Category: social movements

08 Dec

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‘Abolishing the present state of things’

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Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. —Marx & Engels (1845), The German […]

04 Dec

Comments Off on Palestine: Towards a new intifada

Palestine: Towards a new intifada

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A series of armed attacks by young Palestinians against settler targets in Jerusalem and the West Bank is forcing world attention to the simmering intifada across Palestine. The crisis over Al Aqsa has already raised the temperature. The Israeli offensive on Gaza lifted Palestinian sentiment to boiling point. Now the confluence of a polity of […]

18 Nov

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Reply to Callinicos on anti-politics & social struggle

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When Elizabeth Humphrys and I originally wrote “Anti-politics: Elephant in the room” on Left Flank just over a year ago, we were trying to summarise the changes in our thinking over the causes and consequences of the “crisis of representation” that the blog had been focused on since its inception. The post has been widely […]

14 Nov

14 Comments

Understanding Podemos (2/3): Radical populism

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The first part of Left Flank’s series exploring the rise of Podemos looked at the positive incorporation in the project of the “Indignados” (15-M) movement’s participatory democracy and radical opposition towards “politics”. Here Luke Stobart looks more critically at the “radical populism” that has shaped the approach of its dominant grouping (and now formal leadership) […]

05 Nov

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Understanding Podemos (1/3): 15-M & counter-politics

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What Podemos’s present success reveals is the breakdown, the crisis or the collapse (choose the term you prefer) of the Spanish party system. Because in reality the Transition regime is sinking like the Titanic and Podemos is merely the iceberg that caused this. So as soon as the cock crowed on 25-M, all the captains […]

29 Sep

6 Comments

Occupying Hong Kong

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GUEST POST BY KEVIN LIN  The past week has seen a dramatic escalation of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, against the Chinese government’s obstruction in Hong Kong’s electoral process. In scenes reminiscent of the Arab Spring uprisings, 30,000 college students and supporters occupied streets in Hong Kong’s central financial district, encircled by riot police armed with […]

21 Sep

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A funny thing happened on the way through Upton Park

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I was inspired partly by an exchange of well-made points on my Facebook wall between two great friends Jay and Paddy. But the main reason for taking time out to write this on a sunny Sunday morning in east London is because a funny thing happened on my way home last night. I really hope […]

08 Sep

Comments Off on The capitalist state, neoliberalism and industrial arbitration

The capitalist state, neoliberalism and industrial arbitration

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Left Flank’s ELIZABETH HUMPHRYS has launched a new website for her own work, An Integral State: Notes on Marx & Gramsci. The latest post is her paper from the roundtable on Leo Panitch & Sam Gindin’s Deutscher Prize winning book The Making of Global Capitalism, at the Historical Materialism Australasia conference last weekend in Sydney. […]

21 May

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Imperialism & the anti-capitalist Left: Ukraine in context

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THANASIS KAMPAGIANNIS returns to the debate on imperialism, on the occasion of the controversies that have opened up inside the Left regarding the crisis in Ukraine. This is a translation of an article recently published in the theoretical magazine of the Greek Socialist Workers Party (SEK), Socialism From Below. The declaration of the end of […]

24 Mar

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Whatever happened to the Indignados? 2: Regime crisis

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After the weekend’s million and a half strong “March for dignity” in Madrid, once again showing that the wave of radicalisation that has swept Spain since the 15-M protests of 2011 is far from over, LUKE STOBART returns to Left Flank with the second instalment of a special three-part analysis of the Indignados movement and […]