To celebrate the centenary of Ted Grant, founder of the Militant Tendency and Socialist Appeal, we are re-publishing Ted’s article entitled “Will There Be a Slump?”. Written in 1960 in the middle of the post-war boom, when many others on the Left had accepted Keynesian economic ideas, Ted explained the fundamental causes behind the boom and how these would eventually lead to crisis. For more information on this topic, come along to the Marxist Summer School, where Adam Booth will be speaking on the subject.

It has been revealed that the US National Security Agency has been given backdoor access to telephone exchanges and a long range of online accounts from major service providers, underlining how the state breaches users’ privacy on a massive scale in order to get intelligence. Niklas Albin Svensson looks at the latest manoeuvres of the capitalist state and the implications for the labour movement.

The cat-and-mouse game between piracy supporters on the one hand and state authorities and major multinational companies on the other is heating up. Over the past few years there has been a marked increase in the persecution of websites and individuals involved in piracy. Democratic rights are being thrown overboard and the full force of the state applied in the media industry’s ruthless pursuit of profits.