Workers' Liberty

The left devotes much of its efforts to campaigning against imperialism, which is no surprise given the present foreign policy of the American and British governments.

Download this article (pdf). It discusses the issues round “globalisation” by way of two critiques, of Negri-Hardt and of the “new imperialism” theory of John Rees, Alex Callinicos and other writers associated with the British SWP.

Even with Labour and the Conservatives outdoing each other to be the party of big business and wealth, some poor people are still popular at Westminster — that is poor people in other countries. Laments for the scale of global poverty and a stern faced insistence on the need to do something about it are becoming the favoured recourse of every politician, most obviously Gordon Brown.

The stated purpose of the USA’s troop “surge” in Iraq which started early this year was to damp down the country’s conflicts enough that the current US-friendly Iraqi government (or, maybe, a

By Clive Bradley

In Manuel Puig’s novel The Kiss of the Spider Woman, two men confront each other in a prison cell, somewhere in South America. One is a trashy movie-loving homosexual; the other a revolutionary, a guerrilla.

The left and the Serb-Kosova-NATO War (1999)

By Sean Matgamna

By Martin Thomas

It is hard to see how the Socialist Workers Party’s pamphlet No to Bush’s War could convince anyone not already “on side” to oppose the war in Afghanistan.

By Sean Matgamna

The two month "Falklands War" between Britain and Argentina in 1982 was a freak event. It was part of no larger conflict; no issue other than possession of the islands was involved.

By Clive Bradley

In latter-day Trotskyism the theory of 'permanent revolution'-- anti-landlord or anti-colonial revolution being merged with socialist revolution under the leadership of the working class -- has become a dogma, used more to obscure the fact of many colonies winning freedom on a capitalist basis than to enlighten. Clive Bradley discusses the issues.

Download whole dossier as pdf; or read articles online:

This is how the "victory to Argentina" section of the WSL argued their case, in their major initial statement (WSL Internal Bulletin 7, June 1982).

In 1982, the Socialist Workers’ Party, still retaining bits of a “Third Camp” (independent working class) political tradition from its old slogan “Neither Washington nor Moscow, but international socialism”, took a roughly similar attitude on the British-Argentine war over the Falkland Islands to that of Socialist Organiser, forerunner of Workers’ Liberty.

“Reactionary socialism… half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future.”
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

“The attempt of the bourgeoisie during its internecine conflicts to oblige all humanity to divide up into only two camps is motivated by a desire to prohibit the proletariat from having its own independent ideas.

Review by Paul Hampton of John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney eds. Pox Americana: Exposing the American Empire (Pluto) and Leo Panitch and Colin Leys eds. The Empire Reloaded: Socialist Register 2005 (Merlin)

By Chris Reynolds

In the Middle Ages, Ethiopia was not underdeveloped.

This is no peace
conference

I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
Bob Dylan, Masters of War

In order to demystify the post-September 11 situation it is helpful to briefly touch on the two basic claims of the warmongers which were bolstered by the tragedy of the attacks.

The AWL held the second of our new series of political day schools on 22 October (in London) and 29 October (in Sheffield).

On Saturday 22 October, from 14:00 at Sebbon St Community Centre, London N1, and re-run on Saturday 29 October, from 13:30 at the Swarthmore Centre, Woodhouse Square, Leeds. Click here for reading.

Reading material, discussion points, and activity notes for AWL day school on "Globalisation and imperialism".

There is sharp disagreement about the nature and meaning of imperialism on the left, with two broad schools of thought emerging. Two recent books sum up the differences very clearly. Paul Hampton reviews John Bellamy Foster and Robert W McChesney eds. Pox Americana, Exposing the American Empire (Pluto) and Leo Panitch and Colin Leys eds. The Empire Reloaded: Socialist Register 2005 (Merlin)

Amendements de Paul Hampton sur l’impérialisme et sur le stalinisme

The Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) has produce a withering attack on the fake “anti-imperialism” of Islamist forces across the globe. An article by Farooq Sulehria contains a sharp rejection of these forces. Although we disagree with the LPP’s views on some other “anti-imperialists” discussed in the article, we welcome their honest and uncompromising stance.