The Colombian government must ‘immediately release independent media activist Joaquín Pérez Becerra,’ says the Socialist Alliance of Australia, in a statement published May 15 in the weekly newspaper, Green Left Weekly. Read more…
Six years after Bolivians elected their first Indigenous-led government, their ongoing struggle for national and social liberation remains a subject of debate and disagreement among socialists around the world.
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As originally formulated by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (Comintern) in December 1921, united front policy called for the “greatest possible unity of all workers’ organisations in every practical action against the united capitalists”, while assuring revolutionary socialists and other participating currents “absolute autonomy” and “freedom in presenting their point of view”.1 Read more…
Genossinnen und Genossen! That is how Clara Zetkin began her speeches. It is German for “women comrades and men comrades.” Few socialists used that salutation in her time, and there were few women at their meetings. But that was beginning to change, and Zetkin was part of those changes.
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The Toronto People’s Assembly on Climate Justice held its third conference on April 23, 2011, with more than 100 participants. The event marked a step forward from the previous two sessions, held in June and November 2010, both in spirit and in concrete results.
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Bolivia marked Earth Day (April 22) this year by formulating the Law of Mother Earth, which — when adopted — will establish eleven new rights for nature, including the rights not to be polluted and to continue vital cycles free from human interference.
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The brutal massacres of civilians in Libya at the order of the country’s dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, have shocked the world. His air force has carried out air strikes against unarmed civilians. On February 25, Qaddafi followers aimed murderous fire on anti-government protests in his last stronghold, Tripoli. The government declares its intention of reconquering the country in civil war. What can we in Canada do to end the killings?
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The debates following the G20 protests in Toronto last June have raised important questions about how activists can defend and expand arenas of resistance to capitalism, at a time when the system’s power seems overwhelming. Several articles in the latest issue of Upping the Anti, a leading journal of anti-capitalist thought offer an opportunity to discuss this question on a broader basis.
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By John Riddell: The record of the Communist International (Comintern) during Lenin’s lifetime, 1919-23, is widely considered by Marxists to form the foundation of revolutionary socialist policy in the modern era. Nonetheless, many of the basic documents of this movement were long unavailable in English. Since 1983, I have worked with Mike Taber and a broad team of collaborators to publish major documents of the Communist International in English. Here are the volumes published so far: Read more…
Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922. Translated and Edited by John Riddell. Leiden: Historical Materialism Book Series.
“The proceedings of the last Comintern congress in which Lenin participated, now at last available in English, reveals a Communist world movement grappling to reconcile the goal of unifying workers and colonial people in struggle with that of pressing forward to socialist revolution. The principle of national parties’ autonomy strains against calls for more stringent centralisation. Read more…
Documentary volumes, edited by John Riddell
The six volumes of this important series, published between 1984 and 1993 by Pathfinder Press, include hundreds of newly translated documents, speeches and resolutions, most of them unavailable in English anywhere else. All volumes are still in print. Read more…
By Art Young and John Riddell. Two months after the protests against the G20 summit in Toronto and the accompanying police rampage, it is time for an initial balance sheet of what was gained and lost. Read more…
It’s not every day that the Ottawa Citizen mentions Socialist Voice, but on November 30 the pillar of the Canwest media empire broke its silence – and misquoted us as part of a smear attack on all progressive activists in Canada. The page 3 article by Ian MacLeod, headlined “Activists, extremists primed for 20101,” aims to promote fear of possible protests against Israeli apartheid, the Winter Olympics, and the planned G8/G20 meetings in Ontario. Read more…
Book Review. Will the Boat Sink the Water? The Life of Chinese Peasants. By Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao. New York: PublicAffairs 2006.
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In the last three years, a growing number of Latin American governments have expressed support for the Palestinian people through sanctions and other initiatives against the Israeli government. Their actions reflect increasing popular identification across the region with Palestinian rights. Read more…