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What's new at Links: Left wins in Spanish local polls, Ireland Yes, Pakistan, Venezuela, Socialist planning, Hijacking 'Anthropocene', Eyewitness Donetsk, John Riddell on Michael Lebowitz * * * Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10865397643 Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed ( http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to consider an article, please send it to linkssocial...@gmail.com *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links. *Comments welcome on all articles *Return daily for new articles * * * Spain: Madrid and Barcelona show -- the greater the unity on the left, the bigger the win <http://links.org.au/node/4443> By *Dick Nichols*, Barcelona May 27, 2015 – *Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal* -- Once the results of Spain’s May 24 local and regional elections became known the main lesson for the anti-austerity and anti-capitalist left was simply and starkly obvious: the more united and more involving of ordinary people its election campaigns were, the greater its gains and the greater the losses for the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE)—its main rival for the popular and working-class vote—and for the ruling conservative People’s Party (PP). Where the two main poles of the radical left in the Spanish state—Podemos and the United Left (IU)— managed to merge their forces in projects organised not as alliances between party apparatuses but as participatory citizens’ electoral campaigns, the results were at times little short of astounding. - Read more <http://links.org.au/node/4443> Ireland: Yes win in marriage equality poll: Historic step for equality <http://links.org.au/node/4437> May 23, 2015 -- Ireland has become the first country to legalise same-sex marriage through a popular vote, with indications from all count centres across the country showing Yes votes outnumbering No votes by about two-to-one. - Read more <http://links.org.au/node/4437> Spain: How did the radical new mayor of Barcelona win Spain’s second city? <http://links.org.au/node/4441> May 25, 2015 -- Former anti-eviction activist Ada Colau *was *elected the new mayor Barcelona in the municipal elections on May 24. Ahead of the victory of the radical campaigner, who was backed by a coalition including Podemos and United Left, she spoke to *Il Manifesto* newspaper. - Read more <http://links.org.au/node/4441> Pakistan: Baba Jan contests election from jail <http://links.org.au/node/4440> By *Farooq Tariq*, Lahore May 25, 2015 -- *Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal* -- Baba Jan, a federal committee member of the Awami Workers Party (AWP), is contesting the election for the Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly seat (Hunza-6) from behind bars. He is in jail serving a life sentence handed down by an anti-terrorism court last year for raising his voice against police brutality and for the rights of Atabad disaster hit people. - Read more <http://links.org.au/node/4440> Venezuela: Chavismo on the horns of a dilemma <http://links.org.au/node/4439> By *Steve Ellner* May 22, 2015 -- Leftists in Venezuela put forward a number of different explanations for the pressing economic difficulties and growing discontent that has beset Venezuela and increases the possibility of an opposition takeover of the National Assembly in this year’s elections. - Read more <http://links.org.au/node/4439> John Riddell: Socialist planning and the bureaucratic economy <http://links.org.au/node/4438> By *John Riddell* May 17, 2015 -- The following previously unpublished position paper, pulled from my archives, was written in 1992. I am posting it in conjunction with my review of Michael Lebowitz’s *Contradictions of "Real Socialism"*. My comments raised many of the themes found in Lebowitz’s writings of that time, of which I was then quite unaware. My approach, however, gives more emphasis to the problem of economic allocation and the role of non-capitalist markets. - Read more <http://links.org.au/node/4438> Hijacking 'Anthropocene': Anti-green ‘Breakthrough Institute’ misrepresents science <http://links.org.au/node/4436> By *Ian Angus* *“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” **—Lewis Carroll, *Through the Looking Glass May 19, 2015 -- What can lobbyists do when science contradicts their political messages? Some simply deny the science, as many conservatives do with climate change. Others pretend to embrace the science, while ignoring or purging the disagreeable content. That’s what the Breakthrough Institute (BTI) is doing with one of the most widely discussed issues in 21st century science, the proposal to define a new geological epoch, the *Anthropocene*. - Read more <http://links.org.au/node/4436> Eyewitness Donetsk: War and displaced persons in Ukraine and Haiti <http://links.org.au/node/4435> By * Roger Annis *May 20, 2015 -- While in Moscow three weeks ago, following a media tour to Donetsk, eastern Ukraine in which I participated, I had the pleasure of meeting Jon Hellevig, a regular writer at *Russia Insider*. Jon was in Donetsk a few weeks before our group, thanks to the efforts of the same Russian/German citizen group, Europa Objektiv, which organised our tour. - Read more <http://links.org.au/node/4435> John Riddell on Michael Lebowitz: Dissecting the failure of Soviet ‘socialism’ <http://links.org.au/node/4434> Review by *John Riddell* *The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”: The Conductor and the Conducted* by Michael A. Lebowitz New York: Monthly Review 2012. May 19, 2015 -- In current discussions of twenty-first century socialism, the work of Michael Lebowitz has a unique merit: it is rooted in the experience of Cuba and Venezuela, where efforts in recent decades to move toward socialism have been the most vigorous. Quotations from Che Guevara and Hugo Chávez set the tone. - Read more <http://links.org.au/node/4434> Spain: 'Barcelona Together' and the fight for people-first city councils <http://links.org.au/node/4433> By *Dick Nichols*, Barcelona May 21, 2015 – *Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal* -- A commentator for the mainstream Barcelona daily *La *Vanguardia reported in its May 9 edition on a conversation in a lift that he had overheard between two “executives of a certain age”. They were talking about an opinion poll giving the radical, movement-based ticket “Barcelona Together” and its mayoral candidate, housing rights activist Ada Colau, the lead in the March 24 contest for the Barcelona City Council. On that day elections will also be held in all municipalities in the Spanish state, as well as in 13 of the country’s 17 autonomous communities (states). - Read more <http://links.org.au/node/4433> * * * Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information, experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 Follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10865397643 _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
