International Viewpoint

Do you find International Viewpoint, the English language magazine of the Fourth International, a valuable resource? Do we bring you analysis and news from corners of the globe that the mainstream media ignores, from struggles and debates your usual sources of information don't cover? That's certainly our aim.

In most other countries the news that more than 10.2 million citizens are unemployed would lead to mass calls for the President and Finance minister's resignations. Instead, the reality that more than 10 million South Africans are condemned to hunger, inadequate housing, a failed transport system, violent and unsafe neighborhoods is met with further calls for neoliberal orthodoxy from the mainstream.

The body of 24-year-old Steve has been identified. The young man died, drowned in the Loire River after a police charge on the evening of the Fête de la Musique in Nantes. Our thoughts are obviously with his family, his loved ones, and all those who almost lost their lives that night.

Hong Kong has justified its existence as an interface between Western neoliberal globalism and China's statist authoritarian capitalism. China no longer needs the city to play that role; Hong Kongers desperately need an alternative.

The days of July 2019 have restored, or, perhaps, have given to the country a sense of possibility: the feeling that things can change, that things can be changed, that people, mobilizing in the street, can change them.

Radical Socialist resolutely and unequivocally oppose and condemn the effective abrogation of the fundamental meaning and purpose of Article 370 and the overturning of Article 35A. This was carried out through anti-democratic, unconstitutional legal manoeuvrings and accompanied by the deliberate armed intimidation of the people of Kashmir. What has taken place is dishonest and a fraud on both the letter and spirit of the relevant Constitutional provisions.

Strikes have spread to more than 200 emergency rooms across France, as nurses and health-care assistants call out the neglect of public hospitals. The striking workers don't want to disrupt vital services — they're acting to stop Emmanuel Macron from running them into the ground.

“But what do they want?” was the question since the first Feminist Conference in June 2018 held in Lausanne and its call for a Women*'s / Feminist strike to be held a year later. On the 14th of June 2019, exactly 28 years after the first-ever women*'s strike in Switzerland, more than half a million women* and supportive men took part in mobilizations all over the country. Thousands more, from midnight on, occupied public spaces, and several workplaces or simply showed their solidarity with the strike by wearing purple clothing or the strike's ad hoc badge.

DSA Convention 2019—Overcoming Divisions—Votes to Maintain Strong National Organization, Takes up Ambitious Organizing Agenda.

There were protests galore in the build up to South Africa's May 8 national elections, which coincided with the 25th anniversary of the people's victory against Apartheid. Protests occurred in many parts of the country but predominately in Gauteng, the nation's industrial heartland, and in the Western Cape, with its legacy of colonialism.

Bashar al-Assad has started confiscating the homes of Syrians who fled during the Civil War. For decades, his clan has purged the state of all but the most fanatical loyalists: now, it's doing the same to society itself.

The far right is on the rise in one country after another. It has unmistakably become a central factor in contemporary European and world politics. I have come to think that in the coming years the fight against the far right will be decisive for the radical and revolutionary left. So it is more and more urgent for us to understand the far-right threat we face. To some extent we can learn from Marxist analyses of classical fascism, particularly in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. But many things have changed on the far right. To use the term of our comrade Enzo Traverso, most of the far right today is ‘post-fascist': sometimes in continuity with the old fascist right, sometimes not. And gender and sexual politics are not a side issue for the far right – they are key. So this is one of the things we urgently need to understand.

Massive demonstrations in Hong Kong have forced the government to shelve a bill that could muzzle dissident voices. But the protesters are still on the streets — and they're demanding the resignation of Hong Kong's chief executive.

The investiture of Pedro Sánchez has failed and along with it, the tactics of Podemos who invested all its assets to enter the government as a supposed guarantor of social policies. The PSOE has tried a double game: to placate the right by offering itself as a stabilizer of “reasonable” governance for the interests of capital and the 1978 regime, while at the same time, it has tried to defraud, subordinate and annul its left, integrating it into a project alien to the interests of the social majority. Sanchez has graduated as a parliamentary confidence trickster. Unidas Podemos made very important mistakes in their attempt to enter government by the tradesman's entrance: all the resignations have not sufficed for the voracity of social liberalism.

Lucy Redler and Thies Gleiss are members of the Antikapitalistische Linke current, which has existed inside Die Linke since March 2006. We reproduce here their contribution for the Die Linke leadership meeting of 16 June 2019.

Decolonial Communism, Democracy and the Commons, by Catherine Samary, with contributions from Samuel Farber, Silvia Federici, Franck Gaudichaud, Zagorska Golubovic, Ernest Mandel, Goran Markovic, Svetozar Stojanovic and Raquel Varela. Pub. Resistance Books/IIRE/Merlin Press, 2019.

Over last 3 weeks Bangladesh is experiencing terrible flash flood in the north, northwestern, and northeastern parts of the country. Around 22 districts out of 64 are affected by the flood ravaging. Various river flows by 130 cm over the danger levels. As a result, vast areas were inundated by the flowing resulting in huge damages to lives and livelihoods, animals and properties, crops-croplands and houses of the ordinary people. In certain areas, mighty rivers caused erosion, washing away vast areas like villages and market place with all animal and houses, properties, etc. They just sunk into the rivers for ever. According to the government 4.8 million people are hit by the flood so far. But rom the private survey, 10 million people are badly affected by the flood and river erosion.

Theresa May resigned as leader of the Tory Party on June 7 having failed to win majority support in the British parliament for the agreement she had negotiated with the other EU member states on the terms of Britain's withdrawal. The Tory party subsequently carried out an election for a new leader which resulted in the most rightwing candidate, Boris Johnson, being declared the winner on July 23 and inaugurated as Prime Minister on July 24. [IV]

This interview with Algerian activist Wissem Zizi was translated and published by Al-Muzāharāt.

Challenged by the victory of a unified opposition in the municipality of Istanbul and splinter movements in his own party, President Erdogan is now facing a major crisis in his relations with the United States.