By Jonathan Strauss

Contents

Dimensions of the composition of the labour aristocracy

Skilled workers in the labour aristocracy

The bureaucratisation of the labour apparatus and opportunism

The labour apparatus and the labour bureaucracy

The labour aristocracy and the labour bureaucracy

The labour aristocracy and the `lower strata' of the working class

Opportunism and preparation of the proletariat for revolution

Proletarian tactics under the domination of monopolising capitals

The labour aristocracy as the social base for opportunism

Footnotes

by Renfrey Clarke

Renfrey Clarke is a longtime member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective in the Australian Socialist Alliance.

Contents

Import substitution and its exhaustion

The Chicago boys

Shock without therapy: the economic record of Pinochetismo

Social Outcomes: Health and Education

The flourishing of neo-liberalism

The limits of neo-liberal growth

by Roberto Jorquera

Since late March, Roberto Jorquera has been the Green Left Weekly correspondent in Venezuela, where he has also travelled extensively to help organise the first solidarity brigade from Australia. This article was completed on May 19.

Contents

Revolutionary democracy

Debates within the Chávez forces

Political consciousness

By Winfried Wolf

Winfried Wolf is a writer living in Berlin who for many years was an activist in the Trotskyist Fourth International. He was an independent member of the German parliament on the Party of Democratic Socialism list from 1997 to 2002. This article first appeared in Labour Focus on Eastern Europe.

Contents

Old goals in new clothes

Franz Josef Strauss: `Why not us?'

EEC as competitive battleground

New bloc competition

European corporate power?

Base and superstructure

Tensions

War as a `third way'

Lenin revisited

by Aleksandr Buzgalin and Andrey Kolganov

Aleksandr Buzgalin and Andrei Kolganov are economists and political scientists at Moscow State University who are associated with the social and political journal Alternativy.

Contents

Prehistory

Historical context

The anatomy of civil disobedience

The January events: early lessons and the future

It is Not Only about the Law on Monetisation of Benefits

Appendix : Protest actions in 2005: a brief chronology

By Armando Hart

Armando Hart is the former minister of culture of Cuba. Our translation largely relies on a CubaNews translation by Ana Portela.

These thoughts are intended as a tribute to all revolutionaries, without exception, who suffered the great historical drama of seeing the socialist ideas of October 1917 frustrated. We write this with admiration and respect for the Russian people, who were the protagonists of the first socialist revolution in history and who defeated fascism decades later under the leadership of Stalin. The same Russian people, 130 years before, defeated the military offensive of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Fundamentally, I have the experience of fifty years of working for socialist ideas in the beautiful trenches of the Fidel and Martí-inspired Cuban Revolution, that is to say, the first revolution of Marxist orientation that triumphed in what has become known as the West.

by Ariel Dacal Diaz

Ariel Dacal Diaz is chief editor in the politics section of Social Sciences Publishers, a leading Cuban publishing house. Our translation relies largely on a translation by Ana Portela for CubaNews.

by Doug Lorimer

Doug Lorimer is a member of the National Executive of the Democratic Socialist Perspective in Australia. This is a talk presented to the DSP's January 2005 Marxism Summer School.

Contents

Soviets of workers' deputies

January 1905 protest

Bolsheviks and Mensheviks

Anti-feudal revolution

Marxism versus Narodnism

Marxism and the peasantry

Monopoly capitalism

Russo-Japanese War

Lessons drawn by Lenin

Footnotes

Lessons of Russia's revolution Earlier this year, socialists marked the 100th anniversary of the first Russian revolution. For revolutionaries at the beginning of 1905, the historical "model" of previous proletarian revolution—from which to draw both positive and negative lessons—was the Paris Commune of 1871. The 1905 revolution greatly enriched Marxism's storehouse of revolutionary theory.