Left groups and people

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc . Thomas Carolan (“A socialist vote for Biden”, Solidarity 566, 7 October 2020) is right that a “tradition” should not be allowed to become “superstition”. He is also right that “making an absolute principle of never working in or voting for a bourgeois party” would be mechanical and dogmatic. Standing aside from the Sanders movements in 2016 and 2020 because he was running in the primary of a “bourgeois party” would have been hopelessly sectarian; refusing to campaign or vote for him if he had won still more so. But Carolan...

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc . This US presidential election is different in two ways. It narrows down to a contest between a fascistic demagogue with a militant and part-militarised mass base, and a standard-issue neoliberal. And recent years have seen a sizeable though diffuse new US socialist current round Sanders’ campaigns and the Democratic Socialists of America. At the same time, the International Socialist Organization has wound itself up, and Solidarity sees itself more as an “educational centre” than an activist group. Conclusion: the most active...

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc . Workers’ Liberty supports Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker in the 2020 US presidential election: socialists, standing as the candidates of the Green Party. We also carry debate about that stance and on assessment of Trump. Below is how Hawkins and Walker sum up their pitch, from a statement on the hospitalisation on Donald Trump. Our campaign and the work of the Green Party has never been to isolate or target one politician. Behind Donald Trump is an army of Republicans who are cheering him on at every turn. Behind the...

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc . The golden age of the Socialist Party in the U.S. lasted about a decade. By 1912 the party’s vote peaked when Eugene Debs won 6%. It was downhill from there. After more than four decades of decline, the Socialist candidate Darlington Hoopes won just 2,128 votes nationwide in 1956. If 44 years of decline taught the Socialists anything, it was that maybe it was time to try working inside the Democratic Party, the party that most American workers – and their unions – supported. In 2016 and 2020, that idea was tested in reality...

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc . In the light of the Sanders campaign and a small resurgence of leftish pressure from Democrats, having a straightforward position of never voting for or to even contemplate seeking the Democratic nomination would be counterproductive. But Sanders is not building anything out of this presidential election. And at almost 80 years old, he is, unfortunately, unlikely to be the figurehead of a new movement for any length of time. Since Biden won the nomination, Sanders, whether through being told to shut up or feeling burned, has...

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc . Anyone committed to basic human decency, let alone socialism, should hope that Donald Trump loses the American presidential election in November. Given the nature of the US’s electoral system, this means hoping that Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, wins. Does it follow that socialists should campaign for a Biden vote? This article will argue that it does not, and support the position of those US socialists who back Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker, rank-and-file working-class militants running on the Green Party ticket, with...

Progressive International (PI), the latest project of Yanis Varoufakis, who was the negotiator with the EU for Greece’s Syriza government in 2015, held its “inaugural summit” on 18-20 September, drawing many “big names” of the left. Varoufakis was an opponent of Brexit. Then he became an advocate of it. He created DIEM25, an as a movement for reform of the EU, then moved on to PI. At the opening session Varoufakis made a “by the way” comment that there are serious human rights issues in China. Vijay Prashad, a PI Council member responded that the left would tear itself apart if it attempted to...

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc . Workers' Liberty backs the Green Party US campaign of Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker, as the only campaign in the US presidential election to raise explicit socialist demands and have a labour movement orientation. There are other socialists of some stripes running, but on a purely sect-building basis. Hawkins is a member of the revolutionary socialist group Solidarity, and has been a long term activist in the third camp socialist tradition. In some ways, his is the best socialist Presidential campaign for many years. But it...

The news that David Graeber had died so young, at only 59, was shocking and saddening. He had one of those inherently lively, energetic personalities that seems to contradict the concept of death itself. He earned respect as one of the few modern anarchist thinkers who tried to really apply anarchism systematically as a total worldview: anarchist principles informed his anthropological and historical research, his economics, and his interventions into real world politics. Graeber’s anthropological work is fascinating and valuable; his major book, Debt , is thought-provoking, though basically...

On Sunday 6 September my good friend and comrade Tim Hales passed away several months after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Tim will be known to many readers of Solidarity for the colourful and vibrant cartoons he produced regularly for the paper over recent years. He had been an art teacher since the 1980s, first in Barnsley and then Leeds, and was able to devote more time to his own artwork after retirement. He took the responsibility for producing cartoons very seriously and was always proud to see his work published in the paper. I first met Tim as an activist in the Leeds division...