Solidarity 078, 11 August 2005

Sacha Ismail begins a series on the US Civil War and its aftermath. This first part deals with the events of the Civil War itself. One hundred and forty years ago the United States was emerging from a revolutionary conflict the outcome of which would decisively shape its future development. The American War of Independence (1776-83) had liberated Britain's North American settlements from colonial rule. The US Civil War (1861-65) brought even more significant changes, destroying the slave-owning society of the US South and clearing the way for the development of the liberal-democratic...

David Merhav replies to Colin Foster in Solidarity 3/76, (“Social Revolution?”). There Colin argued that David was wrong to see a victory for Amir Peretz in a leadership contest for the Israeli Labor Party as a big breakthrough for socialism. David’s original article “Socialist hope for Israel” appeared in Solidarity 3/75. Comrade Colin Foster uses a terminology and information that seem to be taken from some bizarre analyses of the situation in Israel, in particular, and across the world, in general. Colin’s evaluation of the Israeli Labour Party and the unions stem from misleading or wrong...

Colin Foster makes a futher reply. David’s latest contribution and his original article read as if they are about two different countries. In his first article, the Israeli working class was striding forward. A victory for Amir Peretz as leader of the Labour Party could open the way to socialist revolution. The question of Palestinian rights was not a big obstacle because the big majority of Israelis agreed on two states. In David’s latest contribution, Israeli socialists are in a desperate plight. They have to “choose between” Ariel Sharon and “the fascistic settlers” who oppose even Sharon’s...

Bourgeois politicians praising other bourgeois politicians, even dead ones, is in the same category as self-praise. And as the saying goes, “self-praise is no praise”. Their “adversarial” posturing against each other. even where they agree fundamentally, is a sham. Why should we believe them when they belatedly discover that a departed colleague was an honest person, a humane presence, a great man who might-have-been, someone who, though on the surface an opportunist scumbag, was really a person of deep and unbudgeable integrity. Robin Cook died never knowing how highly esteemed he was in...

The mayor and the mullah Writing in the Guardian on 4 August, Ken Livingstone, under the cover of discussing the London bombings, once again defended his links with the Islamist preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Qaradawi, readers will recall, is a reactionary bigot (see Writing on the Wall this issue for further evidence). According to Ken, the political division is between those who want to ban Qaradawi from the UK and those who favour treating him as an honoured guest, representative of all Muslims and progressive thinker (his own position). Nothing in between Livingstone argues that Qaradawi’s...

In last week’s Looking Left column, the article entitled “LabourStart a Zionist front?”, which defended trade union new website LabourStart from the accusations of Tony Greenstein, also described the site’s founder Eric Lee as “[soft] on the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza”. This claim was totally without foundation and we apologise to Eric for making it.

Saturday 17 September Noon-6pm. St Mary’s Community Centre, 302b Upper St, London N1 Professionally-staffed creche provided Sessions include Disputes: how to win them Pensions: a strategy to win Partnerships: can they work for workers? Equality: the fight goes on Iraqi trade unions: building solidarity Mergers, Super-unions & union structure £10 (full-time), £6 (part-time), £5 (low waged) Send money to: AWL, PO Box, 823, London, SE15 4NA Click here to book online Email dayschool@workersliberty.org for more information.

Jim Byagua reports on the 2005 conventon of the AFL-CIO, the United States’ trade union federation. The AFL-CIO convention, which took place in Chicago on 25-8 July, was witness to two important developments. One concerned the split in the American labour movement, the other, the US occupation of Iraq. Four of the biggest affiliated unions — SEIU service employees, UFCW food and commercial workers, UNITE HERE textile, hospitality and retail workers and the Teamsters — boycotted the event. Two unions, LIUNA laborers and UFWA farm workers, did attend, but are working with the boycotters as well...

The leading American Trotskyist, James P Cannon spoke at a memorial meeting in New York for Leon Trotsky on 22 August 1945. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had just taken place (August 6 and 9), and Cannon used the occasion to express his outrage at the atrocity. What a commentary on the real nature of capitalism in its decadent phase is this, that the scientific conquest of the marvellous secret of atomic energy, which might rationally be used to lighten the burdens of all mankind, is employed first for the wholesale destruction of half a million people. Hiroshima, the first...

This article about Leon Trotsky was written in 1943 by Victor Serge for the radical-cultural review Partisan Review He was hardly forty-five when we began calling him “the Old Man” as we had Lenin at a similar early age. All his life he gave one the feeling of a man in whom thought, action and his personal life formed a single solid block, one who would follow his road to the end, on whom one could always absolutely depend. He would not waver on essentials, he would not weaken in defeat, he would not avoid responsibility or lose his head under pressure. A man with so profound an inner pride...