Fighting global capitalism

Zoom study group on Leon Trotsky's 1934 article "Nationalism and Economic Life": Thursday 8pm 21 July 2022

A statement from the Russian Socialist Movement and the Ukrainian socialist organisation Sotsialnyi Rukh. Although the majority of the left has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the left camp’s unity is still lacking. We would like to address those on the left who still stick to “a plague on both houses” position that views the war as an inter-imperialist war. It is high time the left woke up and carried out a “concrete analysis of the concrete situation” instead of reproducing worn-out frameworks from the Cold War. Overlooking Russian imperialism is a terrible mistake for the left...

Strikers in Kerala As I write tens and very likely hundreds of millions of workers in India are taking part in a two-day (28-9 March) general strike against privatisation, precarious work and growing inequality. It is sponsored by ten of the country’s big union federations (generally organised in India on party lines), with the glaring exception being the Hindu nationalist federation run by the BJP. Narendra Modi’s BJP government is an extreme-right Hindu nationalist regime. It is also radically neo-liberal, accelerating the anti-working class economic policies developed for decades under...

Half the global supply of polysilicon, essential for solar panels, comes from the Uyghur region, and processing chains are tainted with forced Uyghur labour. Moves to reduce European reliance on Russian fossil fuels, in retaliation for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have brought to prominence arguments that the fights against climate change and far-right authoritarianism are one and the same. Prominent environmentalist Bill McKibben has proposed that the transition off fossil fuels and onto renewables is “how we defeat Putin and other petrostate autocrats”. In Solidarity 626, Stuart Jordan...

The left and labour movement should continue to support and build the protests and lobbying of the sacked P&O Ferries workers and their union RMT. (We should also argue for the RMT and wider labour movement to campaign for nationalisation of P&O .) But the best, most likely way to win their reinstatement is through solidarity action. As we understand it, some Hull dockers and river pilots refused to do work allowing the relaunch of the Pride of Hull. However, the Pride of Hull has now launched. We don’t know about other P&O ships. Even if they all launch, there will presumably be dock labour...

An appeal from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty to the international left and individual socialists. Comrades: Ukraine is being destroyed by a predatory Russian imperialism. The Ukrainian left and trade unions need our solidarity. Labour movement bodies, working-class communities and numerousleft-wing individuals have mobilisedin solidarity with Ukraine and taken a strong stand against Russia’s invasion.But there is a crisis in the established organisations of the British and international left. It is a scandal that much of the Marxist left will not support Ukraine against Russian imperialism...

On International Women's Day, 8 March 2022, Russian feminists are organising protests against Putin's war. Read their manifesto and call to action here . Please take a photo in solidarity with women and feminist activists in Ukraine and Russia, send to womensolidarityukraine@gmail.com and/or tweet with the hashtags #IWD2022 #Ukraine #UkraineWomen #FeministAntiWarResistance #FeministsAgainstWar Posters to print off and use: • "Trade Union Women Stand With Ukraine" • "No to Putin's War! Stand with Ukraine!" (this also includes a poster with the main slogan blank so you can print out and add your...

There was a time when the River Thames was an open sewer. Contemporary diarists tell how the stench was great that it was impossible to walk by the side of the river and not choke. Today, the pollution has a different origin and it doesn’t smell. The “laundromat” of “Londongrad” processes the huge amount of Russian money sloshing around the capital and has turned it into a thief’s paradise, corrupting anything and everything it touches. In the (anonymous) words of one Russian financier, “In London money rules everything. Anyone and anything can be bought”. In 2002 the Blair government brought...

This article, written in January 2020, is republished from the Clarion magazine website . In February 2022, as tensions mount over Ukraine, opposition to NATO is being misused by many on the left to alibi Russian imperialism - which is the main issue in the Ukraine conflict. Nonetheless it remains necessary for the left to oppose NATO. When the New Statesman published Paul Mason’s provocatively titled article, “How the left could save Nato” , in late November 2019, it attracted a deserved torrent of criticism. Left activists unsurprisingly objected to the idea that Labour’s social-democratic...

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and his comrade, fundamentalist monk and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath Starting on 10 February, the giant Indian state of Uttar Pradesh - population over 230 million! - is voting in crucially important state elections, in a major test of how much last year's victorious farmers' struggle has pushed back India's far right. The left and labour movement in the UK should be paying much more attention. Many farmers’ leaders are vocal about their desire to drive Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government from power. In March 2021 much of...