The problem with political anniversaries is that they often focus on specific dates in the past without any recognition that they are part of a longer process. Easter Monday 1916 is an iconic date in Irish history that all and… Continue Reading
Debates in Germany in recent years around the wearing of the hijab, Islamic religious instruction in schools, circumcision and claims of a “Salafist” threat continue to demonstrate the importance for Marxists to be clear on the question of religious freedom.1… Continue Reading
Ever since Marx and Engels proclaimed in The Communist Manifesto that the workers have no country, it has been an elementary and defining premise of Marxist politics that we are internationalists.1 There has never been a more clear proof that… Continue Reading
John Rose argued in his talk at Marxism 2014 that the German Revolution had effectively suffered terminal defeat by January 1919.1 The National Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils voted in December 1918 to hand power to the National Assembly… Continue Reading
More than three decades after his death, the ideas of Erich Fromm are enjoying something of an intellectual renaissance. Fromm (1900-1980) was a German-Jewish psychoanalyst, writer, public intellectual and activist whose life-long concern was with developing an understanding of the… Continue Reading
Simon Joyce has helped galvanise a long overdue discussion in International Socialism on the state of workplace class struggle in the UK.1 Though I partially disagree both with his claim that shop stewards have lost control of the strike weapon… Continue Reading
Significant discussion has taken place in recent issues of International Socialism, echoing wider debates in the movement, around the persistently low level of industrial struggle in Britain.1 This is part of a wider phenomenon internationally, but the debate in this… Continue Reading
The major global crises of the mid-1970s and 2008-9 provoked debates among the ruling class about the best economic policies to manage capitalism. For socialists and activists the question was different, and debates about whether and to what extent capitalism… Continue Reading
Something remarkable happened over the summer of 2015. Immediately after Ed Miliband resigned following Labour’s defeat in the general election, the grip exercised by Blairism over the Labour Party had seemed set to continue grimly on. The field competing for… Continue Reading
Up until ten years ago the British army boasted of an expertise in counter-insurgency warfare from which other armies could learn. Whereas the French had suffered humiliating defeats in Indo-China and Algeria and the United States had been driven out… Continue Reading