Human Nature and how it can save us
Talk given by Karla Rab at the Community Church of Boston on May 3rd, 2015 “Socialism — A nice Idea, but it’ll never work because it’s against HUMAN NATURE!” That assertion has been encountered many times by socialists explaining the case for socialism to someone new to the idea. Here’s why it’s wrong: Probably the […]
Clash of the Nincompoops — The 2016 Presidential Election (It Matters, But not the Way You Think)
Talk given by Ron Elbert at the Community Church of Boston, November 13, 2016 You might have seen clips of House Speaker Paul Ryan warning a crowd in Wisconsin (Joe McCarthy’s home state!) that if Republicans were to lose control of the Senate, guess who would become chairman of the Senate Budget Committee? A guy […]
The World Socialist Party of the United States Turns 100
From the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard It is now just a century since the World Socialist Party established itself in the USA. Other such organizations arose at about the same time in Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere, from similar circumstances: SPGB comrades became world travelers to escape conscription in The Great War, […]
Bernie Sanders Bows Out
Having acquired less delegates than Hillary Clinton in the primaries, Bernie Sanders has endorsed her as the Democratic candidate for the US presidency in the elections in November. Even if had won the nomination and actually become President of the United States of America, his freedom of action would be very restricted by economic and […]
Study guide to Capital for the anti-capitalist. Introduction
You Don’t Need Marx to be an ‘Anti-Capitalist’ Why do we need to read Marx’s Capital? Or should I say: Why do you need to read Capital? And who do I think ‘you’ are, anyway? Well, let me tell you . . . You are, I imagine, a fellow worker. That is, you depend on […]
Council Communist
Book Review from the February 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard ‘Marxism in a Lost Century: A Biography of Paul Mattick‘, by Gary Roth. Chicago. Haymarket Books, 2015 This biography will be of special interest to many readers of the Socialist Standard. While Paul Mattick (1904–1981) never joined the World Socialist Movement (WSM), his views […]
Socialism as a Practical Alternative
A talk given by Ron Elbert at the Community Church of Boston on May 11, 2014 (with minor edits for context) Since the keyword in the title of my talk is “practical,” I’d like to kick things off with a little thought experiment. Could anyone suggest some practical things President Obama might do in regard […]
Profit Hotel (dirty gossip about the capitalist mode of production)
J. EDGAR, I HARDLY KNEW YA You will never hear an economist argue that increases in productivity are bad. But where do you think the government ever got all that nifty surveillance technology from? From the surveillance industry, of course. If you’re wondering why there was no surveillance industry in 1917 (Pinkertons, yes! police spies, […]
What is Common Ownership?
Quite simply, the common ownership of the world’s resources and productive capacity is the basis for a reorganisation of society that would ensure plenty of the necessities of life for everyone on the planet – no more starving, malnourished people, no wandering homeless, no senseless deaths for the want of easily affordable medical care and […]
Marx’s Conception of Socialism
Marx usually referred to the society he aimed to see established by the working class as “communist society”. Precisely because he believed that “communist society” would be the outcome of the struggle and movement of the working class against its capitalist conditions of existence, Marx always refused to give any detailed picture of what he […]