WL Aus debate | Workers' Liberty

Antonio Gramsci: working-class revolutionary

Submitted by martin on 25 September, 2012 - 6:59

Printed book out of print (second edition coming around mid-2014); e-version available below.

Antonio Gramsci was a leader of the Italian Communist Party in its revolutionary days, and spent all his last years bar a few weeks in Mussolini's fascist jails. The Prison Notebooks he wrote in jail have been quarried to justify many varieties of reformist or liberal politics.

Australia: Going soft on religious reactionaries won't advance women's rights

Submitted by Aussietrot on 3 November, 2006 - 3:33

The imam of Australia’s biggest mosque, in Lakemba, Sydney, recently caused an outrage after being reported as having “told a service at the mosque that women who do not wear the hijab, or headdress, are like uncovered meat.” In an apparent reference to the (actually 55 year) sentence given in a notorious gang rape case Sheik Hilaly was reported as saying:
“Sheik Hilaly said there were women who "sway suggestively" and wore make-up and immodest dress "and then you get a judge without mercy (rahma) and gives you 65 years." The Australian, 26 October.

Against Howard's legislation: make the unions fight for full rights!

Submitted by AWL on 2 October, 2006 - 3:09

A discussion contribution from Martin Thomas. The left, in my view, should pick up and run with the proposals recently published by the ACTU, "A fair go at work: collective bargaining for Australian workers".

They need to be supplemented, but they include provisions which would give Australian workers a workable legal right to organise, gain union recognition, and get union-negotiated agreements.

Trade unionism, capitalist competition and fragmentation of bargaining

Submitted by martin on 2 September, 2003 - 2:03

Discussion notes on the working class in "globalised" capitalism

Lash/Urry discussion notes 8: Capitalist competition and fragmentation of bargaining

The main theme of Lash/Urry's chapter 8 is the trend for trade-union bargaining to become more fragmented. Company bargaining, plant bargaining, or even departmental bargaining replaces overall national collective bargaining.

About the factual trend they are right. Sixteen years after they published their book, there can be no doubt about it.