Solidarity 273, 6 February 2013

Django, Lincoln, and the Most Revolutionary Idea

“The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the workers themselves” – that's a phrase which will be familiar to most Marxists and originates in the Rules of the International Workingmen's Association which Marx drafted. A century later, Max Shachtman wrote that “When speaking of socialism and socialist revolution we seek 'no condescending saviours' as our great battle hymn, the International, so ably says. We do not believe that well-wishing reforms – and there are well-wishing reformers – will solve the problems of society, let alone bring socialism. … We believe that task...

Expropriate the banks!

Fiddling around with ring-fences isn't enough. To organise investment for social benefit; to redress inequality; to give any reforming government the means it needs to fend off the pressure of global financial markets - there is no alternative but to expropriate the banks and high finance. They should be converted into a public banking, mortgage, and pension service, under public ownership and democratic and workers' control. The last five or six years have indicted the banks. Even the conservative Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf admits, though without drawing full conclusions, that:...

The Lincoln myth on film

The “second American revolution” was a two decade-long political and social upheaval, from the 1850s to the 1870s, which freed millions of black slaves (the Civil War, 1861-5) and drove towards a more radical transformation of United States society (Reconstruction). The radical phase of this revolution was defeated in the 1870s when the dominant sections of the Northern ruling class betrayed the former slaves and allowed them to be deprived of political rights in order to enforce labour discipline in a new, fully capitalist South – though the process of racial subordination was not completed...

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