Comment & Analysis

Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was heckled on the stage at the World Social Forum yesterday by the same international activists who hailed him as a saviour when he swept to office two […]

Well over 100,000 people turned out on a scorching afternoon in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to participate in a demonstration that marked the opening of the fifth World Social Forum.

Over 70 members and sympathisers of the committee for a workers’ international will be making sure that the ideas of socialism are brought to the tens of thousands who will attend the meetings and demonstrations […]

Appeal to Activists in Brazil and Internationally

Appeal to activists in Brazil and internationally

Over 100,000 workers, youth and others exploited by capitalism are expected to attend the 2005 World Social Forum (WSF) in Porte Allegre, Brazil between 26-31 January.

When most of the world’s mass media is firmly "embedded" into the thinking of governments and the big business interests that lie behind them, the publication of a collection of some of the greatest pieces […]

What forms revolutionaries? Maybe they are not so different to everyone else but are the ones who realise first that something has to be done. They are the ones who can’t just shrug their shoulders […]

The price of oil has surged during 2004, after a period of relatively low prices.

The sluggish world economy is being dragged along by two coupled locomotives, with US capitalism at the head of the train and with China as a key auxiliary.

Before the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, an accident or illness could be a catastrophe for working class people.

A ’black gold’ rush is in full swing.

Finance Ministers and central bank chiefs from the seven richest imperialist states, the G7, meet in Washington at the start of October.

It’s not surprising that Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 is storming the US. The film’s release coincides with Americans’ growing anger at George Bush and his right-wing regime.

Builders Labourers fight deregistration, 1981-94, by Liz Ross.

IN ONE of the most controversial and the highest-grossing Spanish films ever, ’The Basque Ball’, director Julio Medem examines the Basque question through hundreds of interviews.

The recovery in the world economy continues to assume an anaemic character.

Among members of the Socialist Party, Francis Wheen is certainly most widely known as the author of an excellent biography of Karl Marx. Equally worth reading is his latest work, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World.

Eurozone leaders attending the recent G7 summit of finance ministers from the richest capitalist nations let out a howl of impotent anguish. The statement issued after their meeting (7/8 February) at Boca Raton, Florida, deplored […]

Intervening in the World Social Forum in Mumbai was very much like intervening in one six day-long demonstration. The activity was more or less constant from eight in the morning until nine or ten at […]

Goodbye Lenin is a political love story set in East Germany (GDR) around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

A socialist world is possible and necessary

What kind of conditions do workers and young people face in your area?

Growing resistance against US imperialism worldwide was reflected in almost every meeting, demonstration, placard and badge at the World Social Forum in Mumbai.

Banners, posters and slogans against Bush and his war on Iraq were prominent in Mumbai (India) on 21st January.

"Many multinational corporations feel their mouths water at the mention of the opening up of the Indian economy. India offers a good ground for plunder. Even if only 10 per cent of the population of […]

Pictures from Mumbai

"Many multinational corporations feel their mouths water at the mention of the opening up of the Indian economy. India offers a good ground for plunder. Even if only 10 per cent of the population of […]

Over 120,000 people have attended the World Social Forum in Mumbai.

THE STRUGGLE over the war was as much for the ’hearts and minds’ of the American people as it was for those of the Vietnamese.

Michael Moore said "barring success", Stupid White Men, (reviewed in the socialist, issue 254), would be his last book. But last year when George W Bush was supposedly so popular, it was the leading non-fiction […]

THE BOOMS of the 1980s and 1990s were both driven by frenzied international financial speculation. They have left deep problems for capitalism, and now form a massive barrier to a new, sustained economic upswing in […]

“Capitalism and poverty reduction has just had its best few decades in the whole of history…” and yet “…Anti-capitalist demonstrations on May 1st in cities around the world attracted sizeable crowds”.

ON A bright June day in Liverpool in 1977, hundreds of trade unionists and socialists took part in a march to rally at the final resting place of Robert Noonan – known more popularly as […]

In 1903, sociologist, scholar, and historian W.E.B. Dubois (1868-1963) wrote his book The Souls of Black Folk, which would make a vital contribution to the struggle of African Americans in the post-Civil War and Reconstruction […]

DUBLIN HAS the odious task of hosting the World Economic Forum (WEF) from 19 – 20 October. The WEF, which is a representative "think tank" for the top thousand multinational corporations in the world, plans […]

ERIC ARTHUR Blair, better known under his pseudonym George Orwell, was born in Motihari, India 100 years ago this month, his father being a lower-ranking colonial administrator in the days of the British Raj.

On Saturday morning there was a meeting of the Greek Social Forum against war and imperialism.

Around 100,000 people demonstrated in Thessaloniki, Greece, on Saturday 21 June to show their opposition to the EU summit.

Just before the demonstrations against the EU summit started, the Greek Social Forum (GSF) organised a number of meetings. Xekinima, an active part of the GSF, organised a meeting on the need for a political […]

During the Greek EU summit thousands will join the protests in the city of Thessaloniki. Nikei De Pooter (a member of Linkse Socialistiche Partij [LSP]/ Mouvement pour une Alternative Socialiste [MAS], Belgian affiliate of the […]

The majority of the members of the delegations to the G8 summit in Evian had accommodation in Lausanne, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. In Lausanne, as well as in Geneva and on the French […]

THIS IS a tremendous follow up to Gore Vidal’s equally impressive Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace published last year.

NOAM CHOMSKY’S Power and Terror is an attack on the hypocrisy and double standards of US foreign policy. It explains why US imperialism is loathed by so many people; because it interferes in international politics […]

The world economy is on the edge of a prolonged period of stagnation. Before the war on Iraq began, its approach had already made a negative impact. A United Nations statement in January this year […]

FINANCE MINISTERS from the seven largest economies in the world met recently to debate how to revive the sick world economy. However, there was little agreement on how to revive the patient.

A major retrospective of the work of the 20th Century painter Max Beckmann (1884-1950) is currently running at the Tate Modern in London. Given the exhibition’s major concern with war and violent conflict, the timing […]

The speech by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula), the popular Left Brazilian president, was undoubtedly the most anticipated event in the World Social Forum. The crowd was even bigger than the 140,000 that participated […]