This statement was issued by a meeting of the European Anti-Capitalist Left on December 5, 2004.

 

European Union governments are trying to impose a constitution designed behind closed doors on 450 million people. This socalled constitutional treaty has taken the place of a constituent process based on a mandate coming out of open democratic debates and sovereignty of the peoples of Europe.

This constitution is dangerous.

It consecrates the absolute primacy of the "free market". It legally forbids any infringement of private property and market relations. It refuses to give any legal status to social gains won on a national level through a century and a half of workers' struggles.

By Aleksandr Buzgalin

Aleksandr Buzgalin is a professor and chief editor of the Moscow social and political journal Alternativy.

The tent city on Independence Square

The context

Popular enthusiasm or political manipulation and big money?

The lessons of Independence Square

Footnotes

 

Malik Miah is an area representative for Local 9, the largest local of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, which has 4000 members, at the United Airlines maintenance base in San Francisco. He is editor of Local 9's bimonthly newsletter Way Points (www.amfa9.org/waypoints) and a member of the editorial board of Links. Caroline Lund is a trustee and member of the executive board of United Auto Workers Local 2244, a local of 5000 members at the New United Motor Manufacturing plant in Fremont, California. She edits a plant newsletter, The Barking Dog (www.geocities.com/abarkingdog/), and is a contributing editor of Links.

 

 

CONTENTS

Proposal for new course

How the unions changed

Demoralised and defeated

In December, Caracas was the setting for two significant gatherings. It is no surprise that the capital of Venezuela was the location for these two meetings. Venezuela today is not only witnessing a deepening class polarisation but is also the scene of a powerful movement of the poor fighting to reclaim their dignity and sovereignty. It was here, the birthplace of the Bolivarian revolution, that the World Forum of Intellectuals and Artists in Defence of Humanity and the Second Bolivarian Congress of the Peoples (CBP) took place, each in its own way a reflection of the process unfolding today in Venezuela.

By Cleto A. Sojo

This article was first published at venezuelanalysis.com.

 

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was warmly received at the 2005 edition of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where he held several meetings with local leaders, intellectuals and activists, and gave the closing speech in Gigantinho Stadium. Chávez generated great interest among forum participants, many of whom see him and his project of political transformations being implemented in Venezuela as an inspiration in the struggle for a better world.

The Venezuelan president visited the Lagoa do Junco agrarian settlement in Tapes set up by Brazil's Landless Movement (MST) and later held a press conference with more than 120 media organisations, where he criticised the US government for claiming to lead a fight against terrorism while undermining democracy in Venezuela.

By Stuart Munckton

Stuart Munckton is the national coordinator of the Australian socialist youth organisation Resistance. This the text of a talk presented to a Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) educational conference in January 2005.

Contents

From anti-imperialism to anti-capitalism

Anti-capitalist trajectory

Is the leadership revolutionary?

The struggle for state power

Cuba

By S. Kumarswamy

 

S. Kumarswamy is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation and working president of the All India Central Council of Trade Unions.

Contents

The new mindset and the high sales pitch

Beneath the gloss and shine

Excerpts: manifesto of All India Agricultural Labour Association

Indian work force: an overview

Unorganised sector workers

Onslaughts on labour

Restructuring: where, how and why?

• Textiles
• Automobiles
• Sunrise Sectors
• Power
• Telecoms and BPO
• Public sector undertakings

 

Proletarian response

A letter to General Secretary Hu [Jintao] from a group of veteran CCP members, veteran cadres, veteran military personnel and intellectuals. October 2004
Translated for Links with an introductory explanation by Eva Cheng.

 

CONTENTS

A great opportunity to adjust the line

Not a question of 'ruling capability' but a question of the line

Our opinion on what sort of adjustment is needed on certain issues

Notes

 

By Eva Cheng

Eva Cheng is a longtime staff writer for Green Left Weekly. This article is an introduction to the document that follows.

Over the past decade, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been escalating its pro-capitalist agenda, a pro-capitalist current among China's economists—known as the neoliberals—has consolidated its domination of China's media and publications, giving these economists a strategic position from which to shape public opinion. An opposing, anti-capitalist current—often called the "new left"—and its occasional sympathisers in the centrist camp have been struggling to have their voices heard. Via the internet they have broken down some barriers, but not completely. An intermittent tussle between these opposing views has been going on.

By Nguyen The Phiet

 

The author is the Vietnamese consul general in Sydney. This is an edited and abridged version of a talk given to an educational conference of the Australian Democratic Socialist Perspective in January 2005.

I have been asked to present a brief account of our history and of our anti-French and anti-US struggles and the important factors that made our struggles victorious, particularly those factors which I think are still relevant in our efforts for national defence and construction of our socialist homeland.

Vietnam has an age-old history. The ancient Viet, the ancestors of the presentday Vietnamese, and several other ethnic groups settled in Vietnam's territory right from the dawn of humankind. They explored and conquered nature to survive and develop. Over thousands of years of nation building, they had to fight continuously against foreign invaders and foiled invaders' attempts to assimilate this nation.

by Michael Karadjis

 

Michael Karadjis is an Australian socialist currently living and researching in Vietnam.

 

Contents

Differences in collectivisation and de-collectivisation

Differences in SOE reform

Roles of state sectors change in opposite directions

Why the difference?

Massive privatisation in China and slowdown in Vietnam

Party, bureaucracy and capitalist business

Mass lay-offs in Chinese privatisation

Labour and unions

Differences within the ruling parties

Health and education

Socialist orientation and the nature of SOE

Problems ahead for Vietnam

Footnotes

Changes of economic policies in China and Vietnam did not begin with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but they are inevitably viewed in a post-Soviet context. Are both countries going through a capitalist restoration that is in some sense "inevitable" in the current world situation? In our lead article, Michael Karadjis examines the evidence. A careful reading of the changes introduced since the late 1970s leads to the conclusion that capitalist restoration in China is more a matter