When a US bank fell on 10 March, Western states and central banks dropped everything and gathered billions of dollars to bail out the financial system. However, other crises – such as the fact that the world’s 22 richest men have more wealth than all the women in Africa – do not elicit urgent responses. In the latest study of our series, ‘Women of Struggle, Women in Struggle’, we recover the legacy of Josie Mpama, one among many often forgotten women leaders who fought against this reality, and whose life teaches us about the importance of grassroots and mass organising.
As the old US-led ‘rules-based international order’ enters a state of great fragility, a new emerging project seeks to recover the spirit of the 1945 United Nations Charter. The struggle between these two systems is at the heart of growing international tensions and conflicts. This dossier, produced in collaboration with Cuba’s Centre for International Policy Research (CIPI), offers a provisional analysis of the realities and possibilities of regionalism to advance a more democratic world order.
In 1973, workers in the industrial port city of Durban embarked on a series of strikes, marking an end to a period of relative quiescence that came on the heels of tremendous state repression. The strikes began a process of unionisation that, within a decade, became the foundation of a wider mass democratic movement that mobilised millions of people in workplaces, communities, and educational institutions into the forms of counter power that brought apartheid to its knees. This dossier returns to the workers whose political contribution was, in the end, decisive.
This dossier examines the history of Christianity and the rise of fundamentalism in Latin America, from looking at its emergence in the United States and how it has served as a tool of an imperialist project to its insertion in politics in the region today and its misogynist, anti-communist, and anti-democratic manifestations.
In an interview with R. Chandra, this dossier discusses the strategic role of activist research in the All India Democratic Women’s Association’s fight against caste oppression, patriarchy, and economic exploitation. AIDWA’s survey and the campaigns that they generated deepened members’ understanding of the reality of caste oppression. In research, activists found a powerful tool to substantiate and systematise their own experiences on the ground, gain newer and broader insights, and understand the anatomy of gender oppression among different sections of women.
The asymmetrical power of the Global North over the Global South is expressed through a new logic of subordination and peripheralisation. Rather than being exclusively a question of the unequal exchange of manufactured goods versus primary goods, it is the control over the process of offshoring and the asymmetrical integration of different regions into global production networks that give rise to substantial distributive differences, even in the context of accelerated industrialisation processes in the periphery.
With the failure of capitalism to address the basic questions of our times, the obstinate facts of hunger and illiteracy that stare us in the face, it has become more urgent than ever to recover traditions that are grounded in a scientific approach and have a sincere desire to confront the dilemmas of humanity. Unpacking the traditions of national liberation Marxism in ten theses, dossier no. 56 unearths the foundations of revolutionary praxis that would allow for more factual assessments of our times, a closer rendition of contemporary imperialism that can advance the construction of a socialist world.
Four decades ago, thirty-two Telugu people became martyrs in the fight to build a people’s steel plant in the Indian city of Visakhapatnam. Today, faced with an Indian government that wants to privatise the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, the people and workers have united in the fight to retain their steel plant in the public sector. Our dossier no. 55 tells a heroic tale of spirited survival in the face of state-induced demoralisation.
Based on an analysis of the current global landscape, this dossier brings the work of Antonio Gramsci to the trenches of social struggles today, reinforcing the central role of the Battle of Ideas. Towards this end, it features an interview with Neuri Rossetto, a national coordinator of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), and sheds light on contemporary social struggles that are planting seeds of hope towards building a new world.
Dossier 53 discusses the land question in South Africa, looking at the role of white farmers who have long benefited from the labour of exploited Black farmworkers.
Beginning with a historical account of the plight of farmworkers, it argues that those who work the land deserve to be its primary beneficiaries, but, instead, they have been excluded from the profits and stability of owning land for generations. Faced with this reality, dossier no. 53 discusses what a land reform agenda that centres the perspectives and needs of farmworkers would look like.
On 2 May 1942, hundreds of China’s leading writers, artists, and communist leaders gathered to discuss the key cultural questions of the time. The historic Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art lasted for three weeks. Why did tens of thousands of artists and writers travel to the remote town of Yan’an during those years? Why was culture so central to the political construction? How did intellectual developments help bring the Chinese people and nation to revolution? Eight decades later, what relevance does the Yan’an spirit hold, especially for artists, writers, and intellectuals who seek to serve the people’s struggles today?
The fifth study from the Women of Struggle, Women in Struggle series discusses the life and political struggles of Josie Mpama (1903–1979), a leader in the resistance against colonial oppression and the apartheid system in South Africa. As a central figure in the Communist Party of South Africa and in society more broadly, Josie teaches us about the importance of grassroots and mass organising. Like so many women involved in radical politics, particularly in the Global South, Josie’s extraordinary political contributions and theoretical acumen have been overlooked and largely excluded from then mainstream historical record.
Significant global changes have emerged in the years since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. This can be seen in a new phase of imperialism and the particularities of eight contradictions, summarised in our latest text.
This publication, from Tricontinental and ALBA Movimientos, sets out on a path to recover the history of struggles, resistance, insurrections,and revolutionary dreams that have been led by womenand LGBTQ+ people throughout the region at different times in order to find the seeds of the popular Latin American feminisms that exist today. Selected and produced by popular feminist activists in Latin America and the Caribbean, these stories continue to inspire us today.
Catastrophes of one kind or another have rippled outward from Ukraine, including galloping inflation that is out of control. Areas of the world that are not directly party to the conflict are being hit hard by growing economic pressures, with political unrest an inevitable consequence. In this context, the Peace and Justice Project, a research institute headed by Jeremy Corbyn, joined up with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and two media partners, Globetrotter and the Morning Star, to produce a series of reflections on unfolding conflicts in relation to concepts of nonalignment and peace.
Nela Martínez (1912–2004), Ecuadorian activist and fighter for the people, was a key figure in the struggles of the working class and women. A communist and internationalist militant, she participated in the formation of the Ecuadorian Federation of Indians and played a central role in the Glorious May Revolution. A member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ecuador, she led the creation of women’s organisations such as the Ecuadorian Women’s Alliance and the Revolutionary Union of Ecuadorian Women. Her political biography intertwines women’s struggles with anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist struggles.
On 25 February 2021, the Chinese government announced that extreme poverty had been abolished in China, a country of 1.4 billion people. This historic victory is a culmination of a seven-decade-long process that began with the Chinese Revolution of 1949. This study looks into the process through which China was able to eradicate extreme poverty as a fundamental step in constructing socialism.
‘Risen from the Ruins’, the first edition of the new series ‘Studies on the DDR’, follows the foundation of the German Democratic Republic (DDR) after World War II and traces its development from an anti-fascist democratic state to a socialist one. The study investigates the DDR’s economic efficiency, accomplishments, and contradictions, while also outlining central aspects of its socialist society such as collective organization in state-owned enterprises, the planned economy, and internationalist solidarity.
This study looks at the life and legacy of Kanak Mukherjee, a fighter for the people and people’s struggles who was born in undivided Bengal, India, in 1921. The rich trajectory of her activism teaches us about the history of women organising in local, national, and international struggles that linked women’s rights to anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggles throughout the twentieth century.
