Weekly Worker 895 Thursday December 22 2011
The other worlds of sci-fi and fantasy
How do science-fiction and fantasy help us understand reality? James Turley investigates
What do I mean by science-fiction and fantasy? The traditional thing to do is to define your terms, so that everyone knows what you are talking about. When you are dealing with genres, however, that is not strictly possible. You can read all sorts of people from the highest echelons of academia down to the most mundane internet warrior, arguing over whether such and such a book is science-fiction or not. They are trying to divide these genres up into some perfect sort of Linnaean system and, of course, it does not quite work. [read more]
LettersLeft and EEC; Play the ball; Bad treaty; Lesser evil; Dirty hands; Go to war; Dumb legalism; No socialist; Murder worship; How much?; Subtle;
Signs of an awakening
Calls for internal democracy within the Socialist Workers Party can only be welcomed. Peter Manson reports on the third and final 'Pre-conference Bulletin'
Playing the blame game
With hundreds of billions of debt due to be repaid in the first quarter of next year, writes Eddie Ford, the euro zone crisis has not gone away
What kind of commitment?
Mike Belbin takes a look at the life of Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011
Lenin, Kautsky and the 'new era of revolutions'
Lenin's vision of world revolution at the turn of the 20th century was inspired by Karl Kautsky, writes Canada-based scholar Lars T Lih
Adam Smith's profoundest reader
Karl Marx built on and developed bourgeois revolutionary consciousness, contends Spencer A Leonard of the US Platypus group
What made us human
Simon Wells reviews Chris Stringer 'The origin of our species' Allen Lane, 2011, pp333, £20
Cameron in the court of King James
The prime minister's speech on the King James Bible ticks every reactionary box going, argues James Turley
Essential task
Robbie Rix sends season's greetings to all our readers - we will be back on January 12!
Weekly Worker 895 is available for download as a pdf file.
More videos from Communist University are available on our vimeo web channel.
Essential task
Robbie Rix sends season's greetings to all our readers - we will be back on January 12!
I hope readers enjoy this final edition of the Weekly Worker for 2011. We thought we might give you something to remember with the addition not only of four extra pages, but hopefully a more attractive appearance for the print issue, thanks to the colour cover.
We are intending to make colour more of a feature in 2012, but, to be honest, we are not yet in a position to do so regularly. Not for any technical reason, of course, but because of the extra costs involved. So, in order to make the paper bigger, better and more attractive, we have decided to raise our fighting fund target to £1,500 from next month. Although that is an increase of £250, we have in fact mostly been exceeding the current target, if not quite by that amount.
This week’s post has given me confidence - two brilliant cheques from AP (£100) and RI (£50), plus a £25 gift from CM. Thanks go to all three. Then we received a total of standing order transfers amounting to £378 (SP, RP, SK, MM, SP, JD, SP and MKS were the donors). Finally two £10 contributions were received via our website - thank you, LK and DF. All in all, our total increased by £557 this week, taking us to £1,013 with over a week to go.
Talking of our website, over the last week our readership has exceeded 20,000 for the first time this year (what better time than the very last week of 2011!). It is true that our 20,667 web readers have long been able to view images in the paper in colour, but that is no reason not to help us improve our paper. We need a few more of them to contribute - not just to help enhance the Weekly Worker’s presentation, but, most of all, to make sure we are able to keep putting out our paper’s unique message - the crying need for a united Marxist approach to organisation and political intervention.
We will be resuming this essential task on Thursday January 12. In the meantime, we have another task to fulfil - we need £212 by January 1. Can you help? In order to beat the Christmas post, please use our online PayPal facility.
We hope our readers have a restful holiday. See you in 2012.
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