Articles tagged “Europe/Canada”

PDF

For eighteen days, from July 20 to August 7, a group of workers at the Vestas wind turbine factory at Newport, on the Isle of Wight, on the south coast of England, held a sit-in at the plant. The occupation was part of a continuing campaign to prevent the closure of the plant by the Danish-owned company, Vestas Wind Systems, and the loss of about 625 jobs.

The group left the premises, to the cheers of hundreds of supporters, just before bailiffs were due to enforce a court order to remove them. A picket of the factory continues at the time of writing, and a national day of solidarity activities has been called for Sept. 17.

The French CGT union’s racist expulsion of African immigrants from its offices reveals deep contradictions inside the labor movement.

On Wednesday, June 24, a terrible event took place in Paris: Hundreds of Africans sans papiers (undocumented immigrants) who had occupied the Bourse de Travail for over a year were evicted and pushed onto the street with their belongings. These workers had taken refuge in the Bourse du Travail, a union-run employment service, because they have no work permits and hope to secure legalization.

PDF

This year, we celebrate the 125th anniversary of Marx’s 1882 Preface to the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, co-authored by Engels, in which he espouses an alternate road toward communism for Russia, one based upon agricultural Russia’s village communes, and different from that outlined in CAPITAL, Vol. I for Western Europe.

PDF

An examination of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution fifty years later, focusing on the creativity of its workers councils, the differing responses to the revolution at the time by C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya, and the relationship of these to what can be done to overcome today’s crisis in developing an alternative to capitalism. — Editors

PDF

The Danish cartoons demonizing Muslims should not be defended as free speech given the context of their publication, in which oppressed minorities inside Europe were demeaned in a racist manner by the dominant media. At the same time, equally reactionary forces in the Muslim world have taken advantage of the controversy to shore up their support — Editors

PDF

An appreciation of the Czech Marxist Humanist Karel Kosik’s Dialectics of the Concrete, 40 years later — Editors

PDF

Marxist Humanism’s review of Chomsky’s book on the war in Kosovo, in which they criticise him for failing to make enough of Milosevic’s crimes.

PDF