Portside

Two recent events – the second-round victory on November 22 of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri in Argentina's presidential election, and the December 6 victory of the right-wing Democratic Unity Roundtable,[1] winning two thirds of the seats in Venezuela's National Assembly elections – have radically altered the political map in South America. Argentine Marxist Claudio Katz discusses what these setbacks for the left mean for the progressive “process of change.”

The word socialism is in the air these days. Socialism of many varieties has been enjoying a comeback in Latin America for some time. Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Lula da Silva, the late Hugo Chavez have been the region's dominant leaders in this century. And now there is a remarkable resurgence of European socialism. And, and, the candidate everyone is talking about is...Bernie Sanders, democratic socialist.

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Mexican labor unions and workers are, overall, in the worst situation in decades. President Peña Nieto has succeeded in passing a series of so-called reforms - education, labor, energy, and communications - that will have devastating effects on an already weakened labor movement. The Mexican government has controlled unions since the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, but it was in the 1930s that the system of one-party state control over the unions was fully developed.

Congress is in revolt, inflation is rising, Brazil’s credit rating is flirting with junk status, a huge corruption scandal looms, and polls put her approval rating at 8% ahead of Sunday’s planned protests – can things get any worse for Rousseff?

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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.