Solidarity 518, 25 September 2019

In defence of the Morning Star

Jim Denham's major piece ( Solidarity 516 ) responding to my letter in Solidarity 515 continues to peddle the outrageous accusation that the Morning Star newspaper “actively foments antisemitism”. Antisemitism is obviously a highly emotive and sensitive issue and in response we need to be really clear, factual and logical. In plainer language, the accusation “actively foments antisemitism” could read: “the paper expresses hatred to people who are Jewish (whether by religion, ethnicity or culture) or encourages other people to be hostile to Jews”. Does the Morning Star encourage hatred against...

Drain the far right swamp!

On 20 September, a 16 year old from Bradford was found guilty and detained for five years for seriously attempting to build a powerful bomb filled with shrapnel. Although the eventual target is unclear, the court heard “he searched for and watched videos about the English Defence League, attacks on Muslims”. He also praised Adolf Hitler, telling friends “gas the Jews”. This 16 year old was not just desensitised to the horrors of Nazism or far-right racism. He was ideologically convinced by them. In Britain there is a growing threat of far right ideology. Only a tiny few will make the jump to...

Was “permanent revolution” the flaw?

A discussion of Jacques Texier's book Revolution et democratie chez Marx et Engels Reformist socialism? Who is there, who could there be, who would hold to such a doctrine today? As a positive scheme for a society of free and democratic cooperation, rather than as a negative reluctance to see working-class struggle rise too high? Labour's 2017 manifesto was a refreshing break from New Labour. But it did not propose to replace a society of the rich Few and the hard-up Many by equality. It proposed only to take a little from those Few to alleviate the Many. And, unlike some reformist-socialist...

Back Bev Laidlaw for PCS General Secretary!

The election for general secretary of the civil service union PCS is now well into the branch nomination phase. Nominations close on 14 October. Voting will run from 7 November to 12 December. There are three known candidates: Mark Serwotka, the existing General Secretary; Marion Lloyd, the candidate of the Socialist Party (SP), a current PCS NEC [National Executive] member Marion Lloyd; and Bev Laidlaw, candidate of the Independent Left (IL), and also a current NEC member. Bev Laidlaw has been a consistent opponent of the bombastic and failed PCS leadership. She has been elected to the NEC...

Industrial news in brief

Strikes in Bristol, Nottingham, Colchester, Newcastle and South London have continued the campaign by Deliveroo riders and the IWGB union, for better pay and conditions. The Nottingham riders demands included reverting the fee change back to the previous minimum of £3.90 for cyclists and £4.15 for motorised vehicles and removing the vehicle priority which has seen cars and motorbikes get priority over bicycles. In Bristol an ongoing issue is the safety of riders, particularly moped drivers who have found themselves attacked and victims of robbery while they go about their work. In Brixton...

PCS to back Labour in England and Wales

The coming period will be a vital one for the PCS as sometime in the next few weeks the General Election will be called. My union now has a clear position on what we will say during that. The NEC [National Executive] has decided that in England and Wales we will be calling for a vote for the Labour Party. In Scotland we will emphasise the union’s position on supporting for a Corbyn-led Westminster government whilst recognising the particular political situation there, and so will urge members to vote to “Get the Tories out”. In Northern Ireland the Union will adopt a “make your vote count”...

Going forward from 20 September

The momentum of the Climate Strike on 20 September should tell the labour movement that now is the time to take climate change seriously as a class issue seriously. Capitalism sees the environment and natural resources as commodities to be exploited, the same way it see human labour. Just 100 major companies have been responsible for over 70% of all greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. Climate change is, in short, caused by the drive for profit. It is caused by capitalism. For the first time in this wave of school-student climate strikes, a number of workplaces organised some forms of action —...

Criticise religion, no to state bans

See other articles in this debate here The analysis of hijab, Islamic religious clothing based on codes of female modesty, which David Pendletone asserts in his article in Solidarity 517 is commonplace amongst many Muslim-background feminists, amongst whom the issue of state bans is highly contested. Iranian writer Chadhortt Djavan, who does support state bans on hijab for young girls, wrote in her pamphlet ‘Bas les Voiles’ (Down with Veils): “What does veiling do to a girl child? It turns her into a sexual object [...] it defines her essentially by and for men’s eyes.” Algerian socialist...

Lukács: another view

According to John Rees and the Counterfire group (a splinter from the SWP), Georg Lukács was "the most important Marxist political philosopher since Marx". He was "the great theorist of revolution in the 20th century", and his writings were "the most sophisticated development of the classical Marxist tradition that anyone has developed". John Cunningham's presentation ( Solidarity 511 ) is more sober. But generally Lukács has enjoyed high repute in a wide range of the left since the early 1970s, and with many Third Camp Marxists since Michael Harrington made the first English translation from...

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