Blogs

There is an ever-growing stream of media commentary on the Grenfell fire, increasing daily as the public enquiry unfolds. There are some elements in the media with the goal of obscuring or excusing the plain facts as part of a pre-emptive defence manoeuvre to protect those most implicated in what caused the fire and the 72 deaths. That they feel the need to use such distortions to defend the Grenfell landlords and those who ordered and oversaw the Grenfell refurbishment that fitted the lethal cladding only increases the suggestion of a general doubt on all sides about their innocence.

New year, old music, from a well-known score sheet played out by... the Left. A "Left" that’s not ashamed to dress itself up in populist clothes, worn in the service of state capital on the understanding that this is the way to open up markets as a "progressive realisation of the patriotic ideal and the concept of nationhood". In the name, of course, of the people and the "concept of community" as understood by those who are ready to recite the hidden virtues of a renewed "capital-socialism".

The article which follows is taken from the new edition of Revolutionary Perspectives (#14) which is just out. It was obviously written before the events which followed the British Navy’s seizure of the Iranian tanker, the Grace 1, off the coast of Gibraltar, but the substance of the analysis has not changed.

Capitalism is now undergoing a technological and scientific modernisation that is becoming a bomb ready to blow up the whole system. Humanity finds itself swept along in a vortex of technological innovations and automation.

What emerges, even among its younger representatives who are less involved in roles of responsibility, is the fact that politically speaking the Left has "abandoned" the poorest social strata and in every respect embraces the economic logic of the world in which we live.

Footage of protests in Iran in the aftermath of the Iranian military shooting down a civilian Boeing 737, killing 177 people as a result.

The article here, from our ICT affiliate in the United States, evaluates the longest strike by US car workers in a decade. After six weeks, members of the United Auto Workers voted for the union’s deal with General Motors.

The American assassination of Soleimani, the top general of the feared Iranian Republican Guard, has brought the world closer to major wars. The riots and protests in Lebanon, Iraq and in the second half of November in Iran have been replaced by war campaigns.

We wrote this short report about the elections and their aftermath for comrades abroad...

Let's cut through the media fog and get to the point. The American attack in Baghdad which killed 10 people, including two Iranian politicians and Qassem Suleimani, a strong man of the Iranian regime, poses a series of problems to which we should give precise answers, even if based for now only on piecemeal information.

For decades Latin America was the United States’ "backyard", although more recently it has also been seen as a den of "socialists". Today it is undergoing a deep crisis that spares neither the big countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela, nor the small ones such as Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.

Analysis of Labour's 2020 defeat.

The following thoughts on the strategy of democratic socialism forms part of our upcoming book reflecting on six years of working class inquiry and intervention in west-London…

What we are looking at in this election is the victory of the concept of nation over that of class. But then it could be said of all elections.

The document which follows is a translation from the French original. It was sent to us in the facsimile version kept in the NKVD files in Moscow by comrades of the Workers’ Group in the USA. The official stamp shows that the NKVD had received it by 8 July 1932 and, no doubt, it later played a part in sealing the ultimate fate of Gavril Miasnikov. Our translation is based on this version.

For years now the whole Brexit issue has diverted attention from the declining quality of life experienced by the working class in the aftermath of the financial crash. Now we have an election campaign where Labour and the Conservatives are vying to outdo each other as to how much they will increase state spending in order to end austerity. Labour's plans for a kind of soft nationalisation (a sort of John Lewis employee share scheme, “when the market will allow it”) and Boris' gob shite about the NHS (as the break-up continues) are not going to alter the fact that the working class is paying for capitalism's crisis.

On the left of the political spectrum there is no shortage of calls for the formation of “workers’ parties”, the transformation of existing parties into “real workers’ parties”, or this or that clique declaring itself to be “the party”. An endless alphabet soup of Trotskyist and Stalinist groups have dedicated their resources towards depriving this slogan of all meaning. So it’s no surprise at all that at first glance our work towards the formation of an independent and international political organisation of the working class, can come across as just more of the same.

A critique of "class consciousness" from an anti-Leninist perspective.

There is no time for hopelessness. Here are some ideas for what we can do – now – to fight back against the attacks we know are coming.

We read and reviewed David Ranney’s “Living and dying on the factory floor”, which was about his decision to put his academic career on hold and his subsequent experiences as a factory worker. [1] The following thoughts relate to this decision, which used to be widespread within the left.