Editorial
- The first issue of transform!, centring on the theme “Re-founding the European Union?” presented diverse left positions for debate and discussion. In the last months, with the ratification process of the Lisbon Treaty, this debate has intensified. Two contributions to the current issue deal with the contradictory course of this process (see Raquel Garrido, The Irish Campaign – A New Version of the French “No” Victory? and José Cordon, Ratification of the Lisbon Treaty: How it is Playing Out in Different Countries). The thematic focus of the current issue is on left conceptions of emancipatory theories (“Reform of the Revolution”), which was also the subject of last November’s conference...
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Re-founding the European Union
The Irish Campaign: A New Version of the French "No" Victory?
- 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
Labour and Life: Memorandum for a Future Investigation of (Class?) Consciousness
- 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).
Red and Green: The Ecosocialist Perspective
- 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
- 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?
On Economic Democracy
- 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.
Capitalism, Socialism, Property and Transformation: Rethinking Fundamental Questions
- 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.
Equality of the Sexes? Feminism Reloaded
- Ladies and gentlemen, Having been asked to speak on “(leftist) feminism as a liberation theory” on the grounds that “by and large knowledge of the theoretical problems involved in sexual relations is...
Building a "Socialism of the 21st Century"
- 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.
Roundtable on the Concept of "Communism" Today
- 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...
Hegemony, Nonviolence and Transformation
- 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.
On a Feminist Conception of Work
- 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...
Passive Revolution and the Reform of the Revolution
- 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...
Radical Politics and Ideals
- 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...
Chronicles
Germany's New Nationwirde Party: Die LINKE
- 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)
- 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...
The Italian Left Before the Elections
- 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...
A New Left-Wing Dynamic?
- 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...
Giving Notice to Neoliberalism
- The Lessons of Health Care Union Resistance in Finland and Canada Jyrki Katainen, the Finnish government’s current Finance Minister, made an infamous promise to voters during the last elections: to...
Utopia - The Explosive Potential of the Present
- 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...
The Attack on the Welfare State in the Name of the Welfare State
- 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...
The European Welfare Models: Changes, Prospects and Strategies
- 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...
Ratification of the Lisbon Treaty: How it is Playing Out in Different Countries
- 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,...
From a Two-party to a Multi-party System
- Deliberations and Realignments in the Greek Party System After the September 2007 Elections Immediately after the September 2007 elections, the Greek political scene witnessed an unprecedented wave...
Reading Beauvoir
- 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...
Left Without Work
- 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...
Additional Articles (language-specific)
Bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen - ein linkes Transformationsprojekt?
- Rezension zu Ronald Blaschke, Adeline Otto, Norbert Schepers (Hrsg.): Grundeinkommen. Geschichte – Modelle- Debatten, (Reihe: Texte / Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung; Bd. 67) Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag 2010,...
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