Solidarity 469, 9 May 2018

Abbas and antisemitism

In a speech to a meeting of the Palestinian National Council held in Ramallah last week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas claimed: • Ashkenazi Jews were not descended from the original Israelites and therefore had “no historical ties” to Israel. • Israel was conceived as a European project: European politicians restricted Jewish immigration into their own countries but encouraged Jewish immigration to Israel. Israel was “a colonial enterprise that has nothing to do with Jewishness.” • The Holocaust and earlier waves of persecution of Jews were not an expression of antisemitism but...

NHS under resourcing in figures

Analysis by the Kings Fund has found that the NHS has among the lowest per capita numbers of doctors, nurses and hospital beds in the western world. The figures, compiled from 21 countries by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development show that only Poland has fewer doctors and nurses than the UK, while only Canada, Denmark and Sweden have fewer hospital beds. The UK has 2.8 doctors per 1,000 people, while Austria has 5.1 doctors per 1,000 of population. The UK has 7.9 nurses per 1,000 people, while Switzerland has 18 nurses per 1,000 people. The Kings Fund concludes that given...

Certification Officer rejects Coyne's claims

In a decision announced on 4 May, the Certification Officer rejected a complaint by Gerard Coyne that the General Secretary election conducted by Unite the Union last year had been in breach of the union’s rulebook. The election had been triggered by incumbent General Secretary Len McCluskey’s decision to resign – and then stand again. When first elected as General Secretary in 2010, McCluskey had promised to be a “one-term-of-office-only” General Secretary. But last April’s election was the third time he contested the position. His victory secured him a twelve-year term of office in total...

1868: a worker-socialist reviews Capital

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...

In Defence of the Bolsheviks: new book coming soon

Max Shachtman’s response to Ernest Erber in 1949, which forms the bulk of a forthcoming book to be published by Workers’ Liberty, deserves to be considered one of the classic polemics of the Marxist movement, alongside The Poverty of Philosophy, Anti-Dühring, and others. It summarises and vindicates the Bolsheviks’ work to build a revolutionary party and lead a revolution, and makes the case for continuing a similar effort in times both of high and of low political temperature. Over the last three years something like half a million people have joined the Labour Party, and done so mostly...

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