Workers Liberty 2/3

Babel-socialism in the light of the Kosova war

There is a story in the Bible about the Tower of Babel. Humankind starts to build a high tower to climb up to the heavens. Offended by this presumption in creatures He has created to be His helpless supplicants and playthings. God punishes them. Where before there had been only one language, humankind wakes up one morning speaking many —all the languages of the earth. God had ensured that the combination of divided humanity in such enterprises as building a tower up to heaven will be impossible in the future. Thus the old story-makers tried to account for the existence of many languages in the...

The texts and the method

From Workers’ Socialist Review no.2, 1982; reprinted in Workers' Liberty 2/3 Time and again the same quotations from Trotsky have been used to justify a pro-Argentine stance in the Falklands/Malvinas war But the main thing the quotations prove is the pro-Argentine comrades’ lack of grip on the points in dispute. Everyone in the WSL majority would agree that if the comparison with China and the other colonies and semi-colonies of the 1930s referred to by Trotsky is legitimate, then we would not invoke the character of the Argentine regime as a reason for not siding with Argentina. We could...

Introduction to dossier on the Falklands/ Malvinas, from Workers' Liberty 2/3

The Falkland Islands, small specks in the South Atlantic, were annexed by Britain and settled by British people in the 1830s. There had been no previous indigenous population. A century and a half later, in the 1970s and 80s, the islands were an odd little relic of empire. They had no huge economic or strategic importance. Their 1800 or so inhabitants, many of whom would move on to more clement climates after their time in the Falklands, had no desire to separate from Britain. Argentina had long laid claim to the islands — calling them the Malvinas — on the grounds that it was the nearest...

Why isn't Hamas the same as the Algerian FLN?

Islamism represents despair. It is not an alternative economic and political programme, but a retreat from having one, trusting instead in God. Old-style nationalism was for something positive and concrete in the real world. The Islamists of course have their ideology (or ideologies, plural, ranging from that of Sayyid Qutb to that of Khomeini) - but what it represents is essentially negative. Download and read the article: Why isn't Hamas the same as the Algerian FLN? by Clive Bradley.

Class politics versus bloc politics

Resolution for the Workers’ Socialist League (WSL, a forerunner of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty), 1982, later sections reworked in 1984. 1. Marxism and war A Marxist attitude to a war must start from an assessment of which classes are waging the war and for what objectives. On the basis of that assessment we determine our line not as supervisors of the historic process but as militant advocates of class struggle. Where a war, even under bourgeois leadership, is about an issue like self-determination for an oppressed nation — an issue which is a necessary part of the liberation struggle of...

The new world disorder: war and imperialism

Number 2/3 of Workers' Liberty magazine is a special issue on "The new world disorder: war and imperialism". For contents, and links to download articles from the magazine as pdf files, read on.

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