Solidarity 278, 13 March 2013

This week’s edition of Solidarity contains articles by Max Shachtman and Hal Draper, two of the foremost writers of “third camp” Trotskyism, the anti-Stalinist Marxists who refused to acknowledge the Stalinist states as somehow progressive against capitalism. Their work, and the tradition they tried to build, is far less well known than it deserves to be. At a time when many on the left still place their faith in perceived lesser evils and substitutes for independent working-class self-organisation (Latin American statist-reformism, political Islam, or some other form of vague “anti...

The Central Committee (CC) of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the biggest would-be revolutionary socialist group in Britain, won a Pyrrhic victory at the SWP’s special conference on 10 March. The CC scored, apparently, a four-to-one victory against those who have expressed doubts or criticisms, mild or radical, of the SWP’s commandist regime. Although the critics were roughly as numerous as the loyalists in the signatures won by rival statements, the CC and its network of compulsorily-loyal full-time organisers were better at rounding up inactive or semi-active members to vote through the...

Writing in Socialist Worker (5 March), timed for the SWP special conference, Judith Orr, with not-so-beautiful simplicity, explains how women’s oppression is rooted in class society. We agree with that, and with Orr’s subsequent argument that gender should not get in the way of a united fight against capitalism. But Orr’s basic picture leaves unexplained many complexities about capitalist exploitation and oppression worldwide: how the exact form of female oppression varies across geography and history; how human beings are “socialised” and gender and sexuality are constructed primarily, but...

On Saturday March 9th, an extraordinary incident threatened to mar UCL’s reputation as a university with a proud tradition of secularism and free thinking. At a debate between renowned physicist and atheist Professor Lawrence Krauss and Islamic lecturer Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, hosted by the “Islamic Education and Research Academy”, women and men were made to sit apart in the audience. Before the debate began, women were asked to sit at the back of the audience, while men and “couples” sat in their own sections. An eyewitness account can be found here . Despite being told that no gender...

Edd Bauer from Birmingham Communities Against the Cuts spoke to Solidarity about the campaign. We are a grassroots community movement based in South Birmingham. It’s different from other campaigns because it organises direct action and calls for protests, not just lobbies. It’s also willing to run candidates in elections. In September last year it was involved in a successful anti-academies campaign in the west of the city. Last month it was involved in protests against the City Council cuts budget — occupying the Council chambers and then later blockading the Council Chambers to stop...

The curve of Britain’s economic output shows a sharp decline from mid-2008 to mid-2009. Then from mid-2009 to late 2010 there was a slight recovery. Since the coalition government’s social cuts have started kicking in, from late 2010, output has mostly stagnated or declined further. The government’s own Office of Budgetary Responsibility felt obliged on 8 March to write to David Cameron saying that, contrary to Cameron’s claims, the OBR was sure that public spending cuts had reduced overall output, and might have reduced it more than the OBR thought. Yet a large wing of the Tories, people like...

When averaged out across the whole population, the government’s benefit cuts amount to a £760 loss by 2014-2015 for every single one of us. Imagine what a monthly reduction of £63 would mean for you. What basic necessities would you have to go without? And what would you have to cut back on that are things that make life more enjoyable? What effect would it have on your social life? Holidays? The benefit cuts show the coalition’s project in the clearest light. They want to use the opportunity of ongoing financial crisis to reduce social costs, so that when capitalism recovers, the social bill...

The teachers' rank-and-file network LANAC held its second steering committee on 9 March in Coventry. There were just over 20 delegates from 18 branches and it was a meeting which prepared the ground for LANAC's second intervention at NUT Conference. The main discussion followed a report on the pay campaign from NEC member, Patrick Murphy, and centred on the approach which should be taken to this dispute at Conference. Whatever the details delegates agreed that LANAC should present an alternative to the strategy of the union leadership which would call for a programme of action to start early...

Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela died this week after a lengthy battle with cancer. Much of the left across the globe has lauded Chávez because he won 15 elections, used some of Venezuela’s immense oil wealth to pay for social programmes and stood up to American imperialism in Latin America. Neoliberals have chastised him as a dictator standing in the way of free markets. Whilst we have absolutely no truck with the neoliberals, our own assessment of Chávez is highly critical for our own reasons. Should socialists hold up Hugo Chávez and his Bolivarian, 21st century socialism? No, we...