The debate on “sex work” has divided the trade union movement. While the GMB has tried to organise women who work in lap dancing clubs, in 2009 the Trade Union Congress (TUC) Women’s Congress voted against a motion which supported… Continue Reading
There is a striking paradox at the heart of contemporary anti-capitalism. Many within the movement deny what is undoubtedly one of its defining characteristics: the very fact that it is political at all.1 The practical problems with this approach have… Continue Reading
Upon joining the Dagenham and Ilford International Socialists in late 1972 I was offered a special bargain price package of reading material. I eagerly devoured what was a fairly mixed selection of work but one pamphlet stood out: Chris Harman’s… Continue Reading
Michel Husson has criticised a number of Marxist economists, including myself, in the most stringent manner.1 He writes that: The crisis has given rise in recent months to a series of contributions characterised by a counterproductive and discouraging dogmatism…What these… Continue Reading
For those of us who joined the Socialist Workers Party from the mid-1990s—too late to have worked closely with Tony Cliff, Duncan Hallas, Paul Foot or Mike Kidron—Chris Harman played a special role. For one thing, he seemed more than… Continue Reading
A review of Gregory Elliott, Althusser: The Detour of Theory (Haymarket Books, 2009), £19.99 The economic crisis of the last two years has provided an extra impetus to the revival of interest in Marxism. A new generation is beginning to… Continue Reading
I first met Chris Harman in the spring of 1963, in Peter Sedgwick’s attic.1 We had gone to Liverpool for a meeting of the Young Socialist paper Young Guard. There had been a danger that control of the paper would… Continue Reading
The tone of media reports of the events in Honduras has been generally tongue in cheek, as if this were simply another episode in the ongoing tale of banana republics and their regular coups. On 29 October, for example, Sophie… Continue Reading
The Obama presidency is in a quagmire. The tremendous promise encapsulated in the campaign slogan “Change we can believe in” and the enormous expectations of reform after the Bush years have not been realised. Energy has given way to hesitancy… Continue Reading
We are coming out of the tunnel,” affirmed finance minister Elena Salgado creatively, when the third quarter unemployment figures came out in late October. 4,137,500 people were jobless, 17.93 percent of the population available for work. The Spanish state’s official… Continue Reading