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
Gordon Brown has got his honeymoon with the voters—or at least with enough of them for him to consider calling an early general election. He has not changed a single one of Tony Blair’s major policies. But the disappearance of… Continue Reading
King In Warning On Market Bail Outs Financial Times headline, 13 September, on a speech by the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King Bank To Bail Out Northern Rock Financial Times headline, 14 September, on the Bank of… Continue Reading
José Carlos Mariátegui nació en una sociedad en crisis, un Perú profundamente dividido entre el sector costeño donde estaba concentrada la mayor parte de la clase capitalista peruana, la zona minera del valle central entre Lima y Huancavelica, y la… Continue Reading
Andrew Kliman, Reclaiming Marx’s “Capital”: A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency (Lexington, 2007), £17.99 Since the publication of the third volume of Capital in 1894 Karl Marx’s analysis has suffered at the hands not simply of those who openly… Continue Reading
Gregor Gall (ed), Is there a Scottish Road to Socialism? (Scottish Left Review, 2007), £9.99 Growing up in the West of Scotland in the 1960s and 1970s, I commonly heard people remark at election time that if you stood a… Continue Reading
The rapid growth of the Chinese economy is gaining admiration not just from the columnists of the Financial Times, but also from sections of the left internationally. So the Left Front government in West Bengal in India (see Aditya Sarkar… Continue Reading
David McNally, Another World is Possible (Merlin, 2007), £12.95 There is a war being waged over corporate globalisation. The leaders of the G8 countries tell us we must trust capitalism to solve the problems of war, poverty and climate change,… Continue Reading