Like Katrina and Sandy before it, Hurricane Harvey in the USA has once again revealed the rotten results of capitalism’s prioritisation of profits over people. What Harvey shows is that the system cannot effectively deal with catastrophe. In fact, capitalism itself is the catastrophe.
Strike action is taking place today in two workplaces in the UK, also coordinated with international action in the USA, where McDonald’s workers have been fighting for better pay for the last few years. We publish here reports from the picket lines in Cambridge and Crayford, where fast-food workers are out on strike.
So-called “pragmatists” often say that it is unrealistic to struggle for socialism. Even if we had a successful revolution in Britain, for example, it is clear that an island of socialism could not survive in a sea of capitalism. But is it realistic to expect revolution to spread internationally?
Next week, on 4th September, workers at two McDonald’s restaurants in the UK will go on strike, in an action intended to co-ordinate with the struggles of fast-food workers internationally. Bosses at McDonald’s and other exploitative corporations: take heed! Downtrodden workers are organising and fighting back!
20 years ago today, on 31st August 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, died as a result of injuries sustained in a car crash in Paris. In the following weeks, a spontaneous mass outburst of grief swept across the country, catching the whole Establishment by surprise. We republish here an article written by Alan Woods analysing this unprecedented phenomenon.
The chaotic process of Brexit reflects the long-term decline and decay of British capitalism. But this turbulence, in turn, is not confined to the UK. The whole of European capitalism is equally crisis-ridden. As Josh Holroyd discusses, the future for both the UK and EU under capitalism is one of stagnation, slump, and austerity.
When we think of slavery we immediately cast our minds back to the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. But while chattel slavery of such scale and savagery has been consigned to the history books, there are in fact more slaves in the world today than at the height of the colonial slave trade.
It emerged last week that the Tories are once again, for the second general election in a row, set to face a police inquiry into illegal behaviour surrounding their election campaigning. These continuous scandals and flouting of the law illustrate the deep underlying fragilities of a Conservative Party facing crisis and decline.
The crimes of Stalin and Mao are frequently held up to demonstrate the apparent failure of socialism and communism; to invalidate the ideas of Marxism. But what failed in the Soviet Union and China, as Maciej of the Swansea Marxists explains in this latest video from the Myths of Marxism series, was not socialism or communism, but a bureaucratically controlled society – a caricature of Marxism.
Rob Sewell, editor of Socialist Appeal, replies to sectarian slanders and points the way forward for the unions in the fight to reclaim the Labour Party, defend Jeremy Corbyn, and fight for socialist policies.
Owen Walsh of the Leeds Marxists reviews the latest book by science fiction writer and socialist China Miéville: an exciting and inspiring account of revolutionary Russia in 1917 – a wholly worthy effort that deserves to be on any comrade’s reading list in this centenary year of the Russian Revolution.
From time to time, governments charged with managing the crisis-ridden capitalist system like to pretend that they have something called an industrial strategy: a grand universal plan for managing and developing production in the so-called ‘national interest’. But, as Steve Jones explains, there is no way forward within the confines of capitalism.