Solidarity 316, 12 March 2014

Facebook: the medium, the message and the Marxists

Martin Thomas’ article ‘Socialism, CPA and Facebook’ (SCPAF) in Solidarity 305 outlines some problems that emerge from the integration of social media into everyday life and its interaction with the culture of the left. Constant “noise” and distraction leading to a neglect of serious reading, erosion of the conditions for serious debate given a lack of depth to high speed responses, online abuse and diversion from offline politics are all real. The article relates these factors to more general social effects of the internet such as the decline of print media, an individualised access to...

Class and democracy in Bosnia's protest movement

Over the past month in Bosnia-Herzegovina, mass protests originating in workers’ struggles have evolved into autonomous citizens’ plenums calling for radical social and political change. Since the close of the Balkans war in 1995 an increasingly corrupt, nationalistic bureaucratic class married to a project of economic neo-liberalism has developed in the country. The dire social consequences have been the seed-bed of a new “movement of the dissatisfied”.1 Jasmin Mujanovic describes the political economy of the Bosnian elite as “accumulation through dispossession”, disguised by indignant ethno...

Could the miners have won in 1984-85?

The beginning of this month marks the thirtieth anniversary of the great miners’ strike. This article, by Sean Matgamna, written in 1992, at a time when the Tories were pushing through many pit closures, discusses the lessons of the heroic miners’ fight, and the effects of their defeat. It is a famous picture, the one of Arthur Scargill being arrested at the “Battle of Orgreave”, on 30 May 1984, where miners fought a long battle with troops of police and with police cavalry at a coke depot outside Sheffield. It was one of the turning points of the 1984-85 miners’ strike. What happened in 1984...

Ukraine: Russian troops out!

On 16 March the new government of Crimea will hold a referendum which, it says, is to ratify the government's decision to split Crimea off from Ukraine and join it to the Russian Federation. The "Left Opposition" group in Ukraine strongly attacks the Ukrainian chauvinism of the new government of Kiev. Yet it declares, rightly: "We are for the self-determination of Crimea only after the withdrawal of the Russian armies that are carrying out this flagrant intervention. We are for the self-determination of the people, and not of the mercenary elite who 'self-determine' so as to protect themselves...

Bob Crow, 1961-2014

“Whatever arguments we’ve had with him, and criticisms we’ve made of him, Bob was one of the best union leaders in the country, if not the best. His vilification by the right-wing media is testament to that,” said a Workers’ Liberty railworker after the sudden death on 11 March of RMT rail union leader Bob Crow. Whenever railworkers struck to defend pay or conditions, the Sun would cover it as Crow being a “union bully” who caused “misery for millions of commuters”. They would denounce him for living a council house, and “expose” him every time he went out for dinner or had a drink. He stood...

Russian and Ukrainian socialists speak out

In a statement issued on 1 March, the Russian Socialist Movement denounced Putin's invasion of Crimea. "War has begun. With the aim of protecting and increasing the assets of the oligarchs in Russia and in Yanukovich's coterie, Russia's leadership has undertaken an invasion of Ukraine... "It goes without saying that the peoples of Ukraine have a right of self-determination, of full autonomy and independence. But what we are seeing today has nothing to do with the democratic will of the masses. It is a brazen and cynical act of Russian imperialism, aimed at annexing foreign territory and...

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