Solidarity 435, 12 April 2017

Trotskyism and Maoism

The Irish Communist Group of the mid-1960s, the subject of the article “Stoking up on theory” in the last issue of Solidarity , was part of a wider scene of Trotskyist-Maoist regroupment efforts at the time. Stalinist Beijing and Moscow had fallen out in the early 60s. The Chinese criticised Moscow from the “left” — for instance, questioning the dogma of the Stalinist parties controlled by Moscow that there could be a peaceful parliamentary road to socialism. If you didn’t know, or let yourself forget, what and who Mao and his comrades were, it was good Marxist critique of Moscow and East...

Marine Le Pen’s Front National

Since 2011, when Marine Le Pen became the leader of the Front National, the presence of antisemitism (but not of racism) has decreased in its official public declarations. Marine Le Pen has tried several times to make an official visit to Israel; she has contacted the leaders of the American Jewish community, made appeals to Jewish voters, and so on. But evidence about what the activists and the local cadres of the FN say in internal meetings shows that antisemitism and even Holocaust denial are still current in the National Front. Moreover, all the polls confirm that the FN is the party that...

Erdogan tries to reinforce his power

On Sunday 16 April, Turkey’s voters will cast ballots in a referendum. They will decide on proposals from the ruling Islamists, the Justice and Development (AK) party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The main thrust of the 18 constitutional amendments that will be voted on as a package is to highly centralise power in the hands of the President. If Erdoğan wins he will also be able to run in Presidential elections in 2019 and 2024, meaning he could be in power until 2029. Erdoğan is an unpleasant, thin-skinned Islamist authoritarian who has used a coup attempt last summer to persecute all...

Chechnya: stop anti-gay state killings

Over 100 men suspected of being gay have been rounded up and detained by the Chechen authorities, with many tortured and some killed. Chechnya has an authoritarian and extremely repressive state presiding over a deeply homophobic society, but this development is shocking even in this context. Some of the suspected gay men were killed in violent raids, whilst others have been kept in secret “concentration-camp style” prisons, where many have been subjected to electric shocks and violent abuse, with some beaten to death. Very few people are openly gay in Chechnya, and much of the torture aims to...

Open up the student movement!

The National Union of Students Conference takes place from 25-27 April in Brighton and, once again, we will be in attendance. It promises to be three days of constant campaigning, debating and flogging Solidarity and other publications. Malia Bouattia is re-standing for President against two right-wing candidates. While credit is due for her commitment to campaigning for a free and liberated education system, there remain many criticisms of her twelve months in office. The limpness of last November’s national demonstration indicates the union’s disengagement from grassroots organising. Workers...

End the "tampon tax” Stop funding anti-abortionists!

In March last year, then Prime Minister David Cameron announced to Parliament that the 5% VAT levy on period-related products — the “tampon tax” — would soon come to an end. Parliament was told the European Commission would allow countries to extend zero rates on VAT, and more generally to have more autonomy over the VAT applied to individual products and services. The European Court of Justice has been called upon numerous times to clarify the rules about individual, esoteric products and services — such as whether or not coin-operated booths in a Bruges sex shop counted as a cinema. Former...

Syria: the return of US “world policing”

During the US election Trump’s advice to Obama was, “do not attack Syria... if you do many very bad things will happen and from that fight the US gets nothing.” Therefore Trump was not heeding his own advice when he gave the go-ahead for 59 missiles to be fired at an Assad military airfield on 6 April. Trump’s non-interventionist stance had been based on an assessment that the Syrian opposition is dominated by various strands of Islamism, while Assad is a known quantity. In October 2016 Trump said: “If they ever did overthrow Assad... you may very well end up with worse than Assad.” While...

Ken Livingstone: Bad History, Worse Politics

Other articles relevant to the Ken Livingstone controversy AWL statement on how we think Livingstone should be dealt with Ken Livingstone and the "anti-Zionist" left Trotsky and the Jewish question Jeremy Corbyn, Zionist? Over the past twelve months Ken Livingstone has made a succession of jumbled and frequently contradictory claims about the relationship between Zionism and Nazi Germany. Even allowing for their incoherence, they add up to bad history and even worse politics. It began in April of last year with his claim in a radio interview: “When Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy...

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