Workers' Liberty | For international working class solidarity and socialism

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Unions must demand Labour commit against cuts

A draft text for motions for union branches following the speeches by Ed Balls and Ed Miliband on accepting Tory public spending levels.

Left Unity sets conference for 23 November

The Left Unity project launched by Andrew Burgin and Kate Hudson has set its first conference for 23 November.

Workers' Liberty bulletin for Unison Local Government and National Delegate Conferences 2013

A bulletin by AWL members in Unison, looking at some of the key issues for union members at its upcoming conferences.

Lift the lid on the secret state

The state snooping scandal continues to grow.

Turkish capitalism creates gravedigger

Protests to stop capitalism’s attempt to plunder Taksim Gezi Park have swiftly spread across the whole country and turned into an anti-government revolt.

Lewisham Hospital Worker #21 - 13 June 2013

A workplace bulletin for Lewisham Hospital workers, by Lewisham Hospital workers.

Lewisham Hospital Worker #20 - 7 June 2013

A workplace bulletin by Lewisham Hospital workers, for Lewisham Hospital workers.

Win the argument for freedom of movement!

Two motions passed at the recent congress of the GMB union show how much work socialists need to do to win the argument for freedom of movement within the working class.

1% pay deals: to fight or not to fight?

One third of Southampton Unison members who voted in a recent consultation on the local government pay offer (a 1%) increase said they would be prepared to strike in order to win a better deal.

Workers' control key to climate struggle

About 150 activists attended the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Conference on 8 June 2013

ISN yet to work out politics

On 8 June the International Socialist Network - the group formed by some of those who quit the SWP in March - held its public launch meeting in London.

Surrey students hunt Jeremy Hunt

On 15 June, NHS campaigners will protest in Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt's constituency. On 24 May, he got a frosty welcome at the University of Surrey, in Guildford.

Online pamphlets

1916: The Easter Rising

C L R James on Ireland's Easter Rising of 1916.

How Stalin destroyed communism

70 years ago, on 22 May 1943, Stalin announced the formal shutting-down of the Communist International, the association of revolutionary socialist parties across the world set up after the Russian Revolution.

The Warsaw ghetto and the meaning of resistance

The Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943 belongs not only to the Jewish people but is also part of the heritage of the working class.

Why is the working class central?

An article by Hal Draper published in the newspaper of the Independent Socialist League in the USA in the early 1950s which attempts to answer the question of why the working class is fundamental to the socialist project.

Three giants of the socialist revolution

January marks the anniversaries of the deaths of three giants of revolutionary socialism — Liebknecht, Luxemburg, and Lenin.

Complete run of Labor Action online

The whole run from 1940 to 1958 of Labor Action, the paper produced by the Workers Party and Independent Socialist League of Max Shachtman, Hal Draper, and others, is now online.

Why we should not back US Democrats

Max Shachtman expounds the underlying issues in an 1942 article from Labor Action

The Workers' Party USA: “The freest party I ever belonged to”

An extract from a speech by Al Glotzer given at a 1983 conference at which activists of the third camp left discussed and reflected on their experiences.

Connolly: hero of the Easter Rising

A 1947 article on James Connolly in Workers' Republic, the journal of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, Irish Section of the Fourth International, reproduced in Labor Action (paper of the US Trotskyist group led by Max Shachtman, Hal Draper, and others).

The last speech of Bartolomeo Vanzetti

Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicolo Sacco, socialist-anarchists, were killed by the US state in August 1927 on trumped-up murder charges, after a long campaign to save their lives. This is Vanzetti's last speech.

Document 6. Al Glotzer's reply to Mandel: The Jewish problem after Hitler

Reply by Al Glotzer on the Jewish question.

400ppm: climate barbarism or socialism!

The global carbon dioxide concentration has hit 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time.

Trotsky and the Communist International

A review by Al Glotzer of Trotsky's "First 5 Years of the Communist International", volume one.

What kind of anti-fascism?

The racist backlash following the murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich has highlighted again the need for a working-class anti-fascist movement in Britain which not only confronts far-right and fascist organisation in the streets but is part of a political alternative.

Stalin’s Place in History: Assessing the Social Role of the Great Assassin

Josef Stalin, the gravedigger of the Bolshevik revolution, died 60 years ago. Immediately after Stalin's death, Albert Glotzer assessed his social role.

Verse: 'Labour'

While the ages changed and sped I was tolling for my bread. Underneath my sturdy blows Forests fell and cities rose.

Culture, Sport and Socialism: recording of a UCL Workers' Liberty discussion

A recording of a UCL Workers' Liberty discussion on the history of European socialist sport and culture by author Edd Mustill, and a report on the new socialist cultural movement springing up in Turkey from Ed Maltby

How Stalin destroyed communism

Verse: 'The Pickets'

Like a roll of distant thunder The pickets tramp their beat. And our slave enshackled brothers Can hear their marching feet.

Wellington seafarers and the invasion of Finland

The USSR’s invasion of Finland in 1939 marked a turning point for the Trotskyist movement.

The left and Syria: a debate

Debate between AWL writers and others on the left about the war in Syria.

A new SWP opposition

A new opposition voice has emerged within the Socialist Workers’ Party.

Trotskyism after the collapse of Stalinism: an open letter to Ernest Mandel

"You, comrade Mandel, are the representative leader of post-Trotsky 'Trotskyism'..."

Big powers and smaller oligarchies

The Greek Trotskyist leader Pandelis Pouliopoulos died 70 years ago, on 6 June 1943, shot by Italian occupation forces in Greece during World War Two.

Politics, sexism and Facebook culture

Rather than seeing Facebook and Twitter as “good” or “bad” for organising, the sensible thing for socialists to do is to use them as another form of media in the same way that we publish papers, phone people and use email.

The battle for democracy in the Arab revolution

The for now unanswerable question hanging over the Middle East is whether the Arab revolution will culminate in bourgeois democratic regimes or Islamist totalitarianism.

The "blowback" theory

Two comment articles in the Guardian typify the paucity of the repetitive, single-focus attempt to explain events like Woolwich.

Woolwich, Islamism and the racist, authoritarian backlash

The left needs to be a voice for rationality in the midst of hysteria.

1916: The Easter Rising

C L R James on Ireland's Easter Rising of 1916.

Marxist Revival pamphlet: articles from international discussions

A selection of articles from the Marxist Revival website, May 2013.

Jean-Michel Krivine, 1932-2013

Jean-Michel Krivine died on 14 May 2013, at the age of 80. He was the older brother of Alain Krivine - since the late 1960s the best known-leader of the French Trotskyist group called LCR and then NPA - and himself a Trotskyist, though long active in the French Communist Party.

Workers Liberty

Workers Liberty Pamphlets