How We Built a Mass Socialist Party in 10 Years, w/ Belgian MP Peter Mertens
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 588 Ratings
🗓️ 27 December 2024
⏱️ 97 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Peter Mertens, Secretary General of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PVDA-PTB) sits for a wide-ranging interview with Brian Becker, longtime socialist organizer and founding member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
They discuss everything from Europe’s economic and political crisis, the window of opportunity for socialism, the U.S.’s goal of encircling China, to how the PYB renewed itself as a mass force in Belgian politics by changing its internal culture and digging deeper roots into the working class. The interview is full of lessons and insights from the movement in Europe and the United States.
Mertens is a member of the Chamber of Representatives since 2019, and as a Municipal Councillor in Antwerp since 2013.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Socialism and the worldwide movement for workers' rights, |
| 0:06.0 | in defense of the environment, for peace, for social justice, is growing. |
| 0:12.0 | We need a new system. We need a new society. |
| 0:16.0 | We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago, but is not only |
| 0:21.9 | realizable, but an imperative necessity. Welcome to the Socialist Program. I'm your host, Brian Becker. |
| 0:51.5 | Today we're talking with Peter Martins. Peter is the Secretary General of the |
| 0:56.4 | Workers' Party of Belgium. I got that right. Yes. Peter, welcome. Thank you, Brian. Well, |
| 1:02.2 | you're here in New York City. Great to have you here. You are here for the launch of your new book, |
| 1:08.0 | Mutiny, an amazing book. I want to talk to you about it. We have to talk about |
| 1:11.7 | some other things. What's going on in Europe? What's your view of the unipolar world versus the |
| 1:17.3 | multipolar world? Is multipolarity the answer or is something else the answer? We want to talk |
| 1:22.9 | about your party. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of the communist parties, socialist parties, |
| 1:29.1 | Marxist parties disappeared. The PTB, the Workers Party, is actually growing. We want to talk about |
| 1:35.1 | why. Anyway, let's get started with your book. Mutiny. Why the title? |
| 1:40.8 | Mutiny is, there's a lot going on and there's a lot. |
| 1:44.7 | The world is changing rapidly. |
| 1:46.6 | We're in a specific timeframe in history. |
| 1:51.0 | And I don't say it's gratuity. |
| 1:53.6 | I don't say it for free that the forces in the world are tilting and shifting towards China. |
| 2:00.4 | And so Europe was in decline even since World War |
| 2:03.8 | II. And now we see maybe the beginning of the decline also of the US. And you see China, India, |
| 2:10.8 | big forces emerge. And that's tilting the world. And then there was the war in Ukraine, the proxy war between NATO forces |
... |
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