1. Back to the Fragments
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2013
   Beyond the Fragments began life in 1979, as a pamphlet, and soon became the classic statement of socialist feminism in the form it took in Britain following the political explosion of May 1968. Its three authors — Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal, and Hilary Wainwright — had spent much of the decade as members of organizations of the “libertarian” left such as the International Socialists, which in 1977 became the Socialist Workers Party. They were also centrally involved in the women’s liberation movement, and grew utterly frustrated by the male-dominated politics of both the Labour Party and Leninist groups.
2. Canada: Activists Face the Future
   Against The Current vol. 91
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2001
   Electoral politics present challenging problems for labor movements all over the world. In the absence of strong working class parties, labor activists are often compelled to support parties that implement anti-worker legislation simply because they represent a lesser evil. While reforms are certainly necessary, the investment of activist energy and resources into the electoral process can often distract union and social justice organizations, preventing them from undertaking the important task of generating solidarity within more impoverished segments of the working class.
3. The Candidate
   Jeremy Corbyn's Improbable Path to Power
   Resource Type: Book
   First 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.
4. The challenge of Podemos
   Resource Type: Article
   First 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.
5. Class is More Intersectional than Intersectionality 
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2016
   The Left as it exists currently is often ashamed of and apologetic for its class struggle orientation, chasing after demographic-specific oppression issues. An approach that leans toward greater emphasis on a class struggle focus is actually more intersectional than a focus which gives more attention to demographic-specific issues than to class.
6. Cliff, Tony - Archive - Index
   Resource Type: Article
   Writings of Tony Cliff (1917-2000).
7. Coming Home to the Struggle
   Against The Current vol. 134
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2008
   I became a political activist at the age of 12, when I marched for open housing in Evanston, Illinois. We lived next to the Black community in Evanston; African-American students made up 40% of my grade school. At the local YWCA girls club my sister and I were the only whites. The young Black women I became close to helped me overcome painful shyness. Later my father, a Methodist minister, was arrested trying to integrate churches in Jackson, Mississippi.
8. A comment on Greece and Syriza
   Resource Type: Article
   First 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. Connexions Digest
   Issue 51 - May 1990 - A Social Change Sourcebook
   Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
   First Published: 1990
   
10. Democracy Against Politics
    Against The Current vol. 136
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    “¡Que se vayan todos!” shouted rebellious crowds during the Argentine economic crisis of 2001, “Out with them all!” The call soon spread throughout Latin America: for a new politics without politicians and a new society without social elites. Many radicals have been inspired by the movements that seemed to rise with so much energy and idealism from this foundational fire. Others have been quick to criticize the inadequacy of movements which seem to have forgotten that economic exploitation is more fundamental than political oppression, and that exploitation is held up by political power which must be seized rather than ignored.
11. 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
    First 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.
12. The Failed Strategy 
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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. How to Change Everything 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything is a vital book whose limitations should spark discussion about where we go from here.
14. How Ultraleftism Divided UNAM Strike
    Against The Current vol. 88
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2000
    MEXICO CITY -- Commandeered buses flying red and black flags and Che Guevara portraits sped through the city on October 2, ferrying students to a demonstration commemorating the 1968 student massacre at the Plaza of the Three Cultures. Led by veterans of the 1968 movement, 60,000 students and their supporters slogged the fifteen kilometers from the university campus up Insurgentes and Reforma, the world's longest urban avenues, to a torchlight ceremony in the plaza. Just five weeks before, on August 28, 30,000 students had marched in support of the electricity workers' struggle against privatization.
15. Inside Corbyn's Office
    An interview with Matt Zarb-Cousin
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
16. The Invisibility of Fascism in the Postwar United States
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2014
    Vials examines the use of the term "fascism" in post-war United States politics since the Tea Party have twisted its meaning to denote a left-wing phenomenon.
17. Is that an archive in your basement... or are you just hoarding?
    Sources News Release
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    Are you an 'accidental archivist'? Have you been saving the publications and documents produced by the social justice projects you've been involved in? Then Connexions would like to hear from you.
18. The Left needs to "find common ground" with Evangelical Christians 
    "There's no point arguing that it can't be done because the cultural differences are too great," says Chomsky
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2017
    A discussion between Noam Chomsky and Charles Derber excerpted from the novel by Derber entitled, "Welcome to the Revolution: Universalizing Democracy for Social Justice in Perilous Times."
19. "Left Reformism" and socialist strategy
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2013
    Rooksby talks about the renewed interest in radical left "big picture" questions of socialist strategy that represents a return to "important debates of the left largely absent over the last three decades." The major factors driving this are several years of deep capitalist crisis together with the almost total capitulation of social democratic parties across Europe to the austerity agenda, opening up a clear space to the left of these organisations.
20. Left reformism, the state and the problem of socialist politics today
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
21. Left reformism, the state and the problem of socialist politics today
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
22. Die Linke: Ten Years On
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
23. A Man Apart
    The Life of Henri Curiel
    Resource Type: Book
    Curiel was a key figure in founding the Egyptian and Sudanese communist movements; he trained and influenced most of the left militants in Nasser's Free Officer movement. Curiel remained one of the most prominent figures on the Middle East scene until he was assassinated in 1978. Eqypt, and especially the radical movement within it, is the backdrop.
24. Marxism.ca 
    Resource Type: Website
    First Published: 2016
    A gateway to resources about Marxism compiled by Connexions.
25. The Middle East in Flames
    Against The Current vol. 124
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    Andrew Kennedy and Suzi Weismann Interview Gilbert Achcar. Gilbert Achcar is the author of Eastern Cauldron and The Clash of Barbarisms, both published by Monthly Review Press.
26. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - August 21, 2015
    Canadian federal election, mining and the environment
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2015
    Featuring the Canadian federal election, mining and the environment, failure of Syriza in Greece, refugees, veterans of India's struggle for independence.
27. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - November 7, 2016
    Depression and Joy
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2016
    It's a difficult thing to measure, but there are strong reasons for believing that the number of people struggling with depression has increased significantly in recent decades. Despite the evidence that this is a social problem, and not merely an individual misfortune, the solutions and escapes on offer are almost all individual: pharmaceuticals and therapy, on the one hand; self-medication with alcohol, streets drugs, television, etc., on the other. Certainly there are individual circumstances and individual causes, but when millions of people are experiencing the same thing, we need to be looking not only at the individual, but also at the society.
28. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - November 11, 2017
    Left Parties
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First 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.
29. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - February 17, 2018
    Hearts and Minds: How do People Change?
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2018
    How can we reach the millions we need to reach and engage if fundamental change is to happen? How can we accomplish the essential task of persuading a majority of the population that a fundamental social and economic transformation is necessary? Even more importantly, what will it take for people to come together and act collectively to bring about that transformation? What can we do to help make this happen?
    
30. Politics Without Politics
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2017
    Jonathan Smucker's recently published book Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals offers a flawed road map for rebuilding the Left.
31. Power and Protest: The Electoral Tactics of Leftist Social Movements
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
32. Preparing the Ground
    Left Strategy Beyond the Apocalypse
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    Richard Swift considers the fall -- and future rise -- of left politics.
33. The Prophet Alarmed
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    A review of Tariq Ali's book "The Extreme Centre: A Warning."
34. The Prophet Alarmed
    The Extreme Center: A Warning (Book Review)
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    Review of Tariq Ali's The Extreme Center: A Warning. In The Extreme Center, Ali gives more than just a pungent and entertaining smack-down of corruption in British politics.
35. Prospects for an Alt-Left
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    Examining the limitations and issues with prevalent approaches of younger progressives and how a more effective 'alt-left' movement might be formed.
36. Radical Newspapers
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1979
    A radical newspaper succeeds to the extent that in engages in dialogue with its readers and community, rather than in preaching.
37. The Rain On Our Parade 
    A Letter To My Dismal Allies
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    O rancid sector of the far left, please stop your grousing! Compared to you, Eeyore sounds like a Teletubby. If I gave you a pony, you would not only be furious that not everyone has a pony, but you would pick on the pony for not being radical enough until it wept big, sad, hot pony tears. Because what we're talking about here is not an analysis, a strategy, or a cosmology, but an attitude, and one that is poisoning us. Not just me, but you, us, and our possibilities.
38. The reactionary, class nature of left Academia today
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2017
    Mellor challenges the idea that socialism is eurocentric and speaks to how capitalist exploitation and workers' resistance is fundamentally similar all over the world.
39. Rebels, Reds, Radicals 
    Rethinking Canada's Left History
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2005
    McKay looks at the history of the left in Canada as a series of experiments in "living otherwise" -- efforts to work out ways of life and thought strategically opposed to the prevailing liberal-capitalist order.
40. Red Rosa 
    A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2015
    A giant of the political left, Rosa Luxemburg is one of the foremost minds in the canon of revolutionary socialist thought. Red Rosa gives Luxemburg her due as a radical and human being. In this beautifully drawn work of graphic biography, writer and artist Kate Evans has opened up her subject’s intellectual world to a new audience, grounding Luxemburg’s ideas in the realities of an inspirational and deeply affecting life.
41. Rise of the Left Party: Germany's Election and Beyond
    Against The Current vol. 144
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2010
    On September 27, 2009 the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) suffered its worst electoral defeat since 1945. After four years of governing as a junior partner in a “Grand Coalition” with the right-of-center Christian Democrats (CDU), the SPD garnered only 23% of the vote (down from 33% in 2005) and now appears to be a shadow of the party that had taken the reins of government in 1998.
42. Social Democracy or Revolutionary Democracy: Syriza and Us
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    Lebowitz discusses the construction of Syriza, its Thessaloniki Programme, and the potential for revolutionary democracy in Greece.
43. The Socialist Register 1965
    Volume 2: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1964   Published: 1965
    
44. The Socialist Register 1976
    Volume 13: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1976
    
45. The Socialist Register 1977
    Volume 14: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1977
    
46. Spain: Madrid and Barcelona show -- the greater the unity on the left, the bigger the win
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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).
47. The stagnation of the Dutch Socialist Party
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    The Socialist Party (SP) is one of the parties that emerged to the left of traditional social democracy in the last decade of the 20th century. In electoral terms, it is one of the most successful. At its peak in 2006, the SP got 25 out of 150 seats (16.6 percent of the vote), becoming the third party in the House of Representatives. With the European Parliament (2014) and provincial (2015) elections it eclipsed the Labour Party (PvdA) for the first time, becoming the biggest party of the left in the Netherlands. Until Syriza's election victory in 2015 the Dutch SP was the only left reformist party in Europe to win a bigger share of the vote than the traditional social democratic party.
48. The Syriza Wave
    Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2016
    An account of the rise and fall of the Greek left party Syriza.
49. Taplok Press, A New Flame
    Against The Current vol. 89
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2000
    Reading Left books has become somewhat of a trend in Indonesia. Although the struggle for democracy is far from won, overthrowing the dictator Suharto in 1998 has brought a lot of positive changes for people. One of the most important changes is the ability to openly explore political ideas and the access to information.
50. There is no Alternative Unless We Build One: Reinventing Socialist Politics
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    Social democratic parties surrendered the countervailing power they had acquired during the long post-war boom to the imperatives of international competitiveness. New parties of the left that originally positioned themselves somewhere between social democracy and communism lost their points of reference and have proven, thus far at least, unable to invent a socialism for a world after Soviet communism and social democratic welfare-states.
51. Thinking of Joining the ISO?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2013
    A critical examination of the ISO’s methods, practices, and structures compared to those of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) which the ISO holds up as its organizing model, as well as some suggestions for a better, more effective political practice.
52. Unreliability, Spinelessness of the Western 'Left'
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    For years and decades, the so-called 'left' in the West has been moderately critical of North American (and sometimes even of European) imperialism and neo-colonialism. But whenever some individual or country rose up and began openly challenging the Empire, most of the Western left-wing intellectuals simply closed their eyes, and refused to offer their full, unconditional support to those who were putting their lives (and often even the existence of their countries) on the line.
53. 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
    First 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.
54. What Die Linke Should Do
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    The German right made stunning gains in this month's regional elections. The Left must rise to the challenge.
55. Why Corbyn so terrifies the liberal elite
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
56. Why This Radical Leftist is Disillusioned by Leftist Culture
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    I will always believe in "The Revolution". But I am becoming very frustrated with modern "activist" culture.
57. The Young Man Was
    Part 1: United Red Army
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    First Published: 2012
    The start of a film trilogy that traces 1970s ultra left movements' turn to violence; Part One is based on the negotiations of the 1977 JAL hijacking, between the Japanese Red Army members on board the plane and the Dhaka control tower in Bangladesh.

Experts on Politique de gauche in the Sources Directory

1. Ulli Diemer