Labour movement history in Britain shows workers secured reforms through collective pressure and political representation, rather than being gifted from above, writes KEITH FLETT
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Xi Jinping in context
JULIDE YAZICI explores the ideological struggle in China today
Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a New Year message in Beijing to ring in 2024, December 31, 2023
[Ju Peng/Xinhua via AP]
ROGER McKENZIE draws attention to the much-neglected oral traditions of the global South that define the identity – and therefore the liberation – of its custodians
Established as a landmark victory for the climate movement, the CCC promised to hold governments to account. Today, it is understating the danger of climate chaos and impeding the radical action needed, says IAN SINCLAIR
The real ‘humanitarian threat’ isn’t Cuba but the United States, where poverty, lack of healthcare and illiteracy abound, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
CLAUDIA WEBBE looks at how Britain’s Nato ally has upped the stakes in its effort to silence domestic dissenting voices
ALAIN BADIOU, in his book Petrograd, Shangai: Les Deux Revolutions du XXe Siecle (the two revolutions of the 20th century), describes the revolutionary impact of the Cultural Revolution on his generation as follows: “Every subjective and practical trajectory has found its nomination in the tireless creativity of the Chinese Revolution.”
The Cultural Revolution was a creative project of engaging new militants to the revolutionary ideological struggle. Mao conceived the Cultural Revolution as a “struggle“ against an objective reality, the danger of deradicalisation that every revolution faces.
The Cultural Revolution, so to speak, emerged as a forced creativity. The harsh reality that the desired society could not be achieved immediately after a socialist revolution, the paradoxical nature and unique challenges and responsibilities of continuing this struggle from a state position were being learned by experience, and the leaders of the Chinese revolution had no ready-made prescription, neither from theory nor from experience.
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