Iraq does not exist. Syria does not exist. The carve up of the Ottoman Empire by the entente powers in 1916 is all but undone. The president of the Kurdish Regional Government Masoud Barzani has said a “new reality” now [...]
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Category "July 2014"
For a Yes Vote without Illusions: On the Scottish Independence Referendum
1 A decade ago, members of the Socialist Worker Platform within the Scottish Socialist Party (as I was then) had a clear, if unenthusiastic position on Scottish independence. If there was ever a referendum, then we would vote yes and campaign [...]
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For a No Vote without Illusions: On the Scottish Independence Referendum
The working class in Britain has been created in over two hundred years of common struggle against the British capitalist class and the British capitalist state. The advances that have been made by the working class such as the creation [...]
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Ukraine – No side but that of the working class
As we go to publication, military conflict continues in eastern Ukraine, following a decision by newly elected Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to end the ten-day ceasefire. Pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk have refused to implement the ceasefire, despite it [...]
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Working Class? . . . What Working Class?
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the [...]
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Rolf, Stuart, Jimmy, Gary, and the Others
A generation ago the ideal typical child sexual abuser was the lonely 'dirty old man' who roamed the streets trying to entice unwary children with sweets. In 2000, the tabloid pictures of a dishevelled and apparently manic Roy Whiting, the [...]
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Elections and the UK Left: Problems and Possibilities
Edmund Potts argues for a serious determination among socialists towards confronting our opponents in all spheres of politics, especially - despite all their limitations - bourgeois elections. TUSC and the significance of a serious challenge It is now more than three years [...]
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Life as a socialist at university
I’m a student at Exeter University, just graduating from doing history and politics but planning to continue my studies in MA history. Exeter is a university in the Russell Group and was a few years ago named the Sunday Times [...]
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Nuclear Power: a response
Colin Piper’s article on nuclear power quite rightly concludes that an international plan of production on socialist lines is the way forward to tackle the environmental crisis. Most on the Green Left, such as Derek Wall, reject this approach, arguing [...]
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Review: Thomas Piketty – ‘Capital in the twenty-first century’
Piketty’s book gives the appearance of a monumental work, surveying the development of capitalism over centuries. Marshalling extensive data he shows a disturbing growth of inequality in wealth and income in modern capitalism. Piketty outlines what he calls “the central [...]
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