The article which follows is taken from the new edition of Revolutionary Perspectives (#14) which is just out. It was obviously written before the events which followed the British Navy’s seizure of the Iranian tanker, the Grace 1, off the coast of Gibraltar, but the substance of the analysis has not changed.
2019 marks the 20th anniversary of the National Minimum Wage. The first minimum wage, brought in by the Liberal government as part of a programme of reforms between 1906-1914, only applied to certain groups of very low-paid workers. The idea was to both undermine the young parliamentary Labour Party and bind it to the Liberals (which it did) and ward off the mounting militancy of the working...
The capitalist mode of production, characterised by exchange for profit, private property, wage labour and capital accumulation, has only existed for around 300 years. Since the late 19th century it has found its way to even the most remote corners of the Earth by the way of exploitation, dispossession and imperialist competition.
2019 finds humanity in an increasingly dangerous place. The consequences of global economic stagnation, itself the product of a much deeper crisis of profitability, can be seen in the rise of nationalism, racism and xenophobia. These in turn threaten not only to add to the increasing proliferation of unending wars around the world but to the possibility of more general conflict further down the...
1. The general terms of the ‘women question’ · The issues facing women have made an urgent political reappearance in recent years, ranging from the horrific numbers of women killed by their partners to the scourge of wage differences and harassment at work. · Clear evidence has emerged that gender equality – so often trumpeted by various politicians as the objective of public political intervention...
In 2010 the announcement by the Coalition government that university tuition fees would be tripled sparked a wave of student protest. Remaining largely within the confines of the campus, the movement exhausted itself and failed to spread to other sectors. Nine years later, what’s left? · The Students · Between 1965 and 1975, under the recommendations of the Robbins Report, university provision in...
The rising tensions in the Persian Gulf in the past weeks can be easily attributed to a sharp crisis of overproduction in the international oil market, ongoing since 2014. One relevant theater for understanding recent developments therefore lies in the largely under-reported and often overlooked Libyan Civil War, and in particular in its wide-ranging implications for OPEC (Organization of the...
Part three of this series was published in 2005, two years or so before the great financial crash when the economic pundits were lauding the move away from manufacture to 'business and financial services'. In 2008 the banking and wider financial bodies were saved and the appearance of capitalist 'normality' maintained only by the concerted injection of gargantuan amounts of...
The article which follows is taken from the new edition of Revolutionary Perspectives (#14) which is just out. It was obviously written before the events which followed the British Navy’s seizure of the Iranian tanker, the Grace 1, off the coast of Gibraltar, but the substance of the analysis has not changed.
On May 23rd Greta Thunberg and 46 other spokespeople for the Youth Climate Protest (YCP) issued a statement before their latest day of action. At the heart of the statement was an "invitation" which we quote in full to accurately reflect its content. · YCP's statement reads - "Starting on Friday 20 September we will kickstart a week of climate action with a worldwide strike for the climate.
This second article in our series examines what is meant by ‘services’ and their apparently key role in the richest capitalist states where moving away from production of commodities is regarded as essential to economic advancement. Indeed, despite the setback of the 2007/8 financial crash, World Bank figures show that ‘services’ represent a higher proportion of GDP for the world economy as a...
The article here, the first in a series on what was then dubbed the "new economy", originally appeared in the CWO's political journal, Revolutionary Perspectives, in 2005. After thirty years or so of economic crisis, a crisis that still haunts capitalism today and which more than ever threatens the future of humanity, the US and its advanced capitalist allies had managed to offload much of...
Since December last year Sudan has been seething but it now looks like the Army have reasserted control. What started as bread riots last December, in the historic working class city of Atbara, transformed itself into a campaign of mass civil disobedience. In a country where 60% of the population are under 25 and 27% of these are unemployed it is not surprising that they should be in the vanguard...
On the morning of June 13, two oil tankers were attacked in the Gulf of Oman. One was the Front Altair, owned by the Norwegian company Frontline, but flying the flag of the Marshall Islands. It was carrying a cargo of ethanol from Qatar to Taiwan. The second was the Kokuka Courageous of the Japanese company, Kokuka Sangyo, flying the Panamanian flag which was carrying methanol from Saudi Arabia...
For those who think that the political and economic incompetence of our rulers is confined to the Anglo-Saxon states the following article from our Italian comrades, written just before the European elections, only underlines the same sorry story for Italian capitalism. The salient fact is that there is no viable capitalist solution to the global economic crisis which continues to bring only...
On Thursday 30 May construction workers at the Tees Renewable Energy Plant, owned by MGT Power, walked out in a wildcat action over safety conditions at the site. When workers act on their own class terrain they begin to challenge the capitalist structure as a whole. · A safety incident seems to have initially sparked the protest.
When the leaders speak of peace · The common folk know · That war is coming · When the leaders curse war · The mobilisation order is already written out. · Bertolt Brecht in German War Primer (1937) · When does a war of words become the words of war? It’s always difficult to say, but if Brecht is right we should be very worried right now.
Type | Title | User | Replies | Date |
---|---|---|---|---|
Advert | Jour fixe am 8.8. | ikt (editor) | | Sat, 2019-08-03 16:57 |
Publication | Revolutionary Perspectives #14 | webmaster | | Fri, 2019-08-02 19:55 |
Article | Reflections on the Student Movement in the UK | stevein7 | 1 | Fri, 2019-08-02 17:31 |
Forum topic | Filippo Turati, where is the critique? | Noa | 3 | Fri, 2019-08-02 17:22 |
Article | Capitalism's New Economy: The Booming Financial Sector | stevein7 | 1 | Fri, 2019-08-02 10:52 |
Article | صدای طبل های جنگ در خلیج | damoon (editor) | | Wed, 2019-07-31 15:32 |
Article | OPEC, Iran, and the Libyan Civil War | Dyjbas (editor) | | Mon, 2019-07-29 12:41 |
Article | L'appello di Greta Thunberg per gli scioperi generali: le confusioni di una protesta riformista | andrea79 | 1 | Sun, 2019-07-28 13:23 |
Forum topic | a quale frazione della borghesia fanno riferimento 5stelle e lega? | andrea79 | 2 | Sat, 2019-07-27 08:03 |
Article | The Drums of War in the Gulf | Dyjbas (editor) | | Tue, 2019-07-23 12:31 |
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ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER - NO SOLUTION WITHIN CAPITALISM!
Evidence of the crisis threatening the entire planet is increasingly stark. Desertification, flooding, hurricanes and cyclones, uncontrolled forest fires all destroy the very basis of life for the "women and men of no property" - the worldwide working class. This, of course, is massively increased by the spreading "wars without end". Whole communities are forced to migrate while the bosses' states raise barriers and walls.
The ecological devastation has been highlighted by the mushrooming mass actions around the School Students' Strikes and the activities of groups such as Extinction Rebellion (XR). Their campaigning focuses on a wish for Governments to save the planet, for corporations to be more considerate and for those who neither own nor control to alter their consumption patterns.
Such arguments put forward by those who seek a "kinder capitalism" are fatally flawed. The root causes of this ultimate ecological crisis are not about gaps in the democratic facade, neither can it be solved by tweaking our lifestyles while the bosses' system based on profit and ruination leads us to the brink of an abyss.
In the latest edition of our broadsheet Aurora the main article is headed "Climate Change: Capitalism is the Problem". CWO has called this meeting to highlight the unbreakable link between the continuation of capitalism and the accelerating degradation of the planet.
Many thousands of people have begun to realise that we cannot allow "business as usual" to continue. The meeting will explore the "hows and whys" of the vital need to move towards a truly sustainable future for humanity. At the core of the required change is the need for a revolutionary replacement of the capitalist system with a world-wide association of freely associated producers - a world without alienation or exploitation.
We welcome anyone interested in joining the discussion.
When: Saturday, 22 June 2019, at 3pm
Where: Rutland Arms, 86 Brown St, Sheffield, S1 2BS
Hosted by: Communist Workers' Organisation (CWO)
TOWARDS THE FUTURE INTERNATIONAL!
From Iran to Mexico, a rising tide of strike actions across the globe shows that class resistance to the horrors of capitalism is still the "spectre that haunts" the capitalist class.
At the same time we are also encouraged by the appearance of new militants attracted to the ideas of Internationalist Communism — the only alternative to the abyss towards which capitalism is dragging the entire planet.
This meeting aims to deepen and extend that communist understanding in the convinced belief that without a clear communist political organisation the international working class will be left without a compass in the tumult ahead.
The CWO and our comrades in the ICT wrote some years ago: The revolutionary programme serves no purpose at all if it exists only in the minds of a limited number of “thinkers” who are deluded into assuming their ideas are being transmitted “to the class” when they appear in a journal of equally restricted readership, or on the html files of some site on the Internet.
More recently we have written: Our earnest hope is to engage with those new forces which do come to a consciousness of the need to overthrow the system, to give them a political compass, something to rally around, whilst at the same time, we seek dialogue with those forces which already exist to actively cooperate where possible, agree to disagree where necessary, and ultimately to unite as history inexorably moves on and a real class movement develops.
We welcome anyone interested in this vital task to come and discuss with us.
When: Saturday, 11 May 2019, at 3pm
Where: Calthorpe Arms, 252 Grays Inn Rd, London, WC1X 8JR
Hosted by: Communist Workers' Organisation
Summer 2019 - Now out!
Journal of the Communist Workers’ Organisation -- Why not subscribe to get the articles whilst they are still current and help the struggle for a society free from exploitation, war and misery? Joint subscriptions to Revolutionary Perspectives (3 issues) and Aurora (our agitational bulletin - 4 issues) are £15 in the UK, €24 in Europe and $30 in the rest of the World.
May 2019
Aurora is the broadsheet of the ICT for the interventions amongst the working class. It is published and distributed in several countries and languages. So far it has been distributed in UK, France, Italy, Canada, USA, Colombia.
Spring 2019
Aurora is the broadsheet of the ICT for the interventions amongst the working class. It is published and distributed in several countries and languages. So far it has been distributed in UK, France, Italy, Canada, USA, Colombia.
Written by Onorato Damen
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
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