“The Hong Kong government has made clear that it will not waver from its stewardship of Hong Kong’s neoliberal crony-capitalist system, and as long as that system remains in place, labour disputes will continue to arise as a symptom of the dysfunction inherent to capitalism.”
Internationalism, Anti-Imperialism, And the Origins of Campism
21 April 2022, byI began this paper as a contribution to discussions in the Internationalism from Below Group, whose members’ criticisms helped to improve it. I finished it with help from the editors of New Politics. Special thanks to Steve Shalom for his comments. I alone, however, am responsible for this version of the essay.
Russian Imperialism and Its Monopolies
21 April 2022, byIt is widely accepted that the accelerating rivalry between the great powers—the United States, China, the European Union, Russia, and Japan—is a key feature of world politics and will remain so for the foreseeable future. This makes it urgent for progressive forces to have a clear view on the character of the powers involved, which in turn requires a concrete analysis of the political, economic, and military features of these powers that goes beyond a denunciation of the reactionary domestic and foreign policy of their respective governments. [1] Unfortunately, large sectors of the left do not take a principled position of opposition to all imperialist powers. Rather, they display some kind of sympathy or even support for China and Russia and recognize only the old Western powers as imperialist. [2] In the case of China, a number of “communist” intellectuals and well-known journals like Monthly Review not only deny the Stalinist-capitalist character of its regime but shamefully glorify it as a kind of “socialism.” [3]
“We must start a new May 68”
16 March 2022, by , ,In an unprecedented interview, Alain Krivine, one of the leaders of the French 68, reconstructs the events that set his country alight that year. (2018)
The United Front in the Revolutionary Marxist Tradition
13 February 2022, by“But we must be very clear about the fact that to have unity, a good unity in elections, the conditions are much more restrictive than to have unity, a good unity, in a strike for example.”
How the Russian Left Survived in a Post‑Soviet World
12 January 2022, byAfter the demise of the USSR on December 26, 1991, the Russian left had to find its place in a society transformed beyond recognition. In the face of huge challenges, its activists have led important struggles against the system established by Yeltsin and Putin.
The story of the modern left movement in Russia begins in the late 1980s, during the era of perestroika. From the very beginning it carried a contradictory combination of two political tendencies of the late Soviet period: (...)
Globalization from Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan until today
12 January 2022, byIn this study, Éric Toussaint covers the period from the 15th to the 21st century, focusing on the dramatic effects of capitalist globalisation.
50 years after Baodiao: How Hong Kong struggled against all nationalisms
12 January 2022, by , , ,“But the “Baodiao” movement (保釣運動)—short-hand for “Protect Diaoyutai” (釣魚臺) in Chinese—represents the first movement led by a generation of people in the city imbued with some inchoate sense of local consciousness (to which today’s “Hongkonger” identity can be traced back), born and raised in Hong Kong upon the wave of mass migration from mainland China in the 1950s.”
Beyond Glasgow – what happened at COP26 and where we go next
24 December 2021, byIt is a month since Alok Sharma as president, fighting back some tears, brought down the gavel on the 26th Conference of the Parties – the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow. The initial flurry of reactions and comments has subsided. Here in Scotland we have already seen some early signs of the impact – with the beginnings of a victory against the development of a new offshore oil field at Cambo.
Friedrich Engels and Primitive Communism
24 December 2021, byIn November 2020, socialists around the world celebrated the bicentenary of the birth of Friedrich Engels. It is a mistake, often repeated, to regard Engels as a mere popularizer of Marx’s ideas. Not only did he contribute, with Marx in 1844-48, to the formation of a new worldview — the philosophy of praxis or historical materialism — but he developed an analysis and argument on subjects that Marx did not want or could not study.
Footnotes
[1] See on this Michael Pröbsting, “Great Power Rivalry in the Early Twenty-first Century,” New Politics (No. 67, Summer 2019). See also Michael Pröbsting, Anti-Imperialism in the Age of Great Power Rivalry. The Factors Behind the Accelerating Rivalry Between the U.S., China, Russia, EU and Japan (RCIT Books, 2019); this book can be read online or downloaded for free here.
[2] See the special issue of Monthly Review: “New Cold War on China” (July-August 2021). For a critique of such an approach, see Michael Pröbsting,, Servants of Two Masters. Stalinism and the New Cold War Between Imperialist Great Powers in East and West, July 2021.
[3] For a Marxist analysis of China’s capitalism and its rise as an imperialist power, see Michael Pröbsting, “China’s Emergence as an Imperialist Power,” New Politics (No. 57, Summer 2014). See also an essay by Michael Pröbsting in the second edition of The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, Immanuel Ness and Zak Cope, eds. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); other works on this issue can be accessed on this sub-page.
