Workers' Liberty 21, May 1995

Left must tell SWP: 'This is not on!"

By Chris Jones* I joined the International Socialists in 1973 and was finally expelled at the 1994 SWP conference. When I first came into contact with IS, in the late 1960s, I was still in the Labour Club at Lancaster University. The thing that impressed me was their engagement with current issues. That fed into the theoretical issues. I read the magazine International Socialism. What struck me was their refusal to get involved in “crisis mongering” — in contrast to the Militant and, in particular, Healy’s organisation. The IS seemed to look at the issues in terms of long-term development...

This IS/SWP Tradition: The Experience of The Left

The SWP is, despite everything, the biggest self-styled revolutionary Marxist organisation in Britain today. More than that: there are a lot of ex-IS-SWP people around. It is now what the Healy organisation was in the late 50s and through the 60s — “a machine for maiming militants.” Politically, it has assumed the traditional role of anarchism. It is a movement of incoherent militant protest living politically from moment to moment, with no strategy and not much in the way of stable politics. It has one goal only — to “build the party”: the party conceived as a fetish outside of politics and...

“Half echo of the past, half menace of the future”

By Mark Osborn The Economist believes that the Algerian government is likely to fall to fundamentalism. If it does, the repercussions will be felt right across the Muslim world and far beyond. The Economist concludes that “we” must “live with Islam,” which is “not like communism, something to be resisted tooth and nail.” They think “Islam is a force for good, offering a moral underpinning for a world that surely needs one.” The Economist wants the bourgeoisie to learn from the worst experiences of the “Islamic Revolution” in Iran (1979). The ruling class must not “overreact”, but to trust to...

Gramsci: In the aftermath of the Turin factory occupations

By Antonio Gramsci The proletarian vanguard, which today is disillusioned and threatened with dissolution, must ask itself whether it is not itself responsible for this situation. It is a fact that in the General Confederation of Labour there is no organised revolutionary opposition, centralised enough to exercise control over the leading offices and capable not only of replacing one man by another, but one method by another, one aim by another and one will by another. This is the real situation, which lamentations, curses and oaths will not change, only tenacious and patient organisation and...

Fabianism, Stalinism and Blair’s new Clause Four: From state bureaucracy to market bureaucracy

By Roland Tretchet This magazine makes no apology for repeating certain basic truths. One truth that certainly bears repetition is that the idea that Stalinism equals socialism is pereposturous, the great lie of the twentieth century. This lie, more than anything else, has provided the ideological underpinning for Blair’s assault on Clause Four. It is the one thing that all liberal politicians, police dictators and media pundits can agree upon. Yet, if we take a step back and survey the full course of the evolution of the socialist and labour movement over the last 150 years, then we can see...

Russia: the return of the army

By Dale Street Widespread disillusionment with the results of market reforms and privatisation is now rife throughout the Russian Federation. This has combined with conflicts between different sections of the old Soviet elite to lay the groundwork for a resurgence of Russian nationalism. Despite Yeltsin’s incessant claims that the Russian economy is on the road to recovery, the country remains in the grip of deep economic crisis. Inflation and unemployment are rising, while the value of the ruble and living standards are falling. Industries often cannot afford to pay their own workforces. At...

Monthly shorts

More than 1,000 trade unionists and other activists have been arrested in a clampdown in Bolivia. The government declared a “state of siege” on 19 April — after a six weeks’ teachers’ strike, backed up by a three weeks’ general strike — and then police and troops raided a conference called by the COB, Bolivia’s TUC. The gap between the richest ten per cent and the poorest in Russia has increased from 5.4-to-1 to 14-to-1 over just the last three years. Thirty to forty per cent of the population are below the poverty line on official figures, though some ease their plight through the black...

How could Hitler win power?

As the establishment commemorates the 50th anniversary of the end of “Hitler’s war” in Europe, we take the opportunity to examine the question: how did it happen that Hitler, the crazy war-lord of German imperialism, was allowed to come to power? How did it happen that the German labour movement let Hitler smash it, without a fight? It was the most powerful labour movement in the world. Its majority party, the Socialist Party, was the mainstay of the Weimar Republic set up after Germany’s defeat in the 1914-18 war, commanding eight million votes and its own powerful organisations. The CP...

1945: The Internationale in Buchenwald

While the Allied press does its utmost to whip up a poisonous lynch spirit against the entire German people, the prisoners of all nationalities released from the Nazi concentration camps express warmest solidarity with their German comrades who were the first victims to feel the barbaric whip of the Nazi oppressor. At Buchenwald, one of the worst camps, the 15,000 prisoners organised an inspiring celebration of May Day, demonstrating the brotherhood of the world working class on this traditional holiday. Here is how PM’s correspondent [2 May] described it: “Many of these men… have been in...

The German Trotskyists' Response to the Nazis Taking Power (February 1933)

Smash Hitler. German Left Opposition Appeals for United Proletarian Resistance Hitler is Chancellor! Workers, do you know what that means? It means complete starvation and loss of all rights, it means the destruction of all the active elements of the proletariat! After the speeches of the Nazi leader, there can be no doubt of this. Hitler’s program is the complete smashing of all the political and trade union organizations of the working class, to clear the way for a still more monstrous impoverishment of the working class. The aim of his foreign policy is war with Soviet Russia. If Hitler...

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