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  1. An Alternative for SYRIZA
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    In order to regain sovereignty, a country has to exit not only the EZ, if a member, but the EU itself. Liberated from the noose of the EU treaties and regulations, Greek people will have the freedom to follow a sovereign monetary and fiscal policy and form trade and international alliances to the best of their interests.
  2. Analyzing the Failures of Syriza
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    Examines the failture of Syriza, The Coalition of the Radical Left, since their election in Greece.
  3. A Blueprint for a New Party
    With the rise of Donald Trump, we need to think seriously about what it would take to form a democratic organization rooted in working class
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    A proposal for a national political organization that would have chapters at the state and local levels, a binding program, a leadership accountable to its members, and electoral candidates nominated at all levels throughout the country.
  4. Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn, and Contempt for Democracy
    Introduction to the July 2, 2016 issue of Other Voices
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    A constant theme in elite reaction to the Brexit referendum, expressed especially through the mainstream media, has been a visceral contempt for democracy. Ordinary working people are portrayed as stupid and reactionary, incapable of understanding how wonderful the European Union project is. Again and again, one hears the comment that the great unwashed should not be allowed to vote on issues which they are incapable of understanding. This reaction is not new: ruling classes for centuries have loathed democracy, which is seen as an existential threat to the wealth and privileges of the elite.
  5. The Candidate
    Jeremy Corbyn's Improbable Path to Power
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2016
    Chronicling Jeremy Corbyn's rise to the position of leader of Britian's Labour Party. An insider's look at the events that led to his appointment.
  6. The Catastrophic International Consequences of the Capitulation of Syriza and the Criminal Responsibility of Mr. Tsipras
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Syriza's betrayal comes at a very critical historical moment, when the racist extreme right is advancing almost everywhere in our continent, which already makes immediate and direct the threat that many of the citizens Europeans disappointed by Syriza will fall prey to this racist and neo-fascist self-proclaimed "anti-systemic" extreme right.
  7. The challenge of Podemos
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    The emergence of so-called populist parties as a response to increasingly discredited political elites is a European-wide phenomenon. In most cases these parties have emerged on the right, if not the far-right. Not so in the Spanish state where Podemos, after barely ten months in existence, appears to be undermining the whole political set up in place since the end of the Franco dictatorship in the late 1970s.
  8. A comment on Greece and Syriza
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2012
    This analysis is a rebuke to the notion that there is nothing between the far left and social democracy. That diagnosis may have been appropriate in the period of revolutionary growth beginning in 1968. This period, marked by the long-term decomposition of once dominant social democratic parties, is quite different.
  9. Conundrum - Syriza, Democracy And The Death Of A Saudi Tyrant
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    It's always a tricky moment for the corporate media when a foreign leader dies. The content and tone need to be appropriate, moulded to whether that leader fell into line with Western policies or not.
  10. The elites hate Momentum and the Corbynites - and I'll tell you why
    The movement that backed the Labour leader challenges MPs and journalists alike - because it's about grassroots democracy
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    As the rolling catastrophe of what's already being called the "chicken coup" against the Labour leadership winds down, pretty much all the commentary has focused on the personal qualities, real or imagined, of the principal players. Yet such an approach misses out on almost everything that's really at stake here. The real battle is not over the personality of one man, or even a couple of hundred politicians. If the opposition to Jeremy Corbyn for the past nine months has been so fierce, and so bitter, it is because his existence as head of a major political party is an assault on the very notion that politics should be primarily about the personal qualities of politicians.
  11. The Facts Proving Corbyn's Election Triumph
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    Corbyn has proved himself the most popular Labour leader with the electorate in more than 40 years, apart from Blair’s landslide victory in 1997.
  12. The Failed Strategy
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    The failure of Syriza in Greece, and the timidness of other left-social-democratic parties and formations tells us that we must learn the dangers of political shortcut and focus on building radical movements outside of government.
  13. The Green Party After the Election
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    Until the Green Party has built a real power base of well-organized, dues-paying members and elected Green caucuses in city councils, state legislatures and the U.S. House, it will not be taken seriously in a presidential run by most media and most voters
  14. Inside Corbyn's Office
    An interview with Matt Zarb-Cousin
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    Jeremy Corbyn’s former press officer on sabotage within the British Labour party, his relationship to the media, and how Labour can close the polling gap.
  15. A Leap Toward Radical Politics?
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    The Leap Manifesto is, in a way, Canada's version of the burst of Left and socialist energies that have come with the Bernie Sanders campaign in the Democratic Party in the U.S. and the Jeremy Corbyn leadership win in the Labour Party in Britain. As with these, the explosion of popular interest reflects general disquiet about the limits of recent protests demanding changes from the state but having no strategy to transform it, on the one hand; and disappointments with electoral politics and social democratic parties that only seem to reinforce neoliberalism, on the other.
  16. Left parties
    Introduction to the November 11, 2017 issue of Other Voices
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    "There is no alternative." That is capitalism's message in the neo-liberal era. The rich keep getting richer and richer, millions of people are unemployed, millions more are trying to survive on precarious, marginal, and part-time work, hundreds of millions are without health care, housing, education, or clean water. Environmental collapse is increasingly likely, masses of people are fleeing wars and economic disasters, nuclear war is a real danger. And all that the corporate elite, the corporate media, and the mainstream political parties have to offer is their insistence that there is nothing we can do about it: there is no alternative.
  17. Left reformism, the state and the problem of socialist politics today
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    The recent calls for the British left either to “reclaim Labour” (Len McCluskey) or to build a new party capable of emulating Syriza’s successes in Greece (Ken Loach) demand serious consideration on these pages. At their core these proposals reflect a widespread desire, shared by members of the Socialist Workers Party, to fight the cuts, alongside revulsion at the Labour Party’s failure to do so. They also reflect a genuine excitement across the left about the prospects for new left formations such as Syriza and France’s similar Front de Gauche.
  18. Left reformism, the state and the problem of socialist politics today
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    Blackledge claims that, while it is of the first importance that revolutionaries welcome and work alongside these coalitions, it is also imperative that we maintain our political independence from them so that we are better able to struggle for an alternative beyond the limitations of their politics. This perspective demands a clear analysis of the nature of reformism.
  19. Die Linke: Ten Years On
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    Political organizations, particularly those committed to radical change, face their greatest tests in times of crisis. In 1914, German social democracy, the international socialist movement’s crown jewel, was brought to its knees by its inability to confront the outbreak of World War I. Two decades later, German Communism’s ultra-leftism proved similarly impotent in the face of the growing Nazi threat, and Europe's most powerful laboUr movement was decimated within a couple of years.
  20. Marxist Theories of the State Played out in Venezuela
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    The implications of Marxist state theories developed by Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband are useful for framing issues related to leftist strategy in twenty-first century Venezuela.
  21. "Não Nos Representam!" A Left Beyond the Workers Party?
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2013
    Larrabure identifies why the participatory budgeting strategy of Brazil's Worker's Party and the city's government failed to decentralize unequality in land ownership and the economy, resulting in mass protests and demonstrations by the public.
  22. Of Hegel and Bernie Sanders
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    My concern is not with Bernie Sanders (basically a New Deal liberal) but with the social dynamics of the Sanders phenomenon. What is going on when we see a surge of mass support for someone who identifies himself (however inaccurately) with socialism? What is the social process driving this unexpected shift in political goals and ideas toward the left? What lies behind the re-entry of socialism into the mass vocabulary of political life?
  23. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - August 21, 2015
    Canadian federal election, mining and the environment
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 2015
    Featuring the Canadian federal election, mining and the environment, failure of Syriza in Greece, refugees, veterans of India's struggle for independence.
  24. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - November 11, 2017
    Left Parties
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 2017
    In recent years, there have been repeated attempts to build left political parties and coalitions, i.e. parties to the left of the established social democratic parties which have long become part of the neoliberal capitalist mainstream. Left parties have emerged out of mass movements in countries like Spain (Podemos), Germany (Die Linke), and Greece (Syriza). In Latin America, in the last two decades, left movements or parties have formed governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, and Uruguay. What these new left parties/movements have in common is a strategy of engaging in grassroots organizing and also running in elections. They all describe themselves as socialist, though in many cases their programs are more reminiscent of what social democrats used to advocate decades ago: reforms that would tame and manage capitalism rather than abolish it. Their ultimate vision may be a world without capitalism, but their immediate proposals are more modest and incremental, though still significantly to the left of the neo-liberal consensus.
  25. Our 10 pledges to rebuild and transform Britain
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    Jeremy Corbyn - 10 Pledges to Rebuild and Transforme Britain: Full employment and an economy that works for all; A secure homes guarantee; Security at work; Secure our NHS and social care; A national education service, open to all; Action to secure our environment; Put the public back into our economy and services; Cut income and wealth inequality; Action to secure an equal society; Peace and justic at the heart of foreign policy.
  26. Podemos, Catalonia and the workers' movement in the Spanish state
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    Following a long period of electoral upheaval and failure of the left, it is argued that the two key areas where the Spanish ruling class could have been confronted was through the workers' movement and the pro-independence movement in Catalonia, both of which were not sufficiently addressed by the Podemos campaign.
  27. Podemos: The People’s Hopes and Adaptation to the Regime
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Since the victory of Syriza in the general elections in Greece on 25 January, all eyes have turned to Spain in expectation of a "contagion". The fact that Spain will go to the polls for general elections at the end of this year brings this prospect even more alive.
  28. Poisoned Fruits of Austerity
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    The most dramatic advance of the far right is that of the National Front in France. It is not unusual that such forces prosper, with some working-class support, in the absence of well-articulated progressive alternatives.
  29. Power and Protest: The Electoral Tactics of Leftist Social Movements
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    The central difficulty for left social movements is determining electoral tactics that will enable them to win both in the short run and in the middle run. On the surface, it seems that winning in the short run conflicts with winning in the middle run.
  30. The problem of Greece is not only a tragedy. It is a lie.
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    According to John Pilger, the leaders of Syriza are revolutionaries of a kind - but their revolution is the perverse, familiar appropriation of social democratic and parliamentary movements by liberals groomed to comply with neo-liberal drivel. Like the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among former social democratic parties such as the Labor Party in Australia, still describing themselves as “liberal” or even “left”, Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, schooled in postmodernism.
  31. The Problem of the Democratic Opposition Organization
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
    The basis for this proposal is an attempt to address the classic dilemma of the broad democratic opposition. In summary it is the need for a competent professional cadre to implement the changes needed, combined with the maintenance of a democratic and effective membership control of this 'elite'.
  32. Prospects for an Alt-Left
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    Examining the limitations and issues with prevalent approaches of younger progressives and how a more effective 'alt-left' movement might be formed.
  33. Reassessing Podemos
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    Podemos has come an immense distance in a very short time. It represents a clear choice by millions of people in the Spanish state to vote against corruption, institutionalised greed and contempt for voters, but also against austerity. As such, it weakens the ruling class in the Spanish state and strengthens the anti-austerity side in Europe. The success of Podemos in December is a cause for celebration and a source for lessons and parallels.
  34. Social Democracy or Revolutionary Democracy: Syriza and Us
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Lebowitz discusses the construction of Syriza, its Thessaloniki Programme, and the potential for revolutionary democracy in Greece.
  35. Socialist Register 1994
    Volume 30: Between Globalism and Nationalism
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 1994
  36. Socialist Register 2013
    Volume 49: The Question of Strategy
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 2013
    This, the 49th volume of the Socialist Register examines the choices faced by the left today, the models of strategy available to it, and the innovations that are being made by groups as they organize in diverse settings.
  37. Spain: Madrid and Barcelona show -- the greater the unity on the left, the bigger the win
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Once the results of Spain’s May 24, 2015, local and regional elections became known the main lesson for the anti-austerity and anti-capitalist left was simply and starkly obvious: the more united and more involving of ordinary people its election campaigns were, the greater its gains and the greater the losses for the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) -- its main rival for the popular and working-class vote -- and for the ruling conservative People's Party (PP).
  38. Spain on Edge
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    An interview with Podemos spokesperson Pablo Iglesias.
  39. Syriza and the crisis
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Interview with Garganas Panos about the election victory of Syriza (the Coalition of the Radical Left) in Greece.
  40. The Syriza Dilemma
    What would constructive pressure on the Syriza government look like?
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    The radical Syriza government was elected in January 2015 based on its promise to try to bargain a better deal than the severe neoliberal austerity imposed through the memoranda signed by previous governments. At the same time, it promised to remain in the eurozone monetary system, in which Greece’s financial system is embedded, as well as within the framework of the European Union, into which its economy has been integrated.
  41. Syriza and Sanders: "Just Say 'No'" to Neo-liberalism
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Hopes for Syriza's negotiations with the banking troika in the EU simmered and even boiled over among elements of the left, especially after the vaunted "No" referendum vote suggested that the Greeks would not succumb to another wave of austerity measures but would instead stand firm, even if this meant potentially leaving the EU. We have seen these hopes dashed by the subsequent "negotiations," in which Tsipras seemed to have negotiated backwards, arriving at an agreement that was worse than the one rejected by the Greek voters in the referendum vote.
  42. The Syriza Wave
    Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2016
    An account of the rise and fall of the Greek left party Syriza.
  43. The Syriza Wave: The Discussion Continues via Irish Marxist Review
    The Discussion Continues via Irish Marxist Review
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    The article is review of Helena Sheehan's book "The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left". Her book is an account of her polital activity and personal reflections during the surge of Syrzia from 2012 through 2015.
  44. The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left - Book review
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    A book review of The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left by author Helena Sheehan.
  45. SYRIZA's 40-point program
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Here is the official program of the Greek coalition of the radical left, SYRIZA, which won the elections of January 2015.
  46. Time for an Independent Party
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    More than in most presidential cycles, there is reason to hope for a mass breakaway in 2016. Sanders' campaign has revealed that a mass base exists now for an independent party of the left.
  47. The unspun Jeremy Corbyn
    Nobody expected a veteran, rebel leftwing MP to be elected to lead the UK labour Party. It's going to be hard for him to manage his own
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    A look at the rise in popularity of Jermey Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, and the challenges he faces from the broader British public and from within his own party.
  48. Victory in Stagnation?
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    An analysis of the direction of the German left party, Die Linke, in the wake of the 2017 national elections.
  49. What can the Corbynistas learn from Syriza?
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2017
    As a Corbyn government seems more and more likely, there are clear lessons to be drawn from the Greek experience.
  50. What Die Linke Should Do
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    The German right made stunning gains in this month's regional elections. The Left must rise to the challenge.
  51. What is Going On in Spain?
    The End of an Era and the Beginning of Podemos
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Something is happening in Spain. A party that did not exist one year ago, Podemos, with a clear left-wing program, would win a sufficient number of votes to gain a majority in Spanish Parliament if an election were held today.
  52. Why Corbyn so terrifies the liberal elite
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    Most Labour MPs would rather destroy their own party than let Jeremy Corbyn and his backers make it fit for its 21st century purpose.

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