“Another World Is Possible!” announces a placard held by a demonstrator on an unspecified global justice movement protest. The photograph is the background graphic of an advert. Above it the Shell logo. The advert is for a conference sponsored by… Continue Reading
Mike Gonzalez has written on Venezuela in this journal and elsewhere. Following his recent visit he answered questions from International Socialism about the latest developments We hear a lot about a “mass movement” in Venezuela. What were your impressions of… Continue Reading
It may not be an accident that Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957), perhaps the greatest archaeologist of the 20th century, committed suicide within a year of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.1 For Childe was not just a leading academic, prehistorian and… Continue Reading
Stefan Bornost, editor of the magazine marx21, spoke to International Socialism about the growth of German’s new left wing party The rise of a new force, Die Linke (The Left), is causing political earthquakes in Germany. Die Linke was founded… Continue Reading
Is the Cold War returning? Relations between Russia and the West now are at their lowest point since the mid-1980s, and some in the West are happy to interpret this as an impending return to the days of the Cold… Continue Reading
This Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Lecture was delivered in London, November 2006. The prize was awarded for Kevin Murphy’s book, Revolution and Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory Ten years ago1 Eric Hobsbawm presented his Deutscher… Continue Reading
Sameh Naguib, an Egyptian socialist, spoke to International Socialism about the current strike movement and its political backdrop, including the role of the million-strong Muslim Brotherhood Egypt was gripped by a wave of strikes over the summer. How did this… Continue Reading
On the fifth day of the strike by fuel supply workers a comrade and I drove around Johannesburg from one filling station to another, searching for petrol. At the fourth dry one I started fantasising about being unable to get… Continue Reading
If the commentators and academic theorists are to be believed, the growth of global capitalism has as a necessary correlate a reduction in the level of working class struggle. Capital is “footloose”, we are told, able to respond to any… Continue Reading
When Gordon Brown took over from Blair the biggest obstacle to refurbishing the image of New Labour was the war in Iraq. It remains an obstacle, despite the British withdrawal of troops from the centre of Basra to the airport… Continue Reading