Solidarity 474, 4 July 2018

The pitfalls of “everything is getting worse”

Until the late 1950s, with decreasing conviction, the official Communist Parties in western Europe promoted as a dogma the idea that working-class living-standards were falling because an iron law of capitalism made it so, and of course were worse than workers’ living standards in the USSR. CP writers were commissioned to select and shape statistics to “prove” that claim. In France, critical Marxists denounced this attitude as “misérabilisme”. Workers whose households had for the first time fridges, washing machines, TVs, central heating could not fail to conclude that the trade-union and...

Nationalising money?

At the session on nationalising the banks at the AWL’s Ideas for Freedom event (21-24 June), we had, alongside Patrick Murphy speaking for that policy, a speaker from the campaign group Positive Money. The Positive Money speaker told us that their policy is for “nationalising money” rather than nationalising banks. He presented it as a left-wing policy, similar in drift to but different in detail from public ownership and control of banks. In fact the proposal for “nationalising money” has a right-wing pedigree and logic. It originates in the Chicago Plan of 1933, written by economists who...

Bastani: time for an answer

Aaron Bastani of Novara Media had — after much to-ing and fro-ing — agreed to debate Brexit with us at Ideas for Freedom 2018, our summer school on 23-24 June. He didn’t show. The session proceeded with only an anti-Brexit, pro-free-movement platform speaker. Bastani has not responded to our queries about the no-show. It can’t be that he is too fumble-handed to cope with email and other electronic messages. On his Twitter page he boasts that he has a “PhD in political communications” (presumably, at that university, “giving straight answers to questions” is considered so advanced that it kicks...

Make Labour the "party of strikes"

There are many who think that trade unions have had their day. While new and powerful labour movements are emerging around the world, on the whole the labour movement in Britain is very much on the defensive. I was born at the end of the miners’ strike, and I am in no doubt that trade unionists are on the back foot. The trade union movement is now half the size that it was at its 1979 peak, with vastly fewer elected workplace reps and shop stewards. Strike numbers are at an all-time low. Around Momentum’s foundation, many debates fluttered around about post-class politics, with a big push to...

Socialism Makes Sense: Ideas For Freedom 2018 report

Just under 200 people attended Ideas for Freedom 2018, a weekend socialist summer school organised by Workers’ Liberty on 23-24 June in London. The title of the school this year was “Socialism Makes Sense”, and sessions aimed to make the basic case for a revolutionary socialist transformation of capitalist society. Another main theme was “challenges of a Labour government”, looking at the difficulties likely to be faced by a left-Labour government, for example in confronting the state, and the challenges for class-struggle socialists in relating to such a government and attempting to...

Stop the far right in West Yorkshire

On Saturday the 7th of July Leeds has the distinct non pleasure of playing host to two far right marches and rallies as well as the National Front carrying out a demo in Wakefield. In Leeds the Free Tommy group have twice before in June held demos outside Leeds Crown Court were Stephen Yaxley Lennon aka Tommy Robinson was caught trying to prejudice a trial and then sent down after pleading guilty to Contempt of Court. The first Free Tommy march on the 1st of June was completely unopposed and included a March through the centre of Leeds were there were chants of "Muslims off our streets". The...

Stop the far right on 14 July

On 14 July the combined forces of the far right will once again march in London in support of the imprisoned far-right “journalist”, and former leader of the English Defence League, Tommy Robinson. On 9 June, this far right — the Democratic Football Lads Alliances, For Britain and other groups — managed to mobilise up to 15,000 people to a rally in Whitehall. There is no guarantee this loose alliance will be able get the same numbers this time, but they should not be underestimated. The left, labour and anti-fascist movements need to pull out all the stops to build a strong opposing force on...

Letters to Solidarity 474

Leave voters cannot be ignored Martin Thomas ( Solidarity 473 ) appeared to, perhaps inadvertently, equate the European Economic Area (EEA) with the countries of Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Croatia. The EEA is more or less the whole of both the European Union (EU) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) — an enormous European single market across which there is free movement of persons, goods, services and capital including the right to seek residence in any member country. The UK, as a member of the EEA, would be part of a free trade zone covering the vast majority...

Morning Star at odds over antisemitism

We publish extracts from an article by two leading members of the Communist Party of Britain, Mary Davis and Phil Katz, which appeared in the Morning Star of 20 June. It makes a refreshing change from the absolute anti-Zionism and denial of antisemitism as a serious problem on the left that generally characterises that paper’s coverage of the subject. It is also good to see the paper carrying such sharp criticism of an earlier article published in the Star that clearly crossed the line into outright antisemitism. However, the fact that the offending article (now removed from the Star’s website...

Like the old PRI

Left populist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador won the Mexican presidential election on 1 July, but his victory offers little for the beleaguered Mexican working class. López Obrador, often known after his initials as AMLO, won over half (53%) of the vote, defeating Ricardo Anaya of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and Jose Antonio Meade of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Although López Obrador led in the polls for months, his victory was surprisingly comfortable considering the history of fraudulent elections in Mexico. López Obrador belonged to the ruling...

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