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July 2011

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CLAY CROSS: A stand remembered

In 1972, the Conservative government of Ted Health introduced the ‘Fair
Rents Act’ which sought to push up rents for council house residents.
Labour councillors in Clay Cross knew that working class people could
not afford to pay the new rents and voted to refuse to implement the
increases. As a result, the councillors were taken to court, surcharged
and disqualified from office. Their stand became a symbol of resistance
to Tory  attacks, attracting solidarity from all over the country.  Rob
Sewell talked to one of those councillors involved, John Dunn, about
the struggle and the lessons it has for those fighting the Tory cuts in
2011.

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The political crisis and the crisis of capitalism

As the
earthquake of economic crisis sweeps across the globe, the political
establishment in country after country is being shaken to the core.
“Strong” governments have been exposed as, in fact, being extremely
weak, both at the ballot box and on the streets. The ruling class is
beginning to lose its political grip on society and people are beginning
to question the traditional pillars that society has rested upon for
centuries.

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Norway Attack

  Socialist Appeal joins others in the British Labour and trade union movement in sending condolences and solidarity to the friends and families of those killed and injured in the horrific attack in Norway yesterday. In particular we mourn the loss of so many young members of the Labour youth group and wish a speedy and full recovery to those injured or otherwise affected.

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90 Years of the Chinese Communist Party – Part Two

As the Chinese revolution approached in the mid-1920s, Stalin’s
leadership of the Comintern imposed on the young Chinese Communist Party
a policy of subordination to the bourgeois Guomindang, thus stifling
the Chinese Communists’ ability to bring together the workers and
peasants under the banner of social revolution. In Part Two, Daniel
Morley looks at the background to this situation.

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The role played by the state in the development of capitalism in Japan

The
classical view of how capitalism develops is that within feudal society a
class emerges made up of merchants, bankers, early industrialists, i.e.
the bourgeoisie, and that for this class to be able to develop its full
potential a bourgeois revolution is required to break the limits
imposed by the landed feudal aristocracy. That is how things developed,
more or less, in countries like France and England, but not in Japan.

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IRELAND: Labour minister attacks unemployed youth.

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Last weekend in Ireland, a Labour minister used the Sunday press to launch an attack on unemployed youth. Readers here will recognise the same arguements she makes as those which have been made over the years by assorted Tories and Blairites in our own movement. They must be opposed. Fightback, the Irish Marxist voice, reports on this disgraceful attack.

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USA: Gay Rights Victory in New York – One Step Forward

On Friday,
June 24, 2011, the New York State Senate voted to legalize gay marriage in New
York State in the US. This is a victory for democratic rights!  Marxists oppose
all forms of discrimination, including discrimination based on sexuality
and gender. The fact that marriage laws discriminate against same-sex
partners is just the latest in the struggle for equality and democratic
rights for the LGBT community under capitalism.

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Ginsberg’s Howl against Capitalism – a Film Review

In the
1950s, amid prosperity and a booming economy, Allen Ginsberg defied
conventions and the mainstream by openly standing forward as a
homosexual, a socialist and a sharp critic of the capitalist American
society he lived in. For this he was persecuted in a famous obscenity
trial, which he ended up winning. This is portrayed in the feature film Howl from 2010, now available here on DVD.

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Crisis of the euro – shades of the Titanic

The euro zone is heading into stormy
waters. The crisis that opened with the near collapse of the world
banking system in 2008 has now deepened into a crisis of insolvency of
entire nations. The bourgeois has no idea of how to get out of the
crisis, which is sweeping like an uncontrollable tsunami from one
country to another in Europe. In the words of Italy’s finance minister,
“There should be no illusions about who will be saved. Like on the
Titanic, the first class passengers won’t be able to save themselves.”

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USA: “Death by a Thousand (Budget) Cuts”

As ratings
agency Moody’s considers the possibility of cutting the US AAA debt
rating, concerned that the US could default on its debt obligations, we
publish a recent editorial statement of the US Socialist Appeal on the
forthcoming wave of massive cuts in public spending in the United
States. As the article points out, “the capitalists must impose a new
normality on the U.S. working class. The crisis of their system means
that small cuts or adjustments are no longer enough. The hatchet is out
now…”

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Greece: What next? – A balance sheet of the mass movement

In spite of a
massive mobilisation of the workers and youth, a movement of
revolutionary dimensions, the PASOK government managed to push through
parliament its austerity measures. This comes at a price, however, for
now the masses have had a taste of their own strength and have been
deeply politicised. The Greek Marxists of Marxisti Foni and Revolution provide here a balance sheet of the situation.

 

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