Far-right forces are rising across Latin America and the Caribbean, armed with a common agenda of anti-communism, the culture war, and neoliberal economics, writes VIJAY PRASHAD
The political economy of trade: a crucial issue for the left
Global South governments’ sovereignty and ability to decide future economic policy are severely compromised by signing free trade agreements, whose terms are heavily weighted in favour of the already wealthy countries of the global North, writes BERT SCHOUWENBURG
A rally demanding changes to the Trump administration’s revised North American Free Trade Agreement at the House Triangle in Washington DC, 2017
[Sally King/Public Citizen/Creative Commons]
Your Party can become an antidote to Reform UK – but only by rooting itself in communities up and down the country, says CLAUDIA WEBBE
Decisions about mandatory testing for prostate cancer have proved controversial. Can too much knowledge be a bad thing?
Looking back to Engels’s reflections on the ILP’s emergence in the 1890s offers a revealing lens on the forces shaping a new working-class politics in 2025, says KEITH FLETT
Your Party can become an antidote to Reform UK – but only by rooting itself in communities up and down the country, says CLAUDIA WEBBE
Claiming to be under arrest, president Embalo has left the country while his opponents remain in custody after a military coup a day ahead of the announcement of the final results, argues PAVAN KULKARNI
A teaching delegation to Cuba offered IAN DUCKETT a powerful glimpse into a schooling system defined by care, creativity and the legacy of the island’s remarkable 1961 literacy campaign
ON NOVEMBER 26, the Morning Star editorial suggested that we should follow the century-old nostrum of German economist, Rudolf Hilferding in avoiding the “bourgeois dilemma” of protectionism or free trade and concentrate instead on building a socialist society.
Whether or not they knew anything of Hilferding’s writings, the Zapatista Liberation Army in the Mexican state of Chiapas had different ideas when they launched an armed insurrection on January 1 1994 to coincide with the commencement of Nafta, the North American Free Trade Agreement, promulgated between the governments of the US, Canada and Mexico.
The Zapatistas predicted that a tri-country agreement completely liberalising trade in goods and services spelt disaster for them and the rural working class, and they were not wrong. Mexican farmers had no hope of competing with subsidised products from north of the border and 1.3 million agricultural jobs were lost. In a country where corn (maize) is not merely a crop, but a deep cultural symbol tied to daily life, the effect of Nafta was catastrophic.
Similar stories
US tariffs have had Von der Leyen bowing in submission, while comments from the former European Central Bank leader call for more European political integration and less individual state sovereignty. All this adds up to more pain and austerity ahead, argues NICK WRIGHT
FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ says the US’s bullying conduct in what it considers its backyard is a bid to reassert imperial primacy over a rising China — but it faces huge resistance
Mexico’s unflinching stand has earned praise from across Latin America and the world, writes DAVID RABY