My latest piece at Overland Journal — “Not a crisis of misogyny: a crisis of political authority” — went up yesterday. It was written in response to a series of recent arguments on the Left, most especially “If Julia Gillard isn’t safe from the Liberals’ sexism, who will be?” by Van Badham, which appeared in The Guardian […]
09 Jun
Here is an edited transcript of the speech I gave at the Secure Jobs in a Green Future Conference. Thanks to the Search Foundation for inviting me along, and to the other speakers on the panel: Sally McManus, Andrew Giles, Cate Faehrmann, Nick Martin and Hall Greenland. You can now access many of the presentations […]
20 Mar
Comments Off on Cyprus says ‘No!’ — a watershed vote against EU austerity
By KEVIN OVENDEN My previous post was written early on Monday morning, London time. Since then events have proceeded rapidly and dramatically. They will continue to do so. This update is meant to highlight the political significance of some of those developments in a fast moving crisis. 1) Despite desperate protestations it is now clear, […]
19 Mar
GUEST POST by KEVIN OVENDEN Two months ago, perennial optimists were telling us that the worst of the Eurozone crisis was probably over. Then came the Italian election. Now the great Cypriot bank heist. By Sunday morning it was dawning on tens of millions of people what had happened, as the news spread from […]
10 Mar
Comments Off on Europe: The persistence of racism & the fascist threat
by KEVIN OVENDEN Below are the points, updated and a little amplified, I made in a contribution to the highly successful Unite Against Fascism conference in London on 2 March. The speech (and I’ve incorporated my summing up) was in a workshop with Petros Constantinou from Greece, Marwan Mohammed from France and Glyn Ford […]
08 Mar
Comments Off on Leo Panitch, the state & capitalist social relations
Introducing AN INTEGRAL STATE, the new blog by Elizabeth Humphrys Recent years have seen a big increase in Marxist theorising on the state and its relationship to the capitalist system. These discussions have gone through several phases, from debates over the nature of globalisation in the late 1990s, to renewed interest in imperialism in reaction […]
27 Feb
In the end the results of Italy’s general election were even more unsettling than the most pessimistic pro-Euro commentators had anticipated. As this post was being completed, the lower house counts were as follows: Pier Luigi Bersani’s centre-left coalition 29.5% Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition 29.1% Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement 25.5% Mario Monti’s Civic Choice […]
23 Feb
With a sense of crisis swirling around the government, last Friday’s post on how the ALP’s problems run much deeper than a faulty “narrative” was republished at ABC’s The Drum. Then Christine Milne announced the end of the Greens-ALP agreement, and The Drum commissioned the piece below on the Greens. Now that comments are closed at the ABC website, we’re […]
15 Feb
In a considered piece at ABC’s The Drum on Thursday, Jonathan Green highlighted a phenomenon that seems to overwhelm Australian politics — the inability of simple facts about the Gillard Government’s performance to overcome the stench of crisis hanging over it. He is correct to point out “that in assuming that the mere facts of its […]
29 Jan
Following on from our previous coverage of the Greek crisis, Left Flank is pleased to publish this analysis — by Thanasis Kampagiannis — of the balance of forces within the Greek Left and the question of what kind of politics can take the resistance movements forward. Thanasis has previously written for Left Flank on Greek politics, and […]
22 Jun
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