This week – Friday 30th November – sees the 95th anniversary of the death of the outstanding Scottish Marxist John MacLean. To commemorate this event, we look at MacLean’s contribution to the socialist and working class movement.
After two and a half years of the First World War, Russia exploded in February 1917 in a revolution that overthrew the Tsar's dictatorship. The capitalist provisional governments that took over did not at all fulfill the expectations of the masses of an end to war, need and oppression. Therefore, in October, an insurrection that shook the world...
The horrific slaughter of the First World War has haunted generations. By the time it ended, it had put into question the ‘right’ of the ruling classes to rule, something that helped provoke revolutions and mass struggles around the world. Just the huge military casualties, officially nearly 10 million, maybe more, soldiers killed and...
November 9 is a momentous date in German history. On this date Robert Blum, one of the leaders of the 1848 revolution in German-speaking countries, was executed in Vienna; the Nazis instigated the infamous Reichspogromnacht (sometimes called, in a softer version, “Kristallnacht”) and when the Berlin Wall was opened in 1989. But above all,...
'Socialism: Utopian and Scientific' should be read and studied by socialists, worker-activists and young people interested in socialist ideas, as it greatly adds to our understanding of the roots of socialism and the tasks the working class need to conquer to fundamentally change society. This short pamphlet by Friedrich...
"From time to time, each new era presents people, especially their young people, with new dilemmas and plots. Previous legacies are crumbling and boys and girls must invent their own way of being in the world.
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Patricio Rivas, Chile, a long September.
No-deal Brexit, establishment splits, threat of renewed downturn...
Trump’s tariffs raise international tensions and could derail global economic growth
The socialist answer to capitalist crisis
This week saw the 80th anniversary of the founding conference of the Fourth International, on 3 September, 1938. To mark this historic event, we republish below a brief 2013 introduction to an article by Peter Taaffe on the Fourth International and the founding document of the conference, known as the 'Transitional Programme'. This...
“How things have changed,” declared US-based scholar Minxin Pei. Pei was referring to the problems now confronting China’s strongman, Xi Jinping, who suddenly doesn’t look quite as strong any more. Pei is among a horde of overseas China watchers who have picked up on the same theme: signs that Xi’s seemingly impregnable hold on power...
Mariana Mazzucato’s new book is a detailed exposé of the parasitic character of modern capitalism, drawing on Karl Marx’s theory of the source of value creation. But understanding the law of value is only a first step to providing an alternative to a system that cannot overcome its inevitable tendency for periodic crises and which needs to...
