The new Autumn 2002 edition of the Asian Marxist Review has recently been published. We are listing the contents and publishing the Editor’s note. If you would like to buy the latest issue or take out an annual subscription please go to http://www.wellredbooks.net/amr.asp
The new Autumn 2002 edition of the Asian Marxist Review has recently been published. Below we are listing the contents and publishing the Editor's note.
If you would like to buy the latest issue or take out an annual subscription please go to http://www.wellredbooks.net/amr.asp
Contents
– Editor's note
– Pakistani Elections: No Solution for the Workers and Peasants
– Interview with Manzoor Ahmed
– Blatant vote-rigging in Pakistani elections
– U.S. Imperialism and the war on Iraq
– On the recent situation in Turkey and Tasks
– Bali Terrorist Attack
– Capitalist recession and Iraq
– Some historical clarifications on Israel/Palestine
– Earth Summit: No solution for the masses just a lot of hot air
– How U.S. Imperialism was defeated in Vietnam
Editor's Note
The beating of the war drums of US aggression against Iraq becomes noisier and noisier as each day passes. The Zionist genocide in Palestine is becoming more and more terrible. The terrorist bombing in Bali has shaken the whole region. The distorted development of capitalism has produced a massive cloud that engulfs large parts of South East Asia, literally suffocating the cities already bursting at the seams. Afghanistan has further sunk into the throes of a protracted guerrilla war. At the same time its poppy production has risen from 180 tonnes to 2000 tonnes in just one year since the fall of the Talibans and the takeover of the imperialist armies and their Afghan stooges. This heroin will kill more youth on the streets of US cities than those killed during the WTC attacks.
As the teeming millions of the Subcontinent continue to suffer in the quagmire of misery, poverty, and disease, the rulers of India and Pakistan carry on with their gimmickry of escalation and de-escalation, of war and peace, to disillusion the masses and to further intensify the capitalist onslaught. In Iran the threat of a US attack on Iraq is widening the cracks in the theocratic elite. The face of Asia has been smeared by the intensifying crisis of the capitalist system. The turmoil rages on. The rulers are helpless. They have no option but to increase repression and intensify IMF dictated economic genocide of the impoverished masses.
The so-called "Lefts" have been sucked under in the quick sands of the NGOs and of futile reformism. The traditional leaders of the mass parties and the trade unions have embraced capitalism in its epoch of terminal decay. The workers, peasants and youth are being forced to comply, subdue, accept, adopt and bow down to this inhuman and atrocious system.
Yet there is a silver lining to the dark clouds on the horizon. For the first time ever a committed Marxist, a Trotskyist, has entered the echelons of the bourgeois state institutions, the parliament in Pakistan. Manzoor Ahmed, Editor of the fortnightly Class Struggle [Urdu] and publisher of this very journal has won the seat to the National Assembly in NA 139 Kasur II. He fought on a Marxist programme with the slogan of "Irreconcilable struggle until Socialist Revolution". His victory sent a wave of inspiration and enthusiasm among the workers, youth and left activists throughout the length and breadth of Pakistan. This victory proves that after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, socialism can still win the masses. Without mincing words, this victory was won on a clear Socialist Programme in the name of revolutionary Marxism. Manzoor's victory is a turning point in the struggle for Socialist Revolution in Pakistan and throughout the Indian Subcontinent. A Marxist revival now begins, and is taking forward the caravan of Revolution.
Those who dare WIN!
Lal Khan,
October 21, 2002
