January 7, 2021
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Focus Malaysia There is a lot of discussion about our access to the COVID-19 vaccine and the cost of the vaccination programme for the country. However, the issue of the safety of the different vaccines on offer hasn’t been addressed adequately.
The COVID-19 vaccines on offer now can be divided into two main groups.
The first group is the vaccines that use inactivated COVID-19 viruses or laboratory manufactured COVID-19 protein to stimulate the body’s immune response.
The second group of vaccines use a new technology that makes the subject’s own body produce the COVID-19 protein that then stimulates the subject’s immune system.
January 7, 2021
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell s Marxist Essays and Commentary Many socialist groups today seek to shape their organizational principles in the spirit of “democratic centralism” identified with V.I. Lenin. Yet as historian Lars Lih has demonstrated (“Fortunes of a Formula” and “Further Fortunes of a Formula”), Lenin himself used the term only occasionally, and then with widely varying emphasis. The formula’s meaning for socialists today is in fact derived mainly from its application by the Communist International (Comintern) in Lenin’s lifetime and under his guidance (1919–23).
This article will examine how this principle was expressed in the internal functioning of the Comintern’s national parties and also in their relationship to the Comintern’s leadership, the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI).
January 7, 2021
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Verso The sudden death our friend and comrade Leo Panitch has led to an extraordinary outpouring of sadness and appreciation across the world. Very few intellectuals on the left have had the intellectual impact on progressive thinkers and activists that Leo has had, as the flood of testimonials shows; and fewer still have in addition personally trained a comparable network of scholars of the highest calibre who are now carrying forward his distinctive project of critical – and self-critical – research and teaching in dozens of countries. Leo also combined research and teaching with engagement with activists in parties, trade unions and social movements: he knew and was consulted by leaders on the left in several continents, but was also known and admired by the rank and file who flocked to meetings whenever he showed up in Johannesburg, Athens, Frankfurt, London, Rio, New Delhi and elsewh
January 3, 2021
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal On the morning of October 27, Maribel Mora, representative on the Parliament of Andalusia’s speakership board of radical left coalition Forward Andalusia, got a nasty surprise: minutes before the board was due to meet in the capital Sevilla, Inmaculada Nieto, spokesperson for the coalition’s parliamentary caucus, rang Mora to say that she would be asking the board to expel eight MPs from their 17-member group for being “defectors”. If most MPs from the other parties on the board voted for expulsion, the eight Forward Andalusia representatives would be reclassified as “unassigned”.
Forward Andalusia is an electoral coalition. Its founding affiliates were the United Left Andalusia (IU Andalusia) and Podemos Andalusia: they were soon joined by the two smaller left-nationalist (
January 3, 2021
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Law and Political Economy Project Although it has hardly broken through the parochialism of the US news cycle, India is currently experiencing what is perhaps the largest strike wave in world history. In this post, Veena Dubal interviews Navyug Gill about the strikes, the agricultural reforms that led to them, what those outside India can learn from them, and what the future might portend.
Venna Dubal: Farmers and laborers are engaged in a massive protest in India right now, but few in North America are paying attention. Why is this protest happening, and what are the goals of the protestors?