Sixty-four years ago the American labor movement established May First as a day of demonstration and struggle for the eight-hour day.

This year the leaders of the American labor movement, AFL, CIO and independent, have joined with the most reactionary and anti-labor employers' organizations, the NAM and the United States Chamber of Commerce, to herd the workers into "Loyalty Day'' parades on April 29.

Brush the dust off the old Democratic Party election handbills and there in fading letters you read of happiness to come, of comfortable homes to rise out of slums, of higher standards of living, of security from cradle to grave, of guaranteed incomes, of blissful peace and opportunity for all. A glorious vista opens before us, if only - if only we will choose liberals or "Fair Dealers" and give them a thumping majority in Congress on Election Day.

The ideas of socialism are under attack from various sides. The Republican Party's main charge against the Fair Deal is that the Democrats are leading America "down the road to socialism." Austerity in Britain and all the economic difficulties of the British Labor Party government are blamed on "socialism." And finally, the totalitarian slave state in Russia and all its evils are pointed to as the fruits "of socialism."

'Now 'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;
Suffer them now, and they'll o'ergrow the garden
And choke the herbs for want of husbandry'
- Henry VI

In Solidarity 242 (18 April 2012), we began publishing a series of recollections and reflections from activists who had been involved with the “third camp” left in the United States — those “unorthodox” Trotskyists who believed that the Soviet Union was not a “workers’ state” (albeit a “degenerated” one), but an exploitative form of class rule to be as opposed as much as capitalism. They came to be organised under the slogan “neither Washington nor Moscow.”

The permanent exhibitions at the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green (East London) are basically collections of children's toys from over the last hundred and fifty years. By themselves they are well worth a visit.

John Brown, "Father of the Second American Revolution" hated slavery, and he believed that it could not be destroyed by peaceful means. He
thought the North was playing around with the question and had no intention of conducting a real struggle for the liberation of the

Eighty million Americans visit the cinema every week, and in the course of the next year or so, perhaps ninety million will see the film Gone With the Wind. Millions will get from this film their most powerful impression of the greatest civil war in history and one of the decisive turning points in modern history.

Eighty million Americans visit the cinema every week, and in the course of the next year or so, perhaps ninety million will see the film Gone With the Wind. Millions will get from this film their most powerful impression of the greatest civil war in history and one of the decisive turning points in modern history.

Two reviews of the important 950-page collection of documents on the classic pre-1914 Marxist debates on imperialism recently published by Daniel Gaido and Richard Day.

• Lenin's laboratory, by Paul Hampton
• The historic debate in full daylight, by Martin Thomas