PaulHampton's blog

Leading Venezuelan trade unionist victimised

Venezuelan trade union leader Orlando Chirino has been sacked from his job in the state-owned oil company PDVSA.

Chirino, a national coordinator of the National Union of Workers (UNT) and a member of the oil industry union Sinutrapetrol, argues that this is an act of “discrimination and political...

Hands Off Venezuela – repeating the mistakes of the past

The new Hands Off Venezuela film No Volverán (Never Again) is misnomer, because inspite of its title, it repeats the mistakes of earlier lefts.

The film follows a delegation to Venezuela at the time of the 2006 presidential election. The first part is largely a propaganda piece for the Venezuelan...

Chavez loses the referendum in Venezuela

Hugo Chávez lost his referendum on constitutional reform by a tiny margin, with 4.5m votes against (50.7%) and 4.4m (49.3%) in favour. Chávez has accepted the results, saying that the proposals had not been approved “for now”, but that he would continue to struggle for his version of “socialism”....

Review of Joel Kovel - the limits of eco-socialism

Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature (2nd edition 2007, Zed books)

Joel Kovel is probably the world’s best known eco-socialist and representative of a significant strand of thinking on the left at present. In 1998, he was the Green Party candidate for US Senator from New York and in 2000 sought their...

Review of Greg Wilpert, Changing Venezuela By Taking Power

Greg Wilpert, Changing Venezuela By Taking Power: The Policies of the Chávez Presidency 1999-2006, Verso 2007

Greg Wilpert is responsible for some of the most useful English-language journalism on Venezuela over the past five years. The Venezuelanalysis website he edits continues to be a valuable...

Workers Power – rrr hot air

I had an interesting altercation with some rrr-revolutionary “anti-imperialists” Workers’ Power people at a post support group meeting yesterday.

Workers Power has long denounced anyone who belongs to the Labour Party, even when they’ve been involved with struggles against the leadership (e.g...

US labor in trouble and transition - review of new Kim Moody book

US labor in trouble and transition, Kim Moody, London: Verso 2007

Why is US labor in decline and how can the situation be turned around? Kim Moody, a prominent Marxist participant and commentator in the US labour movement over the past three decades has produced a coherent answer to these...

Postal strike – still too economistic for the CPGB?

After a week of industrial action by militant postal workers, official and unofficial, dodgy deals, the intervention of the courts and some labour movement solidarity meetings, how does the left respond?

For the CPGB, the only comment (11 October) is the lament that, “the print version of the...

Six degrees to ruin the planet

Six degrees of global warming will effectively ruin the planet. That’s the message in Mark Lynas’ new book, Six degrees: our future on a hotter planet.

Basing himself on scores of scientific papers, Lynas does a good job in describing the likely consequences of global warming.

At 1°C warming...

SWP volte-face on academic boycott of Israel?

SWP chief mandarin Alex Callinicos has written a rather surprising volte-face on the Israel boycott debate in the UCU lecturers union.

In the latest Socialist Worker his assessment is a) much of the left opposes the boycott b) a membership ballot on the issue (proposed by general secretary Sally...

Workers are organising in Venezuela — the question now is: with what politics?

There are signs of a revival in worker organising in Venezuela, but it is not clear whether it will be independent of Chávez.

Last week a “unification commission” of the two major factions within the UNT union federation met to organise elections for the leadership, which are long overdue. Leaders...

Free Mansour Ossanlou! + Interview

Mansour Ossanloo, the president of the Iranian independent bus workers’ union was kidnapped by plain clothes police on Tuesday 10 July and taken to the notorious Evin prison.

Ossanloo was stopped while he was returning home by a public transit bus in Tehran. According to Iranian workers’ sources...

CPGB: More bluster, no substance

Another pathetic article slandering the AWL over Iraq in the latest Weekly Worker (28 June), notable only for Mark Fischer’s ever more vapid rhetoric.

Nowhere does Fischer address the central point: what would happen if the troops left Iraq tomorrow? The CPGB avoids the question, because given the...

CPGB: Gossip no substitute for politics

More proof that the Weekly Worker is scarcely more than a grubby little gossip sheet (677, June 14 2007). Its flirtation with some AWL comrades over Iraq goes unrequited, so out come the slurs about “imperialist economism”, with neither the majority nor the minority spared.

The CPGB compares the...

Rising like lions after slumber

Review of: Live working or die fighting: How the working class went global, Paul Mason, Harvill Secker £12.99

This book is an ambitious attempt to bring some of the great events from working class history to a new generation of youth. Paul Mason argues that as the working class in the “global...

Marxism and ecology: clearing the air

Review of Paul Burkett, 2006, Marxism and Ecological Economics, Amsterdam: Brill

The conventional wisdom among Greens is that, so far as environmental struggles go, the organised labour movement is only occasionally an ally and often an opponent. Most ecologists dismiss Marxism as having little to...

Joel Kovel meeting - why I'm sceptical about "eco-socialism"

Recently I went to a lecture by Joel Kovel, a leading US eco-socialist and author of the book, The Enemy of Nature. The meeting was chaired by Derek Wall from the Green Party and had Jane Kelly from Socialist Resistance on the platform. Over 50 people were there.

Kovel spoke well enough about the...

Defend union independence in Venezuela

There is a useful article in English by Venezuelan socialists fighting for class struggle trade unionism in Venezuela. Defend union independence by Milton D’León explains how Chávez has attacked the unions as part of his drive to form his new party, the PSUV.

Chavez vs trade unions in Venezuela

After the attack on Sanitarios Maracay workers recently in Aragua state in Venezuela, more evidence of anti-union activity by the Chavistas.

According to Greg Wilpert on the Venezuelanalysis website:

The UNT-Aragua issued a statement with ten points yesterday, in which it called for union...

Solidarity with Sanitarios Maracay workers

Workers from Sanitarios Maracay in Venezuela, which has been occupied and run under workers' control for more than 5 months, were subjected to brutal repression last Tuesday 24 April.

Workers were travelling by bus to Caracas to participate in a national march called by FRETECO, the Revolutionary...

Iran: More Arrests of Teachers

Teachers’ vow more protests to come over the next few weeks!

April 8, 2007- According to the Teachers’ Trade Association of Iran’s website and other reliable sources about 45 teachers of the province of Hamadan were arrested on Sunday, April 8, 2007 and then transferred to an unknown location...

Chávez presents timetable for new party

Hugo Chávez announced his timetable for a new ruling party last week, and it is clear that it will be a top down affair. Chávez has created a special committee of political leaders, including vice-president Jorge Rodríguez to oversee the process over the next nine months.

The first stage, to be...

APPO revives in Oaxaca

This abridged report from Nancy Davies in Oaxaca is great news. Full report on the Narconews website.

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On 21 February, Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) took over the government offices in the city of Oaxaca, along with...

Chávez nationalises oil fields, oil workers demand better conditions

Hugo Chávez has announced a new law to nationalise the last remaining oil production sites that are under the control of foreign companies in Venezuela. The nationalisations affect oil production in the Orinoco oil belt, which is said to contain the world’s largest reserves of extra-heavy oil and...

Hobsbawm’s miserable apology for Stalinism in Spain

Today’s Guardian Review contains a miserable apology for Stalinism in Spain by Eric Hobsbawm.

He says events in Spain 1936-39 were about fascism vs anti-fascism. And he can’t resist a good old ad hominem amalgam: “It was not, as the neoliberal François Furet argued it should have been, a war...

Trotsky, Cárdenas and Chávez (13) - Mexican Trotskyism

Mexican Trotskyism

There was small Trotskyist group in Mexico during Trotsky’s stay there. A section was formed in 1930 and in 1933 took the name Oposicíon Comunista de Izquierda, renamed the Liga Comunista Internacionalista (LCI) in 1934. Its best-known supporter was the muralist Diego Rivera...

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