The second edition of Reason in Revolt will shortly be going to the printers. Here we publish the new Preface which deals with some of the more important scientific findings since the book was first published. Again, they all confirm the validity of dialectics in a remarkable manner.
As expected Labour took a hammering in both the elections for the Scottish Parliament and in the local elections. The only way forward for the left in Scotland is to support the urgent need to build socialist programmes within the Labour and trade union movement.
The Reverend Tony Blair has announced his departure from the pulpit of the Trimdon Labour Club, Sedgefield. Ten years ago millions of workers hoped that the party would introduce fundamental change after two decades of Tory misrule. They were disappointed. For the working class, the departure of Blair is a blessing. He has become even more hated than Thatcher. The task now is to finish off Blairism, and the reactionary pro-capitalist creed associated with New Labour.
A recent six week investigation by the Financial Times found widespread profiteering and fraud in carbon trading, the main mechanism for greenhouse gas reduction proposed by the Kyoto treaty. Many schemes will produce only limited reductions in greenhouse gases and will have little or no effect on global warming.
The armed struggle is over. Class struggle is the only option. Those who ignore the class question and stand alone on their "republican principles" stand condemned to remain in splendid isolation. We now live in different times and the old certainties now no longer hold. We all on the left need to forget our petty differences and become relevant to the lives of the working classes in Ireland while keeping alive our vision of socialism.
The local election results for the Coventry area serve as an interesting insight into the mood of the working class, in particular the way they view the Labour Party under the concrete conditions of a Tory-controlled council. It shows despite the deep unpopularity in the Blair government, workers still see the Labour Party as the only viable alternative to the Tories.
While the Blairites are licking their wounds after last week's elections results, the results of the Scottish Socialist Party and Solidarity in Scotland and the Socialist Party in England should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that sectarian politics is a dead end.
Last week's elections confirmed the damage that Blairism has done to the Labour Party. Far from being the man who "wins elections" as the Blairites boasted in the past, Blair has become a liability. After ten years he has thrown away the 1997 victory. Now is the time to draw lessons from this whole experience and fight to change the leadership of the Labour Party.
As armaments were piled up in preparation for the Second World War Ted Grant explained that, "This war machine is for the defence of the trading interests and the colonial loot of British imperialism, for what is making for war is the intensified and sharpened struggle for markets between the different countries of the world."
On April 16th, "senior Labour sources" briefed the Financial Times that they "fear a drubbing" in Scotland. What we are witnessing is a rejection of the New Labour project which rejected class politics as outdated.
The trade unions have the power to clear the Blairite clique from the Labour Party by putting their full weight behind John McDonnell instead of presiding over the coronation of Gordon Brown, who supports privatization, the anti-union laws, the sacking of 100,000 civil servants, wage cuts in the public sector and the war in Iraq.