Workers' Liberty

By Paul Hampton

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

By Sean Matgamna

There are two basic lines of possible working class policy in relation to the European Union.

The first advocates building on what the bourgeoisie has created and uniting the working class across the EU to fight the bourgeoisie for democratic and social reform and, in the course of doing that, building towards socialist transformation by working-class revolution on a European scale.

By Daniel Randall

Solidarity is published by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, AWL. The first thing the AWL stands for is the idea of socialists being organised. We believe that individual socialists, no matter how right their politics or good their intentions, can never be as effective as an organised, educated, activist socialist group.

The Greater London Authority and Ken Livingstone are supporting the London ESF. A demonstration of the progressive politics of the London Mayor perhaps? Not quite. John Bloxam examines his record.

By Mick Duncan

No Sweat, the British anti-sweatshop campaign, began life as a national network a little under three years ago. During those three years the organisation has extended the breadth and scale of its work, which has included drives against sweatshop bosses abroad and in the UK.

By Martin Thomas

Iraq has a growing new labour movement — independent trade unions, unemployed movements, women’s organisations, and working-class political parties.

In oilfields, oil refineries, the railways, factories, and elsewhere, workers have organised trade unions and sometimes won victories by removing Ba’thist managers or improving wages.

A is for ATTAC

The biggest “movement for another globalisation” in France, which has a large international network. It has a considerable overlap with official politics, for example in the French Socialist Party. But some revolutionaries are active within it.

By Mark Osborn

How can exhausted, downtrodden workers, bombarded with prejudices, come to see their place in the world as part of a revolutionary class? Or will better-off workers always see their interest in getting what they can out of the system, and will worse-off workers always be helpless objects for charity and welfare?

By John O’Mahony

In 1991, after the collapse of the USSR, we went on the streets with the headline: “Stand up for socialism”, and the strapline: “Stalinism was the opposite of socialism”.

A common response, gleeful or sad, was: “Socialism is dead, darling!”

The Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) is the biggest left group in Britain. Earlier this year the SWP and some other socialists put a big effort into a Respect election campaign for the European Parliament (held on 10 June). The election campaign was organised around the politics and personality of George Galloway MP, a figure who will be prominent at the ESF. But was it left-wing? Does George Galloway deserve to be a hero of the left? Does the SWP’s self-submergence in Respect help socialist and anti-capitalist politics? Colin Foster says no.

Can we change the world without taking power? Without organising ongoing, structured, political movements (parties)? John Holloway, in a much-read book (Change the World Without Taking Power, Pluto 2002) says we can.

The AWL draws on the “Third Camp” tradition in revolutionary socialism, stemming from the ideas of Leon Trotsky, and developed after Trotsky’s death by people such as Max Shachtman and Hal Draper.

By Colin Foster

Socialism means democratic control by the producers — the workers — over what is produced and distributed.

That’s how it will end poverty, class inequality, exploitation, boom-slump cycles and the trashing of the environment. That is how it will ensure good social provision for all, in place of the chaos and inhumanity of the free market.

From the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq

In one of the public health sectors in the city of Mosul, the Islamists have committed several misogynist crimes, in their thirst for blood and hatred for women.

Tariq Ramadan is one of the top-billed speakers at the European Social Forum, appearing on a panel to present “Voices of resistance and alternatives from the global South”.

In fact Tariq Ramadan is not from “the global South”, but a professor in Switzerland. His Islamism, presumably, is supposed to authorise him to speak for “the South”.

Contre les europhobes et contre les capitalistes européens !
Par Sean Matgamna.