Contributers to this site are in a process of discussion and review of key issues facing today’s revolutionary movement. Published articles identified as “Discussion articles” do not necessarily reflect the agreed position of all participants.
Protests in Bolivia have intensified in recent weeks due to a combination of economic crisis, privatizations of the agricultural sector, economic concessions to US imperialism, fuel shortages, inflation, and political tensions between the government of Rodrigo Paz, the Movement for Socialism (MAS), and the main labor and peasant organizations.
This war was never about creating the conditions in which ordinary Iranians could organise, overthrow the dictatorship and establish a democratic society. Its real aims were to strengthen the control of US imperialism and Israel over the region, including to gain control of the oil and gas supplies, while the Iranian regime was determined to protect its dictatorship. It is further proof, if any was needed, of why a powerful internationalist anti-imperialist movement should be built based on a clear working-class political alternative to the capitalist system combined with the real material and political solidarity with those fighting the regime in Iran and elsewhere.
In 1969 the PFLP declared it was a “Marxist-Leninist” organisation – a term universally used by Maoist organisations. Lenin’s united workers front strategy was replaced by Mao’s popular frontism; his class-based approach to the national question was overturned by prioritising the national conflict over class struggle; his international workers’ solidarity was replaced by alliances with the ruling elites of ‘friendly countries’; and Lenin’s “arming the working class” during a working-class led political revolution was replaced by “guerrilla struggle” aimed at igniting a mass based popular war.
Thus, if we, as a movement, are serious about anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism and socialist feminism, we need to centre Indigenous voices and support the Kalaallit in how they decide to organise their own movement toward decolonisation. We have to stop speaking about this as a geopolitical conflict between Denmark and the US and start speaking about it as a continuation of the long history of annexation of Indigenous land by Western superpowers
This is why we want to see a genuinely left government – one based on a mass anti-capitalist and socialist movement in society, that fights for democratic public ownership of the key wealth and resources of society, and a radical transformation of the economy to meet people’s needs. It isn’t a question of left-wing ‘purity’, but what’s practically necessary. Because that’s the only kind of government that can possibly deal with the multiple chronic crises we face, all of which are only going to become more acute as the capitalist world continues to devour itself in the coming years.
This movement of solidarity has also refuted the idea that the only way to push back the electoral support for the far-right is to concede to their ideas. This idea has been widely pushed since Trump was elected within the Democratic Party, the media and other sections of the establishment, particularly that Democrats must move (even) further to the right on migration. This was justified by polling, which showed that public opinion had favoured Trump’s call for a harder line stance. In fact, accepting anti-migrant frameworks has only strengthened the hand of the right.
Trump has jettisoned any notion of operating as part of the “rules-based order” that has existed, as far as Western imperialism is concerned, since 1945. Of course, this was an order always rooted in rank hypocrisy, as the livestreamed genocide in Gaza since October 2023 has definitively borne out. The only order that imperialism and big capitalist powers seek is one where the rules apply to the weak, but not the powerful – facilitating geopolitical and economic domination.
The region has a strong tradition of anti-imperialist and revolutionary struggle. Imperialist domination of China was ended by the revolution of 1949. Never a socialist society, Maoist China was a bonapartist state leaning on measures of land reform and state ownership in its early stages, before reverting to an openly capitalist, now imperialist world power. US imperialism was unable to escape defeat either in Korea or Vietnam. The Japanese masses too during the Anro movement used militant tactics to resist militarism and the domination of Japan by US imperialism.
Notwithstanding nationalisations of oil, telecommunications, electricity and public services, the main levers of the economy still remained in the hands of the capitalists. In addition, a new layer of state bureaucrats and managers – the so-called Bolibourgeoisie – enriched themselves in this period and acted as a brake on the revolutionary process.
Zimbabweans are angry because they are not only subjected to various forms of oppression under the tyrannical government, but they are also forced to witness the overt displays of wealth by ZANU PF leaders including buying luxury cars for their bootlickers.
Certainly, and despite the complicity of the corporate media—which for the most part has chosen to ignore the massive protests in Caracas in favor of Maduro’s release—it is a fact that Maduro’s fall did not mean the fall of his regime, the Chavista bureaucracy, or Chavismo itself. As some analysts have pointed out, this amounts to capturing the king without delivering checkmate.
Centuries of colonial conquest and imperialist domination have brought nothing but misery to the masses of Latin America. Trump’s new colonial adventure in Venezuela is another chapter in this horrendous history—the working class, the poor and oppressed must build a continent-wide revolutionary movement that breaks the stranglehold of imperialist and capitalist domination and exploitation.
