Founding Editor: Daya Varma (1929-2015)
Editors: Vinod Mubayi (New York) and Raza Mir (New Jersey).
Editorial Board: Ram Puniyani and Irfan Engineer (Mumbai); Pervez Hoodbhoy (Islamabad); Dolores Chew (Montreal); Vamsi Vakulabharanam (Amherst); Ajay Bhardwaj (Vancouver).
Circulation/website: Feroz Mehdi (On behalf of Alternatives, Montreal).
MAY DAY – AN HISTORIC OCCASION TO CELEBRATE THE STRUGGLES AND SOLIDARITY OF THE WORKING CLASS
Editors
In the pre-capitalist era, May Day was a pagan ritual celebrating the advent of spring. But under modern capitalism, the origin of May Day is bound with the struggle of the working class against capitalist exploitation, which began with the demand for a shorter workday – a demand of major political significance for the working class. On May 1, 1886, workers took to the streets in a general strike throughout the entire United States to force the ruling class to recognise the eight-hour working day. Over 350,000 workers across the country directly participated in the general strike, with hundreds of thousands of workers joining the marches as best they could. Read more…
WHY SOCIALISM?
Albert Einstein
(Albert Einstein is the world-famous physicist. This article was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949). It was subsequently published in May 1998 to commemorate the first issue of MR‘s fiftieth year. The Editors [of Monthly Review])
Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is. Read more…
APPROACHING SOCIALISM
C.T. Kurien
In the mid-1980s, when the socialist People’s Republic of China showed tendencies of turning to the capitalist path of development, a commentator from the West remarked that socialism appeared to be the quickest route from feudalism to capitalism. While that was some kind of a snide remark, the rest of that decade showed that there was reason to raise doubts about the nature and future of socialism, which for a few immediately preceding decades, had appeared to be a global alternative to capitalism. Read more…
HEALTH IS A RIGHT
World Federation of Trade Unions (25 April 2013)
The rate of blood that the working class pays in capitalist countries is unacceptable. At a global level, the professional illnesses continue to be the main cause of death that has their origin in the workplace. According to estimates from the International Labour Organization (ILO) out of 2.34 million workplace deaths, 321,000 are due to accidents and 2.2 million are caused by illnesses related to work. This means that every day 6,411 workers die as a consequence of their work. Read more…
THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM STILL MEETING ITS’ CHALLENGE
Immanuel Wallerstein
The World Social Forum (WSF) has just ended its now biennial meeting, held this time in Tunis. It was very largely ignored by the world’s mainstream press. It was attended by many skeptics who pronounced its irrelevance, something that has occurred at every meeting since the second WSF in 2002. It was torn by debates about the very structure of the WSF. It was filled with debates about the correct political strategy for the world left. And despite this, it was an enormous success. Read more…
THE NINTH CONGRESS OF CPI (ML)-LIBERATION
Daya Varma
The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)-Liberation held its 9th party Congress at Ranchi from April 2-6, 2013. Read more…
INDIAN TRADE UNIONS ARE GETTING BIGGER, COINCIDING WITH SLOWDOWN
Sreelatha Menon
This is also more than the total membership size of all trade unions in the previous survey conducted in 2008. Early data emerging from the ongoing survey of trade unions in India have revealed they are growing by leaps and bounds from what they were five years ago, contrary to popular belief they are losing their sheen and diminishing by size with the rapid contractualisation of labour. Read more…
CRUSHED LIVES, CRUSHED DREAMS
Omar Rashid Chowdhury
Bangladesh stands petrified as an unprecedented horror unfolds in Savar, near the capital city of Dhaka. In the morning of the 24th of April, a nine-story building crashed down in Savar Bazaar. Thousands of garments workers were in the building. The death toll, as of this writing, was more than 175 [as of April 28, the death toll is estimated to reach 375], with over 1,000 injured, according to a Dhaka daily. Thousands are still trapped under the pile of concrete rubble. Read more…
BANGLADESHIS BURN FACTORIES TO PROTEST UNSAFE CONDITIONS
Julfikar Ali Manik, Jim Yardley and Steven Greenhouse
DHAKA, Bangladesh
Thousands of garment workers rampaged through industrial areas of the capital of Bangladesh on Friday, smashing vehicles with bamboo poles and setting fire to at least two factories in violent protests ignited by a deadly building collapse this week that killed at least 324 workers [perhaps as many as 1,000]. Read more…
BANGLADESH FACTORY DISASTER: HOW CULPABLE ARE WESTERN COMPANIES?
Brian Montopoli
“How many more workers have to die, before these corporations are willing to take the steps necessary to put an end to this parade of horror?”
A Bangladeshi rescuer looking for survivors gestures from beneath a concrete slab of a building that collapsed Wednesday in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 25, 2013. Read more…
APPEAL FROM JAIL: STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH US FOR JUSTICE
Maruti Suzuki Workers Union
We are workers of Maruti Suzuki, who are behind bars since July 18, 2012 as part of a conspiracy, and without any just investigation. 147 of us are inside Gurgaon Central Jail. Read more…
TRINAMOOL CONGRESS (TMC) TERROR IN WEST BENGAL
(ML Update, CPI (ML) Weekly, 16–22 APRIL 2013
The custodial killing of student activist Sudipto Gupta in West Bengal sparked off protests all over West Bengal and beyond. Since then, a veritable reign of terror of the ruling TMC has been unleashed in West Bengal. Offices of Left parties, including several CPI(M) offices and at least one CPI(ML) office, have been torched and vandalised in the State. And the attack by TMC cadres on Presidency University (presumably because of the fact that many Presidency students have been vocal and active against several acts of high-handedness by the TMC Government) has underscored that the TMC Government is at war with dissent and democracy. Read more…
SHADOWS OF TRIDENT: MODI AS PRIME MINISTERIAL CANDIDATE
Ram Puniyani
From last several months (April 2013) the Bihar Chief Minister Niteesh Kumar is becoming more vocal about his opposition to his electoral ally BJP projecting Narendra Modi as the Prime ministerial candidate. He went on to say that the PM candidate should be one who has a secular image, in obvious reference to Narendra Modi’s role in Gujarat carnage of 2002. Read more…
DEFEAT COMMUNAL FORCES IN THE FORTHCOMING GENERAL ELECTIONS
Irfan Engineer
UPA (United Progressive Alliance) – II, now in minority but supported from outside by SP , BSP and RJD is about a year away from facing general elections. In its final year the Central Government is experiencing various pulls and pressures from tough allies. The largest party in UPA-II – Congress is negotiating space for pushing economic reforms desperately needed by the elite class and the corporate sector to increase their surplus rapidly which is euphemistically called growth by economists and development by political class. Read more…
MAULANA ABDUL KALAM AZAD
Shorish Kashmiri, Matbooat Chattan, Lahore
Congress president (Late) Maulana Abul Kalam Azad gave the following interview to journalist Shorish Kashmiri for a Lahore based Urdu magazine, Chattan, in April 1946. It was a time when the Cabinet Mission was holding its proceedings in Delhi and Simla. Azad made some startling predictions during the course of the interview, saying that religious conflict would tear apart Pakistan and its eastern half would carve out its own future. He even said that Pakistan’s incompetent rulers might pave the way for military rule. Read more…
MARGARET THATCHER DEAD: (The Iron Lady took too Long to Rust, ed.)
Morrissey blasts former PM as “barbaric” just hours after her death (April 8, 2013)
The musician has been a long-time critic of the former Prime Minister and aired his views in songs like Margaret On The Guillotine Read more…
BOOK REVIEW: UNTOUCHABLE GOD
Author: Kancha Ilaiah
Reviewer: Poornima Joshi
Kancha Ilaiah is not an easy scholar to digest, with his brutal polemic against the Brahminical dominance of the Indian caste order. His latest assault, appropriately titled Untouchable God, is a progression of the unique line of argument he has forwarded since he burst onto the Indian sociological scene with his seminal work Why I am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy. Read more…
OBITUARY: JUSTICE J.S. VERMA (1933-2013)
Farah Naqvi
To pay tribute to the man who left a legacy of justice is to promise to keep the fight ongoing. Read more…
OBITUARY: SHAMSHAD BEGUM (1919-2013): THE ‘TEMPLE BELL’ WILL TOLL FOR LONG
Ziya Us Salam
I heard about the passing away of Shamshad Begum, quite appropriately, on ‘telephoon.’ After all, Shamshad was the one who sang into the nation’s collective memory with Mere Piya gaye Rangoon, Kiya Hai Wahan Se Telephoon, deliberately pronouncing telephone as ‘telephoon’ just as people were prone to doing in the late 1940s. The duet with C. Ramachandra in Patanga became a whole generation’s second most identifiable point with Rangoon, the other obviously being the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, who was buried in the Burmese capital. Read more…
OBITUARY: HENRY A. PRUNIER (1922-2013)
Douglas Martin
Henry A. Prunier taught Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who withstood the armies of France and the United States, how to throw a grenade. Read more…
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