Journal

Contents

• Re-founding the European Union

• • The Irish Campaign: A New Version of the French "No" Victory?

  • By Raquel Garrido

  • In the same week in which the French Parliament ratified the Lisbon Treaty, brutally ignoring the democratic “no” vote of 2005, the Irish Coalition against the EU Constitution (CAEUC), formally...

• Reform of the Revolution

• • Passive Revolution and the Reform of the Revolution

  • By Walter Baier , Marco Berlinguer , Mario Candeias , Scipione Semararo

  • In November 2007, transform! organised a conference entitled “The Reform of the Revolution”. The title was chosen to convey two theoretical political objectives, namely: the reformulation of – that...
• • Hegemony, Nonviolence and Transformation

  • By Giuseppe Prestipino

  • Gramsci certainly did not disdain the conquest of power via an assault on its palace. But his idea of revolution perhaps became a “revisionist” one as it was understood by the founding fathers, though it conceded nothing to reformism. 

• • Equality of the Sexes? Feminism Reloaded

  • By Birge Krondorfer

  • Ladies and gentlemen,...
• • Radical Politics and Ideals

  • By Juha Koivisto

  • In the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy Marx regards law, politics, religion, art and philosophy as “ideological forms“ in which social struggles are fought out (MEW 13, 8). Recalling the...
• • Labour and Life: Memorandum for a Future Investigation of (Class?) Consciousness

  • By Mimmo Porcaro

  • The paradox of our times is that the more class position determines people’s lives, the less people think of themselves as members of a class (or of a coalition of classes). 

• • On a Feminist Conception of Work

  • By Lia Cigarini

  • I would like to discuss with you the question of labour from the point of view of its feminine specificity which has been, and is, in my opinion, creating new political forms and a new way of thinking...
• • Roundtable on the Concept of "Communism" Today

  • By Patrice Cohen-Séat , Roger Martelli , Jean-Louis Sagot-Duvauroux

  • Three critical intellectuals, Patrice COHEN-SÉAT, Roger MARTELLI and Jean-Louis SAGOT-DUVAUROUX, talk about the word and the concept “communism”. This term is the object of much controversy and...
• • Capitalism, Socialism, Property and Transformation: Rethinking Fundamental Questions

  • By Dieter Klein , Michael Brie

  • The rise of a new capitalism, the current wave of neoliberal globalisation, the success of this project of counter-reforms on the one hand and the emergence of new social movements, the attempts to form new political alliances and to initiate alternatives at all levels of society on the other hand — all this makes necessary a re-invention of socialism twenty years after the break-down of the Soviet bloc.

• • On Economic Democracy

  • By Michael R. Krätke

  • Throughout the world there is consensus around the idea of democracy as the one and only viable concept of a good order. However, that consensual view remains restricted to the realm of politics. A good society today is conceived as a mix of political democracy and … a capitalist market economy.

• • Red and Green: The Ecosocialist Perspective

  • By Michael Löwy

  • The earth’s ecological crisis has reached a decisive turning point with the phenomenon of climate change, a fateful process that is accelerating much more rapidly than predicted.   

• • News from Somewhere: Participatory Budgets and Social Transformation

  • By Javier Navascués

  • What is the value of Participatory Budgeting (PB) for a strategy of social transformation? Is it a mystification aimed at keeping people busy apart from what really matters?  

• • Building a "Socialism of the 21st Century"

  • By Leo Gabriel

  • It has become fashionable nowadays to associate the student and youth movement of 1968 with the worldwide attempt to build a political culture of a new kind; but very few bear in mind the qualitatively different impact this outburst of subjectivity had on the political developments in the North and in the South and East.  

• Chronicles

• • Reading Beauvoir

  • By Marlene Streeruwitz

  • The young woman, who wants to write an essay on Beauvoir tells me, she would not enjoy reading her. “It really gets you down,“ she says. She looks at the table and pushes the microphone back and...
• • From a Two-party to a Multi-party System

  • By Christoforos Vernardakis

  • Deliberations and Realignments in the Greek Party System After the September 2007 Elections...
• • Germany's New Nationwirde Party: Die LINKE

  • By Cornelia Hildebrandt

  • In summer 2007 the Left Party/PDS merged with the Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG) to form a new party – Die LINKE.

• • The Development and Challenges of the Spanish United Left (IU)

  • By Javier Navascués

  • Post scriptum: After this article was written, IU obtained very poor results in the Spanish general elections: less than 4 % of the vote with only two seats. Some of the worst fears have become...
• • A New Left-Wing Dynamic?

  • By Elisabeth Gauthier

  • An important feature of the municipal and cantonal elections in France was a steep rise in the abstention rate – in sharp contrast to the 2005 referendum and the 2007 presidential election. Fifty-four...
• • The Italian Left Before the Elections

  • By Walter De Cesaris

  • The precipitous fall of the government and consequent early elections (April 13 -14) caught the Italian left’s unification process in midstream. The process, officially launched at the convention of...
• • Giving Notice to Neoliberalism

  • By Kaarina Kailo

  • The Lessons of Health Care Union Resistance in Finland and Canada...
• • Utopia - The Explosive Potential of the Present

  • By Birge Krondorfer

  • Frigga Haug combines philosophical conscientiousness and shrewdness with uncompromising farsightedness and passionate visions of the future. (Judith Butler) It is time to break free of the false...
• • Ratification of the Lisbon Treaty: How it is Playing Out in Different Countries

  • By José Cordon

  • The current ratification process of the Lisbon Treaty is characterised by several key features. In France: First of all, there is the question of democracy. The day after the Parliament’s vote,...
• • The European Welfare Models: Changes, Prospects and Strategies

  • By Stefan Sjöberg

  • This is the title of a Transform! workshop to beheld in Stockholm on June 13-14. Its aim is to contribute to the analysis of the changes in European welfare states, both in terms of empirical reports...
• • The Attack on the Welfare State in the Name of the Welfare State

  • By José Casimiro

  • Discussion of the welfare state and the European social model has intensified in the last years. This is of vital importance, not only for European workers and citizens, but also in terms of the role...
• • Left Without Work

  • By Ruurik Holm

  • In April, Left Forum, a Finnish component of the Transform network, published a volume entitled The Left Looking for Work (in Finnish: Vasemmisto etsii työtä, Like Publishing Ltd.), authored by the...