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Global Left Midweek - August 29, 2018

Portside
Three Women, French Reds, Students and Workers in China, Swaziland Democracy, Guatemalans Fight Privatized Energy, Philippines Youth Rage Against Marcos Family

books

Simone Weil, Meditations on a Corpse: Sketch for an Article

Simone Weil New Left Review
A pungent and exhaustive evaluation of the short-lived, pre-war popular front government of France, written on the heels of its demise by the brilliant French writer Simone Weil, with an introduction by the NLR editors.

books

Tariq Ali on 1968 and Today

(Interview with David Edgar) London Review of Books
Tariq Ali, a key figure in the British New Left of the 1960s and a well-regarded Marxist writer and activist, offers an extended take on the politics and culture of the1968 anticapitalist movements and their echoes in today’s resistance worldwide.

Emmanuel Macron and Echoes of May 1968

Elizabeth Benjamin The Conversation
The French president has proposed a controversial higher education reform at a particularly inopportune moment, sparking major protests.

France Goes Off the Rails

Benoît Duteurtre. Translated by Charles Goulden. The Nation
The government’s proposed railway reforms will force yet more traffic onto the country’s overcrowded roads, even as people in the provinces and regions lose mobility, convenience, and time.

What Happened to Europe’s Left?

Jan Rovny The London School of Economics and Political Science Blog
Only a handful of European states are currently governed by left-wing governments, and several of the traditionally largest left-wing parties, such as the Socialist Party in France, have experienced substantial drops in support. Jan Rovny argues that while many commentators have linked the left’s decline to the late-2000s financial crisis, the weakening of Europe’s left reflects deep structural and technological changes that have reshaped European society, leaving left-wing parties out in the cold.
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