Portside

India and Zimbabwe: National Strikes, Germany and Nepal: The Fate of the Left, Sudan and Bangladesh: Showdowns With Power

While Americans teetered, arguing as to which side gained more in the elections, Germans have been balancing on a seesaw of their own – which can also have decisive consequences.

Contrary to what is often believed, the wage-earning classes are not united but fragmented. In competition with each other, can they be controlled. It is only with the help of the state and in fighting for state power that solidarity can be created.

Aufstehen -- a new left movement in Germany is designed to counter growing support for right-wing nationalist parties from segments of the working-class. The question is: will it unite a popular movement or be a source of new divisions?

German "Movement of Movements", Bengladeshi Students Protest, Disabled Unite in UK, Colombian Contender, Class in China

Die Linke’s electoral result shows what the party must do to really contend for power.

The German right made stunning gains in this month's regional elections. The Left must rise to the challenge. We spend too much time speaking to people instead of with them, we make too many promises to do something for others instead of inviting them to get active themselves, to fight and organize with us.

With Bernie in the USA, Corbyn in Britain and various kinds of leftist opposition in Ireland, Spain and Portugal, resistance to billionaire-led governments has been growing, most dramatically last year in Greece until German "austerity" smashed it (though perhaps not permanently). Germany already has the LINKE party, with 64 seats in the Bundestag (out of 630). But it has failed to fill that gap of anger, worry and distrust among working people...

Previously Portside published Michael Brie's, The Tragedy of Party Communism and responses from three socialist activists - what lessons there may be to draw on, and which to forget. Here are additional responses from Nina Udovicki, Gilberto de Leon, Dynamite Hallinan and Scott Tucker. Those responding see capitalism as a system that needs to be abolished and socialism as an alternative - A socialism that is different from the past, and democratic.

Two weeks ago Portside published an essay by Michael Brie, The Tragedy of Party Communism. Here Kurt Stand, David Cohen and Jack Radey reflect on their participation in the socialist movement, what lessons there may be to draw on, as well as which to forget. For today's and tomorrow's socialists, they see socialism as a system that could be reformed, capitalism a system that needs to be abolished.