The government of the Portuguese Socialist Party supported and pressured by an alliance with the Communist Party and the Left Bloc have shown that it is possible to implement an effective anti-austerity programme as a member of the EU.
It was typical that as Javier was dying, just 10 days before he passed away, too sick to get to his computer, he should e-mail me on his mobile phone to introduce José Manual Mariscal as the new editor of the monthly magazine of the Spanish Communist Party (a part of the United Left coalition). “I'm quite sick,” he said, rather understating his personal problem, “so I can’t go on. But if you’re so kind, lend him your help as if he were me.” He knew our friendship was personally strong but also intrinsically political. And based on openness and collaboration, he deeply loyal to the Marxist Leninist Spanish Communist Party and I of a libertarian mould
In this essay, I take a critical account of these ambiguities and their implications for different directions for a contested transition beyond the post-war settlement, while focusing on the specific possible legacies for a democratic, egalitarian dynamic of change. This must build on but go beyond social-democratic capitalism.
The British feminist socialist, best known for being editor of Red Pepper magazine, talks with Laura Flanders about her first Women's Liberation meeting , her thoughts on Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and how her feminism intersects with solidarity economics.
Building a real democracy in the face of corporate and financial power will require a rethinking of power and agency, unleashing the creative, experimental, knowledge-sharing and emancipatory approaches of social movements.
The uncertainty about UK's election results reflects an important opening up of politics and expectations in the UK and an opportunity for social movements to push for anti-austerity and progressive policies
Throughout the world, public service workers, alongside their fellow community members, are not only defending public services but also struggling to make them democratic and responsive to people’s needs and desires.
From South Africa to Brazil, from Italy to the US, in Uruguay, Greece, Norway, the UK and in many other countries, municipal councils are taking services back under public control. Public Service workers and their fellow community members are not only defending public services but are also struggling to make them democratic and responsive to the people's needs and desires.
"After spending several evenings this week immersed in inspiring tributes to Stuart, I’ve been pondering on what it was that was distinctively special about him — all the tributes confirm one’s instinct that we have lost someone with a special spirit that we must try to carry inside us"
There is mounting evidence that neoliberal policies are losing legitimacy. The translation of such disaffection into positive commitment to an alternative, however, requires deeper disengagement from the dominant order and practical participation in creating alternatives. A social order built on escaping the pressures of democracy while at the same time depending on the capacities of many desiring democracy is unlikely to be stable. Thus the opaque and indirect forms of power typical of neoliberal rule are simultaneously sources of vulnerability and dependence, and breeding grounds for the power to subvert and transform.
Conventionally, the concept of ‘labour’ is understood as referring to waged labour – the capacity to labour as exercised through a market. It was precisely this narrow understanding of labour that the discussions in this stream challenged from several angles.
How can society move towards forms of economic organisation that place human creativity, including a respectful relationship to nature, at their centre?
A combination of opposing privatisation and putting forward practical alternatives is helping water campaigners mount an effective challenge to austerity in Greece.
Experience worldwide shows that EC-imposed privatisation on crisis countries will not work. The alternative is not reinforcing the status quo, but using citizen power and labour to reinvigorate public services and democratically transform the state.
A series of interviews with young activists shows signs of a movement that connects local everyday struggles to a global movement, and one that resists by creating alternatives in the present.
