Third Camp Marxism

The ongoing chaos around Brexit is having many detrimental impacts on PCS members’ working lives.

In Stratford DWP, hundreds of workers have been temporarily reallocated to Brexit-related work on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra). Members have said they want to ballot over this.

The concern is that DWP is looking to move work outside of London, where they don’t have to pay London weighting, so workers are worried that they might not get their DWP work back after the Defra project is finished.

Postal workers are discussing the timing of potential strikes, likely aimed at disrupting “Black Friday” retail deliveries on Friday 29 November, and/or Christmas post, after the Communication Workers Union (CWU) strike ballot returned a 97% majority for action on a 76% turnout.

The CWU’s Head of Communications Chris Webb, in an article for Tribune magazine discussing the successful ballot result, wrote: “Most crucial of all were our 1,250 workplace meetings.

When Avon jet engines being refurbished for use by the Chilean air force came into the workshop at the Rolls-Royce factory in East Kilbride, Scotland, from 1974, workers there decided to refuse work on them.

On 29 October Labour for a Socialist Europe is meeting to discuss its plans, including plans to organise an internationalist-left profile within the Labour campaign in the general election likely to come soon.

A basic leaflet is being printed, and an L4SE video has been produced. Other materials being discussed include:

Paul Vernadsky (Solidarity 520) wrote a valuable article on Marx and the environment, and a review of a book on the same topic. I want to pick up on one point.

Marx’s theory of metabolism is the starting point for explaining how capitalism generates ecological problems through the insatiable drive for capital accumulation.

Kohei Saito’s book, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy (2017), is the most extensive study to date of the roots of Marx’s ecology.

Bing. You have one new WhatsApp message — “What you up to?” asks one of my friends, “Nothing. Watching Drill videos”, I reply.

Drill eh? Isn’t that the music that literally kills you? I’ve heard it literally comes out of the headphones and stabs you as you listen to it.”

This article is a second excerpt from a document on climate change to be discussed and possibly amended by the forthcoming Workers’ Liberty conference. See the first half here. The document has since been updated. See a more recent version, in conference motion form, here.

On paper, almost all trade unions recognise climate change as a grave danger, and demand state action to combat it, with workers having a role in “a just transition”.

In 2013, the Australian journalist Ginger Gorman became the subject of an online hate campaign.

In 2010, she had interviewed two gay men, seemingly an ordinary couple, about their adoption of a young boy. Three years later the men were convicted of child sexual exploitation; they had been involved in an international paedophile network.

26 October was called “Super Sunday” because of the number of Labour parliamentary selection meetings held on that day – nine, and in important seats.

The most positive development was undoubtedly the selection, in a fiercely fought contest, of Nadia Whittome in Nottingham East. Nadia’s campaign was distinctive in terms of her advocacy of policies far to the left of mainstream “Corbynism”; her strong opposition to Brexit; her commitment to “working-class representation”; and her pledge to take a worker’s wage and to always submit to open selections.