Solidarity 053, 10 June 2004

I think I will vote Respect in the Euro elections despite taking on board the very real criticisms levelled against them by Workers' Liberty. I don't think that you can ever vote for a party uncritically anyway. I can't bring myself to vote Labour anymore, nothing in their manifesto, policy or action is left-wing. Whatever battle has gone on in the Labour Party the working class have clearly lost. Galloway may have some dodgy views (and a dodgy past) but his views, e.g., on abortion are not Respect policy, just personal views. Most Respect candidates I'm sure would disagree with Galloway's pro...

Ronald Reagan's death at the age of 93 has prompted a wave of gushing eulogies. The entire US nation, we are informed, is grief stricken. President Reagan restored the US's confidence and single-handedly ended the Cold War… So they say. Actually, Ronald Reagan was widely hated and rightly so. And not only in those tiny Central American countries that his government invaded, but also by the US workers. Reagan became President during a economic crisis for US capitalism. His solution was an aggressive attack on American workers and the poor. Like Thatcher in the UK, Reagan cut back the precious...

Dear comrades, Over the last couple of months, you and some other socialists have put a big effort into the Respect election campaign. Has it been worth it? If Respect does get a reasonably big vote, that will not be because of the general leftish talk that it shares with the Greens. It will because of the chosen cutting edges of its campaign. Respect promotes George Galloway as its hero. All its ballot papers, everywhere, say: "Respect - the Unity Coalition (George Galloway)". Respect's own definition of success is getting Galloway into the Euro-parliament. For sure, it is Galloway's! George...

(Article written in 2004) On 4 June 1989 the Chinese Communist Party savagely repressed the Tiananmen Square democracy movement that had grown to threaten its rule over the previous three months. The student-based protest had occupied Tiananmen Square at the heart of Beijing. The Tiananmen movement has been remembered as an overwhelmingly student-based protest movement, well summed up by the iconic image of students defying the tanks of the Chinese army. But, though students took the lead in establishing the encampment in the square, it was ultimately the intervention of the working class that...

The last issue's interview (Solidarity, 3/52) with London Mayor candidate Lorna Reid showed up both strengths and weaknesses in her group, the Independent Working Class Association (IWCA). The left in general tends to dismiss the IWCA, writing them off as reactionary. But I think it has several good points. It does patient work in communities. Some IWCA groups have been at the heart of important campaigns, and are usually better at involving people and pursuing an effective strategy than the left's standard parachute-in-and-tell-them-how-to-do-it method. While the left has failed to build a...

The first two letters of this exchange appeared recently in the letters page of the Guardian newspaper. The Guardian has not printed Sacha Ismail's reply to George Galloway's reply. Sacha is a member of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty. Since George Galloway cannot seriously believe Respect is going to win any election, his desire to "defenestrate" Blair [by purely electoral means - in the uncut letter] implies a silent coalition with the Tories, Lib Dems and all other anti-Labour forces (Mea culpa, June 2). A vote for Respect is not at all "unambiguous": it is a vote not only against the...

By Vicki Morris The European Social Forum in London on 14-17 October will be a great event, be in no doubt. Thousands, hopefully tens of thousands, will come from all over Europe and beyond to discuss all the issues of concern to people who oppose capitalism and people who at least want to reform it. And the ESF will not be just a talking shop. The assembly of the social movements held at the end of the ESF will decide on initiatives for common action across Europe, against war, against privatisation, around EU developments. The Alliance for Workers' Liberty will play a full role in building...

Martin Thomas concludes a series on "Marxists and the workers' party" with a warning against fetishising the trade-union-based forms of "old Labour" In 1909, Karl Kautsky, then a Marxist, wrote that moves to set up trade-union-based Labour Parties in continental Europe "must be fought with all the means at our disposal" (Neue Zeit, July 1909, Vol.13 no.7, pp.316-28). Lenin, a few years earlier, had opposed the call for a broad "labour congress" in Russia. "A labour congress means 'taking down the signboard'… it means merging with the Socialist-Revolutionaries [populists] and the trade unions…...

Click here for the series on The Roots of Bolshevism of which this article is part By John O'Mahony The 'Tsar Liberator', Alexander II, was on the eve of his death ready to make some concessions to the reform-minded liberals. The work of the Narodnaya Volya assassins put an end to reform from above for a generation. In the 1880s and 90s, the Tsarist regime was a frozen ice-cap on top of Russian society. Underneath that inert political regime, Russian capitalism expanded. Market relations became dominant in more and more of Russian life. The working class grew with the growth of industry. Great...

Paul Hampton reviews Historical Materialism 11/4 (2003) £10 Why is the American labour movement so weak, given the rapid development of capitalism in the United States over the last 150 years? Why is union density now so low (15%) and why has no workers' party developed in the US? Does this mean socialism has failed, given the Marxist argument that economic development constitutes the basis of politics? The latest issue of Historical Materialism journal contains illuminating material on these questions, providing valuable historical context to discussions on working class representation in the...