By Andrew Williams
As the revolutionary process has continued to unfold across the Middle East there is much cant being espoused by the US and its allies. Whilst publicly calling in the region for democracy, human rights and peace, a completely contrary agenda is actually being pursued. This is being consolidated through imperialist intervention into Libya.
Jobs, Growth, Justice Say no to unnecessary and unfair spending cuts Saturday 26 March 2011Assemble 11am Victoria EmbankmentMarch to a rally in Hyde Park For more details of the TUC’s March [Read more]
One of the important international economic developments in recent years has been the increasing trade and cooperation of China with Latin America and with Africa – two of the continents most oppressed by imperialism. This has given an important extra room for manoeuvre for these countries in providing an economic alternative to simply trade with the US and other countries. The economic ties of China with Brazil and South Africa, for example, are strongly growing in importance. The following article, which originally appeared in China’s Global Times, makes an assessment of the recent revolutions in the Middle East from this angle. It is also interesting in characterising clearly the hypocrisy of the US and European powers in propping up Arab dictators to the very last minute.
China’s media carries a wide range of different views. A significant part of this is pro-capitalist. It is therefore of interest that Global Times, one of China’s main English language papers, has just carried an interview stating the ‘superiorities of the socialist system’, seeing the international financial crisis as ‘an unprecedented crisis of capitalism’, and concluding that ‘the China path… is not only a brand new one that has never been seen before but also a path that is becoming more and more successful.’ The interview was with Hu Angang, Director of the Center for China Studies of Tsinghua University, Beijing. Extracts from the interview are below and the full interview may be read in Global Times here.
The extraordinary and completely heroic actions of the Egyptian people have driven Mubarak from power. After thirty years of brutalism and torture, the US and Israeli backed dictator has been ousted. At a cost of hundreds of martyrs who gave their lives, after last week’s defeat of Mubarak’s thugs in two days of street fighting, after the movement began to spread to working class strikes, after a final attempt by Mubarak at defiance yesterday night, after the gigantic outpouring of the people in answer today, the dictator has been driven out.
The political current Counterfire, which has its origins in the SWP, has chosen to produce as one of its first publications Capitalism and Class Consciousness: the ideas of Georg Lukács by Chris Nineham (Nineham, 2010). Such a choice is highly interesting in placing theoretical concepts developed by Lukács in the early 1920s as a basis for the approach of Counterfire. These concepts were specifically rejected by Lenin in very strong terms – he referred to Lukács’s views as ‘purely verbal’ Marxism. As ideas of, or similar to, the early Lukács are the basis not only of Counterfire but of other currents, and as they reveal more generally a misunderstanding of Marxism, analysing why these ideas are wrong – and why Lenin so specifically rejected them – is of importance to more than simply small circles.
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