January 2015 marks 43 years since the 1972 miners’ strike – the first national miners’ strike since the 1926 general strike. Matt Wood reviews The World on our Backs, a vivid description of the ’72 strike, which demonstrated what could be achieved when the working class is united.
Twelve months ago the economists were predicting that 2014 would be the Year of Recovery. One year later nobody seriously maintains that vain illusion. The bourgeois economists do not understand the crisis and have no solution. It is a case of the blind leading the blind. Alan Woods analyses the state of the world economy at the dawn of the New Year.
Owen Walsh of the Leeds Marxists reviews Soy Cuba, a 1964 film written by Enrique Pineda Barnet and Yevgeny Yevtushenko and directed by Mikhail Kalatazov, which is a living monument to the Cuban Revolution. At a time when the future of the Cuban planned economy lies in the balance, this classic film is a must see for all who defend the Cuban Revolution.
We publish here an article by Jorge Martin, written at the end of 2014, which analyses the latest developments in the case of the disappeared Ayotzinapa students. Over three months after the police attack on teacher training students in Guerrero, Mexico, details have emerged that cast even more doubts on the official version of events and the level of complicity of the state in the affair.
On Saturday 14 February delegates from all over Britain will be joined in London by international visitors for the 2nd Marxist Student Federation conference, held in SOAS. The theme of this year’s conference is internationalism: struggles of workers and youth are breaking out in one country after another. There is much that we can learn from these struggles
We publish here a draft of the main document being discussed throughout the Marxist Student Federation at the beginning of the upcoming academic term. The final document will be discussed and voted on at the MSF national conference, to be held in SOAS, London, on Saturday 14th February 2015. We encourage all our student readers to come along and take part in the discussions!
The ugly face of Obama’s “hope we can believe in” has been starkly revealed. The extrajudicial killings of Michael Brown andEric Garner, unarmed black males killed by white police officers, have set off an emotional firestorm of protests and outrage on a scale not seen in the US in many years. It is the task of the Marxists to help people draw out the revolutionary conclusions implicit within the situation.
Tectonic shifts are taking place in the world economy. The price of oil has fallen dramatically in the past six months. The price of Brent Crude has now fallen to less than $60 a barrel. This marks a near fifty per cent drop in price from $115 a barrel in June. It heralds a new stage in the capitalist crisis, and its impact is being felt throughout the world.
The United States has admitted that its attempt to bully Cuba into submission had failed. This should be seen as a victory for the Cuban Revolution and its resilience against the relentless onslaught of the most powerful imperialist power. However, US imperialism has not given up on its aims: the restoration of the rule of private property and the destruction of the gains of the revolution; it has just changed the means to achieve the same result.
In this recording from the International Marxist Winter School 2014, Rob Sewell – editor of Socialist Appeal – discusses the important contributions made by Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx’s closest friend and political peer. In particular, Rob explains Engel’s groundbreaking analysis of the family, the state, evolution, and natural science, all from the standpoint of the Marxist method of dialectical materialism.
A grassroots upsurge has swept the US over the past few weeks, its sudden eruption marked by huge marches last weekend on the East Coast and by smaller, broadly based protests across the length and breadth of the country. These protests have popped the lid off a widespread, simmering popular discontent in the USA and given it focus.
The attack by the Taliban on a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Tuesday 16th December 2014 was perhaps the most barbaric and brutal attack carried out by the fundamentalists to date. Now more than ever, it is vital to highlight the courageous work of the Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign and to ask for concrete solidarity for those fighting imperialism and fundamentalism in Pakistan.