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From the FIFA World Cup to the Olympic Games: under capitalism, today’s mega-sporting events have become vehicles for the profits of giant multinationals. Ray Physick analyses the situation of sport under capitalism and looks back at history at the alternatives provided by the international labour movement.
The shocking revelations that certain officials from Qatar had allegedly bribed their way to a successful FIFA vote to stage the 2022 World Cup, football’s highest competition, will not come as a surprise to anyone. With the World Cup 2014 beginning this week in Brazil, Steve Jones examines the corrupt, big-business-dominated world of football under capitalism.
Eleanor Marx, daughter of the greatest political scientist in history, faced the formidable task of living up to her family name in the turbulent period during the birth of the organised labour movement in Britain. Ben Gliniecki reviews Rachel Holmes’ new biography Eleanor Marx – A Life, which impressively describes and analyses Eleanor’s achievements over her lifetime.
Twenty-five years ago, on 4th June 1989, the Tian’anmen square movement was brutally smashed by the rifles and tanks of the Chinese troops. It was a heroic movement of the Chinese people in a struggle against the bureaucracy. Class struggle is again on the rise in China today; but unlike the movement of 1989, the workers and students in China today are a qualitatively and quantitatively more powerful and revolutionary force.
Monday 2nd June saw the founding meeting of the ‘Solidarity with the Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine’ campaign, which was hosted by the Marxist Student Federation in SOAS, London. Over 150 people attended the meeting to discuss the need for a campaign in support of the antifascist resistance in Ukraine to provide a counterweight to the lies and distortions of the Western media.
Monday saw the announcement by King Juan Carlos of Spain of his decision to abdicate. That same evening, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards took to the streets throughout Spain and the rest of Europe demanding a referendum on the return to a republic. We publish here reports of the protests in Spain and Edinburgh.
Capital in the 21st Century, by the French economist Thomas Piketty, has hit the stands and has been making waves in the national and international press, not least among economic commentators. John Pickard looks at Piketty’s work, which has caused a sensation amongst both the left and the right for its analysis of the inequalities under capitalism.
The decision of Lawrence & Wishart to demand that the Marxist Internet Archive (marxists.org) take down the collected works of Marx and Engels from their website has sparked justified outrage across the internet. Such works should not be a source of profit for publishers, but a freely available source of revolutionary education for workers and youth.
The whole of the Egyptian establishment are falling over each other as they praise the ‘landslide victory’ of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in the Egyptian presidential elections. However the stability that the bourgeois are craving for is further away than they think.
Britain is facing a massive housing crisis. There is an acute and growing shortage of housing; virtually no council housing has been built for decades; homelessness is increasing; private sector rents are soaring; the entire private sector is a disaster. Pete Gilman looks at the housing question in Britain and concludes: reform is not enough – only a bold socialist programme offers a solution.
The recent European Parliament elections have caused shock waves in the continent’s political landscape. Many commentators have argued that these elections represent a sharp swing to the right. Alan Woods explains that this argument is entirely false.
Eamon Gilmore, former leader of the Labour Party in Ireland, has resigned as party leader after Labour was hammered in the local council and the European polls. The Labour Party’s right wing programme and the record of its ministers in office have massively discredited its local representatives. Ireland’s elections illustrate that there are no short cuts. The working class must find a way out of the chains of capitalism.