Low wages, long hours, management bullies: Nothing can be done?! - Something is being done!
Cutting class for communism, school strikes April 20th?
Solidarity with the GDN Logistics workers
In the early afternoon of Tuesday, January 30, the police charged and drove a group of workers away from the gates of GDN Logistics of San Cipriano Po (Pavia). They were demonstrating in front of the company's gates to ask for an end to dismissals and suspensions (therefore for reinstatement) carried out by the company against some of their colleagues for the simple fact they were "registered with Sicobas". The strike began in the early morning, and the police charge took place after more than 10 hours of blockade in which protesting workers prevented the entry of trucks to the warehouse units.
Brexit 2018: The Ruling Class Nightmare Continues
During the preparation for the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU) we made it entirely clear (in Revolutionary Perspectives 08) that the debate was one that class-conscious workers should not have been drawn into – on either side. Participating in the exercise could only line workers up behind one or other faction of the ruling class. The stories peddled by both sides – that somehow workers would benefit from the British state either maintaining or ditching their relationship with EU institutions – were full of lies and imagined, but non-existent, benefits.
The unsurprising reason Jonathan Pie rants sound straight out of Spiked
Intellectuals cheer as US moves towards global war in Syria
'Change the Rules': reifying labour under capital
Hemel Hempstead Amazon workers' report: 'Power hour' or Workers' Power?
Carillion’s Failure and the Private Finance Initiative
The collapse of Carillion is another symptom of capitalism’s general crisis of profitability. We are told the PFI and debacle of Carillion are not the way capitalism is supposed to work. Unfortunately this is the way capitalism is supposed to work, and the way it worked under state control also. The system is supposed to transfer wealth created by the working class to those who own capital and this is precisely what has been happening with Carillion, with PFI in general and with privatisation.
Listen, Gamer!
Capitalism’s Crisis of Stagnation and Austerity
As 2018 opens economic optimism is breaking out amongst the capitalist class. Leaving aside the vainglorious boasts of the current President of the United States that unemployment in the US has reached lows only last seen in the post-war boom, or that the New York stock market is now at all time record highs, more serious economic commentators are arguing that after a decade of misery (at least for 99% of the planet) the signs of recovery from the 2007-8 banking collapse are now behind us. If this sounds familiar it is because we have heard the same tale so many times.
Bitcoin: Make Way for Cryptomoney!
Iranian Protests against Austerity
On Thursday, 28th December 2017, in Mashhad the second most populous city in Iran, thousands of protesters gathered outside the city hall and chanted “Death to Rouhani”, the country’s President. Some reports have suggested that it may have been initiated by the conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi, Rouhani's defeated rival in the May 2017 Presidential election. Later on, some others, including the senior officer of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, implicitly accused ex-President Ahmadinejad's circle being behind the recent protests. However it may have started, it quickly broke out of its intended framework and control and, in less than a week, spread to over 40 cities.
Remembering the Black Triangles
Smashing H&M in South Africa: not the first attack on the garment supply chain (and not the last either!)
Migration and national social democracy in Britain
We look at the recent history of migration to the UK and the current discussion about migration and wage decline, in particular within the nation state policies of Labour. We criticise the effort of trying to reconcile a largely liberal 'pro-migrant' position with Labour's national perspective and share our experiences of working and organising amongst migrant workers in west London.
Radek on the International Situation in Spring 1918
This is the second in our series of translations from the review Kommunist via the French version published by the Collectif d’édition smolny (www.collectif-smolny.org) as La Revue Kommunist: Les communist de gauche contre le capitalisme d’état (The review Kommunist: Left Communists against state capitalism). Our first translation was of Radek’s article on the situation of the October Revolution in Russian in March 1918 entitled Five Months On. (See leftcom.org). This second one is also by Radek from Kommunist No. 1.
An Epitaph for the October Revolution?
2017 will no doubt see a flood of publications to commemorate the centenary of the Russian Revolution. There will be those who insist that the October Revolution provides a model for today and still others who will argue the opposite. Neither opinion is likely to go much beyond the defence of entrenched ideological positions. The fact that the great hopes raised by the October Revolution not only failed to materialise, but ended in a monstrous Stalinist regime which turned private exploitation into state exploitation, has been one of the greatest propaganda weapons for today’s capitalist system whose own crisis grows deeper with every year that passes.
Bukharin on the “Socialist” Opposition to Soviet Power
In Revolutionary Perspectives 11 (due out January 2018) we shall be printing Bukharin’s short review of Lenin’s The State and Revolution. In the meantime we are publishing here another translation from the same journal Kommunist which appeared in March 1918. Kommunist was the journal of the “proletarian communists” or left communists who opposed the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk as well as the change in direction which the revolution began to take at that time. We have already published several articles from it with our commentaries.