Blogs

There is an ever-growing stream of media commentary on the Grenfell fire, increasing daily as the public enquiry unfolds. There are some elements in the media with the goal of obscuring or excusing the plain facts as part of a pre-emptive defence manoeuvre to protect those most implicated in what caused the fire and the 72 deaths. That they feel the need to use such distortions to defend the Grenfell landlords and those who ordered and oversaw the Grenfell refurbishment that fitted the lethal cladding only increases the suggestion of a general doubt on all sides about their innocence.

Trico - A victory to remember, The 1976 equal pay strike at Trico Folberth, Brentford, by Sally Grovers and Vernon Merritt. Great book on an important women-led strike in 1976. We summarise the main events and then share some thoughts on struggles for 'equal pay'.

Some critical commentary on the Full Brexit group's call for a "socialist and internationalist Brexit".

Twenty years ago, from 24 March to 10 June 1999, United States and other NATO airplanes conducted bombing raids over what was left of Yugoslavia. Ever since the late 1980s, as capitalism’s world economic crisis sharpened and the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia went down with the USSR, rival war lords had been whipping up ethnic and religious divisions in order to carve out new state territories for themselves.

The dire situation really does pose the question of what sort of society we should and could be living in the 21st century.

From today, libcom will be an abbreviation of 'Library of Communism' to reflect our move towards a more Marxist Leninist approach.

Anarcho-syndicalist critique of communisation

Some thoughts on the role and function of formal debate.

Two months after workers launched wildcat strikes in the Mexican city of Matamoros, 89 “maquiladora” factories, mostly in the auto parts, electric, and metallurgical industries, have agreed to workers’ demands for a 20 percent raise and a bonus of 32,000 pesos (US$1,655)—half of the average yearly salary. The strike wave has become known across Mexico as the “20/32 movement.”

Internationalist communists oppose every war that the capitalist class and their governments create to defend their own selfish interests. This position is nothing new but is the legacy from previous generations who saw that "War or Revolution" is a choice that has to be made clearly and consistently.

This is a draft for the fourth part of our system series - it will be published in our local workers’ paper WorkersWildWest. We want to write something basic about the system we live in and the possibility of social revolution - for our colleagues. We don’t want to compromise on the complexity of the issue and we try to avoid lefty jargon. Let us know what you think and we can re-work the draft:
angryworkersworld@gmail.com

The Brexit pantomime threatens to fracture the traditional political set-up of the British ruling class. Meanwhile the whole issue is diverting attention from the dire situation experienced by the working class. Theresa May has announced that austerity is over but the massive spending cuts that have been implemented over the last decade are not going to be reversed.

Investors and top executives have used profits at GM to enrich themselves for years, while insisting mass layoffs are an unavoidable fact of economics.

Manning’s lawyers believe the government may be trying to prove Manning perjured herself during 2013 testimony. Developments come as Manning enters third week of imprisonment.

Analysis that situates recent white supremacist violence as a product of global capitalism and it's mechanisms of oppression.

John McTernan, writing in the Financial Times claims that anti-capitalism ‘masks and normalises anti-Semitism’. The claim was picked up the next day by a Labour MP on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Fake news about Venezuela is a lesson wrapped in a lesson of why we are not in a position to decide the fates of other countries.

We decided to read and discuss Mike’s text because the question he is asking is a pertinent one: ‘who can become a social force of revolution?’ By looking at what constituted revolutionary agency during the peak-time of working class radicalism between 1870 and 1920, we can perhaps better assess our chances in the present.

A recent report in The Guardian exposes the fraud of Amazon's October wage hike stunt. It also raises the question: was this all simply intended to stave off a unionization effort that began last summer?