In 2013, during his time as Mayor of London, Boris Johnson gave a lecture to city bankers in which he said: Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality… Continue Reading
Donald Trump was elected to the United States presidency in 2016 by the votes of the Christian right. Some 81 percent of evangelical Christians, who made up a third of the total electorate, voted for him. Not only did a… Continue Reading
Universal Basic Income (UBI), while having several differing strands of thought among its proponents, is in essence the proposal to introduce a single non-means tested, unconditional flat payment to all citizens regardless of employment status.1 Luke Martinelli provides a useful… Continue Reading
As I write this, a global revolt is shaking ruling classes from Hong Kong to Colombia, via Chile, Haiti, Catalonia, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq. Protest movements in the United Kingdom are not on the scale of those in other countries.… Continue Reading
Chris Harman died suddenly on the night of 6-7 November 2009, on the eve of his 67th birthday. He had been serving his third stint as editor of International Socialism. I took over editing this journal after Chris’s death. Ten… Continue Reading
December 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven, one of Europe’s greatest composers, a musician of a revolutionary era who revolutionised music.1 Why should socialists be interested? The answer is twofold. Firstly, the need for… Continue Reading
This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Third International—the Communist International (or Comintern), the organisation of revolutionary socialist parties around the world. The Comintern represented the hope of millions that the example of the Bolshevik Revolution… Continue Reading
The recent centenary of the Russian Revolution produced a renewed flurry of interest in the events of 1917 and reminded us of their huge impact. The focus of those discussions for revolutionary socialists was quite rightly the significance of the… Continue Reading
In March 2011 the Arab Spring arrived in Syria. Syrians had lived under the totalitarianism of the Asad family, first with the father, Hafez al-Asad (1971-2000), followed by the son, Bashaar al-Asad, for 40 years.1 This included a state of… Continue Reading
The election to India’s Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament) ended on 23 May 2019 with the stunning success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies. The BJP is a pro-business and Hindu-nationalist party. It bagged 303… Continue Reading