[Marxism] What's new at Links: Bolivia; Zimbabwe; Nicaragua; Latin American Marxism; Africa; Malaysia; Cuba & Africa; nationalise oil;

[glparramatta <glparramatta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - 
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed 
(http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to
consider an article, please send it to links@xxxxxxxxxx

Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links.


    Bolivia's vice-president on the course of revolution
    <http://links.org.au/node/484>

By *Álvaro García Linera*, vice-president of Bolivia

Translation, notes and introduction by *Richard Fidler*

The following article, based on a speech given in December 2007 but only 
recently transcribed and published in Spanish by /Bolpress/ on May 12, 
2008, is an important statement by a leading member of Bolivian 
President Evo Morales' government on the political situation in that 
country in the wake of the Constituent Assembly's vote on a draft 
political constitution. The draft constitution is to be put to a popular 
vote for adoption later this year. Álvaro García Linera, Bolivia's 
vice-president, is a former leader of the Tupac Katarí guerrilla army. 
He was subsequently employed as a university sociologist. He is also a 
prominent Latin American Marxist, strongly influenced by post-World War 
II European non-Stalinist Marxist currents inspired by the ideas of the 
Italian communist leader and political theorist Antonio Gramsci. 
Gramsci, who died in 1937, was an innovative Marxist thinker who wrote 
extensively on the concept of cultural hegemony and its role as an 
ideological mainstay of capitalist societies.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/484>


    His Excellency Comrade Robert: How Mugabe's ZANU clique rose to
    power <http://links.org.au/node/481>

By *Stephen O'Brien*

Towards the end of 1975 a movement of young radicals organised in the 
Zimbabwe People's Army (ZIPA) took charge of Zimbabwe's liberation war. 
ZIPA's fusion of inclusive politics, transformational vision and 
military aggression dealt crippling blows to the white supremacist 
regime of Ian Smith. However, it's success also paved the way for a 
faction of conservative nationalists led by Robert Mugabe to wrest 
control of the liberation movement for themselves.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/481>


    Malaysia: Fuel heats governmental crisis (+ videos)
    <http://links.org.au/node/485>

June 21, 2008 -- The National Front (BN) government led by PM Abdullah 
Badawi has been shaky since the March general election that returned a 
much stronger parliamentary opposition --- now largely united in a new 
People's Front (Pakatan Rakyat).

However, the BN's recent decision to lift petrol prices by 41% (and 
diesel by 63%) has galvanised a new round of mass protests. Thousands 
took to the streets in Kuala Lumpur after prayers at the mosque on June 
13 demanding that prices be lowered and a much larger rally is being 
planned for July 6./ Link/'s /*Peter Boyle*/ spoke on June 19 with 
/*S.Arutchelvan*/, the secretary-general of the Socialist Party of 
Malaysia (PSM), about the recent developments. After a 10-year battle 
for registration as a legal party, the PSM has just been promised 
recognition by the embattled government. This follows the PSM winning 
two seats in the March elections.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/485>


    Cuito Cuanavale: How Cuba fought for Africa's freedom
    <http://links.org.au/node/483>

By *Barry Healy*

June 14, 2008 -- This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Battle of 
Cuito Cuanavale, a heroic struggle in which, between October 1987 and 
June 1988, in some of the fiercest fighting in Africa since the Second 
World War, the South African Defence Force (SADF) were humiliatingly 
defeated by liberation forces in Angola. Cuban assistance to Angolan 
resistance to the SADF invasion was vital. Defeat at Cuito Cuanavale 
spelled the doom of apartheid and the victory of the South African 
liberation movement.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/483>


    Nicaragua: Anti-FSLN opposition seeks unity to topple Ortega
    government <http://links.org.au/node/482>

By *Felipe Stuart Cournoyer*

Managua -- On June 11, 2008, the axe of Nicaragua's Supreme Electoral 
Council (CSE) came down on the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS[i]) 
and the old historic Conservative Party of Nicaragua (PCN), now a tiny 
shell of its former self. The CSE unanimously decided to deregister both 
parties on the grounds that they had failed to fulfill the requirements 
of the national electoral law.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/482>


    Nationalise big oil, enemy of the planet and its people
    <http://links.org.au/node/479>

By *Dick Nichols*

June 17, 2008 -- The latest surge in the spot price of crude oil (to 
US$139 a barrel---87.4 cents a litre) dramatises the urgent need for 
society to wean itself off "black gold". The longer we remain hooked the 
greater the devastation both to our environment and to the living 
standards of billions, especially the poorest peoples of the planet.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/479>


    From Marx to Morales: Indigenous socialism and the Latin
    Americanisation of Marxism <http://links.org.au/node/478>

*By John Riddell*

June 16, 2008 -- Over the past decade, a new rise of mass struggles in 
Latin America has sparked an encounter between revolutionists of that 
region and many of those based in the imperialist countries. In many of 
these struggles, as in Bolivia under the presidency of Evo Morales, 
Indigenous peoples are in the lead. Latin American revolutionists are 
enriching Marxism in the field of theory as well as of action. This 
article offers some introductory comments indicating ways in which their 
ideas are linking up with and drawing attention to important but 
little-known aspects of Marxist thought.

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/478>


    How Europe underdevelops Africa (but how some fight back)
    <http://links.org.au/node/477>

By *Patrick Bond* and *Richard Kamidza*

ADDIS ABABA, June 11, 2008 -- In even the most exploitative African 
sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations 
take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of 
being divided and conquered. Turns in the class struggle might have 
surprised Walter Rodney, the political economist whose 1972 classic /How 
Europe Underdeveloped Africa/ provided detailed critiques of corporate 
looting.

In early June, the British-Dutch firm Shell Oil --- one of Rodney's 
targets -- was instructed to depart the Ogoniland region within the 
Niger Delta in southern Nigeria, where in 1995 Shell officials were 
responsible for the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigerian dictator Sani 
Abacha. After decades of abuse, women protesters, local NGOs and the 
Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) gave Shell the 
shove. France's Total appears to be the next in line to go, in part 
because of additional pressure from the Movement for the Emancipation of 
the Niger Delta (MEND).

    * Read more <http://links.org.au/node/477>

/Links/ seeks to promote the international exchange of information, 
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political 
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for 
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from 
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the 
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social 
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in 
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing 
socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
*
ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at 
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu