International Viewpoint, the monthly English-language magazine of the Fourth International, is a window to radical alternatives world-wide, carrying reports, analysis and debates from all corners of the globe. Correspondents in over 50 countries report on popular struggles, and the debates that are shaping the left of tomorrow.
Millions of people in all 50 states, joined 1,600 demonstrations in large cities and small towns to protest against President Donald Trump and his henchman billionaire Elon Musk on April 5, with a number of small solidarity demonstrations in European cities. The “Hands Off” demonstrations, the largest anti-Trump protests yet, demanded that Trump keep his hands off democracy, human rights, reproductive rights, Social Security, Medicaid, public schools, immigrants, and LGBT people.
read article...The 25% tariffs imposed on exports from Canada and Mexico by the US administration of Donald Trump effective March 4 (with an exception of 10% tariffs for Canadian oil and gas and potash) constitutes an aggressive attack on the livelihoods of Canadian working people and a threat to the survival of key industries in Canada. Trump postponed some of the auto and other tariffs in sectors covered by the US-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade treaty between the three countries (about 40% of Canadian exports to the US), with auto tariffs planned for April 2nd but has threatened to continue with others. Further tariffs on aluminum and steel (over the 25% level) were threatened to be as high as 50%, with Trump also threatening to “shut down” the Canadian auto industry.
read article...A multi-front attack is in full swing — not only on supporters of Palestinian freedom, but on everyone’s First Amendment and civil rights. The abduction of Mahmoud Khalil, the peremptory deportation of Brown Medicine Dr. Rasha Alawieh, the attempt to detain and deport Columbia University Ph.D student Ranjani Srinivasan who’s fled to seek asylum in Canada, and the seizure of Georgetown University scholar Badar Khan Suri — none of these, and many more cases that haven’t attracted public attention, are happening in isolation.
read article...Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte gained international notoriety with his violent ‘war on drugs’ – a campaign of violence targeting the country’s poor that claimed thousands of lives. He is now in a cell in The Hague, awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court, but it remains to be seen what will happen in the Philippines.
read article...It’s not April Fools day (1 April). But it might as well be as later today US President Donald Trump announces another barrage of tariffs on imports into the US in what Trump calls ‘Liberation Day’ and what America’s voice of big business and finance, the Wall Street journal, has called “the dumbest trade war in history.”
read article...Socialist Resistance and Mutiny are organisations in Britain which are both part of a process of forming a wider organisation which has the provisional name of Anti-Capitalist Resistance. Over the past six months, Mutiny has had a dialogue with American Marxist theorist William I Robinson. Phil Hearse, a Mutiny member who also supports Socialist Resistance, wrote a ‘presentation’ of Robinson for SR members, strongly supporting some of his ideas, while raising concerns about imperialism and Robinson’s ideas about a ‘transnational capitalist’ class’. We publish this below, together with a rejoinder from William I Robinson.
Eighty years ago, in August 1940, Leon Davidovich Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico by Ramon Mercader, a fanatical agent of the Stalinist GPU. This tragic event is widely known today, well beyond the ranks of Trotsky’s supporters, thanks, among other things, to the novel The Man Who Loved Dogs by Cuban writer Leonardo Padura ...
This year we commemorate the deaths of three leading figures of our movement. Daniel Bensaïd Marxist activist and philosopher, emerging from the May 1968 movement in France, who died too early in 2010 after a life as leader of the French section and the Fourth International. Ernest Mandel whose political activity started in resistance to the rise of Nazism, was an outstanding Marxist economist and a central leader of the Fourth International from the postwar period until his death in 1995. Léon Trotsky, leader of the Russian Revolution and of the fight against the counter-revolution, founder of the Fourth International, was assasinated by a Stalinist agent and died on 21 August 1940.
On this sad anniversary we publish an article by Daniel Bensaïd on Trotsky written in 2000.
It was in 2017, so very late in the day, that I truly discovered the extent of the struggles waged by Gisèle Halimi. Having started to campaign on the eve of May 1968, I have always attached a great deal of interest to the leaders of major social movements. I knew that Gisèle Halimi had defended FLN activists during the Algerian war, nothing more. I had followed with enthusiasm the progress of the Bobigny trials in 1972 where young Marie-Claire, accused of having an abortion, was acquitted and that in Aix in 1978 where three rapists of two young Belgian campers, feminists and lesbians, were sentenced by the Court of Assizes of the Bouches du Rhône. For me, Gisèle Halimi, this beautiful “bon chic, bon genre” woman was an excellent advocate for the cause of women, but she was not one of those remarkable feminist activists who inspired me. But after having immersed myself in the book she wrote with Simone de Beauvoir on the case of Djamila Boupacha and the account of the multiple obstacles that she had had to overcome for two years to ensure her defence, I grasped the determination of this woman to denounce torture alongside other intellectuals, in disregard of her safety and that of her family, and more generally the radical nature of her commitment to the fight against all injustices.
In the so-called case of “the parliamentary assistants to the European Parliament”, Marine Le Pen was sentenced on Monday 31 March to four years in prison, two of which were suspended, a fine of €200,000 and was banned from running for office for five years. Thus, taking into account the usual judicial delays before the holding of an appeal and the effect of political destabilization, her candidacy for the presidential election in 2027 is very much in doubt, especially if the election is called early.
- read article...Dear friends and allies, stand with us! Share this call with your local MPs, mayors, unions, parties, and friends.
Raise your voices for Turkey
- read article...In Spain, a comrade of Anticapitalistas is in prison for participating in a demonstration against the negationist extreme right. He is 27 years old, has been in prison for one year and still has four more years to go.
- read article...We, the different human rights and organizations of agricultural workers and sectors in Mindanao firmly stand in solidarity with the deprived and exploited workers of the Holcim Philippines Incorporated Lugait, Misamis Oriental Mindanao Plant. We call on Holcim Philippines Incorporated to listen to the just demands of the workers and their families.
- read article...After the vote of no confidence, let’s finish with Macron and the 5th Republic!
The result was clear: 331 votes in favour of the no confidence motion. The Barnier government resigned and the austerity budget law fell. This illegitimate government, a symbol of Macron’s decomposition of the Macron presidency, had no future. The promise of ever more austerity and authoritarianism has been rejected by the vast majority of the population.
- read article...International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.
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