Anti-Fascism

including Social Forums

older

To the young people of the United States

On November 2 you will be called on to vote for president - at least those of you who are over 18 and are US citizens and have a permanent address. Polls have shown that a clear majority of 18 to 35-year olds are opposed to Bush. And with good reason! In the last four years Bush has launched the country into two major wars, and it is the young who are called on to fight and die for the profits of American oil companies. The Bush regime has caused dramatic increases in unemployment, poverty, and the number of people without healthcare. Military spending is way, way up, while funds for education...

An A-Z of the “global justice” movement

A is for ATTAC The biggest “movement for another globalisation” in France, which has a large international network. It has a considerable overlap with official politics, for example in the French Socialist Party. But some revolutionaries are active within it. ATTAC France was launched in June 1998, following a call for an “Association for the Tobin Tax for Aid to Citizens” in the December 1997 issue of the magazine Le Monde Diplomatique. It now has more than 30,000 members, and other national ATTAC groups tens of thousands. For Tobin Tax, see T, below. There is an ATTAC-Britain, but, according...

Change the world without taking power?

Can we change the world without taking power? Without organising ongoing, structured, political movements (parties)? John Holloway, in a much-read book (Change the World Without Taking Power, Pluto 2002) says we can. He is wrong. If we don’t take power — if, to be more exact, activists do not agitate, educate, and organise to push the working class towards sufficient organisation, confidence and assertiveness for the working class to take power — then the Blairs and Bushes, the Schröders and Putins, will keep power. If, at points of crisis and turmoil, we counsel the working class to step back...

The psychopath

Mark Osborn reviews The Corporation by Joel Bakan “The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power” is the subtitle of The Corporation , a new film and book, released in the UK at the end of October. The book’s author points out that corporations have similar legal rights to human beings and asks: if corporations are like people, what sort of people are they? He concludes that, as they are legally obliged to put the interests of shareholders first, and place profits above all else — a pathological compulsion — the corporation is a psychopath! For example, General Motors knowingly put a fuel tank...

Eat yourself sick

Pat Longman reviews Super Size Me McDonald’s is having a bad time. UK profits are down by £61 million and have been steadily declining since 2000. The company brand — the famous arches — is in danger of collapsing. McDonald’s directors must be cursing Morgan Spurlock, the man behind the box office hit movie Super Size Me. Morgan got the idea for his movie when he heard that two girls in the USA were suing McDonald’s for their ill health. They lost their case because they couldn’t prove McDonald’s, and not other factors, had led to their plight. Spurred on by the court decision, Morgan Spurlock...

European Social Forum: You have to be there!

By Joan Trevor Last-minute preparations are being made for the 3rd European Social Forum, less than a month away. While it’s far from being the ESF we — or many others — would have wanted, it will still be an immensely significant and enjoyable event. Taking place mainly around Alexandra Palace in north London, and in the Bloomsbury area of central London, the ESF and fringe events are likely to draw 20,000 people — anti-capitalists, ecologists, socialists, NGOs, trade unionists, pacifists, of all shades of opinion. Readers of Solidarity should be there! The seminar programme, shrunken...

Reason in revolt: Why we fight capitalism even when it is 'progressive'

by Sean Matgamna On D-Day, 6 June 1944, an armada of ships and planes launched British, American and Commonwealth soldiers into a full-scale invasion of Hitler-ruled mainland Europe. The official celebration of the 60th anniversary of that momentous event cannot but arouse mixed feelings in socialists. We watch George W Bush and his junior partner Tony Blair, surrounded by the leaders of bourgeois-democratic Europe, rolling out the clichés and conventional bourgeois-democratic pieties. Yet, though pluto-democratic capitalism rules Europe still, it is a fact that those armies did in 1944-5...

Marx for which times?

I offer a different assessment of Daniel Bensaid's Marx for our times to the one given by Alan Johnson in Solidarity 3/40 . Marx for our times * is one of a number of books which Bensaid has published since 1990 to rethink Marxism in the light of the disconcerting events of 1989. Until then, Bensaid's current, the USFI, and many others had located their politics within a view of history as proceeding on two levels. The "underlying" history of the second half of the 20th century was relentless advance by the "world revolution" through more and more victories "against imperialism". It was both...

Issues in the global justice movement: Solidarity book reviews

Alan Johnson reviews Marx For Our Times: Adventures and Misadventures of a Critique by Daniel Bensaid Read this review here . Sacha Ismail reviews Diego Garcia In Times of Globalisation Read this review here . Cathy Nugent reviews Reclaim the State, Experiments in Popular Democracy by Hilary Wainwright Read this review here . Paul Hampton reviews Change the World Without Taking Power - The Meaning of Revolution Today by John Holloway Read this review here .

A to Z of the "new anti-capitalism"

[This is an expanded version of the article in the print edition of Solidarity] From 12 to 15 November, around 40,000 "anti-capitalists" will descend on Paris for the European Social Forum. Martin Thomas provides a guide to some of the main strands in the anti-capitalist movement A is for ATTAC, the biggest "movement for another globalisation" in France, which has a large international network. It has a considerable overlap with official politics, for example in the French Socialist Party. But some revolutionaries are active within it. ATTAC France was launched in June 1998, following a call...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.