A spending watchdog has recently reported that the level of unpaid student debt in the UK is set to exceed £200bn in the next three decades. The report – coupled with the recent privatisation by the government of nearly £1bn worth of student loans – has served as a reminder of the inability of the capitalist system to deal with a crisis of its own causing.
On Wednesday 27th November, around 50 people came to a Coventry TUC public meeting on austerity and the fight back. Speakers from various unions and local groups discussed the impact of the cuts in Coventry and nationally. Darrall Cozens, UCU delegate to the Coventry TUC, reports on the meeting and provides a statement by the Coventry TUC on the Coalition’s austerity and how to fight it.
In this recording from the IMT Winter School 2013 “Marx was right!”, Marie Frederiksen of the Danish Marxist paper Socialistisk Standpunkt discusses the questions of women’s oppression and liberation, and provides a Marxist analyses of the women’s question and the feminist movement.
Marxism is often referred to as ‘scientific socialism’, as it is based upon a materialist analysis of history and society, looking at social and economic systems in their historical development. This materialist understanding of capitalism underlines why socialism isn’t just a nice idea or an ‘alternative’ to capitalism, but is actually an essential solution to the problems inherent in the capitalist system. Michael Allan of the Glasgow Marxists explains the contradictions of capitalism highlights the potential for a socialist society that is free of such contradictions.
We publish here a video by the Reel News, which report on the official TUC national day of action against blacklisting that took place last week on 20th November. The next protest against the blacklist takes place on Friday 29th November at 9am, outside High Court on the Strand in London, where the first case is being heard against blacklisting as an unlawful conspiracy. Tomorrow, Wednesday 27th November, Steve Kelly of the Blacklist Support Group will be speaking in UCL alongside Rob Sewell, editor of Socialist Appeal, on the lessons of the trade unions struggles of the past.
It has often been noted that the serious bourgeois analysts frequently arrive at the same conclusion as the Marxists, albeit with a slight delay. Some are suggesting what the Marxists have explained many times since the onset of the current crisis: that this is no ordinary period of recession, but that depression has become the new normality for the world economy. What we are witnessing is not a temporary phenomena, but an organic crisis of the capitalist system.
Given the lack of opportunities for political expression in the US, even off-year elections provide important insights into where things stand politically and in which direction they are moving. Frustration with incumbents and disgust with “politics as usual” has reached record highs. This is an unprecedented situation with profound implications for the future. It is not simply this or that politician or this or that party in the doldrums; the entire system is being questioned. It is in this context that the 2013 elections give us yet another snapshot of the changing mood in America.
In the run up to the 8th December municipal elections in Venezuela, the campaign of speculation, hoarding, profiteering, overpricing and sabotage of the economy has intensified. The Venezuelan government of President Maduro has denounced that there is a “slow motion coup” being implemented and has taken measures to fight this economic war.
In the opening session of this year’s International Marxist Tendency Winter School, entitled “Marx was right”, Jorge Martin – editor of America Socialista, the Spanish language magazine of the IMT – discusses the current crisis of capitalism and analyses the revolutionary movements that have broken out across the globe as a result.
The “No More Page 3” campaign (NMP3), now boasting over 117,000 signatures to their online petition, asks for the Murdoch-owned British tabloid rag The Sun to remove the topless women from Page 3. Natasha Sorrell of the Sheffield Marxists analyses the NMP3 campaign and asks: will such a campaign achieve its desired aims? And if so, will this mark a real step forward in the fight against sexism and the objectification of women?
We are publishing here an extract from a letter sent to the IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) by Arthur Scargill, the President of the National Union of Minerworkers during the 1984-85 miners’ strike, who outlines evidence that the police were preparing a conspiracy file for Scargill and that his arrest during the Battle of Orgreave was premeditated. This extrace has been forwarded to Socialist Appeal by the Justice for Mineworkers campaign.
On Saturday 16th November, about thirty young Spaniards in Edinburgh gathered outside the Spanish Consulate in Castle Street to protest against the Madrid government’s cuts in financial support for students studying abroad under the Erasmus Scholarship scheme. The cuts are one more attack the big business government is making on the living standards of Spanish workers. Tam Burke of the Prospect trade union (personal capacity) reports.