Workers' Liberty 2/1, September 2001

Dick Whittington's heir —The Truth About Mayor Ken Livingstone

25 Aug 2007 |

John Bloxam

Robbed of the official Labour candidacy by Tony Blair, Ken Livingstone defied the New Labour leaders and in the summer of 2000 was elected Mayor of London. No sooner was Livingstone installed as Mayor than he created a Tory-Liberal-New Labour “popular front” government for London. The most “left-wing” plank in his election platform had been opposition to Blairite plans to privatise London Underground. His record, as distinct from his reputation, for many years, at least, did not identify Livingstone as a leftist. Yet he had the support of many left-wingers in the Labour Party and trade...

In an age of barbarism

27 Jan 2015

This 2001 publication features an array of articles, letters and debate, many of which are helpful to understanding contemporary issues on the left. £3.50 + £1.60 postage This book contains the following articles: Socialists in an age of barbarism The left must unite Who are the anti-capitalists? Two critiques: "Empire" and "new imperialism" Socialists in the 2001 general election The politics of Ken Livingstone The new turn of the SWP The human genome Louis Armstrong China, and independent working class politics "Apparatus Marxism" in the Balkans war Sylvia Pankhurst and democracy Hal Draper...

Why did Cliff slander Shachtman?

09 Aug 2013

Click here to download as pdf Click here to download as mobi Click here to download as epub I: Why did Cliff traduce Shachtman? (Workers' Liberty 62) II: Was Stalinism the new barbarism? (Workers' Liberty 66) III: Attitude towards the Communist Parties (Workers' Liberty 2/1) I: Why did Cliff traduce Shachtman? Over the past ten years there has been a good deal of discussion in this magazine about the ideas of Max Shachtman. Shachtman was in the 1940s the foremost critic of Trotsky's view of Stalinism in the USSR, and together with his comrades in the Workers' Party/Independent Socialist League...

"Apparatus Marxism" and the Balkans war

30 May 2011

Apparatus Marxism, twin of academic Marxism Apparatus Marxism in the Balkans war, parts one to six Apparatus Marxism in the Balkans war, parts seven to nine and afterword

'Apparatus Marxism', Impoverished Twin of 'Academic Marxism'

23 Aug 2007 |

Sean Matgamna

“You who have really done something, must have noticed yourself how few of the young literary men who attach themselves to the Party take the trouble to study economics, the history of trade, of industry, of agriculture, of the social formations… The self-conceit of the journalist must therefore accomplish everything and the result looks like it…" — Friedrich Engels Introduction Watching the accelerating political and moral degeneration of the Stalinised “Communist International" in the mid-1930s, Leon Trotsky entitled one of his commentaries “Is There No End To The Fall?" Had he been forced...

Ours Is An Age of Barbarism — Why?

20 Aug 2007

“Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement” — Vladimir Lenin According to the classic account by Lewis H Morgan, “barbarism” is in human history the stage between savagery and civilisation; between the stage of “savage” peoples who are hunters and casual gatherers on one side, and on the other “civilised” people who have developed cities. In barbarism, human beings have become settled, regular producers; agriculturalists, herdsmen, handicraftsmen. Over thousands of years, these “barbarians” create all the prerequisites of civilisation. In barbarism, human beings had...

Is Cuba Socialist?

29 Jul 2007 |

Paul Hampton

This book is a pseudo-debate between Peter Taaffe of the Socialist Party and CWI (formerly Militant) in Britain and Doug Lorimer of the Australian Democratic Socialist Party (DSP). It is also, I guess, an attempt to check the recent rash of Castro-worship in the Scottish Socialist Party, with whom Taaffe maintains a strained relationship. The DSP, following the lead of the American SWP, rejects Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, preferring Lenin’s blurred and outmoded formula of a “democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants” as the programme for revolutions in countries of less...

Who are the anti-capitalists?

30 Sep 2001

The anti-capitalist movement exploded onto the world political scene in Seattle two years ago. There is very little material available on the development of the constituent parts of the anti-capitalist movement. Many commentators say Seattle “just happened”. In fact the movement seems to have different roots in different parts of the world. In the USA three streams converged at Seattle. - Direct action groups, many with anarchist-inspired politics, had grown steadily through the 1990s; many had already staged effective local protests. - Anti-globalisation NGOs, with significant staff, and...

China and independent working-class politics

30 Sep 2001 |

Paul Hampton

This article argues that a renewed socialism for the 21st century will be based on independent working class politics. It uses the “Third Camp” as a formula for summing up this essential element for Marxist history and for current intervention in the class struggle. China represents a fertile example in both these respects. In 1925-27 the Chinese working class lost a revolutionary opportunity because it was subordinated to bourgeois nationalism by Stalin’s Comintern; in 1949 the working class was absent because of the terrible defeat it suffered at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek. Mao’s...

Sylvia Pankhurst and Democracy

30 Sep 2001 |

Susan Carlyle and Sean Matgamna

The development of industrial society threw masses of women into the factories. Whole industries, like the cotton industry, had a majority of women and children workers, existing in terrible conditions of super exploitation; as Marx put it in Capital, “Robbed of all that had previously been considered necessary for life".(1) Middle-class women, on the other hand, were thrown into the home. Whereas previously such women, wives of artisans and so on, had taken part together with their husbands and children in production, now they became ladies of leisure, locked into the home. They were deprived...