En Passant

Much of the left internationally has given open or covert support to the Assad regime in Syria. The Morning Star in Britain went so far as to call the defeat of Aleppo a “liberation”. Why do left-wingers support a murderous regime instead of people fighting for their freedom? What is the role of Islamist forces […]

Tim Ginty has written an important and thoughtful article in defence of Labor Party social democracy. (A tale of two campaigns: The Spanish and Australian elections compared. If the ALP wants to avoid a fate similar to the Labor type Socialist Workers Party in Spain (and SYRIZA, the equivalent in Greece, I would add), and avoid losing most of its support base and being outflanked by new more radical political groupings, Tim says Labor ‘must rebuild itself as a genuine party of the left. ‘ Can Labor be rebuilt? This is my reply.

The globe continues to warm. The recent Paris conference agreement was a sham. We are heading towards 3 – 4 degrees C warming. Why can’t world leaders end their fossil fuel addiction? If you are in Canberra come to this meeting to discuss why we have to change the system, before the system destroys the planet. It is on at 1 pm on Wednesday 17 February in room G 039 in Copland Building at the Australian National University.

I went along to the protest for the Syrian revolution and democracy at the Russian Embassy in Canberra on Thursday. Here is a one photo of part of the crowd of about 80 Syrians and Syrian Australians. They asked me to speak and I expressed support for the democratic struggle against the butcher Assad and for democracy and to stop the bombing. Victory to the Syrian revolution. Victory to the Syrian people. Victory to democracy. More photos in the link.

The support for Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign is a very good sign but British Labour isn’t the answer, argues Charlie Kimber, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Socialist Worker UK

If there are two lessons I draw from the surrender of SYRIZA they are, first, not to pursue a grand reformist project, especially an electoralist one aimed at winning power to manage capitalism, and second to consider how to unite those small and disparate forces now on the ground in Australia that understand that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class.

The word “revolution” is often misused to describe events or historical developments that are far from revolutionary. Writing in Socialist Worker US, Paul D’Amato, author of The Meaning of Marxism, explains what Marxists mean – and don’t mean – when they talk about revolution.

According to Oxfam: The combined wealth of the richest 1 percent will overtake that of the other 99 percent of people next year unless the current trend of rising inequality is checked, Oxfam warned today ahead of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. This is the logic of capitalism. It is irreformable. Revolution […]

Here is a snippet from a good article in Solidarity in Australia about the fall of the Berlin Wall. It describes the Stalinist regimes as state capitalist. I would urge those interested in understanding how ‘socialism’ could be overthrown by the very workers it supposedly ruled for to read this. I would especially urge members of Socialist Alternative in Australia to read it to help re-discover their hidden history and analysis.

Writing in Socialist Worker UK, Martin Empson reviews Naomi Klein’s new book, This Changes Everything, and argues that the only way to stop climate change is to get rid of capitalism There’s no denying it—capitalism is damaging the planet. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report proves that humans are fundamentally changing the […]