International Viewpoint

This statement by the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International was adopted on 26 September 2020.

Less than one year after its resounding electoral victory over the Labour Party, Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government is in turmoil – and crashing the country towards a social, health and economic disaster of unprecedented proportions. Combining incompetence with neoliberal myopia, Johnson is allowing a second wave of Covid-19 to explode. The ensuing economic crash merges with the disastrous results of Britain's departure from the European Union (Brexit) and threatens economic and social meltdown by Christmas. Politically, the hard right Conservatives are responding by trying to ramp up anti-migrant, anti-European xenophobia.

For the defence of democratic and trade-union freedoms! No to the referendum and the Tebboune constitution! For the election of a sovereign Constituent Assembly! This statement was issued by the Socialist Workers Party (PST) Algeria on 19 September 2020.

The sixth re-election of Alexander Lukashenko as President of Belarus on 9 August, 2020 was preceded and followed by popular mobilizations fuelled by police brutality, against a background of fraud and increasing challenges to old social protections. The Belarusian autocrat, after multiple tensions with his Russian neighbour, is now asking Putin for his “help” in dealing with an unprecedented social protest.

Joseph Daher from SolidaritéS, Swtizerland, spoke to US longtime activist and DSA member Ashley Smith about the situation in the USA in a wide-ranging interview covering the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter, social movements of resistance to Trump, the aftermath of the Bernie Sanders' movement and the prospects for the left in the USA.

On 13 August the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel entered into a US-sponsored peace accord that further deepens the process of normalization of the colonial and racist apartheid state.

As expected the constitutional referendum to reduce the number of MPs in both houses by a third passed by 70 per cent to 30 per cent. This means an Italian MP will represent up to 150,000 voters, the highest in Europe and considerably more than here [United Kingdom]. Democratic space and access is severely reduced and it makes it even more difficult for new or smaller parties, particularly alternative left wing or ecological ones, to be represented.

THE U.S. POSTAL Service, a publicly owned institution with a large (630,000) unionized workforce and a history dating to 1775, is facing a financial crisis that could present a real opportunity for the Trump administration to enact its program of privatization as well as weakening its employee unions.

For the past year and a half, Hong Kong has been in turmoil, with a new generation of young and politically active citizens mobilising to protest Beijing's tightening grip over the city. In Hong Kong in Revolt: The Protest Movement and the Future of China (Pluto Books 2020), prominent Hong Kong leftist intellectual Au Loong-Yu retraces the development of the protest movement in his place of birth over the past two decades, setting them within the context of broader political trends in mainland China and beyond. Published after the Chinese authorities enacted a new draconian National Security Law that effectively signalled a new stage in the crackdown, this book provides a perfect opportunity to reflect on the events of the past months, dispel some myths, and, possibly, draw a few early lessons.

As Long as Grass Grows:
The Indigenous Struggle for Environmental Justice,
from Colonization to Standing Rock
By Dina Gilio-Whitaker
Beacon Press, 2019, 222 pages.

Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NODAPL Movement
Nick Estes and Jaskiran Dhillon, editors
University of Minnesota Press, 2019, 420 pages.

Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations
with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders
J. Kéhaulani Kauanui, editor
University of Minnesota Press, 2018, 400 pages.

BELOW ARE THE comments Clifford D. Conner made at a September 8th press conference in front of the British consulate in New York City. Conner is an historian and author of Jean Paul Marat: Tribune of the French Revolution and The Tragedy of American Science: From Truman to Trump. The court in Britain is holding hearings on the Trump administration's request to have Julian Assange, the Australian editor, publisher and founder of WikiLeaks, extradited. Assange would be tried in a Virginia court on 17 counts of espionage and one count of conspiracy to commit a computer crime. If convicted, he could face up to 175 years in prison.

The Bolsonaro government in Brazil is a huge catastrophe and a dangerous threat: ineffectiveness in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, disastrous international relations, a deliberate anti-environmental line, attacks on democratic institutions, human rights and the (precarious) gains of civilization. Its policy towards indigenous peoples is genocidal in nature. Even before the pandemic, its economic policy had failed. Brazil is the second most affected country in the world in number of Covid-19 cases and deaths, behind only the United States, with more than 125,000 deaths. The picture could be even worse, but Bolsonaro has been prevented by court rulings from imposing his line.

In Mali, the seizure of power by the military on 18 August, 2020 opens a new page in a country which is experiencing an unprecedented crisis. The situation continues to deteriorate seriously.

Left-communism was initially a response to setbacks faced by the communist movement after the failure of the German Revolution. The movement put its hopes in workers' self-activity, yet remained apart from most of the working class. In this book, Philippe Bourrinet discusses the history of this movement, from its roots in the Dutch and German revolutionary Left before and during the First World War to its final evolution. The book provides a detailed overview of its theoretical debates, and traces how left-communist ideas evolved into council communism. However, the strong focus on theoretical debates means the reader learns little about the movement's relative weight in the workers' movement or about its social composition. Ultimately, the left-communists hit a dead-end as the movement was caught in its own contradictions.

The following invitation to participate in the First World Congress in Defense of Public Education and Against Educational Neoliberalism was written by a broad coalition of educators in Latin America and Europe. Educators from all over the world are encouraged to register and take part. For more information about how to take part, email: congresomundialdeeducacion2020@gmail.com. First published in Spanish by Otras Voces en Educacíon, translated by No Borders News.

“And I contend that the cry of ‘Black Power' is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro,” King said. “I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.” (Martin Luther King, Jr., in response to a frequent question asked by reporters in 1966)

SIX MONTHS SINCE the worst health crisis in 100 years began, there is no sign that it is under control in most parts of the world. In the United States, it has created mass unemployment, exposed the vast rifts between the rich and poor, and promises to widen them unless the social movements impelled by Black Lives Matter and teacher/community organizing can continue to reframe the political, social and economic landscape.

This chapter will address the pandemic crisis at the level of political economy and, in particular, the fundamental decisions that the European Union is adopting, whose measures will take precise form once its particular institutional procedure is completed.

The creation of Podemos in the Spanish state was an important attempt to build an anti-neoliberal and pluralist mass party to the left of social-liberalism. That experience, which started very well, has finally ended very badly. Perhaps, for this reason, the title of this article could have been “Radiance and decline of Podemos ... as an emancipatory political project.”

WHILE THE POST-World War II Southern Civil Rights Movement is viewed as a nonviolent movement, reality is more complicated. Charles Cobb, Jr., who was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary from 1962-67, points out that mass marches and other forms of direct action necessitated nonviolence in the face of government officials and the presence of a well-armed KKK.