ARTICLE: INDONESIA – THE POLITICS OF MAY DAY, 2014.

Around 250,000 workers, members of various trade unions, mobilised in Jakarta for May Day, 2014. From all accounts, the mobilisations were similar to those of 2012 and 2013. The demands carried on workers banners and posters were for rises in minimum wages and the banning of the widespread labor hire practices. From the hundreds of […]

SHORT COMMENT: On feminism and feminism

Originally posted on MAX LANE ONLINE:
Over the course of the last twelve months, due to developments in the small Australian, British and Indonesian lefts, the issue of the Marxist orientation to feminism has become higher up in the current discussion agenda. Over the last 30 years, I have been part of a tradition that…

Facebook status comments on politics: September, by Max Lane.

Both the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government and now the Abbot LNP gang are carrying out racist, xenophobic and inhuman policies on refugees, shunting them off to Manus and Nauru. They should not just be welcoming refugees when they arrive on poor fishermen’s boats, they should be organizing them to fly safely down from Indonesia to settle in […]

SHORT COMMENT: On feminism and feminism

Over the course of the last twelve months, due to developments in the small Australian, British and Indonesian lefts, the issue of the Marxist orientation to feminism has become higher up in the current discussion agenda. Over the last 30 years, I have been part of a tradition that has tried to explain the origins […]

Revolutionaries and reformists in contemporary Australia – by Max Lane

By Max Lane — Rosa Luxemburg wrote the booklet Social Reform or Revolution in response to the writings of Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein was advocating an “evolutionary” path to socialism, counter-posed to revolution. “Reform or revolution?” became a fundamental question for the socialist and labour movements at the beginning of the 20th century. Defining the division […]

Mixing Marx and Indonesia by Mohammed Cohen

BALI – Max Lane is a Marxist and leading authority on Indonesia. That’s somewhat ironic since Indonesia has been a bulwark of anti-communism since the 1965 coup that brought General Suharto to power and led to the killings of up to 3 million alleged communists. Yet Lane says that Indonesia turned him into a Marxist. […]

MARXISM 2013 CONFERENCE

I am pleased to be able to speak at next year’s Marxism 2013 Conference.  There will also be speakers from Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as well the US and elsewhere. The website for the Marxism 2013 Conference, organised by Socialist Alternative as a national/international conference in Melbourne, is nowup with information on […]