Socialist Register: 2008: Global Flashpoints

What are the forces at work in opposition to the American Empire? Are such forces, in the Islamic World and in Latin America, reactionary or progressive? What are the distinguishing features of neoliberalism today? What are its emerging contradictions? This volume surveys the key flashpoints of resistance today. The main arena of resistance to imperialism is the Middle East. Six essays explore the ambivalent nature of Islamic anti-imperialism, and the West's crucial role in making it so significant, as well as the different forms it takes as a political creed; and they provide particular insight into the relationship between religion and politics today in Iraq, Palestine and Turkey. Resistance to neoliberalism has been seen most clearly in the 'pink tide' in Latin America. Seven essays evaluate the potential - or lack of it - for a 21st century socialism across the region, and especially in Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico, and Argentina; while an interview with Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of Brazil's Landless People's Movement, provides a unique perspective on class struggles in that country. Three further essays look at recent reactions to neoliberalism and imperialism elsewhere - in Eastern Europe, in France, and in the heart of empire, the United States itself. The volume concludes with a symposium: three leading left economists analyse neoliberalism as a global regime of social and political control, and critically examine the left's response to it.