Karl Marx

O, sing me not that song again My lovely Nora, dear, The strong, the proud defiant strain It breaks my heart to hear. Charles J Kickham(*) 150 years on from the Communist Manifesto, the spectre that haunts the collective imagination of Europe and the world is not the looming prospect of communism, but the experience of "communism", that is, Stalinism. Ours is an age of disillusionment. We live in the time after the fall of "utopia". Not only is "utopia" discredited and abandoned, so also - and the two are connected - is much that went to make up the old liberal commitment to social progress...

Published in the ‘Demokratisches Wochenblatt’ 1st, 22nd, 29th August and 5th September 1868 If I remember rightly, it was Goethe, who, on his death bed, called for “Light, more light”. Whether a lack of earthly light moved him to this, or, as the pious would perhaps have it, the prospect of heavenly light in the hereafter, the light of knowledge, which the present work has in abundance, has the same effect on me. “Light, light! That is clear, that is illuminated”, I rejoiced, when I was able to penetrate with my intellect one chapter after another. Mental labour is certainly necessary for this...

A series of 19 short videos on the key concepts contained in Capital vol 1 See Workers' Liberty's channel for other playlists , and individual videos .

The Marxist writer Moishe Postone, best-known for his 1993 book Time, Labour, and Social Domination , died on 21 March at the age of 75. He was also well known for his critique of left antisemitism. Born in Canada, he first studied for a degree in biochemistry at Chicago University, but then moved to studying history. He recalled a big student occupation in 1969, and a reading group on Hegel and Marx which came out of it, as turning-points in his development. He went to do further postgraduate study at Frankfurt University with Iring Fetscher, a philosopher in the tradition of the “Frankfurt...

On 1 March Donald Trump announced tariffs of 25% on steel imports, 10% on aluminium imports. Other governments are alarmed by this shift towards trade war. The OECD, a consortium of the world’s 35 strongest capitalist economies, has criticised the move. Further argument will come at the meeting of the finance ministers and central bank governments of the G20 (20 strongest countries) in Buenos Aires on 19-20 March. Socialists should be alarmed too, for our own distinct reasons. Socialists do not endorse capitalist free trade. We are not for the unfettered rule of markets. We are for fettering...

From Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy In England… permanent combinations have been formed, trades unions, which serve as ramparts for the workers in their struggles with the employers... The organisation of these strikes, combinations, and trades unions went on simultaneously with the political struggles of the workers, who now constitute a large political party, under the name of Chartists. The first attempt of workers to associate among themselves always takes place in the form of combinations. Large-scale industry concentrates in one place a crowd of people unknown to one another...

From Hal Draper's book Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution The historical problem in the socialist movement [before Marx] was seeing the positive side of trade-unionism; there was never any lack of denunciation of the limitations, deficiencies, and faults of trade unions. The socialist orthodoxy that Marx overturned leaned exclusively on the latter. [Marx, by contrast, argued] that “the working people, in the management of their colossal Trade Societies” also prove themselves “fit for administrative and political work”. This applies not only to the training of union officials — who sometimes...

Workers' Liberty is producing a range of badges, postcards and posters to help our fundraising drive. Badges Wear your revolutionary heart on your sleeve (or jumper) with our set of five badges — Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Eleanor Marx. 50p each when sold in person. Order a set of 5 online for £2.50 including postage. UK orders only, for international orders please email office@workersliberty.org to work out postage costs Postcards A set of 5 postcards with quotes from Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Eleanor Marx. 50p each when...

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“Anyone who thinks [Donald Trump] has dropped his vow to rip up the global trading system has not been paying attention”, wrote Edward Luce in the Financial Times (18 October), after the fourth round of US-Mexican-Canadian talks on Nafta, the North American Free Trade Agreement, closed on 17 October. The Mexican and Canadian governments were aghast at the US negotiators’ manner, and their push for arbitrary changes which would destabilise the agreement which dates back to 1994. There will now be a lull: a fifth round of talks on 17-21 November, and then another in early 2018. Peter Navarro...