Bush explains he is engaged in a ‘crusade’ for freedom. Osama bin Laden calls for a ‘jihad’ against the new crusaders. Saddam Hussein portrayed himself as a latter-day Saladin. Maybe Blair thinks he is Richard the Lionheart. The debate about… Continue Reading
The name of Antonio Gramsci is regularly invoked internationally by people looking for a version of Marxism that avoids references to revolution. Roberto Robaina challenges this approach, criticising fellow Brazilians who use it. Brazil was one of the first countries… Continue Reading
Six years after its coming out party at Seattle, the anti-capitalist movement faces its biggest challenges yet. The movement has made huge advances. Its basic critiques have become mainstream. Walk in to virtually any bookshop in the world and you… Continue Reading
The message is repeated over and over again: ‘Europe has to change because of the rise of China and India.’ To question it, as the majority of French people did in last year’s referendum and millions of Germans in the… Continue Reading
Haifa Zangana and Sami Ramadani answered questions from Anne Ashford on the situation in Iraq as the third anniversary of the occupation approaches. I’d like to start with the question of sectarianism. How do you see the problem? Haifa Zangana:… Continue Reading
Venezuela has caught the imagination of people internationally. Three times in three years the country’s upper class, supported by the Bush administration, tried to get rid of Hugo Chavez—once with a coup, once with a lockout and finally with a… Continue Reading
The deaths on Thursday 28 October 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois north east of Paris) of two French kids of immigrant workers, Zyad Benna and Bouna Traoré, set off riots in working class outer city areas (banlieues) that have been the most… Continue Reading
‘In recent years,’ remarked the sociologist Emmanuel Todd in November 2005, ‘French political life has been nothing but a series of catastrophes. And each time the ruling class’s lack of legitimacy becomes more flagrant’.1 He was speaking in the aftermath… Continue Reading
Pierre Broué (1926-2005) who died in July, was one of the most important historians in the revolutionary socialist tradition. Broué became a Trotskyist in 1944. It was not an easy time. Militants faced lethal danger not only from the Nazi… Continue Reading
This October is the hundredth anniversary of one of the high points of the Russian Revolution of 1905—the strike wave that saw the formation of the world’s first soviet (workers’ council) in St Petersburg. In our New Year issue Mark… Continue Reading