Despite holding a wealth of natural and mineral resources, Pakistan’s economy is projected to grow a mere 0.5% in 2023. This unprecedented contraction will see the poor grow poorer. To understand the crises in the country, from political upheaval to natural disasters, and the structural obstacles to social development, greater scrutiny of how International Monetary Fund policies are undermining economic independence is urgently needed. Pakistan is by no means an extraordinary case; it merely illustrates the IMF’s general template for all economies, whether large or small, with little interest if its actions turn a cyclical recession into a depression.

Dossier no. 68 presents an analysis of the 1973 coup against Chile and its effects on the Third World and non-aligned countries. It was the Allende government’s policies to nationalise copper that spurred the coup, but the policy to nationalise copper was part of a broader conversation in the Third World to create a New International Economic Order which would restructure the neocolonial international economic system along democratic lines and give weight to the ideas and peoples of the Third World. In that sense, the US-driven coup against Chile was precisely a coup against the Third World.

This dossier analyses the role of Marxist dependency theory today as an important scientific tool to understand the processes of development and underdevelopment, the current anti-democratic and fascist trends, and emancipation processes in the Global South.

Over the past century, there have been major shifts in the debates and theories concerning the question of development. In the post-war era, this evolution can be divided into four eras: the era of modernisation theory, the era of the New International Economic Order, the era of neoliberal globalisation, and the current transitional era following the 2007–2008 financial crisis. This dossier examines the historical and current thinking on development and offers an outline for a new socialist development theory.

In Argentina, the concentration of land ownership remains in the hands of a few. This system privileges the export of agricultural and agro-industrial goods, leaving the population facing hunger, a growing rural exodus, and an increasingly high concentration of the population in urban areas. Faced with this reality, this dossier looks at the debate and projects that consider land as a strategic resource, allowing people to put down roots, enjoy a dignified quality of life, and produce food aimed at supplying the local population.

This dossier offers a broad analysis of the living and working conditions of India’s large and diverse working class. The vast majority of workers in India are poorly paid and face terrible living conditions. Most of them are in the informal sector, where unionisation rates have been historically low. During the neoliberal era, corporations have demanded ‘labour market flexibility’, claiming that it would help attract foreign investment and generate economic growth. To overcome unions’ resistance against such ‘reforms’, which make jobs even more insecure, the government has moved to change laws. But workers have not surrendered to capital’s rising power.

The African continent has for decades struggled with seriously high – and unpayable – levels of debt. The permanent debt crisis besieging them has not resulted from short-term market failures or from business cycles that will rebound, and that it is not fully a consequence of governments’ mismanagement of finances or deep-rooted corruption. Rather, our assessment of the debt crisis draws from an important analysis given by Burkina Faso’s President Thomas Sankara, who argued that ‘debt’s origins come from colonialism’s origins’ and, therefore, can only be confronted by the creation of new financial alternatives that fall outside of a neocolonial framework.

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.

Hugo Chávez built the foundations of today’s Bolivarian Revolution, which radically transformed democracy and the material conditions of the people and made it possible to build independent states of free women and men. With advances and setbacks, the dreams of economic independence, political sovereignty, and social justice that Chávez embodied are more urgent than ever for Latin America and the Caribbean.

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.

Although it existed for just 40 years, the German Democratic Republic (DDR) was able to construct a fundamentally different health care system that ensured a continuous improvement of the population’s health. The DDR built on progressive medical traditions and socialist property relations to eliminate the profit motive from medicine and construct a unitary health care system that operated in all sectors of society, from urban neighbourhoods and rural villages to workplaces and schools.

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.

We are witnessing a dangerous political, economic, and military escalation by the United States and its Western allies against Russia and China. The United States seeks to prevent a historical process that seems inevitable, the process of Eurasian integration, which threatens the primacy of the Euro-Atlantic elites. To secure global hegemony, the United States is committed to the pursuit of global nuclear primacy and is willing to use any means to ‘weaken’ both Russia and China – even at the risk of destroying the planet.

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.