Left groups and people

IMT members in Brazil demonstrate alongside the Brazilian Communist Party in support of Russian nationalist rebels in Eastern Ukraine (2014) On 24 January, after almost two months of silence since the new Russian threats to Ukraine began, the International Marxist Tendency website, run by the Socialist Appeal group and its co-thinkers, published an article by Jack Halinski-Fitzpatrick with the title “Will Russia invade Ukraine?” As we’ll see, Halinski-Fitzpatrick’s article is blander, less overtly pro-Russian, than what SA has put out in the past. But in a way it is worse: in 3,677 words, it...

On 23 January sign-ups close for the "Popular Primary" for left candidates for the French presidential election, for which the first round will be 10 April. Two individuals - one a sometime Green activist, one an "entrepreneur" who had launched and run an NGO aimed at improving understanding and cooperation between people of different backgrounds - set up "Popular Primary" in February 2021. Raising funds online, they now employ 18 full-time-equivalent staff and (as of 17 January) have 250,000 people signed up and making a token payment to take part in the online "primary" on 27-30 January. In...

Click on to the website of the Socialist Action group and the banner at the top of the Home page tells you what to expect. There is no place here for Marx, Trotsky, or Lenin. But enough space for pictures of Malcolm X, Chavez, Castro and Guevara. That certainly sets the scene nicely. Socialist Action was one of the splinters that emerged in the mid-1980s from the break-up of International Marxist Group (from 1982 renamed Socialist League). Inside the IMG the faction that eventually became the current Socialist Action group had traditionally been led by John Ross. Socialist Action was launched...

(From Marxism vs Ultra-Leftism , a 1967 pamphlet). Click here to download as pdf But the logic of subjectivism, of extreme factionalism, is merciless. Having begun on this course out of need to find self-justification for their sectarianism, of need to distinguish themselves at any cost and on all issues from the world Trotskyist movement on which they put the label, “revisionist,” and having reduced the Marxist method from an instrument for analysing objective reality in order to be able to change it in a revolutionary way, into an instrument for justifying their own existence, the Healyite...

According to the Telegraph and the Daily Mail , Jeremy Corbyn’s inner circle is thinking of quitting the Labour Party and standing Corbyn as an independent in Islington North in the general election likely in 2023 or 2024. It looks like malicious “stirring “by those papers. The Corbynista blog Skwawkbox claims Labour right-wingers have been feeding those Tory papers. Though Skwawkbox is unreliable, that is plausible. An exit would be a foolish move by Corbyn. His feeble “Peace and Justice Project“ does not provide the groundwork for a new party. Corbyn might gain local support (he has a good...

Two organisations proscribed by the Labour Party, Labour Against the Witch-hunt (LAW) and Labour In Exile Network (LIEN), have voted to merge. The merged group is making connections with Chris Williamson’s Resist movement and the “Workers Party of Britain” launched by George Galloway and the older Stalinist grouplet CPGB-ML. Resist also has links with the Socialist Party’s “TUSC” electoral vehicle. Four members of the LAW steering committee have resigned in protest at the merger. Both LAW and LIEN subscribe to the idea that the entire issue of antisemitism in Labour was a fake and an invention...

TUSC embraces Chris Williamson Galloway and Bannon Batley and Spen Labour victory despite Galloway threat Notes on a debate with Tony Greenstein George Galloway and Respect Weekly Worker

In the Morning Star of 18 November, former Straight Left ultra-Stalinist Nick Wright, now rehabilitated into the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and a regular contributor to the paper, had a lengthy article headed “The truth about immigration waits at the Polish border” While rightly condemning Poland and the EU over the plight of the people at the border, Wright glosses over Lukashenko’s cynical manipulation of desperate migrants in his efforts to destabilise the EU (while his master Putin gloats from the sidelines), and reports of Belarusian troops forcibly turning back migrants attempting...

While the US administration labours to squeeze a now-much-reduced social-spending plan through Congress, on 17 November the Senate voted by a big bipartisan majority to expedite procedure on a huge military budget. That budget has already gone through the House of Representatives by a big majority, with Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others from the “squad” voting against. In the Senate, Bernie Sanders spoke out against the budget and for at least a reduction. Day after day, here on the floor and back in their states, many of my colleagues tell the American people how deeply concerned...

Édouard Taubé, who was known as Mody and who wrote under the pen name Gil Lannou, left us on 13 November last, after suffering two strokes in a single week.