Law and Order in the U.S.A. (1968)
From the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard A member of the World Socialist Party of the US paints a somewhat frightening picture of politics in America If you saw it only on television and stayed off the streets, the political situation in the United States this year seemed like a second-rate circus which […]
Vietnam and the anti-war movement (1966)
From the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard Vietnam will one day take its place beside Hiroshima and Auschwitz as an example of a time when the sickness of capitalism exploded into a kind of psychotic nightmare. It is no mere piece of sensationalism, either, to compare Vietnam with Hiroshima and Auschwitz, for there […]
A Rose by any other name (1954)
From the May-June 1954 issue of the Western Socialist We are all “socialists” now. Let us witness the parade: The Churchill Tory socialists, the French Radical Socialists, the totalitarian “socialist” governments including the black, brown and red shirts, the New – Deal—Fair – Deal creeping “socialists,” the Labour Parties of Europe, the Asiatic “socialist” and “communist” […]
The Theoretical System of Karl Marx (1968)
Book Review from the 1968 – number 3 issue ofThe Western Socialist The Theoretical System of Karl Marx by Louis B. Boudin, Monthly Review Press, $7.50 The reprint of this book, sans introduction and hence free of possible reader misdirection, should be warmly received by all students of Marxism not having the good fortune […]
The Yom Kippur War (1973)
From the 1973 – number 6 issue of The Western Socialist There are several ways of looking at a problem, depending upon one’s point of view. Take an example such as the latest Arab-Israeli War, the so called Yom Kippur War. The case for the Arabs rests upon their assertion that Israel is a nation […]
Marxism in the USA (1968)
Book Review from the December 1968 issue of theSocialist Standard Marxian Socialism in the United States, by Daniel Bell, Princeton University Press. 17s. 6d. This book, written over fifteen years ago, has been re-issued with a new introduction by the author. It is a history of the Socialist Party of America and the Communist […]
Can the Tea Party save the American Dream? (2010)
From the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard The right-wing Tea Party movement is, according to some commentators, turning into a mass, ‘grassroots’ movement and revolutionising politics in America. Is it? If the ‘lame-stream media’, to steal an appropriate phrase, is to be believed, then there has been a ‘massive’, indeed ‘historic’, change in […]
Joe Hill: songwriter to the working class (2000)
From the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard Eighty-five years ago, on 19 November 1915, Joe Hill, a rootless, unassuming migratory worker and member of the IWW, was executed by a five-man firing squad in the prison yard of Utah State Penitentiary for the alleged murder of a Salt Lake City grocer and his […]
The Mind of a Social Democrat (1966)
Book Review from the 1966 – number 5 issue of The Western Socialist The Accidental Century by Michael Harrington (New York: Macmillan Co., 1965) Next to the world-wide Moscovite movement, the largest phony “socialist” tendency is that which is frequently referred to as “social democratic,” or, unfortunately, as “socialist.” The Scandinavian social democratic parties, […]
Trade Unionist Extraordinary (1985)
From the November 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard Eugene V. Debs was born 130 years ago, on 5th November 1855. Although a member of the reformist socialist Party of America, in his speeches and articles he came nearer to the socialist position of the SPGB than any other prominent political orator in America, as […]