党员领导干部要带头弘扬艰苦奋斗精神

当前,党内、社会上艰苦奋斗的状况都不容乐观,要在全社会真正形成“以艰苦奋斗为荣,以骄奢淫逸为耻”的良好风气,必须坚持党内先行,领导干部带头的原则。     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article:
Charles Bergquist, Ricardo Peñaranda, and G. Gonzalo Sánchez (eds.), Violence in Colombia 1990––2000. Waging War and Negotiating Peace
H. Kline, State Building and Conflict Resolution in Colombia, 1986–1994
N. Richani, Systems of Violence. The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia
Maxwell A. Cameron, and Brian W. Tomlin, The Making of NAFTA: How the Deal Was Done
Ben Fallaw, Cárdenas Compromised: The Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatán
Aníbal González, Killer Books: Writing, Violence, and Ethics in Modern Spanish American Narrative
Valerie Boyle (ed.), A South American Adventure: Letters from George Reid, 1867–1870
Caroline Salvin, A Pocket Eden. Guatemalan Journals 1873–1874/Un paraíso. Diarios guatemaltecos 1873–1874     

“Value Grabbing”: A Political Ecology of Rent

This paper aims to redress the under-appreciated significance of rent for political ecological analysis. We introduce the notion of value grabbing, defined as the appropriation of (surplus) value through rent. A concept that is analytically distinct from accumulation, rent is both a social relation and a distributional process that is increasingly central to the reproduction of contemporary capitalism. Emphasis is placed on the “grabbing” of value in order to shed light on the processes at work by which surplus value is distributed unevenly between different classes and fractions of classes. A focus on rent within political ecology, we argue, can help us distinguish between two organically related but analytically distinct “moments”: (a) the creation of property rights that establish rent relations and (b) the struggle over the appropriation and distribution of surplus value generated by the rent relation itself. We explore some of the implications of this perspective for understanding new forms of socio-ecological struggles and their varied relations to the state. We maintain that a value-grabbing perspective has far-reaching consequences for political ecology, as it provides a sharp conceptual tool for situating a wide range of socio-ecological conflicts and movements as class struggles over value appropriation and distribution.     

LIP: a workers’ community facing globalization

The aim of this article is to show how at the beginning of the 1970s a community of workers in Besançon in France reacted to globalization. It deals with the culture of the working class in a French province, the level of organization of the community and how it reacted when ‘its’ factory was taken over by a multinational company. In seeking to understand this transformation and how the workers perceived it, it is crucial to investigate the changing role of the state. All these aspects will be developed in the sections below with the aim of better understanding the meaning of the strategy of workers’ resistance in the face of a change that affected the community, the sector of production, the region and, ultimately, the working class within the Western societies.     

Employee benefits,migration and social struggles: an Indian coalfield, 1895–1970

ABSTRACT

During 1895–1970, in the Indian coalfield of Jharia, circular migration of the mineworker coexisted along with the fact that workers became regular over time. This article suggests that the development of employee benefits influenced the patterns of migration and settlement of workers. Employers, guided by a new industrial sensibility, came up with specific employee benefits, with an objective of continuous production from a group of settled workers. The workers’ approach to social security and the pressure exerted by them shaped the expansion of employee benefits. My finding takes an issue with the thesis of cheap migrant labour. The latter argument has insufficiently revealed the actual preferences of employees. My work critiques another thesis which suggests that workers maintained a preference for investment in rural homesteads; therefore choosing to remain oscillating migrants. My study suggests that workers developed a notion of the civilised and human form of life from the 1920s onwards. The self-respect campaign amongst the unprivileged caste groups, the movement for industrial democracy and national reconstruction and the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO’s) advocacy of civilised and human life for workers, gave a spur to new reproduction preferences. Now, they sought employee benefits regarded as necessary for a dignified living.     

Rural unions and the struggle for land in Brazil

Studies of Brazil's agricultural labor movement have generally neglected its relationship to the struggle for land, but this is neither fair nor accurate. Analyzing the rural labor movement's historical contributions to the land struggle in Brazil, this contribution has been organized into three main periods, emphasizing social relations, institutional activism and policy changes. It argues that despite the peculiarities of different historical contexts, rural labor consistently provoked protest against policies that privileged large landholders, whose concentration of power over land and labor resources continually worsened Brazil's ranking as one of the most unequal of nations. For more than half a century, the most constant opponent of this situation among the peasantry has been the National Confederation of Workers in Agriculture (CONTAG), a corporatist organization of rural labor unions founded in 1963.     

井冈山斗争时期的红军兵员补充

井冈山斗争时期红军的兵员来自多种渠道，但到后期主要兵员补充来自国民党士兵。其原因在于：井冈山地区人口稀少，无法更多补充兵员；土地政策不完善，群众参加红军的积极性受影响；红军的俘虏政策好，许多被俘国民党士兵留下来。在毛泽东的正确领导下，采取了三个方面的措施对国民党的俘虏兵进行改造，即不断加强政治教育与训练、实行军内民主、执行铁的纪律，最终起到了明显的成效，并为后来加强红军及解放军建设总结了很好的经验。     

五六十年代党在社会主义建设问题上的艰难探索

自新中国成立以后,中共党内对建设问题的较大分歧,首次表现在1956年前后的冒进和反冒进问题上,进而在对当时我国形势的困难程度以及社会发展动力的认识上,又产生较大分歧,这对我国社会的发展产生了很大的影响.这一历史教训告诉我们要建设好社会主义国家,就必须坚持从实际出发,理论联系实际的马克思主义路线.     

边缘化的生活——中国改革过程中女民工的城市生活经历

生活在城市边缘的女民工,她们抱着不同的理想来到城市,其工作和生活状况虽各有不同,但多处于社会的下层,但她们中的一部分人不向生活低头,通过不懈努力和奋斗,找到了自己生存和发展的空间,为家庭和谐和社会稳定做出了应有的贡献。     

社会主义荣辱观教育与青少年成长——论艰苦奋斗精神的继承与发展

社会主义荣辱观中的“艰苦奋斗精神”,既继承了中华民族传统美德的精华,并赋予其深刻的时代内涵,又充分体现了现代人的崇高追求和高尚境界,是社会主义伦理观、道德观和价值观的精确提炼和生动体现。社会主义荣辱观中的“艰苦奋斗精神”作为一种精神价值,在不同的时代,内容和形式虽然有所变化,但它绝不会消失。我们要教育和引导青少年继承和发扬艰苦奋斗的光荣传统,为社会多作贡献。