Workers' Liberty

Glossary

The AWL, Trotskyism and the Marxist tradition: sections E1 to E8

The state and revolution: sections D1 to D8

The revolutionary outlook: sections C1 to C6

How class struggle changes the world: sections A7 to B5

Capital, workers, and socialism: sections A1 to A6

Here is a PowerPoint presentation on commodities, value, wage-labour, profit, and capital. It is designed as back-up for talking through the issues, rather than as a stand-alone. You may find it useful when reviewing your notes from a study group on these issues, or when leading a study group.

Download as pdf (see "attachment" below), or read on.

**** Please note Tuesday's session is cancelled. Why The Working Class (originally on Tuesday) replaces Thursday's session on Anarchism ****

This school covers the same broad areas as the AWL week school in July, but each area in a different way, using different texts and different activities - sometimes activities which were in the July school schedule but which we could not do then for lack of time. It will be held in London. To register to attend, contact the AWL office.

Sessions: 1. Skills
2. Why the working class?/ How to do educationals
3. Marxism and Economism
4. Marxism, Anarchism, and Zapatism
5. The National Question and Israel-Palestine in Particular
6. D

Sessions: 1. Skills
2. Why the working class?/ How to do educationals
3. Marxism and Economism
4. Marxism, Anarchism, and Zapatism
5. The National Question and Israel-Palestine in Particular
6. Debating and arguing

You can find the text here. Skip the section headed "By what is the price of a commodity determined?", but do make sure to read the Introduction.

You can find the text here. Skip the section headed "By what is the price of a commodity determined?", but do make sure to read the Introduction.

A guide to studying the Communist Manifesto (PDF). If you prefer to download it as a Word file, click here.

A guide to studying the Communist Manifesto ('Word' file). If you prefer to download it as a PDF, click here.

The IWW was a trade-union organisation, a revolutionary trade-union organisation, founded in 1905 in the USA, whose heyday was between 1905 and 1914.

We surveyed the IWW's distinctive organising approaches:

1. Fastest-growing categories of employment: USA

Henwood gives a list for the USA. None of the 30 top categories is a factory operative/ machine minder category. That does not mean that those workers are disappearing. There are as many car workers in the USA today as in the 1970s. But the fastest growing categories are elsewhere.

• Marx argues that class struggle and working-class combination (trade unions) is endemic in capitalism, at all stages. "The contest between the capitalist and wage-labourer dates back to the very origin of capital..." (Ch.15.5). Workers' "struggles for the standards of wages are incidents inseparable from the whole wages system" (WPP); the basic "activity of the trade unions... cannot be dispensed with so long as the present system of production lasts" (TUPPF).
  
  

Discussion group on Working class and trade unions: Marx and today.

Three key excerpts.

Agenda:

Short plenary introduction

Small-group discussions one: Transitional programme vs fake ultra-leftism

Small-group discussions two: Marxism vs Apparatus Marxism

Small-group discussions three: Striving to be "the memory of the class" vs invention of tradition

The notes and discussion points are classified under three headings:

• Auto workers and textile workers (Silver's ch.2 and ch.3 to p.97)

• Overall trends (Silver's ch.4 and ch.1)
• The future (Silver's ch.3 from p.97 onwards, ch.5, and ch.1.

The notes were prepared for a Brisbane Workers' Liberty discussion series in August/ September 2005.

First run of session 10: overview. More.

Second run of session 10: overview. More.

Third run of session 9, on primitive accumulation. More.

Second run of session 9, on primitive accumulation. More.

Third run of session 8, on the class struggle. More.

Second run of session 8, on the class struggle. More.