Workers' Liberty 15, February 1992. Socialists answer the new right.

Sean Matgamna debates Roger Scruton. Click here to download pdf.

Sean Matgamna

When, recently, I debated Professor Kenneth Minogue, one important point he made against me was this: if you pin down a socialist about a particular regime in a particular country you invariably get the reply: this was not real socialism. Minogue made the point that it is very hard to know what we are arguing about. Ours is an idea which is never realised and therefore can never be criticised. On a certain level that is a reasonable point to make. So I will try to define what I mean by socialism.

Obviously,

Martin Thomas debates David Marsland. Click here to download pdf.

Martin Thomas

The free market is a cruel and unequal system. In a whole epoch of human history, nonetheless, it played a progressive role. Now it is possible to do better.

I shall also look at the relevance of the experience of Stalinism to the question of socialist planning

The free market is a system of inequality fundamentally because of one exchange which takes place within it, the exchange between worker and employer. On the face of it, this is a free and equal exchange. Selling your labour power is much like selling a sack

Sean Matgamna debates Kenneth Minogue. Click here to download pdf

Sean Matgamna

We are discussing “Is Socialism Dead?” because of the collapse of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. The question there is: what, if anything, did the Soviet Union have to do with socialism? Yet there is a more immediate reason why we are discussing this issue in Britain. For ten years now the British working class has suffered a series of defeats. If we had not had those defeats we would not have the climate of ideas we now have, and we would not be discussing issues in this way. Quite likely, there would be euphoria