King Abdullah of Saudi
Arabia is occupying the headlines of many newspapers with
his comments that Britain
failed to act on intelligence that could have prevented the 7/7 London bombings. Beyond
the response of the bourgeois media, what is the real relationship between the
West and Saudi Arabia?
Alan Woods talks to the ULU Marxist Society on the topic of ‘Marxism and Religion’. Alan explains the materialist conception of the world, integral to the theory of Marxism, and contrasts it to the idealist perspective that gives rise to religion. Alan explains the nature of religion as a means of consoling the oppressed with a life after death, the tendency of the church to break down along class lines, as well as the trade union credentials of God.
The UK Social Atlas
states that British society is becoming more and more segregated into
classes, and British people are becoming more and more conscious of the
class society in which we live. The report ‘finds’ that Britain is
becoming increasingly segregated along the lines of class, education,
income, occupation, health status and family type.
The privatisation of higher education has meant its complete distortion, as the nature of a university degree has become subordinate to profitability and the market. Academic schools are now ‘business units’, students are customers and the mark you get is open to manipulation for the sake of attracting potential new consumers. It is the ‘commodification’ of education.
Last Saturday, October
20th, hundreds of thousands workers and youth marched through the
streets of Rome, called out by the main left papers to put pressure on
the Prodi government to change its policies in favour of working people.
You’ve probably never heard of Punch Taverns. But you may well have
had a drink in one of their 9,000 pubs. Chief executive Giles Thorley awarded
himself £11.3 million last. Punch Taverns
has the biggest gap between executive and workers’ pay in Britain.
Wellred is pleased to announce the publication of our new
book, ‘What is Marxism?’, based on the highly successful series of study guides
issued by Socialist Appeal, this book brings together key
material and introductions on the three basic areas of Marxist theory:
Dialectical Materialism, Historical Materialism and Marxist Economics. Each
section of the book includes a clear and easy-to-understand introduction to the
subject aimed both at readers new to Marxism as well as those seeking to refresh
their understanding of Marxist theory.
Wellred Books at www.wellred.marxist.com are pleased
to announce that we have a limited stock of Ted Grant’s book ‘The Unbroken
Thread’ in stock and available to buy. Both Hardback (£11.95) and Paperback
(£6.95) editions are available.
The Indian Hindustan Times published an interview with Lal Khan in its
Sunday edition of 21st October. In this newspaper, which claims to be
the largest in the world with a circulation of 35 million, Lal Khan
openly defends the ideas of socialist revolution.
The British media has been giving enormous coverage to the manoeuvres of Benazir Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party and former Prime Minister, in seeking to negotiate a return to Pakistan from her comfortable exile in London. In this extract from a wider analysis (see Whither Pakistan on Marxist.com ), Lal Khan, leading figure of the Marxist tendency, The Struggle, explains what is going on.
After the Crimea conference, the British Communist Party leaders came
out with a position advocating a National unity government with the
Tories for the post-war period. This policy of class collaboration was
denounced by Ted Grant, who wrote in 1945
that, "to support Churchill is to support monopoly capitalism. To
support the capitalists, the interests of the working class must be
betrayed. It has taken the advanced British workers the experience of
50 years to realise that the Liberal and Tory Parties are parties of
capitalism."
In the period of intense and bitter struggles described in Part 1, the
massacre at Peterloo in August 1819 was just the most extreme example.
Arthur Thistlewood was able to gather around him a mixed collection of
other individuals equally impatient to bring matters to a head and have
it out with the country’s political leaders. They believed that violent
direct action was the answer.