Globalisation

Tories push an ugly “new normal”

The Conservatives are reaching new lows in their recent lurch to the right. We have had the de facto abandonment of the net-zero target with the postponement of the ending of petrol and diesel car sales and the licensing of new oil drilling in the North Sea. Rishi Sunak has falsely claimed that the Labour Party’s “eco-zealots” plan to tax meat. A government minister has retold the alt-right conspiracy theory that fifteen-minute cities (a reasonable planning goal that people live within easy walking distance of amenities they need) is an attempt to control people’s lives. The underlying...

Labour, democracy, and Rosebank

Activists from Workers' Liberty and supporters of Solidarity will be at Labour Party conference and women's conference, 7-11 October in Liverpool. We'll be there to help the efforts of Free Our Unions, the Labour Campaign for Free Movement, the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, India Labour Solidarity, and other campaigns; to sell literature, seek discussions and contacts. There will be demonstrations for the NHS and for abortion rights on Saturday, for free education on Sunday. And agitation for a block on new North Sea oil and gas fields, following the Tories' decision to "max out" licences in...

Shifts in the world order

Economic barriers between countries are growing. The world is less "flat" than it used to be, in the sense of being a free-fire zone for capitalist trade and investment with negligible barriers to surmount at borders. It is more "multipolar", in the sense of differentiated political and economic networks, each with its own centre or centres. How far has this gone? What, in more exact terms, are the trends? What should socialists make of it? Between 1945-7 and 1989-91 the world was, in broad terms, divided into two blocs. One bloc was dominated by the USA. Within that bloc, the old colonial...

The G7: resistance in Cornwall

More photos below article My trip to Cornwall to demonstrate around the G7 summit (11-13 June) felt a bit like a set of concentric circles: I was part of and helping to cohere a delegation of Workers’ Liberty supporters and friends; we were seeking to imbue socialist politics, internationalism, and a working-class orientation into the wider anti-G7 movement; and that movement was challenging the G7 and the politics they represent. It was only en route towards the most southwesterly tip of this island, cutting through the darkening fog in a car-share with newly-acquainted comrades — and...

Robert Fine's "Cosmopolitanism"

The sociologist Robert Fine, who was a long-time sympathiser and sometime activist with Workers’ Liberty, passed away on 9 June 2018 at the age of 72. As our series of book reviews to commemorate his life illustrates, Fine dedicated his scholarship to many far-reaching topics in social and political theory. These topics include the rule of law, the anti-apartheid movement and independent trade unions in South Africa, racism and antisemitism, and the political thought of GWF Hegel, Karl Marx, and Hannah Arendt. Since Dale Street’s review in Solidarity #432 and Dan Davison’s tribute article in...

A left case for Brexit

The left was right to campaign against leaving the EU in 2016. Based on the tenor of the campaign, it was clear the Leave campaign would embolden the xenophobes and nationalists that exist across the class spectrum in the UK. This prediction was proven chillingly correct with both the spike in hate crime that followed the referendum and the movement that has emerged around Tommy Robinson over the last few weeks. The left should deplore and, if necessary, physically resist such acts of violent racism. But fighting fascism does not mean accepting globalisation. The fact is, working class people...

Rewind Labour’s policy on Europe

Labour right-winger Chuka Umunna is using European issues as a device for self-promotion and to bash Corbyn, but on the Single Market he is right. It will be abject if Labour ends up using its votes in the Commons to save the Tory government on a possible pro-Single-Market amendment which will be debated in the House of Lords on 8 May and may be backed by enough Tory rebels to defeat May unless Labour gives her its votes. The Single Market means free movement of workers and free movement of trade, through a more-or-less common set of regulations, across Europe. There are Single Market rules...

Danger in US-China tit-for-tat

As I write on 10 April, US stock markets are recovering after dipping in the wake of tit-for-tat tariff announcements by US president Donald Trump and by the Chinese government on 4-5 April. Trump and then the Chinese authorities have announced new 25% tariffs on a range of imports from each other. Those are bigger than and additional to the new tariffs introduced by Trump in March on steel and aluminium, and the Chinese retaliations for them. With China running a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger, responsible-adult pose, majority plutocrat opinion is now hoping that the announcements are largely...

Editorial: Trump threatens trade war

On 1 March Donald Trump announced tariffs of 25% on steel imports, 10% on aluminium imports. Other governments are alarmed by this shift towards trade war. The OECD, a consortium of the world’s 35 strongest capitalist economies, has criticised the move. Further argument will come at the meeting of the finance ministers and central bank governments of the G20 (20 strongest countries) in Buenos Aires on 19-20 March. Socialists should be alarmed too, for our own distinct reasons. Socialists do not endorse capitalist free trade. We are not for the unfettered rule of markets. We are for fettering...

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