Workers' Liberty

In the preposterous film 2012, solar flares cause the earth’s tectonic plates to move, resulting in ecological catastrophe. The ruling classes respond by building a number of modern Arks, so that the best of humanity will survive the apocalypse and begin again. Reflecting existing divisions, the main states all build separate Arks, and allow the extremely wealthy to buy tickets for themselves, so that they can pick up business as usual.

Review of Lars T. Lih's Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be done? in context (2008 Haymarket).

A review of Martin Empson, Marxism and ecology (2009).

The Copenhagen climate talks were an utter failure. But what lessons do Marxists argue climate campaigners should draw from this experience?

Anyone who believes that the Stalinists who run the Morning Star have repented might want to read their review of Robert Service’s biography of Trotsky (2 December):

Oscar Wilde remarked in The Critic as Artist (1891) that while “formerly we used to canonise our heroes, the modern method is to vulgarise them”.

Dan La Botz has warned that the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), one of the most important in Latin America, is fighting for its life.

The “class nature of the Soviet Union” was for most of the twentieth century a debate that defined the meaning of socialism.

Mike Hulme’s book, Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity, is probably the best overview of the subject published in recent years.

In the early hours of 24 May 1940, twenty men in uniform led by a world-famous artist burst into the last refuge of Leon Trotsky. The muralist David Siqueiros and his Stalinist cohort riddled Trotsky’s Mexican sanctuary with over 300 shots.

Workers at Zanon, the occupied ceramics factory in Argentina, won a significant victory last week.

Over the past decade or so, John Bellamy Foster has been one of the principal architects of the revival of Marxist ecology, arguing that the relationship between nature and human society is best conce

A late night meeting of the Cuban leadership towards the end of 1959. Fidel Castro looks around the room and asks for ‘a good economist’ to become the president of the National Bank of Cuba.

There’s a symposium of articles in the latest Against the Current magazine, published in the US.

This is a useful analysis of the coup in Honduras, from the Solidarity (US) website - publishers of Against the Current.

http://www.solidarity-us.org/hondurascoup

This article is from the Venezuelanalysis website:
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4156

Two Workers Killed During Factory Occupation in Venezuela
by Tamara Pearson

The antinomies of eco-socialism

We should mark the passing for Brian Pearce, who died recently. The Guardian carried his obituary today.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/dec/11/brian-pearce-obituary-communist-history/print

This report is from Venezuelanalysis
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/newsbrief/4015

Another trade union leader, Simon Caldera, was assassinated Tuesday in the state of Aragua, in Venezuela.

Unwilling to debate the AWL in public, the so-called CPGB continues its snipping at us from the safe distance of its paper.

Richard Gallardo, Luis Hernández and Carlos Requena, members of the Unidad Socialista de Izquierda (USI, United Socialist Left) and of the UNT trade union federation in Venezuela have been killed.

The pathetic intervention of the CPGB at the AWL-Machover on Sunday has been followed by an even more pathetic write up in its paper, the Weekly Worker (16 October).

It is an irony of history that Jack London should be remembered today mainly for dog stories - the children’s fictional stories Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1905) remain his best-known wo

The prize for the most hysterical response to Sean’s article on Israel, Iran and nuclear weapons goes inevitably to the CPGB (Weekly Worker, 31 July).

A year ago Mansour Osanloo, President of the Vahed Syndicate – the Tehran Bus Workers’ Union was arrested.

If you missed the “Black Power Salute” film on BBC 4 last night you missed one of the best hours television for ages.

Two reasons to cheer in Venezuela recently, as socialists restarted the task of building an independent workers’ party, separate from Chavez’s ruling bourgeois PSUV.

I’m not a great one for polls, given the skewed questions and the dodgy sociological categories, but among the general gloom in recent polls on the environment, one finding stood out.

Chavistas try to split UNT

Pro-Chavez union leaders backed by the Labor Ministry have launched a new trade union centre in Venezuela – though it is not clear whether they will succeed.

The opinions of William Morris on what we now call ecology are important in any assessment of him as a political thinker in his own time.