Solidarity 214, 24 August 2011

How workers can find their power

This is the second part of JT Murphy’s 1917 pamphlet The Workers’ Committee. Murphy was a founder member of the Communist Party and a Sheffield metal worker. Here Murphy outlines his socialist-syndicalist viewpoint: how workers organised in workers’ committees, plant committees and local federations of those committees could develop class consciousness as well as organise themselves to win class battles. The pamphlet remains a source of ideas for any union militant wishing to building rank-and-file organisation. More background and the first part can be found here . The next step to intensify...

Why did the Berlin Wall fall?

The Berlin Wall, erected fifty years ago by the East German state, was a symbol of the totalitarian Stalinist systems. The wall was a monstrosity and we are glad it was torn down by Berliners at the end of 1989. The collapse of Stalinism was a victory for freedom. Despite a wave of capitalist triumphalism that followed, the workers of the former Stalinist states are now able to meet, discuss and form their own organisations. Here, an editorial in Workers’ Liberty magazine of July 1990 examines the reasons behind Stalinism’s collapse in Eastern Europe. For over 60 years the typical totalitarian...

1911: a time of possibility

By Edd Mustill The summer of 1911 saw the high-point of Britain’s pre-war industrial unrest with a strike wave that engulfed the country’s ports and railways. On Merseyside, the situation developed into something approaching a regional general strike. It began with seamen in Southampton. The immediate issues were medical examinations, which they regarded as humiliating, and the employers’ “ticket” that the men had to pay for in order to be taken on any job. But the deeper underlying issue, as it was for many disputes during the “great unrest”, was that of union recognition. The Shipping...

Israeli reactionaries gain from Islamist attack

This week the Palestinians Asked the UN For recognition of The State of Palestine. They will not be put off With crumbs. This week the Israeli Social protest leaders Formed a Committee of experts To pursue their demand For an Israeli welfare state. They will not be put off With crumbs. Netanyahu has nothing to offer To either of them. (Advert placed in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz, by the Israeli left-wing peace campaign Gush Shalom) The mass Israeli protest movement for social justice, which has been gathering in strength since July, has been seriously set back in the aftermath of an Islamist...

Global finance markets extend their rule

Dick Bryan, professor at the University of Sydney and co-author of Capitalism With Derivatives, spoke to Martin Thomas about the trends behind current US economic difficulties. For 70 years we have existed with the idea that the US dollar is some sort of quasi world money, even when, with the end of the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1971, it stopped being officially so deemed. Especially over the last year, the international consensus on the US dollar has come under threat. It is notable that when there was extreme volatility in markets after the recent dollar credit rating downgrade and great...

Oppose this class hate blitz!

Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered I’ve seen lots of funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen. And as through your life you travel, Yes, as through your life you roam, You won’t never see an outlaw Drive a family from their home. Woody Guthrie The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Falling fine acidic rain, The moral culture eats At the ties and fabrics of the society That makes, remakes, sustains and poisons it. Tory politicians, magistrates and press, ranting about “criminality”, “pure...

Is the future with Russia's workers?

Dave Osler compares a recent visit to Russia with his first in 1989. The first time I visited Russia, it was still the core of the experiment that will go down in history as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Mikhail Gorbachev was attempting to transform Stalinism into something nicer instead, and frankly not making a very good fist of it. The place was just opening up to the outside world in 1989, and I got a reasonably-priced package deal through a travel company tied to the old Communist Party of Great Britain. Also on the trip were two very prominent British Trotskyists. Somewhere or...

Our class needs consciousness, not “direction”

Much of the left’s response to the riots centred on the argument that the whole thing would’ve been positively progressive if only the “anger” or “rage” of rioting youth could have been successfully “channelled” or “directed”. This is not only thoroughly patronising but also a total misunderstanding of the importance of ideas for socialists. Patronising, because it implies that all we can expect from urban working-class youth is a formless “rage” that must be “channelled” and “directed” by an enlightened leftist elite. And a misunderstanding because it forgets that for our politics to win...

Riots: how are schools to blame?

As commentators wring their hands with anguish at terrible kids who have “lost their moral compass”, once again schools — including a lack of discipline in schools — are getting the blame. This misses the point... again. The incredible work being done in schools, by very dedicated people, is being done despite the education system, rather than because of it. Teaching Assistants and Learning Mentors (like myself) spend a lot of their time not assisting in the academic learning but in trying to convince the kids they work with that they are not the “crap” or “losers” or “failures” or any other...

Help Dale Farm resist!

Dale Farm travellers’ community in Basildon, Essex has been fighting a battle against eviction by District Council for the past ten years. From the end of August they could face the bailiffs. The momentum of the current attacks on the travelling community stems from racism towards gypsies in towns like Basildon — reflected in the council’s willingness to spend £18 million on this eviction in a period of austerity and cuts, but nothing on providing alternative sites. Some of the cash for the eviction has come from the government but the bulk is being funded by the council. It’s a case of make...

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