killed and thrown in the Seine. - News from around the world / France, Algeria

“The sectarian nature of the state, accompanied by the promotion of neoliberal policies, is an obstacle to the rise of a working-class alternative from below, capable of challenging the ruling bourgeois sectarian parties. In this perspective, the ruling parties will use the next elections as a way to try to regain some legitimacy, both locally and internationally.”

“But we can already affirm that we will not be intimidated by this kind of manoeuvre, we will not stop denouncing police crimes and we will continue to stand by the victims and their relatives in the struggle for justice and truth.” - IV561 - October 2021 / France

“We on the left have a big job ahead, to explain the existence of multiple imperial powers and to build a movement to resist U.S. imperialism, while also opposing Russia and China.” - IV561 - October 2021 / USA, China

In Sri Lanka, the far-right government of Mahinda Rajapaksa represses without restraint: Tamils, Muslims, trade unionists, students fighting against the privatization of colleges and so on. Stan Miller spoke to Samantha Rajapaksa, a Sri Lankan far-left activist in exile in France. - IV561 - October 2021 / Sri Lanka

Communique from Sinistra Anticapitalista (Anticapitalist Left), 9 October 2021. - News from around the world / Italy, Trade unions/workplace organizing

“[I]t is the only way to develop the political and social forces that will give a basis to new institutions, built in struggle and meeting the expectations of the street.” - IV561 - October 2021 / Brazil

“The U.S. war machine rains death and destruction everywhere its economic and political interests are challenged. Its corporate media monopoly operates to burnish or prettify and deflect capitalism's horrors, or to ignore or justify them outright.” - IV561 - October 2021 / USA

“Berliners' struggle for the socialization of the big real estate groups has only just begun, but it is already rich in lessons for us.” - IV561 - October 2021 / Germany

“A space exists to the left of the social liberal PD for a class struggle movement with an electoral impact. However it is difficult to see this growing unless the social movements and trade union struggles reach a different level.” - IV561 - October 2021 / Italy

Since the dawn of capitalism the logic of collective commons has been systematically challenged by the capitalist class through commodification and private appropriation of wealth. - IV561 - October 2021 / Economy, Debt

“Mandel's main fault, several speakers at the commemorative meeting claimed, was over-optimism. But he left us with writing on the history and economic grounding of capitalism, analyses of bureaucracy and alienation, and an account of the underlying structural preconditions for the world we live in today.” - Ernest Mandel Archive / Marxism, Fourth International,

Russia Has a New Socialist Movement AN INTERVIEW WITH MIKHAIL LOBANOV The big winner in Russia's recent election was the Communist Party, which jumped to almost 20 percent support. The party is today being transformed by a new wave of democratic socialist activists opposed to Vladimir Putin's rule. Mikhail Lobanov at a campaign rally. (Courtesy of Sofia Kalinina)

On October 2, in cities small and large, people marched and rallied for reproductive rights with many home-made, creative and funny signs. Solidarity members were there to express our support for the broad range of reproductive rights including but going well beyond the right to access abortion care. - IV561 - October 2021 / USA, Women

Mimmo Lucano was mayor of Riace, a small town in Calabria in the South of Italy. He used his leadership to welcome migrants and asylum seekers to his town. - IV561 - October 2021

Rob Marsden reviews the impact of the recent Extinction Rebellion mobilisation in London. - IV561 - October 2021 / Climate, Ecosocialism

A new Introduction by longtime comrade John McAnulty to D.R. O'Connor Lysaght's 1970 book The Republic of Ireland made available online following his recent death. - Reviews section / Ireland, Reviews

“It is thus crucial that the lessons of this tough experience not be lost. The first is that even a mass movement of such magnitude cannot alone provide solutions to the problems posed by its own emergence. ” - Features / Greece

“While the coalition that is to take over looks similar to the Red-Green coalition that governed Norway under prime minister Jens Stoltenberg (2005-13, later NATO General Secretary), there are some notable differences.” - IV561 - October 2021 / Norway

“This cruelty is utterly sickening. The events that took place today are all too familiar to those that are aware of America's ugly history. The actions we witnessed today were inhumane under the last administration, and that sentiment remains.” - IV561 - October 2021 / USA, Migration

“The escape of six prisoners from Israel's Gilboa prison opened pathways to new worlds beyond the walls erected by apartheid Israel and its barbaric policies.” - IV561 - October 2021 / Palestine, Israel

“[E]ither we stop, by pulling the revolutionary emergency brakes, the train of modern capitalist industrial civilization, or it will continue its suicidal course toward an abyss: ecological catastrophe.” - Features / Marxism, Historical events and figures

“This article, if I remember well, was published around 1979 in the French Journal Quatrième Internationale. If I would rewrite it today, I would probably give greater emphasis on the positive side of Rosa Luxemburg's and young Leon Trotsky's views on political organization. But I still agree with the essential argument of the paper, bringing together both

“It is time to debate in Die Linke and in the left in general how, in the medium term, we can build a stronger political left, more rooted in the workplaces, in the neighbourhoods, in schools, active and inspiring in the social movements, the bearer of concrete mobilization and action projects that fit into a perspective of radical social change.” - IV560 - September

“The housing crisis is a metaphor for Irish society as a whole. Every aspect of public life is being auctioned off to the vulture capitalists.” - IV560 - September 2021 / Ireland

After the 7th National Congress of the PSOL what are the party's next steps. - IV560 - September 2021 / Brazil

In late August a local blogger Li Guangman in China posted an article which would earn him national fame the overnight. His “Every One can Sense that a Profound Transformation is Under Way” was reposted online by multiple Party media from the People's Daily to the PLA Daily. - IV560 - September 2021 / China

“It is positive that other unions, particularly health workers, have condemned the protests and that there has been widespread derision towards participants.” - IV560 - September 2021 / Australia, Trade unions/workplace organizing, Covid-19 Pandemic

“We continue to rebuild solidarity in the communities. […] We also continue to grow our alliances across women's groups and to go to the streets expressing women's resistance!” - IV560 - September 2021 / Philippines, Women

“However, the real outcome of events depends on whether opposition candidates, grassroots activists and ordinary Russians will be able to take to the streets and demand that the real, and not fake, election results be recognized.” - IV560 - September 2021 / Russia

“The question is whether the leadership of the unions or Labour Party are willing or capable of mobilising people in action like the Florentine workers have or draw up realistic green transition plans like the Birmingham union.” - IV560 - September 2021 / Italy, Britain, Trade unions/workplace organizing

GKN: court blocks redundancies citing “Clear violation of workers' rights. There was a desire to limit the union's activity.” - IV560 - September 2021 / Italy, Trade unions/workplace organizing

As I write, the American media is filled with remembrances of the September 11, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, some of critical reflection, most in a patriotic vein, yearning for that moment of national unity. This is a fleeting interlude for a country consumed by internal conflicts. - IV560 - September 2021 / USA

“The hoped-for victory at GKN and success on 11 October could make a positive change in the relationship of forces between the classes”. - IV560 - September 2021 / Italy, Trade unions/workplace organizing, Covid-19 Pandemic

“From the beginning, the campaign's sole theme has been the ability of the main candidates to step into the shoes of the great Merkel. […] Fortunately, there has been more encouraging news! ” - IV560 - September 2021 / Germany

“The PST section in Bejaia denounces this repressive drift which calls into question democratic freedoms and infringes on the fundamental rights of citizens.” - News from around the world / Algeria

“Perhaps the increased influence of the confusionist, conspiracy movements and far-right parties and action groups, will provoke a more vigorous search for different forms of united action in defense of democratic rights and social justice.” - IV560 - September 2021 / France, Covid-19 Pandemic

“In order to confront this situation, health care workers in Poland have joined together in the struggle.” - IV560 - September 2021 / Poland, Trade unions/workplace organizing, Public services

“Life demands us to stay joyful” – Berta Cáceres. - Features / Honduras

“Leftists must therefore oppose Islamophobic discourse developed and maintained by Western elites, governments and media against Islamic fundamentalist movements and denounce their repression by authoritarian regimes when it is the case in certain countries. But this principled position should not prevent us from supporting and fighting for radical

Reda Ibrahim Farag, a former leader of the Egyptian revolutionary Marxist current, died in Cairo on 4 August 2021. He played an important role in the constitution and leadership of a revolutionary organization from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. - In Memoriam - Obituaries and appreciations / Obituary, Egypt, Features

“And despite pleas for the inclusion of women in the peace process that Washington conducted with the Taliban under Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, women's participation remained marginal.“ - IV560 - September 2021 / Women, Afghanistan

In Bolsonaro's Brazil, a new emblematic case of judicial repression is targeting leaders of the movement against land grabbing. - News from around the world / Brazil, Peasants

“The Al Mounadil-a current works with this vision, to contribute to the achievement of the objectives of national sovereignty (freedom from dependence on neo-colonial forces), popular sovereignty (the realization of democracy) and social justice (the overthrow of capitalism).” - IV560 - September 2021 / Morocco

“We believe that a socialist transformation will be needed in order to tear down the state structures of oppression and racism that political Zionism has created — which are now inextricably intertwined with Israeli and regional capitalism — and to open a future of national equality, democracy and freedom from oppression for Arab Palestinians, Jewish Israelis

As elsewhere, the Delta variant has become dominant in the Philippines, causing a new wave of infections, more serious than the previous one. Despite this, the Duterte presidency is acting as if the epidemic is already behind us. - IV560 - September 2021 / Philippines, Solidarity after disasters , Covid-19 Pandemic

On 14th July, two hundred families in the Briandene informal settlement north of Durban lost everything in a devastating fire. All houses and shacks were burnt down. This catastrophe was only one of many in the Durban area during days of looting, killings and destruction. The Briandene community is a member of the shack dweller movement Abahlali baseMjondolo.

Brazil's independence dates from 7 September 1822, when the Prince Regent ousted his father Joao VI and became Pedro 1st, Emperor of Brazil. An independence finally achieved without much drama and consolidated by a financial transaction between Brazil and Portugal under the auspices of Great Britain. It's the occasion of a military parade. It was this date

On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, Gilbert Achcar explores the consequences of attempted US expansionism in the ‘Greater Middle East' - IV560 - September 2021 / USA, Britain, Middle East, War drive

South Africa is now undoubtedly in the throes of its worst social crisis since 1994. The recent violent events during the week of 11-18 July 2021, mainly confined to the two most populous provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, marked a turning point in the social and economic crisis that has been brewing for most of the time in post-94 South Africa. - IV560 - September

“Let's remember that this is not only a time of rightwing menace, but also a moment when popular resistance movements and anti-dictatorship struggles are exploding globally. In the United States there's a revival of interest in socialism, even if organizations of the revolutionary left coming from the struggles of the 20th and early 21st centuries are at

“Today's crisis opens up an opportunity to assert the right to a full program of reproductive justice. This begins with sex education based on science not superstition, an accessible public health system and a healthy environment to raise children.” - IV560 - September 2021 / USA, Women

“Sixty days before COP26 in Glasgow, let us already point out the global mobilization on Saturday 6 November.” - IV560 - September 2021 / Ecology and the Environment, Climate

The United States suffered grave losses in Iraq and Afghanistan, just as it did in Vietnam. But we shouldn't mistake revisions of US military strategy after calamitous failures for a turn away from US imperialist ambitions. - IV560 - September 2021 / USA, Iraq, Afghanistan

“More must be done now. The people of all ethnic groups need to hit the streets, as the Black Lives Matter movement did in 2020.” - IV560 - September 2021 / USA, Racism

“From today until 7 September, the most important task is the construction of large popular mobilizations on the occasion of National Independence Day. ” - IV560 - September 2021 / Brazil

“The Chad of the Débys remains in the same vein as Habré: assassinations, ethnicism, regionalism, nepotism, clientelism, shameless exploitation of human and natural resources for the benefit of a minority of parasites, plundering of public funds, and nauseating religious rigorism! All this with the blessing of French imperialism.” - IV560 - September

Adrienne Rich was many things to many people. She was one of the United States' leading poets, the recipient of countless honors, beginning while she was still in college and continuing until her death in 2012. In her forties, Rich became a lesbian feminist icon, idolized by crowds who flocked to her readings and talks, renowned for her book on motherhood Of Woman

“We do not pay homage to a man, a hero or a great thinker, but to a crowd of anonymous people whom we refuse to forget.” - Reviews section / France, South Africa, Reviews, Historical events and figures

During the 1930s, many communists and socialists from Germany and Austria sought refuge from the Nazis in the USSR. But in a shocking betrayal, the Soviet secret police handed over hundreds of them to Hitler's Gestapo. - Features / Austria, Germany, Historical events and figures

With quite some time having elapsed since the election results to the West Bengal Assembly were announced on 2 May, we need to start by providing a bird's eye view of the results before probing into details. And this can be summed up by saying that this is the most right-wing Bengal Assembly elected not only in independent India, but even going back to the Government

Below is the transcript of a talk titled “Marxism, socialist strategy, and the party” by Gilbert Achcar, which was delivered to the South African initiative, Dialogues for an Anti-capitalist Future. Here, Achcar traces conceptions of the party from Marx to the present and its implications for socialist strategy today. This transcript has been revised,

“But now, many Oregonians don't view summer as a consistently pleasant event. Instead we must be prepared to leave ‘as if we may never come back'.” - IV560 - September 2021 / USA, Climate

“It is a joke to say values like “women's rights”, “democracy”, “nation-building” etc. were part of the US/NATO aims in Afghanistan!” - IV560 - September 2021 / Women, Afghanistan

A NATIONAL STRIKE led by Indigenous Guatemalans, as well as an institutional crisis over the peremptory firing of anti-corruption prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval, are shaking that Central American country. - IV559 - August 2021 / Guatemala

“Life no doubt was bad under the US occupation. Taliban suicide missions further compounded the misery bombed onto Afghan villages by the US war jets. The latter claimed more civilian lives. However, under the Taliban it will go from bad to worse. Once consolidated, Taliban will start deploying their horns more ruthlessly.” - IV559 - August 2021 / Afghanistan

“We have defeated a new onslaught of imperialism and the criminal right through worker, peasant, communal and popular resistance. From there we must begin to rebuild our economy. We will see if the government representatives take into account this balance sheet, considerations and proposals.” - IV559 - August 2021 / Venezuela

“Small in size but Himalayan in courage, this protest began to dominate the TV screens and blogosphere. ” - IV559 - August 2021 / Women, Afghanistan

In Martinique, hit by a particularly deadly fourth wave of Covid-19, the vaccination campaign is struggling to take off. 25.4% of the population has received at least one dose, of which almost 20% have received a complete vaccination regimen. Rates are still low, which place the island among the least vaccinated French territories, along with Guadeloupe

A woman's right to decide what happens to her body is at the core of her right to equality, human dignity, and choice. This right is identified as one's bodily autonomy. By criminalising abortion, Sri Lanka's law undermines a woman's right to exercise her bodily autonomy. Despite this criminalisation, women who choose to exercise such rights are vulnerable

In less than a week after United States-NATO forces left the country, the puppet regime in Afghanistan collapsed, as the militant Taliban march into city after city without resistance. The capital Kabul is now in Taliban hands. President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani has fled the country. - IV559 - August 2021 / Afghanistan

The killing on 7 July 2021 of Haiti's president, Jovenel Moïse, highlighted the status as a land of extreme poverty attributed by the mainstream media of the “democratic countries” to the first territory to have abolished slavery on the “American” continent. It is in the perspective of this “historical revenge” that the historian Marco Morel – author of “A

We mourn with the Afghan people their double tragedy. The first tragedy---the US's illegal and utterly unjustified military invasion twenty years ago---helped prepare the ground for today's tragedy, the accession to power of the Islamo-fanatical Taliban. Condemnation of the latter must not mean any softening of the criticism of US and Western imperialism

Wales is the one country within the United Kingdom where there has been a Labour administration over recent years [1]. To many people's surprise, including their own, Labour not only won the Senedd [2] election in May but gained a seat overall. - IV559 - August 2021 / Britain, Wales

Women in Afghanistan have been affected by wars and occupation of their country for decades. The plight of Afghan women has often been instrumentalized by imperialist forces, in particular the USA, to justify and legitimize their war-mongering policies in the region. However, women have been at the forefront of fighting both, imperalist and fundamentalist

Socialist Resistance is pleased to announce the launch of the ecosocialist.scot website and associated social media sites on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. - IV559 - August 2021

The Afghan government's fate is but the most recent in a long list of cases of puppet entities created by a foreign occupation that collapse when that occupation ends. - IV559 - August 2021 / USA, Afghanistan

“The deepening of democracy is not a threat to the revolutionary process and socialist project. On the contrary, it is a necessary pre-condition for their fulfillment where true emancipation is the goal.” - IV559 - August 2021 / Cuba

Rowan Fortune writes on the danger posed by the warped ideology of the incel. - IV559 - August 2021

It is now evident that the US imperialism has lost all its human and financial investment in Afghanistan. The Taliban have almost occupied Afghanistan without a fight. What has been spent in Afghanistan in the name of development, ‘democracy' and training of the armed forces for the last 20 years was unprecedented in the history of the world. - IV559 - August

The violence in South Africa is the result of decades of economic hardship and institutional failure. The government must abandon its austerity agenda. - IV559 - August 2021 / South Africa, Covid-19 Pandemic

In 1880, five years before the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the federal government's imposition of a head tax on Chinese immigrants, Dukesang Wong (1845-1931) migrated from China to “Gold Mountain,” the term Chinese migrants used to refer to the west coast of the United States and Canada. He landed in Portland and eventually found work building

As “part of China,” we Hong Kongers have seen how China's economic growth has contributed to the degradation of its environment. To be fair, Hong Kong's economic takeoff had already harmed its environment before China took over the city. We witnessed all our beautiful beaches becoming polluted. The relocation of Hong Kong's factories to Guandong since the