April 13, 2008 -- I’m sure everybody here is aware of the basic facts of global warming and the likely consequences if rapid and serious action is not taken. There is virtually unanimous agreement among scientists and activists, and increasingly among millions of ordinary people, about the degree of the problem and the time frame we have to make fundamental changes to address it.
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DSP
The DSP and the Fourth International
Introduction
On August 17, 1985 the National Committee of the Democratic Socialist Perpective (then named the Socialist Workers Party) voted to end the party’s affiliation to the Fourth International, the international organisation founded in 1938 by the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his supporters around the world.
China: Socialist revolution and capitalist restoration
By Chris Slee
The Chinese revolution was one of the most important events of the twentieth century. The victory of the revolution in 1949 was a major defeat for imperialism. The new Communist Party government carried out democratic measures such as land reform, and improved the conditions of workers and peasants through the spread of health care and literacy. It began expropriating industry, and within a few years had nationalised all capitalist enterprises. It proclaimed that the revolution had entered the socialist stage.
A Lego recreation of Jeff Widener's 1989 photograph of "The unknown rebel".
Some more comments on Peter Taaffe's Cuba book
[This article first appeared in the Democratic Socialist Party's internal discussion bulletin The Activist - Volume 10, Number 9, October 2000.]
By Doug Lorimer
Last year I wrote a letter to Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Labour Party Pakistan, responding to his request for our leadership's disagreements with the Committee for a Workers' International's view of Cuba. The letter took the form of an extended polemic against Socialist Party of England and Wales (SPEW) general secretary Peter Taaffe's 1982 pamphlet Cuba: Analysis of the Revolution. The letter was subsequently printed in The Activist for the information of DSP members. In June this year [2000] the CWI published a book by Peter Taaffe replying to my letter to Comrade Tariq entitled Cuba: Socialism and Democracy.
The Cuban Revolution and its leadership: A criticism of Peter Taaffe's pamphlet 'Cuba: Analysis of the Revolution'
The following article was written at the request of Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Labour Party Pakistan, as an initial contribution to a discussion between the LPP and the DSP on the character of the leadership of the Cuban socialist state and the Communist Party of Cuba. It was published in the Volume 9, Number 4, 1999, edition of The Activist, the Democratic Socialist Party's internal discussion bulletin.
By Doug Lorimer
“Ahora construimos el socialismo”. Informe sobre la revolución venezolana para la sesión de abril del Comité Nacional.
Stuart Munckton
April 29, 2007 -- Este informe pretende reafirmar la línea general y las posiciones sobre la fase actual de la revolución bolivariana recogidas en el informe del 12 de febrero adoptado por el Ejecutivo Nacional del DSP. Los acontecimientos posteriores han mostrado que el análisis general, que indicaba la apertura de una nueva fase en la lucha de clases desde las elecciones presidenciales del 3 de diciembre, era correcto. Aquel texto contenía más información sobre algunos de los análisis y formulaciones recogidas en este informe, a los que deberán remitirse los camaradas para complementarlo y desarrollarlo.
Myths answered: How the workers and peasants made the Cuban revolution
Review by Graham Matthews
Cuba: How the Workers & Peasants Made the Revolution
By Chris Slee
Resistance Books, 2008
55 pages, $6 (pb)
Available from <http://www.resistancebooks.com>
May 10, 2008 -- There is a myth perpetrated by some on the left, that there never really was a revolution in Cuba.
The Cuban “revolution”, they claim, was just the result of the collapse
of the brutal, US-backed Batista regime, followed by the filling of the
political vacuum by the few hundred guerrillas that made up the July 26
Movement (J26M). These fighters simply marched down from the mountains
to take power in Havana, installing the Castro brothers as virtual
dictators.
Are livable cities just a dream?
By Dave Holmes
When one sees a modern city from the air, especially at night, it is a truly awe-inspiring spectacle. What always strikes me is the immensity of the project, a testimony to the power and creativity of human beings. However, on the ground and actually living and working in this wonder, things are quite different and the social and ecological problems crowd in and fill one’s view. The truth is that our cities have always been dominated by the rich and powerful and built and operated to serve their needs — not those of the mass of working people who live and toil in them.
* * *
This article is based on a talk presented at the Climate Change | Social Change Conference in Sydney, April 2008. The conference was organised by Green Left Weekly. For more articles, audio and video from the conference, click here.
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Individual versus social solutions to global warming
By Terry Townsend
A talk to the Climate Change Social Change Conference held in Sydney from April 11 to 13, 2008, organised by Green Left Weekly. For more articles, audio and video from the conference, click here.
Tibet and the `Olympic tradition'
Below are two articles discussing the protests against the Olympic torch relay by supporters of Tibet's right to national self-determination. The first appeared in Green Left Weekly. The second is by Pierre Rousset, a member of the French Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) and editor of the Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF) website. It was translated for Links -- International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- by Katie Cherrington.
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Pro-Tibet protests grow — why Tibet deserves justice
By Tony Iltis
A revolutionary response to the climate change crisis
``We need an emergency mobilisation of society, a five- or 10-year plan to achieve a drastic reorientation of our economy and use of energy. Anything else is simply not serious.''
Stop the bloodshed — freedom for Tibet!
By Tony Iltis
March 28, 2008 -- A demonstration by Buddhist monks in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on March 10 to commemorate the anniversary of China’s crushing of the Tibetan independence movement in 1959 triggered protests for self-determination that, by March 14, had escalated into anti-Chinese riots in which 19 people were killed.
Over 100 Tibetans are reported to have been killed, and hundreds more arrested, by Chinese occupation forces.
This eruption of mass anger — that spread to cities throughout the Tibetan Autonomous Region and the neighbouring provinces of Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan, historically part of Tibet and with large ethnic Tibetan communities — was a response not only to the 58-year-old Chinese military occupation of Tibet, but to the dispossession and marginalisation of Tibetans by an influx of both global capital and Han Chinese transmigrants.
Revolutionary appreciation & respect to Comrade Fidel Castro
Below are salutes to Cuban President Fidel Castro following his announcement on February 18 that he will not stand for the position again. The first is from Australia's Democratic Socialist Perspective, followed by a message from the Socialist Party of Malaysia.
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Greetings to delegates at the PSUV founding congress
Dear comrades,
We in the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) — a Marxist organisation in Australia — wish to offer our greetings and revolutionary solidarity to the delegates at the founding congress of the provisionally named United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
DSP Congress reaffirms commitment to broad left regroupment
By Peter Boyle
January 7, 2008 -- The 23rd Congress of the Democratic Socialist Perspective, a Marxist endency in the Socialist Alliance in Australia, reaffirmed its commitment o broader left regroupment.
The Congress noted that a new political terrain was opening up with the
election of the Rudd Labor government on the back of a mass campaign of opposition to the anti-worker "Work Choices" laws introduced by the former Liberal-National government.
The labour aristocracy and opportunism in the history of Australian working-class politics
By Jonathan Strauss
The theory of the labour aristocracy argues that opportunism in the working class has a material basis. Such class-collaborationist politics express the interests of a relatively privileged stratum of workers who receive benefits supported by monopoly superprofits. Karl Marx and, especially, Frederick Engels, first developed this theory. It is most closely associated with V.I. Lenin, however, for whom it became “the pivot of the tactics in the labour movement that are dictated by the objective conditions of the imperialist era”.[1]
The Democratic Socialist Perspective and the Socialist Alliance
The following resolution was adopted by the DSP's 22nd Congress in Sydney, January 5-8, 2006, following extensive internal discussion about the experience as a leading force within the Socialist Alliance since its formation in 2001.
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Work Choices: a huge challenge for organised labour in Australia
By Graham Matthews
Work Choices is the Orwellian name given by the Australian federal Liberal-National (conservative) Coalition government to its second wave of industrial relations legislation, passed through parliament on December 2, 2005, and proclaimed as law on March 27.
Towards a historical materialist history of Australian working-class politics
By Jonathan Strauss
The theory of the labour aristocracy argues that opportunism in the working class has a material basis. Class-collaborationist politics express the interests of a relatively privileged stratum of workers supported in their benefits by monopoly superprofits. Karl Marx and, especially, Frederick Engels, first developed this theory. It is most closely associated with V.I. Lenin, however, for whom it became “the pivot of the tactics in the labour movement that are dictated by the objective conditions of the imperialist era”.1
Theses on the class nature of the People's Republic of China
This resolution was adopted by the 18th Congress of the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia, held in Sydney, January 5-10, 1999.
I. Theoretical framework
1. For orthodox Marxists, as Lenin explained in his 1917 book The State and Revolution, the state is a centralised organisation of force separated from the community as a whole which enforces, through special bodies of armed people and other institutions of coercion, the will of one class, or an alliance of classes, upon the rest of society.
Socialists in the Australian women's liberation movement
By Margaret Allan
Introduction
To understand the development of feminism in Australia, it is useful to briefly recap the political situation that gave rise not only to the women's liberation movement, but to the whole range of social movements that sprang up in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
During the Second World War, women were drawn into many non-traditional areas of work, such as making ammunition and ships. These were much higher paid jobs than women were used to, and many women who did not previously work for pay experienced life as working mothers for the first time. There was some public child-care provision, and the ideology that women were incapable of metal work and similar trades conveniently disappeared as everyone was urged to “do their bit for the war effort and the boys at the front”.
When men began returning from the war in large numbers in 1945, women were forced to give up these jobs. It was the start of the “baby boom”: women were encouraged to have babies to repopulate. This was also the start of the economic boom of the 1950s.
Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution: A long and still relevant debate
By John Nebauer
Review of Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution: A Leninist critique, by Doug Lorimer, Resistance Books, Sydney, 1998, A$6.95.
John Nebauer is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia.
On the origins of women's oppression
By Pat Brewer
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