Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) announced the latest step in its campaign to preserve its profits. Having driven out tens of thousands of staff, kept wages down against a backdrop of inflation, and intensified the rate of work for the remaining staff, now it intends to take on the longest serving workers with attacks to the pension scheme.
The publication in English of The Man Who Loved Dogs by the Cuban author, Leonardo Padura is a major literary and political event. Alan Woods reviews this excellent book, which covers the story of the assassination of Leon Trotsky from a unique and illuminating perspective.
The first of three two-hour short, sharp strikes took place today, Thursday 23rd January, from 11am to 1pm. The picketing in Coventry was the most successful since this current dispute began back in the autumn term 2013. Darrall Cozens of the West Midlands UCU reports from the picket lines and looks ahead to future rounds of planned actions.
We are frequently told that the working class is no more and that class in 21st century Britain is simply a matter of social tastes. We are supposedly “all middle class now”. Martin Hall of the Bristol Marxists examines the real nature of class in British society today.
Luxury goods brands have posted falls both in growth and profits in the recent period, down from record highs. That the sales of luxuries have been booming in a period of global recession for the past few years appears remarkable in itself. This contradictory phenomenon, and its more recent decline, gives an insight into one aspect of the capitalist crisis.
Ninety years ago, on 21st January 1924, Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, died from complications arising from an earlier assassin’s bullet. Rob Sewell looks back at the life and ideas of Lenin, the great Marxist and revolutionary leader.
The world economy has been mired in a deep crisis since 2007. The bourgeoisie have tried everything to climb out of the crisis, from quantitative easing, to zero interest rates, to the socialization of banking losses, but all to no avail. Luca Lombardi of the Italian Marxists Falce Martello asks: why is it that a modern-day version of Keynesianism cannot work?
Friday 17th January 2014 marked the 53rd anniversary of the assassination of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, who after being beaten and tortured for days, was finally shot. Nelson Wan of the QMUL Marxists looks back at the life and revolutionary ideas of this historic Congolese leader.
As the New Year dawns, memories are reawakening of another New Year, exactly a century ago, the dawn of 1914 when millions of people were drifting towards the abyss as if in a dream. Alan Woods looks back at the beginnings of the First World War and examines the possibilities of world war today.
Rob Sewell – editor of Socialist Appeal and author of “In the Cause of Labour” – looks back at the Great Crash of 1929, which marked the beginning of the Great Depression, and asks what lessons we can learn today in terms of looking at the current crisis of capitalism.
What is value? This question has perplexed the human mind for more than 2,000 years. The classical bourgeois economists grappled with the question, as did Marx. Rob Sewell looks at Marx’s Labour Theory of Value and provides a defence of these economic ideas against attacks from modern day critics.
Tory Education Secretary Michael Gove, on account of the approaching 100th anniversary of the First World War, has taken the opportunity to denounce what he has claimed are attempts to write out the glory and heroism of WW1 in the education system. Ajmal Waqif provides a Marxist analysis of the real history behind the First World War.